Tag

Search Engine Optimization

Browsing

By Jennifer Simonson

The difference between a flourishing business and a floundering business often comes down to an effective marketing campaign. This is especially true for small businesses. Every successful marketing campaign starts with a well-thought-out marketing plan. In this article, we will guide you through the steps on how to create a top-notch marketing plan to help put your business on the road to success.

What Is a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is essentially a roadmap that guides businesses through the complex terrain of promoting their products or services. Think of it as a blueprint that details specific marketing campaigns, timelines, target audiences and channels such as social media, email or traditional media. Your plan should also establish clear metrics for success, the methodology used to evaluate performance and allocated budgets.

It is important to note that a marketing plan is not a static document. It is supposed to be an ever-evolving plan that adapts to market trends, customer feedback and the successful or unsuccessful marketing efforts. If done properly, a marketing plan will help you synchronize your marketing objectives with your overall business goals and ensure every marketing activity aligns with your broader vision of growth.

Marketing Plan vs. Marketing Strategy

Some assume that “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” are the same thing, but be aware they hold distinct meanings and serve different purposes. A marketing strategy is more big-picture thinking. It identifies your target market, your value proposition, how you position yourself against competitors and how you will sustain your value over time. It involves deep insights into your customers’ needs, market trends and competitive analysis. It is essentially the “why” behind all your marketing actions.

The marketing plan, on the other hand, details the “what” and the “when” of those efforts. Once you have your marketing strategy outlined, you can begin to create a marketing plan. The plan should outline the specific campaigns, activities and tactics you’ll use to carry out the strategy. This includes details on the marketing channels you’ll use, the timeline for implementation, the budget and the key performance indicators you’ll track to measure success. It’s a blueprint that translates the strategy into actionable tasks and schedules.

Why Businesses Need a Marketing Plan

A carefully crafted marketing plan can be a game-changer for small businesses dreaming of steady growth and a competitive edge over larger companies. Marketing plans with smart strategies and targeted campaigns can level the playing field by helping small businesses carve out their niche. It provides a clear roadmap that aligns marketing efforts with business objectives to ensure every marketing action contributes to the broader company goals.

This focused approach saves small businesses money by efficiently focusing resources instead of using a scattergun approach that can drain limited budgets. By identifying and understanding target markets, businesses can tailor their messaging to meet specific needs, which increases the likelihood of conversion. A solid marketing plan offers a framework for measuring success by setting benchmarks. With careful tracking, small businesses can quickly see what’s not working and adjust strategies in real time for better outcomes.

Essential Marketing Channels

Today’s businesses have a wide array of marketing channels available to them. From highly analytical PPC advertising to engaging in-person event marketing, there’s no shortage of methods to promote your company.

Social Media

During the past two decades, social media has proved to be a highly effective way for small businesses to market themselves at little to no costs. Platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn offer businesses a dynamic platform to engage directly with their audience. They allow for the sharing of content, running targeted ads and fostering community through comments and shares. Effective social media marketing can enhance brand awareness, drive traffic and strengthen customer loyalty.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is another highly effective way to reach an audience directly. Newsletters, promotional offers and personalized content can nurture leads, promote loyalty and drive conversions. Email marketing offers measurable results and high ROI, making it a staple in a digital marketing strategy toolbox.

Content Marketing

Content marketing involves creating hyper-relevant and compelling content that will act as a magnet to attract a laser-focused group of people. You can create blogs, videos, infographics and podcasts to cultivate an engaged community of followers with whom your brand’s message genuinely resonates.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of optimizing website content to rank higher in search engine results pages. Effective SEO strategies including on-page optimization, quality link building and keyword research help drive traffic to your website.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is a method of online marketing where you pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad. Popular platforms such as Google Ads and Bing Ads guarantee your ads show up first in search engine results for specific keywords, allowing you to bypass the “organic” results. While the pay-per-click fees can add up, this form of advertising provides immediate traffic and measurable results.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing leverages the reach of influencers in specific niches to help you promote your business to a larger audience. When you partner with a credible influencer, you can tap into their loyal followings, gain trust quickly and drive engagement that will hopefully lead to greater sales. Affiliate marketing can complement influencer marketing by allowing influencers to earn commissions on the sales they drive. This performance-based option is cost effective, as you will only pay for actual results.

Event Marketing

Event marketing involves marketing your brand, company or service through in-person or virtual events. It can be anything from interactive webinars and educational workshops to large-scale conferences and industry trade shows. Event marketing gives you the opportunity to directly engage with your audience and hopefully provide a memorable experience for your customers.

How To Create a Marketing Plan

Creating a marketing plan is a step-by-step process. Make sure you take your time with each step before moving on to the next one.

1. Create an Executive Summary

An executive summary is a snapshot of your simplified marketing goals, significant milestones and an outline of future plans. It should encapsulate relevant facts about your brand, setting the stage for the detailed strategy that follows. This section provides stakeholders with a clear understanding of where the company stands and where it intends to go, concisely summarizing the essence of the marketing efforts.

2. Identify Your Target Market

Who are you trying to reach? By identifying your target market you can tailor your marketing strategies effectively to help them reach the people most likely to be interested in your products or services. Outline the characteristics of your ideal customer including age, location, goals, pains and trigger points.

3. Research Your Competitors

Competitor research is a critical step in forming a marketing plan. Analyse the strengths and weaknesses in other businesses in your industry. This insight can help you identify opportunities for differentiation and areas where you can fill in the opportunity your competitors may have overlooked.

4. Determine Your Marketing Goals

Without clear marketing goals, you are just shooting barrels in the dark. Are you trying to increase brand awareness, boast sales or grow your digital footprint? And if so, by how much and in what timeframe? Use the SMART criteria for goal setting, which advises that goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

5. Establish and Track Benchmarks

Once you determine what your marketing goals are, it is important to track their effectiveness.

To do this, set baseline measurements for key performance indicators related to your goals, such as website traffic, conversion rates or social media engagement. Monitor these benchmarks on a regular basis and adjust strategies as needed to enhance marketing performance.

6. Identify Your Marketing Channels

Are you going to throw all your eggs in the social media basket? Or are you going to diversify your marketing strategy with both digital and in-person events? This step requires a deep dive into the various channels available—be it social media, email marketing, SEO or traditional advertising. When choosing your marketing channels, be sure to ask yourself where your target audience is most engaged.

7. Create a Budget

Finally, create a budget that covers all aspects of your marketing efforts from paid advertising and content creation to software subscriptions and event sponsorships. This will help you stay financially responsible as more marketing opportunities arise.

Bottom Line

One of the keys to a successful business is setting yourself apart from the competition. A strategic marketing plan that details your marketing efforts can not only help you stand out but also provide a step-by-step guide toward reaching your business objectives.

By Jennifer Simonson

Reviewed by Lauren Holznienkemper

Sourced from Forbes

By Jason Hall

If you’ve searched for something on Google lately, you’ve probably noticed the AI-generated text that’s produced to answer many of your questions. These AI overviews are revolutionizing search engine optimization, which means companies have to step out of their comfort zone and into new marketing strategies. As AI overviews become more common and better at delivering the information that searchers are looking for, you must adapt or risk your business becoming irrelevant.

Update Your Keyword Strategy

The first thing to focus on in this new world of AI overviews is your keyword strategy. What worked in the past was focusing on high-volume keywords that appeared in the most searches. But as AI becomes better at understanding context and providing more relevant search results, what worked before may not in the future. Instead, start prioritizing longer key phrases, especially those that reflect natural conversation and speech patterns.

Think about what exactly people are typing into the search engines, as opposed to just focusing on certain keywords. If you can figure this out, you have a much higher chance of increasing your visibility and engagement moving forward.

Produce Higher-Quality Content

In addition to a better keyword strategy, focus on higher-quality content that is both in-depth and user-friendly.

Keyword stuffing will no longer suffice in a world where AI can summarize your entire content in a matter of seconds. Instead, you need to take content creation much more seriously and put attention to detail and a high level of research into every article on your website. You must be able to provide value.

Focus on not only answering specific questions with your articles but also anticipating searches that are closely related to the topic. This will give you a greater chance of being noticed by AI.

Ultimately, your goal should remain the same as it always has: Provide engaging and informative content that answers questions your visitors may have about the topic. However, in this new world powered by AI, shortcuts and workarounds probably won’t get you anywhere.

Make Appearing In AI Overviews Your New Goal

Search engine results pages (SERPs) are likely in for a significant change as AI overviews become more and more prevalent. With AI overviews in position zero, and organic links being pushed further and further down the page, users can find the answers they’re looking for right at the top of the search results. This means they won’t have to click through to random websites looking for the information they need.

As a result, many businesses may notice a reduction in their click-through rates. Your new goal, then, should be to appear in AI overviews as opposed to just being on the first page, and you should adjust your content accordingly. This further emphasizes the need for content that is high-quality and authoritative.

Prioritize Structured Data And Schema Markup

Another thing you need to prioritize in this AI climate is structured data and schema markup, or the standardized format for search engines to understand and interpret website content accurately.

Handled correctly, structured data highlights key information, making it easier for AI to detect the relevant details to be shown to users. This is actually a twofold approach, as it not only gives you a better chance at being prominently featured but also improves user experience by offering clear and accurate information.

Don’t underestimate just how much visibility good structured data and schema markup can offer in an AI overview landscape.

Improve User Experience And Engagement

Don’t forget the importance of user experience and things like dwell time, bounce rate and interaction either. AI overviews strive to give the most accurate and relevant information they can, and engagement metrics like these can go a long way in how algorithms judge quality.

Longer dwell times and lower bounce rates indicate a positive user experience, which shows the content is valuable and engaging. Focus on this kind of content. Try to incorporate as many interactive elements as you can in your content and entice readers to respond.

With an enhanced user experience, your content is more likely to be recognized as high-quality. This also will lead to your content being used more, which leads to higher engagement and better placement in the SERPs. You aren’t just looking for visitors; you’re looking for visitors who stay.

Focus On Authenticity And Ethics

As with anything associated with your company, authenticity should be your highest priority.

There also are ethical considerations to think about when it comes to AI overviews. Content that is inaccurate or biased can damage your company’s credibility and trustworthiness. Make sure you emphasize fact-checking and offer genuine and unbiased information.

Though AI has advanced at an incredible rate in recent years, it is far from perfect and can produce suggestions that are flat-out incorrect. One viral social media post showed an AI overview suggesting that glue can help prevent cheese from sliding off pizza, for example. However, as with anything else, this technology will improve, reliability will increase and so will the general public’s trust.

To stay ahead of the game, focus more on transparency and hold your content to high ethical standards. The last thing you want is for AI overviews to quote your content to someone only for it to go viral for how ridiculous it is and destroy your reputation and authenticity along with it.

Embracing these changes will help your company stay relevant and competitive in an increasingly AI-driven digital landscape. By focusing on more nuanced keywords, better-quality content, authenticity and ethics, you can better meet user needs and improve your search visibility.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Jason Hall

Jason Hall, Founder & CEO of FiveChannels, specializes in brand awareness, traffic & lead gen, marketing funnels, social media, and more. Read Jason Hall’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

BY NICK ZVIADADZE , EDITED BY CHELSEA BROWN

Discover the best SEO hacks you can use to rank fast and avoid waiting for months to see results.

Search engine optimization (SEO) usually takes a lot of time to show results. In fact, it’s common for businesses to wait up to a year to see improvements in their search engine rankings.

For a growing business, waiting that long for results is not always optimal, which is why many entrepreneurs ditch SEO in favour of quicker alternatives, like paid ads.

Luckily, there is a way to speed up this process and climb up Google’s rankings faster. And it’s worth it too, considering 49% of marketers believe that SEO delivers the highest ROI of any marketing strategy.

In this article, I share five actionable SEO hacks that can help you rank faster and drive more traffic to your website in no time.

1. Target long-tail keywords

Many small business owners trying SEO for the first time make the mistake of targeting highly competitive keywords. Although it’s tempting to aim for those big, high-traffic keywords, it can take years to rank for them.

To accelerate your SEO results, you want to focus on long-tail keywords. These are longer, more specific phrases that potential customers are likely to use when they’re closer to making a purchase.

Sure, long-tail keywords may have lower search volumes, but they often come with higher buyer intent, which means that the people using these terms are more likely to convert into customers.

For example, a standard keyword you may want to target is “running shoes.” This keyword is highly competitive and could take a long time to rank for. Instead, a better SEO strategy is to go for a long-tail keyword like “best running shoes for flat feet” because it is more specific, less competitive and more likely to attract users who are ready to buy.

2. Create epic content

Most website owners don’t put enough effort into the content they publish. However, generic 500-word articles haven’t been able to compete with in-depth content for a long time.

Recent Google algorithm updates have made quality content even more important, so generic 2,000-word articles aren’t going to cut it either.

That said, quality content is more than just word count.

Here’s what truly epic content consists of:

  • Well-researched: Use relevant statistics and credible sources to back up your points. This adds authority and trustworthiness to your content.
  • Actionable: Provide advice and tips that readers can immediately apply to solve their problems.
  • Authoritative: Share expert opinions and real-life examples to increase the credibility of your content.
  • Well-structured: Break your content into clear, logical sections with headings, subheadings and bullet points to increase readability.
  • Engaging: Write in a natural, conversational tone that resonates with your audience, and don’t overuse AI.

For example, if you’re writing an article about “how to choose the best running shoes for flat feet,” include expert opinions, real-life examples, shoe ratings and actionable steps for your readers to follow.

If you’re not sure how to create content that ranks, the best approach is to hire an SEO expert.

3. Upgrade old content

Regularly updating your content signals to Google that you actively manage your site, which improves your chances of climbing the search engine rankings.

One effective way to do this is to use Google Search Console to identify articles that are ranking in the middle of page one or top of page two.

Then, you need to analyse the content created by competitors who are ranking better than you. Have they added new information, updated statistics, built more backlinks or improved the user experience? Is your article still the best resource available?

The chances are that your competitors have upped their game and so should you.

Add new data, update links, refine your points, and ensure your advice is current and actionable. This shows Google that you are proactive about keeping your content relevant.

4. Proactively build internal links

When writing an article, you should include internal links to all relevant blog posts on your site. This helps Google understand how these different blogs are related to each other.

You can do that by typing “site:yourdomain.com [related keyword]” into Google search. This gives you a list of pages on your website you should link to in your new article.

When adding internal links, use descriptive anchor text that indicates what the linked page is about.

For example, if you’re writing a blog post targeting the keyword “running shoes for flat feet,” you want to link to your other article about “best insoles for flat feet.” Instead of using generic text like “click here,” choose a descriptive anchor like “best insoles for flat feet” to help readers understand what they’ll find when they click the link.

5. Build topical authority

Topical authority refers to how well your website covers a specific subject area. It’s an important factor for SEO because search engines prioritize websites that demonstrate deep knowledge of a given topic.

For example, a website with 100 articles about running shoes will generally perform better in search rankings than a site with just ten articles on the same topic.

The best way to build topical authority is to publish a ton of SEO content. Publishing just two or three articles per month isn’t enough. Aim to publish 10, 20 or even 30 articles each month to improve your credibility with search engines.

Creating that much content on your own can be difficult, so the best option is to hire an SEO agency.

But once you manage to build topical authority, your new articles start ranking in a matter of weeks instead of months, and you can enjoy a steady flow of organic traffic.

Even though SEO takes time to show results, you can try these five SEO techniques to hack your way to better rankings.

Focus on targeting long-tail keywords, creating quality content, updating your old articles, building internal links and establishing topical authority for faster and more substantial SEO results.

BY NICK ZVIADADZE ,

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK® CONTRIBUTOR

Founder at MintSEO. Nick Zviadadze is a growth marketing specialist with more than eight years of experience in SEO, copywriting and content marketing. He’s the founder of MintSEO, a fully-remote SEO and content marketing agency. He helps businesses drive growth by improving their search visibility.

EDITED BY CHELSEA BROWN

Sourced from Entrepreneur

By Jason Hennessey 

Here are some tools that business owners can use to optimize their websites and bring in more revenue

Small businesses face unique challenges when it comes to their marketing operations. For one, very few have dedicated personnel to manage marketing campaigns (there may be few team members wearing many hats). They might also have limited financial resources, making it difficult to subscribe to the latest and best marketing tools.

But running a small business also has its advantages. There is often far less competition within a small niche market, and successful marketing campaigns are significantly less expensive. Similarly, amazing results can still be achieved even with a small repertoire of marketing tools.

If you’re looking to increase organic traffic to your business via Search Engine Optimization (SEO), here are some cost-effective software solutions to have in your toolkit.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is Google’s own SEO keyword research tool. Although Keyword Planner is primarily used to identify keywords to target with Google Ads, the same data can be used to inform your organic keyword strategy for your website.

Use Keyword Planner to find keywords your target audience may be searching for, validate the search volume and competition level for each and discover related keywords that can help you reach people interested in your products or services.

Cost: Free

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is another Google-hosted SEO tool, but specific to your website performance and analytics. GSC measures your website traffic, identifies site issues and allows you to monitor your ranking keywords. Sign up for GSC using your Google account, add the code to your website, and start tracking. This data will allow you to make improvements to your website that can help increase your organic traffic.

Cost: Free

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is perhaps the most widely known SEO analytics tool, and for good reason. For one, it’s fed by first-party data directly from Google, making it one of the most accurate analytics tools. Also, it allows you to implement conversion tracking to monitor what actions users take on your website, whether filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, purchasing a product, etc. You can also monitor traffic from other channels, not just Google, such as referral traffic, direct traffic or social media traffic.

Cost: Free

4. Yoast (WordPress only)

With WordPress being the most popular Content Management System (CMS), it’s only fitting to mention Yoast. Yoast is a WordPress-specific SEO plugin that allows businesses to add essential on-page elements to their sites, including meta titles, meta descriptions, keywords and internal links. Once activated, the Yoast plugin displays a score (red, yellow or green) to reflect the degree to which your website is optimized. Some alternatives to Yoast include RankMath and SEOPress.

Cost: $99 per year

5. Semrush

Semrush is one of the best “freemium” SEO software options, with a wide range of keyword research functions, site auditing features, content optimization tools and more. Like Google Keyword Planner, you can research keywords relevant to your service or product and even discover the keywords your competitors are ranking for. You can audit your site for on-page and technical SEO issues and receive an easy-to-follow report on how to fix them. Semrush also includes backlink analysis, listing management and local SEO tools, which are not available via Keyword Planner or Google Analytics.

Cost: free (limited); paid starts at $129.95 per month

6. SpyFu

SpyFu is a small-business-friendly competitive keyword research tool. Its complete SEO marketing suite includes a Pay Per Click ad analyser, robust historical data, competitive analysis tools, backlink outreach and even custom reporting. SpyFu is a close runner-up to Semrush, as it provides a range of helpful SEO features at an affordable price. However, Semrush is often the preferred option, given that it includes on-page, off-page, and technical SEO tools (the trifecta).

Cost: free (limited); $16 per month (annual plan)

7. AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic is not explicitly an SEO tool but rather a “search listening tool,” but it made the list because it is supremely helpful when it comes to small business content strategy. And content is one of the most important drivers of organic traffic. AnswerThePublic allows you to search for a primary keyword and discover a “web” of questions and/or topics to turn into blog posts or web pages.

For example, say you sell dog toys online; some topic ideas generated could include “Are dog toys machine washable?” or “Which toys are safe for dogs?” These might make interesting blog posts that appeal to the interests of your target audience.

Cost: Free

8. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is an industry-leading website crawling and log analysis tool. Its purpose is to imitate a Google web crawler, “crawl” your website and identify any issues hindering its organic performance. Such issues might include broken links (404 pages), missing page titles, oversized images, unused JavaScript and many others. Addressing these issues can help you speed up your website, make it more discoverable by real search engines, and increase your organic rankings, leading to more site traffic. Screaming Frog is best paired with a keyword research tool like Semrush to ensure a holistic SEO strategy.

Cost: free (limited); paid starts at $259 per year

So now what?

In small business marketing, the challenges are unique, often stemming from limited resources and personnel juggling multiple roles. SEO can feel intimidating, especially to small business owners facing limited technical and financial resources. However, the advantages of operating in a niche market with lower competition and cost-effective campaigns are undeniable. To harness these benefits, businesses can leverage powerful yet budget-friendly SEO tools. Elevate your small business’s online presence with these tools, turning challenges into opportunities for growth and visibility. So, dig in, get optimizing and start seeing the organic payoffs for your website.

By Jason Hennessey 

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

Entrepreneur & CEO Jason Hennessey is an entrepreneur, internationally-recognized SEO expert, author, speaker, podcast host and business coach. Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student and practitioner of SEO and search marketing.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

By Nate Nead

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing visibility and traffic to websites by improving their rank in search engine results pages.

While there are multiple time-consuming strategies utilized to improve SEO, sponsored links offer a more direct route by carrying websites’ targeted messages directly into the top portions of search engine results with ads created from certain keywords.

Though it can be beneficial, there has yet to be an agreed-upon consensus regarding its effectiveness for SEO improvement.

This blog post examines auditing sponsored links as one aspect of SEO management by covering overarching benefits and drawbacks, important factors to consider before lowing budget resources on paid search options, and alternate strategies that should also be carefully incorporated alongside out paid methods for improved organic ranking and reach overall.

Sponsored Links

Source

Sponsored links are displayed advertisements paying for prominent display on a search engine. They can take the form of either pay-per-click ads or flat rate fees and are placed separately from natural, organic search results with clearly designed headers.

In the link building realm, sponsored links are typically paid-for ads via a backlink that is (or should be) marked with a rel=”sponsored” tag.

Customers who click through sponsored link visits yield revenue to its creators while providing potential customers quick access to relevant content mentioned in the sponsored text link itself.

Companies relying on these timely linked pages typically experience faster acquisition of marketing leads, higher website viewership, and greater profitability from within their revenue streams gained though voluntary organic search means.

Differentiating sponsored links from organic search results

Sponsored links refer to online advertisements that appear on certain websites, usually displayed as a separate box of results below the natural search engine result pages (SERPs). They are identified by an accompanying notation or symbol stating they are an advertisement/sponsored link.

Ideally, sponsored links allow businesses and organizations to quickly present users with relevant solutions using keywords that match the interests or needs of the target consumers. In contrast, organic search engine results provide unbiased combinations of keyword matches based purely on relevancy algorithms unprompted by advertising efforts.

Popular platforms offering sponsored link opportunities

Sponsored links are advertisements that appear on search engine results pages alongside organic results. They can be differentiated from organic search engine rankings in a few ways.

Firstly, sponsored listings display visible extensions such as “Ad” and use language to identify them as paid promotions.

Secondly, sponsored links lead to paid content or promotional landing pages rather than traditional web pages with accumulated content.

Thirdly, depending on the platform utilized they may offer additional features such as increased size and more prominent placement. Finally, organic search ranks websites based on relevance to key phrases while sponsored listing allocations depend partially on chance and time intervals specific to buyer’s budget constraints.

Pros of Using Sponsored Links for SEO Enhancement

Source

Increased visibility and exposure

Sponsored links present a unique opportunity to greatly increase visibility and exposure for websites, brand names, products and services. When employed strategically on popular platforms such as Google AdWords, companies are able to position their best-performing content above organic search engine results that would otherwise appear lower in the search rankings.

Increased visibility, therefore, works towards achieving higher click-through rates from users either actively or passively searching online using relevant keywords embraced through PPC optimizations which work in unison with SEO factors.

Increased visibility subsequently leads to boosted performance levels as well as enhanced reach throughout varying networks ensuring brands remain highly visible and tangible across multiple channels of communication.

Potential for targeted audience reach

Sponsored links allow businesses to develop a targeted campaign with specific messaging that prioritizes connections with users that would most likely show active interest in the product or service. Advertisers can target their audience based on location, habits and other attributes through sophisticated targeting options available through sponsored link campaigns.

Having an accurate advertising strategy helps to make sure certain messages are sent to only relevant audience and ads are intelligently displayed at opportune moments resulting in more predictive responses from customers.

In addition, by ensuring detailed targeting of ads potentially time-consuming manual labour required can be reduced significantly while simultaneously enhancing marketing results with various budgets.

Accelerated traffic generation

Sponsored links offer the potential to drive accelerated traffic generation, especially when it relates to targeting more specific audiences. Unlike organic long-term getting techniques like regular SEO strategies, sponsored link visibility can be achieved instantly with faster and direct results.

Additionally, clear direction is offered using location settings or advanced keyword searches which allows for a controlled influx of user volume. Through this method, advertisers are able to reach out to their ideal demographic group in real time with quick effective timing since many people are now online actively searching and browsing.

Improved brand recognition and authority

Sponsored links provide an excellent opportunity to leverage brand recognition and authority on a search engine. As noted by SEO experts, branded queries are great opportunities to generate leads and enhance conversion rates.

When done correctly with knowledge of keyword and marketing research, daily budget and market insights, sponsored links can often yield positive results that help businesses have higher SERP visibility via organic spot as well as get own share in the pricey paid search auction while competing against other bidder’s money bids for relevant keywords slots.

Cons of Utilizing Sponsored Links for SEO Improvement

Source

Cost considerations and budget constraints

When considering using sponsored links to improve SEO, cost considerations and budget constraints are key detriments. Utilizing sponsored link campaigns for SEO improvement requires substantial upfront costs as well as ongoing campaign maintenance fees which can quickly add up.

Additionally, industries with entrenched players tend to have much larger marketing budgets dedicated to paid advertising than smaller businesses due to the costly nature of performance bidding.

Cost is a particularly important factor to consider for digital marketing campaigns since insufficient funds due can result in ineffective initiatives leading to little-to-no return on investment.

Risk of dependency on paid advertising

Sponsored links are expensive and one could suffer from decreased ROI if their SEO requires extensive utilization of such services.

As more of the marketing budget is poured in sponsored links, it runs the risk of becoming a dependency that can become hard to sustain over time.

This may also cause an interruption in search presence for certain keyword queries when campaigns are paused due to Budget constraints, costing further organic visibility for SEO optimizations.

Ethical implications and potential negative user perception

Sponsored links can create ethical implications if utilized in a dishonest or misleading way. The use of sponsored links to promote or offer information, products, or services that may not align with the mission and values of an organization or brand might be viewed as deceptive.

Selling links as a service is also cheapened when sponsored links are involved.

Furthermore, consumers could develop negative perceptions about these practices, which could compromise their trust in the company promoting them. Sponsored links should never outshine appropriate organic SEO techniques as users value higher quality online content even more than visibility alone.

Uncertain long-term impact on organic search rankings

Sponsored links can provide short-term gains with increased traffic and improved brand visibility. However, the long-term impacts of relying heavily on sponsored links may be an issue to take into consideration.

Google algorithmologies are constantly changing and some major algorithm updates have resulted in a loss of organic search ranking for specific websites. It is difficult to predict future changes which could affected paid search performance, causing sites that rely heavily upon sponsored links for SEO improvement to see substantially reduced results.

Factors to Consider Before Employing Sponsored Links

Comprehensive analysis of SEO goals and strategy

Before beginning to use sponsored links for SEO goals, it’s essential to do a comprehensive analysis of the strategy in place. Start by evaluating existing content and appearing on how relevant and useful it is to the audience or demographic likely to answer your ad.

Furthermore, you need to predict possible outcomes of using sponsored links and make sure they would support the overall SEO goal through certain metrics such as website lead generation rate aimed activity increase after this channel implementation.

Evaluation of available budget and cost-effectiveness

When deciding to use sponsored links for SEO enhancement, it’s important to evaluate the available budget as well as cost-effectiveness. Knowing how much money can be allocated for Ads will help determine if managing a sponsored link campaign is feasible.

It’s also important to analyse how effective different channels and platforms are performance-wise in order to optimize the impact of each individual chosen Ad and maximize conversions given a specific budget.

Last but not least, ROI (Return on Investment) should be optimized from sponsored link campaigns – can enough money be earned back from sales or merely from brand recognition? Taking all these factors into account before opting in will save time, resources and provide better long-term effects from employing Sponsored Links.

Researching target audience and platform compatibility

Researching target audience and platform compatibility is an important factor to consider before employing sponsored links in enhancing your SEO performance. Understanding the needs, interests, and demographics of your visitors can help you determine where and how to best invest in sponsored links.

You should also research the platforms that offer sponsored link opportunities; learn what types of content formats they support, geographic availability and other technical requirements that may be necessary for each channel.

Balancing sponsored links with organic SEO techniques

Before investing in sponsored links to improve SEO, it is important to assess whether your strategy includes the correct balance of organic and paid techniques. It’s recommended you create a outline of expectations, organic keyword targets, and current performance gaps in order to focus on utilizing an optimal combination of both options.

To optimize performance outcomes, sites should connect their sponsored link campaigns with website analytics and measure perceived value versus costs accurately across ongoing goals. This data enables business improvements and adjustments so that a venue can consider making continual refinements going forward and achieve maximum promotional success.

 Alternatives to Sponsored Links for SEO Enhancement

On-page optimization and content quality improvement

Source

On-page optimization and content quality improvement are essential alternative strategies to sponsored links when it comes to SEO enhancement.

On-page optimization involves in-depth keyword research and the application of those keywords throughout the website (title tags, headlines, etc.) for better indexing by search engines.

Quality content is also important in that it communicates information effectively to users without looking spammy or automated and keeps them engaged over time. These methods do take longer than sponsored links but improve credibility with organic rankings in the long run.

Building high-quality backlinks

Building high-quality backlinks is an effective alternative to sponsored links that can be utilized for SEO enhancement. Backlinking helps send direct traffic to your website and sours further credibility with search engine algorithms improving rankings over time.

A mix of strong anchor texts, trusted sources, targeted audiences and varied link types should all be addressed when creating a successful backlink strategy. Additionally, finding internal link opportunities allows your own web pages to benefit from the increased SEO boost providing a more efficient use of time and resources.

Utilizing social media platforms and influencer collaborations

Using social media platforms for SEO enhancement means creating, sharing, and monitoring content. This includes optimizing website hierarchies with keyword placement, link building from quality external sources, and providing thoughtful posts and commentary – including the engagement of influencers.

Influencer collaborations open up entirely new channels for businesses to tap circles that were otherwise inaccessible or achieved with difficulties.

From organic reach among commenters on relevant feeds to actively timed sponsored posts related to the services a business has on offer – leveraging relationships between real people adds credibility and gold-lined star power that is tremendously useful when seeking potential customers’ attention away from paid advertising routes.

Conclusion

Depending on individual goals and strategy, sponsored links can be a very useful tool for SEO improvement if used correctly. Advantages include increased visibility and reach, accelerated traffic growth, enhanced brand recognition, etc.

However, such benefits have to be considered in the context of budget constraints/cost-effectiveness and ethical concerns. Therefore, an effective evaluation of available options is necessary before determining whether the use of sponsored links is worthwhile for any given SEO project in question.

By Nate Nead

Nate Nead is the CEO & Managing Member of Nead, LLC, a consulting company that provides strategic advisory services across multiple disciplines including finance, marketing and software development. For over a decade Nate had provided strategic guidance on M&A, capital procurement, technology and marketing solutions for some of the most well-known online brands. He and his team advise Fortune 500 and SMB clients alike. The team is based in Seattle, Washington; El Paso, Texas and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Sourced from readwrite

 

 

By Michelle Hawley
Stay up-to-date on the latest in search engine optimization. Learn about SEO strategies, best practices and the latest updates to Google’s ranking factors.

The Gist

  • SEO best practices still matter. To show up in search engine results pages (SERPs), following search engine optimization (SEO) best practices is necessary.
  • Still Google’s world. Google dominates the global search engine market with 84% market share, making it crucial to consider in an SEO strategy.  
  • High-quality content. On-page SEO involves optimizing visible elements such as content, which should be relevant and high-quality, with expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) guidelines in mind.

When someone wants to search for a product, look at videos or read about a topic, they go directly to their preferred search engine. And if you want to show up in said search engine results pages (SERPs), you’ll need to follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.

As we delve into best practices as of February 2023, our primary focus will be on Google. Why? Because it has dominated the global search engine market since its inception in 1997.

As of December 2022, Google held 84% of the search engine market — with runner-up Bing claiming nearly 9%.

 

The necessity of considering Google in an SEO strategy, whether for a single blog post or entire website.

 

Google doesn’t share its search volume data. But experts around the web estimate the search engine sees anywhere from 40,000 to 99,000 search queries every second. For one day, that could amount to more than 8.5 billion searches.

SEO, which companies use to maximize content marketing efforts, ultimately breaks down into three categories:

  • On-page SEO
  • Off-page SEO
  • Technical SEO

Let’s take a look at some core components of these three categories and how SEO professionals can aim to follow best practices.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO, also called on-site SEO, refers to the optimization of elements that you can see on-page, such as:

Content

Content is at the core of on-page SEO, and it’s what many people focus on when first optimizing their SEO strategy.

Relevance and quality are more important than any other Google ranking factor.

Google actively penalizes thin content that offers little to no value to searchers. While in the past it used to consider pages as a whole, it now looks at and ranks subsections within pages to match queries.

When you’re working on your content creation strategy or overall SEO strategy, consider these questions to determine if you’re headed in the right direction:

  • Do you have a target audience in mind that will find your content useful if they come directly to you?
  • Does your content demonstrate expertise that comes from firsthand experience?
  • After reading your content, will someone feel they’ve learned enough about the topic?

If you’ve answered yes to these three questions, you’re on the right track.

Some content worst practices to stay away from include:

  • Creating content specifically to attract people from search engines
  • Utilizing extensive automation to produce lots of content on a variety of topics
  • Summarizing what other content creators have said without adding additional value
  • Writing to meet a particular word count or because you’ve heard Google’s algorithm prefers a specific word count (it doesn’t)
  • Creating content that promises to answer a question that has no answer (for example, suggesting you know the release date of a movie that has no confirmed release date)

E-A-T Guidelines

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. This concept became a core part of Google’s algorithm in August of 2019 and continues to play a significant role today in evaluating content.

In Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, E-A-T specifically refers to:

  • The expertise of the creator of the main content
  • The authoritativeness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself and the website
  • The trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself and the website

E-A-T plays a part in websites of all types, including gossip columns, satire websites, forums and Q&A pages. How a website meets E-A-T guidelines will depend on the type of website. Some topics or industries will require less formal expertise than others.

For example, a news website with high E-A-T articles will convey journalistic integrity, contain factually accurate information and utilize robust policies and review processes with included sources.

A site containing scientific topics, on the other hand, should be created by people or organizations with the appropriate scientific knowledge or expertise and represent established scientific consensus.

When it comes to establishing E-A-T for your content, think about the page’s topic and what expertise is needed to achieve the purpose of that page.

Search Queries

Search queries are the words and phrases people use when using search engines or smart assistants. These words and phrases shift based on the search intent — the “why” behind the action.

Types of search intent include:

  • Informational: The searcher is looking for information, wants to answer a question or learn how to do something. The best way to target an information query is to develop high-quality, SEO-focused content that provides helpful and relevant information to the user. Position yourself as a source of information people can trust.
  • Navigational: The searcher is looking for a particular website or page. For example, they might type “YouTube” or “LinkedIn.” You can’t typically target navigational queries unless you own the specific website or page the person is looking for. But you can make sure you claim the top results spot for your brand’s own navigational query.
  • Transactional: With this search intent, the user wants to make a purchase. The query might include a brand, product or service name or a generic item, such as “coffee maker.” You can target these search queries with optimized product or service pages. You can also use pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to target these search terms.

By understanding search intent — which might include keyword research to best understand which words the target audience uses — companies can better craft content to meet needs and win more readers.

Links

You should include two types of links within your website or web page content: internal and external.

Internal links redirect to another page or piece of content on your website. For example, on an article about the latest chatbot trends, you might link to a related article about how chatbot technology works.

External links direct readers to a page that is not yours. These links should be highly relevant webpages or sites with high expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T).

Link building is also important — getting other websites to link back to your website or piece of content. These links signal to Google that your website is valuable enough to earn a citation, allowing content to rise in search rankings. We’ll talk more on these later, in off-page SEO strategies.

Visuals

Visuals (videos, gifs, pictures, infographics, etc.) are a large part of online content.

If you plan to use visuals on your site or pages, you’ll want to ensure that they’re:

  • Large and high quality (beware of large image file sizes, however, which can cause slow loading)
  • Relevant to the content
  • Shareable
  • Placed high on the page
  • Have a relevant file name
  • Have alt text, which aids visually impaired users

If you’re using video content, include a video transcript. Not only will a transcript make your content more accessible, but it will also make videos more “scrapable” by search engine bots.

Meta Title & Meta Description

Your meta title (the alternative title that shows up on Google) tells search engines and searchers what your content is about and what keywords to focus on. This title should be relevant to your content, include at least one word or phrase from your keyword research and be no longer than 60 characters.

Search engines don’t factor meta descriptions into your ranking — but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it.

The meta description is the ideal place to let Google and searchers know what your page is about. As a result, you’ll see higher click-through rates.

URL & Slug

Including your keyword within the slug of the URL — the last part of the URL that identifies the unique page — is a small bonus to SEO. However, if you can’t do so in a sensible way, it won’t be a big hit against you.

Ensure that your slug matches the title of your content. For example, if your blog post is about customer experience, your URL might be: www.yourwebsite.com/blog/all-about-customer-experience

Another thing to keep in mind is that shorter URLs receive high click-through rates than longer ones. A shorter URL comes across as more trustworthy and authoritative to users.

Other best practices for URLs include:

  • Avoid using dates in your slugs (for example: “2022-customer-experience-best-practices”
  • Use the hyphen between words in your slugs

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to optimization strategies that don’t involve the content on your website. Some of the most vital off-page SEO tactics include:

Link Building

As mentioned above, earning backlinks from other authoritative sites can position your website or web page as trustworthy and increase your rankings on Google.

You don’t want to get backlinks from any site. In fact, getting backlinks from link farms — a group of websites that all link to one another to increase organic search rankings — can result in a penalty from Google. Google also penalizes any site that gets caught paying for links.

Some link-building tips to turn to instead include:

  • Create high-value content that others want to share
  • Promote your content via social media, which leads others to sharing it
  • Submit your website to business directories
  • Promote your content via paid campaigns, which may lead others to link to it
  • Look for relevant content on other sites that contains broken links, and send an email with the suggestion to use your content as a replacement
  • Ask people in real life to share your website or content on social media

Brand Building

Google rewards well-known brands. And branded searches (your company’s name, domain name searches and product searches) will lead right back to your website.

Google offers a great tool, Google Trends, that allows people to track interest in a topic, such as a brand, over time. SEO professionals can also use this tool to track searches for specific products or services.

Social Media

Social media plays a big role in how people learn about brands, websites and content. As of 2022, there were 4.59 billion social media users worldwide — a number expected to grow to 5.85 billion by 2027.

 

Social media usage and its role in the SEO world.

 

You should have a presence on the social media channels that matter most to your target audience.

Some of the most popular social media platforms, as of 2022, include:

  • Facebook: More than 2.9 billion monthly active users (MAU)
  • YouTube: More than 2.5 billion MAU
  • Instagram: More than 1.4 billion MAU

Not only should your profile include pertinent information about your brand (what it does, where it’s located, contact methods, the website, hours for in-store operation, etc.), but you should also post original and engaging content regularly.

For instance, if you offer a specific product, you could create educational content on how to use that product or answers to frequently asked questions. You can also encourage user-generated content from your community.

Encourage users that read and engage with your social media content to visit your website or web content to learn more.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is exactly what it sounds like — it refers to the technical aspects that play into your website and web pages, like page load speed and responsiveness.

Google Search Console is an ideal tool for monitoring and maintaining SEO health. It can measure traffic, generate reports, including a technical SEO report, and fix issues.

Technical SEO includes:

Site Speed

Loading performance is part of Google’s Core Web Vitals, which measures different aspects of the user experience. A website or page should only take 2.5 seconds or less to load the page’s main content.

To ensure fast website load speeds, you should:

  • Choose a fast hosting option
  • Choose a fast domain name system (DNS) provider
  • Keep the use of scripts and plugins to a minimum
  • Use small image files (without creating pixelization)
  • Minify your site’s code
  • Compress your webpages

Mobile-Friendliness

As of the second half of 2022, mobile traffic accounted for more than half of global web traffic. Not only does a mobile-friendly design make for a better user experience, but it’s a significant ranking factor for Google.

If you’re unsure of your website’s mobile accessibility, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

Most brands accomplish mobile-friendliness by using a responsive web design, which adjusts itself automatically depending on the type of device a person is using.

Google also offers a guide on customizing website software for companies that use content management platforms (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla or Squarespace.

Beyond using a responsive design, companies should also pay attention to how content and assets behave on-page for mobile users. Layouts that shift when a person is trying to read content or interact with the page are a significant part of Google’s Core Web Vitals.

SEO professionals can monitor these movements with a metric called cumulative layout shift (CLS), which measures visual stability and quantifies how often these shifts occur. Core Web Vitals recommends that pages maintain a CLS of 0.1 or less.

XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap helps search engines understand your web pages while crawling them. It tells them:

  • Exactly where each page is
  • When a page was last modified
  • Which pages hold the most priority
  • How frequently a page is updated

Some hosting platforms create an XML sitemap automatically. If your chosen platform does not, you’ll want to look into using an XML sitemap generator.

Site Indexing

Google Search Console allows you to submit your website’s XML sitemap for site indexing. (Bing also has a version of this tool called Bing Webmaster Tools.)

These tools also track the general SEO performance of your site, allowing you to:

  • Test your site’s mobile-friendliness
  • Access search analytics
  • View backlinks to your site

Search in 2023: SEO Strategy Remains Top Priority

People want content that is high-quality and relevant to them. If you want to appear in their search results, it’s essential to pay attention to changing SEO trends and tactics.

Google continually updates its algorithm, meaning how they rank your site or content will depend on your use of the latest SEO strategies. With the latest tips above, you can ensure your content meets essential Google ranking factors and shows up in search results for your target audience.

By Michelle Hawley

Michelle Hawley is an experienced journalist who specializes in reporting on the impact of technology on society. As a senior editor at Simpler Media Group and a reporter for CMSWire and Reworked, she provides in-depth coverage of a range of important topics including employee experience, leadership, customer experience, marketing and more. With an MFA in creative writing and background in inbound marketing, she offers unique insights on the topics of leadership, customer experience, marketing and employee experience. Michelle previously contributed to publications like The Press Enterprise and The Ladders. She currently resides in Pennsylvania with her two dogs.

Sourced from CMSWIRE

By Christopher Jan Benitez

Search engine optimization (SEO) enterprise tools perform a host of functions. These tools can be invaluable in your marketing slack, from keyword research to site error detection.

But which among the platforms available in the market suits your organization’s unique digital marketing needs?

Answering this question as part of a large organization is important. You need a platform that considers your company’s size to help you launch and implement a well-coordinated SEO campaign.

So, if you’re facing the same problem in your organization, this post is for you!

It lists the enterprise SEO tools that can help you create a well-developed SEO plan from the ground up, no matter how big your company is.

Semrush

semrush, one of the best seo enterprise tools

Semrush is one of the most recognizable names in the SEO industry, and it’s easy to see why.

Its vast array of highly versatile enterprise SEO features will help solidify your digital marketing strategy. But don’t take our word for it. PCMag ranked it as “excellent.” And actual users on TrustRadius, have given it a cumulative score of 9 out of 10.

Features

With the Semrush enterprise SEO platform, you get immediate access to 55+ nifty tools that have been carefully designed to accomplish various tasks, such as:

  • Keyword research – It helps you find the best and most relevant keywords. Next, filter them according to search volume, difficulty, and others. You can also see which keywords your competitors are ranking for.
  • On-page SEO – Run a website audit to spot issues so you can fix them immediately. It also tells you how to improve the SEO score of your site pages to improve their rankings.
  • Competitor analysis – Find out how much organic traffic your competitors are getting. Also, monitor how the competition leverage paid search and social media to their advantage. Then use the gathered data to help you make better marketing decisions.
  • Content marketing – Brainstorm content topics and create optimized content for each. Then manage your content strategy by filling out your editorial calendar with these topics.
  • Local SEO – Automatically distribute your business data to reputable local online directories. And optimize your Google Maps listings for local search.

Pricing

semrush pricing

Subscription to Semrush starts at $119.95/month. The enterprise SEO Business plan, priced at $449.95/month, is available to large enterprises and agencies. It includes 40 projects, 50,000 results per report, and 50,000 keywords to track.


Frase

frase homepage

Frase is an AI-powered enterprise-grade SEO platform allowing content creators to create briefs and optimize content quickly and easily.

This enterprise SEO software also helps content teams create SEO-focused content in half the time. This is because its AI content features expedite the research, writing, and optimization process for you.

Features

Frase helps teams amplify the effectiveness of their enterprise SEO efforts with these features:

  • Question research – Frase removes the need to spend hours researching questions on Reddit, Quora, forums, search engines, and other resources. You type in a keyword, and Frase returns a list of questions within seconds.
  • AI-generated content briefs – Unwilling to spend copious amounts of time creating briefs? Don’t know how to create a content brief? No problem! Frase can automatically create a content brief based on your search queries in seconds.
  • Templates – Frase offers various templates to help expedite the writing process. These include Content Brief, Best Post, Listicle, Alternatives, and more.
  • Answer engine – Frase Answers is a chatbot that helps deliver content to site visitors asking questions on your website. It crawls and analyzes all your site’s content and shares them as answers to their questions.

Pricing

frase pricing

Frase has three pricing tiers. All three include an AI writing plan that can generate up to 20,000 characters per month:

  • Solo – $14.99/month, one user seat with the ability to write and optimize four articles.
  • Basic – $44.99.month, one user seat with the ability to write and optimize 30 articles.
  • Team – $114.99/month, three user seats with the ability to write and optimize unlimited articles. Each extra user seat is an additional $25/month.

You can also get the Pro add-on for $35/month to unlock more features, such as:

  • Keyword search volume
  • Search engine results page (SERP) data enrichment
  • Unlimited access to the Frase AI writer

MarketMuse

marketmuse homepage

MarketMuse is an enterprise SEO platform that boosts website ranking in search engines through data-driven content optimized for your target audience. It uses patented artificial intelligence (AI) technology to accelerate content research and development.

Features

To help your SEO team create remarkable content, MarketMuse offers the following features:

  • Automated inventory collection and audit – You can automatically collect, organize, and analyze your pages for better accessibility.
  • Content metrics – MarketMuse offers AI-powered metrics such as Authority, Content Score, User Intent, and Personalized Difficulty. These help enterprise SEO and content teams identify and leverage the best content opportunities.
  • Content briefs – No more guessing which types of content get the most search traffic. With MarketMuse’s content briefs, your team can confidently produce comprehensive content that addresses user pain points.
  • Optimization – With MarketMuse’s AI-powered text editor, content creators get real-time feedback on content quality and how well they cover a topic. This way, you produce content that search spiders would want to index.

Pricing

marketmuse pricing

MarketMuse has three subscription tiers. And Optimize, Research, Compete, Questions, and Connect are available applications for all tiers.

  • Free – At $0/month, one user can execute 15 queries per month and work on 10 projects. A query happens whenever you enter a URL or focus topic into a MarketMuse application and press “Run.”
  • Standard – Priced at $7,200/year ($600/month), this subscription plan allows one user to export data, perform 100 queries per month, and complete an unlimited number of projects. Each additional user costs $99/month.
  • Premium – This plan starts at $12,000/year ($1,000/month). It comes with on-demand content audit capabilities, managed topics tracking, domain analysis, unlimited queries, unlimited projects, a dedicated account manager, and workflow/platform training for teams.

Botify

botify homepage

Botify is another enterprise SEO platform worth considering. It enables executives, content teams, and technical SEO professionals to prioritize the SEO tasks that yield the most impact. It can be leveraged for various use cases, including:

  • Keyword research
  • Keyword tracking
  • Site migrations
  • Mobile SEO
  • JavaScript SEO
  • Content analysis

Features

Botify offers essential enterprise SEO features that can maximize the potential of your online assets:

  • Botify Analytics – All the data you need about your websites from various search phases—crawl, render, index, rank, and convert—is available here. There’s also an option to import log files for additional crawl insights. From here, you can analyze your site’s bounce rate, conversions, and other SEO metrics.
  • Botify Intelligence – Powered by machine learning, the tool lets you identify technical SEO and content opportunities prioritized by impact. It also has an early warning system for catching SEO issues before they become real problems.
  • Botify Activation – Faster, autonomous implementation of SEO initiatives such as quick and easy submission of new and updated pages. This allows for faster content indexing.
  • Professional Services – Need help making the most of Botify to power your SEO strategy? You can tap its SEO professionals for various enterprise SEO services, such as site migration, understanding how JavaScript impacts your website, and more.

Pricing

botify pricing

Botify offers three subscription plans:

  • Essential – For websites that want end-to-end SEO data plus prescriptive recommendations for better performance
  • Pro – For organizations that get the bulk of their revenue from organic search
  • Enterprise – For organizations with complex, large, or multiple websites

Botify doesn’t list pricing on its website, as each package is unique to each customer’s needs. Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote.


Conductor

conductor, one of the best seo enterprise tools

Built for enterprise SEO, web, and content teams, Conductor tracks search and content performance. It is a search engine optimization tool that integrates with a wide range of technology tools, including:

  • Analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
  • Project management platforms such as Asana.
  • Consumer intelligence tools like Talkwalker.
  • Other SEO tools, such as Semrush.
  • And so many others!

Features

This enterprise SEO software offers powerful features such as:

  • Keyword explorer – Helps with research into keywords (organic and paid), topics, demographic insights, audience sentiment, competitive research, social insights, etc.
  • Content guidance – Provides AI-powered recommendations for creating content that resonates with your target audience.
  • Digital presence tracking – Monitors the visibility of your digital assets across channels. This includes search engines, social media, press coverage, owned content, and earned media.
  • Technical SEO – Assists with ensuring your website is technically sound and provides the best user experience possible. Choose between ContentKing or Lumar for real-time technical monitoring.
  • Chrome extension – Free SEO tool that delivers advanced SEO intelligence about any page. Insights include page fundamentals such as metadata, media, technical SEO, and many more.

Pricing

conductor pricing

Conductor builds unique enterprise SEO subscription packages according to your needs and budget. Contact their sales team for a custom quote.


BrightEdge

brightedge homepage

BrightEdge is a comprehensive enterprise SEO tool offering an impressive set of features from search, content, social, and local. It provides SEOs and digital marketers with the actionable insights necessary to boost website visibility and increase search traffic.

Features

This enterprise SEO software provides the tools your SEO team needs to more effectively and quickly optimize website content. Below are other things it can do:

  • Demand discovery – Create a list of target keywords that delivers the best results. You can then determine which search queries generate the most organic traffic to your site.
  • Content creation and optimization – Receive SEO suggestions on boosting content relevance and visibility. And you can monitor existing pages for potential errors and fix them before they become critical issues.
  • Content performance prediction – Identify which content type ranks for a search term before writing it. Then estimate the impact of your content initiative so you can better prioritize tasks and campaigns.
  • Results measurement – Generate website performance reports to help communicate to stakeholders for high-value keywords and best-performing content.

Pricing

Pricing information is not available on the BrightEdge website. Call their sales hotline to get a custom quote.


Linkdex

homepage of one of the best seo enterprise tools, linkdex

Another enterprise SEO tool that deserves its place on this list is Linkdex. It aggregates insights from various channels like search engines, social networks, and influencer marketing. This way, all the data you need is available via a centralized enterprise SEO platform.

Features

Linkdex carries many features to help enterprise SEO and marketing teams maximize their SEO efforts. These include:

  • Visibility and crawl analytics – Compare multiple domains using domain and keyword filters. Crawl thousands of pages, even your competitors, to uncover performance issues and opportunities to optimize your pages.
  • Ranking intelligence – Get better insights into your (and your competitors’) keyword rankings. Then analyze the search traffic value and ranking of any page to gauge how you’re faring against competitors.
  • SEO reporting and forecasting – Using Linkdex data, create smart, insightful SEO reports with just a few clicks. Next, turn data into smart forecasts to better communicate your content marketing and SEO efforts.
  • Author discovery – Using targeted keywords, find influencers and the people behind high-ranking content. Reach out and build relationships with topical influencers to boost your website’s authority.
  • Content strategy – Comb through various SEO data like technical SEO, analytics, social, rank, and link. This way, you can create content that’s highly shareable and link-worthy.
  • Smart SEO alerting – Create custom alerts through email or in-app so you know immediately when to take action. Fix lost or broken links, investigate significant traffic drops, enact appropriate changes, etc.

Pricing

linkdex pricing

Linkdex offers three subscription plans:

  • Starter Package – For $600/month, you get 10,000 rank tracking credits and 20 content and link credits. Linkdex SEO tools for research, task management, and workflow engine are also unlimited.
  • Power Users – This plan has the same features as the Starter Package but with more credits. It includes 25,000 rank tracking credits, 45 content, and link credits. Starting price is $1,200/month.
  • Enterprise Users: Discounted custom plans are available for enterprise users. Contact the sales team for more details.

Pitchbox

pitchbox, the best link building tool among the seo enterprise tools in this list

Looking for an enterprise SEO platform to help you build quality backlinks, boost visibility, and increase credibility? Then, Pitchbox is for you.

Pitchbox is an email outreach platform for building backlinks using various link building strategies more effectively.

It’s an end-to-end link-building and prospecting tool that increases team productivity.

Features

Pitchbox enables enterprise SEO teams to build links at scale through the following features:

  • Prospecting – Take advantage of built-in targeting and prospecting features to identify the best link building opportunities in less time. Find relevant blogs and articles in any niche. You can also import domain lists and other data from other SEO tools.
  • Outreach and follow-up – Reach out to prospects at scale using smart templates. You can also schedule your messages and follow-ups to reach prospects’ inboxes at the right time. This way, you receive more responses and close more deals.
  • CRM – Aggregate all link-building and prospecting data and information in one place. Segment leads by relationship status, SEO metrics, age, etc. This allows you real-time visibility into your pipeline, making it easier to turn opportunities into wins.
  • Reports – Pitchbox reports provide deep-dive insights into the performance of your campaigns and how they’re progressing. Track team activity and identify monthly, quarterly, and yearly trends.

Pricing

pitchbox private demo page

Pitchbox doesn’t provide pricing details on its website, but some review sites say plans start at approximately $500/month. Contact their sales team for more information and a private walkthrough.

Quattr

quattr homepage

Quattr is an AI-driven enterprise SEO tool that empowers digital marketing teams. With it, they can leverage data-driven SEO insights to boost their search rankings and capture highly targeted traffic.

If you need help maximizing the tool’s power, Quattr’s SEO Concierge team is available for personalized consulting.

Features

Features you get when you subscribe to Quattr include:

  • Competitive trends – Quattr identifies which pages on your website are underperforming and provides optimization suggestions. It gives you real-time visibility into your market share and how much traffic competitors are getting.
  • Ranking factors – This enterprise SEO platform tracks your site’s ranking based on various SEO factors. Plus, it shows how you’re doing against competitors. And if you identify any problems, you can fix them directly from the Quattr platform.
  • Prioritized keyword recommendations – Quattr’s recommendations let you optimize your content to rank them higher in SERPs. You can then preview how your changes improve your site’s search performance. If the results are positive, only then should you implement them.
  • Usability recommendations – Unlock the technical insights necessary to improve your site. To do this, fix any issues surrounding accessibility, performance, and mobile-friendliness.

Pricing

Quattr has not provided any pricing details. The amount you pay will vary greatly depending on your enterprise SEO requirements. Contact their sales team for more information.

SearchMetrics

searchmetrics, one of the seo enterprise tools to look out for

Another notable contender on this list of enterprise SEO tools is SearchMetrics. It helps enterprises:

  • Identify market opportunities to increase sales from organic search using actual data from the search engines.
  • Build comprehensive plans tailored to boost search engine rankings and visibility.
  • Implement and monitor those plans.
  • Perform competitor analysis for benchmarking and outranking them.
  • Track performance and tweak as needed.
  • Create reports for management to justify SEO spending (and get funding increases, if necessary).

Features

The SearchMetrics Suite allows organizations to take control of their search revenue via features such as:

  • Research Cloud – Run a competitive analysis to identify content gaps and factors enabling winning content. Then launch real-time ranking performance monitoring and search visibility auditing to uncover more SEO opportunities.
  • Content Experience – You can create topic-aligned briefs to help write your content. Refer to its real-time Content Score to further optimize your content. There’s also Topic Explorer, a WordPress plugin to help you identify the topics people are searching for.
  • Search Experience – Enterprise SEO users like yourself can track top-performing keywords and ranking dips and analyze URL performance and competitor search features.
  • Site Experience – This web crawler alerts you and other enterprise SEO agencies to risks and opportunities for improving site performance.

Pricing

searchmetrics quotation page

The SearchMetrics website doesn’t provide pricing details. A PCMag review, however, says their plans start at $69/month. But this was from 2019, so the amount may no longer apply. Contact the SearchMetrics sales team for more details.

seoClarity

seoclarity, one of the best seo enterprise tools

Last but not least on our list of market-leading SEO platforms is seoClarity. As its name suggests, it provides clarity and visibility into your SEO efforts through AI-powered insights.

It does the following:

  • Crawl data
  • Deliver ranking and search demand insights
  • Provide content optimization recommendations
  • Perform technical SEO analysis
  • One-click automated SEO execution
  • Create and send automated reporting

Features

Get the following features and capabilities when you subscribe to seoClarity:

  • Daily rankings – Manage site performance on organic search by knowing where your site ranks for its target keywords. You can also find insights on securing the Google featured snippet to position your website on top of SERPs.
  • Technical and on-page optimization – Crawl pages to identify and remedy site errors. Analyze log files to get the bigger SEO picture about performance, rankings, and search bots. From here, you can optimize your web pages to improve their crawlability and indexability.
  • Insights from real-time analysis – Leverage advanced AI analysis to help you provide actionable items. You can also compare your sites with competitors based on SEO metrics to benchmark their performances. Finally, determine if you have a healthy link profile through constant link analysis and monitoring.
  • Content ideas and gaps – Identify content gaps and opportunities using People Also Ask datasets. From here, you can write compelling, authoritative content to answer their questions using seoClarity’s AI writer.

Pricing

seoclarity pricing

seoClarity offers multiple subscription options:

  • Essentials – Price starts at $750/month. Essentials provide daily rank tracking, live chat, and email support.
  • Core – Price starts at $3,000/month. Core offers daily and weekly rank tracking, a dedicated success manager, and an SEO advisor.
  • Professional – Price starts at $4,500/month. It gives you everything Core provides, advanced technical SEO tools and the highest level of support.
  • Agency: This subscription tier includes all the elements of Core plus an unlimited number of users. Get a custom quote by contacting the seoClarity sales team.

How to Choose an Enterprise SEO Tool from the List Above

There’s a lot of feature overlap among the SEO enterprise software above. This makes choosing the right one for your corporation much more difficult.

But to help with the selection process, below are the things you must do:

Determine Your Needs

Start by looking at what you expect from an enterprise SEO platform based on the needs of the business. Create a list of all the features you want, the must-haves and nice-to-haves.

Any vendor that doesn’t offer the features your SEO and digital marketing strategies can’t live without is not a good fit.

Schedule Demos with Applicable Vendors

Once you’re ready with a shortlist of vendors, it’s time to schedule demos. When on the demo call, ask questions if something isn’t clear. And be sure to watch out for the following:

  • Presence of critical features.
  • The vendor’s understanding of your marketing and business needs.
  • Ease of use.
  • The type of after-sales support you’ll be getting.

Negotiate Contract

Enterprise SEO software providers generally don’t advertise that they’re amenable to negotiating contracts.

Not only can you get the best pricing and discounts for multi-year contracts. But you can also negotiate the support facilities available, warranties, backups and recovery plans, service level agreements (SLA), etc.

Which Among the Enterprise SEO Tools do I Recommend?

So there you have it—our list of some of the best enterprise SEO platforms on the market today.

And since we know you’re expecting us to suggest a tool or two, here are our top picks:

  • Semrush: It’s an all-in-one solution and, therefore, ideal for large SEO and content teams. Plus, it’s a household name in the SEO industry—meaning it’s reliable.
  • Conductor: Want high-performing content? Take Conductor with you. Most tools on this list help drive content that converts, but Conductor’s ability to integrate with various business tools makes it stand out.

As mentioned above, however, the needs of your business come first. Determine your must-haves and choosing the best fit should be smooth sailing.

By Christopher Jan Benitez

Christopher Jan Benitez is a professional freelance writer who provides small businesses and startups with content that aims to grow their engagement and conversion with their audience. To learn more about Christopher, you can follow him on Twitter.

Sourced from Niche Pursuits

By Dave Colgate

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) often has a reputation for being a cheap marketing strategy, but high-value work can require substantial investment. Dave Colgate of agency Vertical Leap looks at how to invest properly.

Unsure how much you need to spend on search engine optimization (SEO)? Let’s look at how to set the right budget, considering how much other companies are spending; the factors you need to budget for; and the minimum recommended spend for small businesses just starting out with SEO.

How much do companies spend on SEO?

Marketing budgets suffered from Covid-19, but industry reports show companies are on their way to returning to pre-pandemic levels. According to Oracle’s top marketing trends report, 64% of companies planned to increase their budgets in 2022.

Meanwhile, Gartner’s State of Marketing Budget and Strategy 2022 shows companies are spending 9.5% of revenue on marketing this year, up from 6.4% in 2021.

The same study shows companies are spending 8.5% of their marketing budgets on SEO, topping the list of “unpaid channels”.

Gartner’s insights are largely backed up by The Marketing Budgets Report 2022 from StrategiQ, which finds companies spending 10% of total revenue on marketing in 2022. It also finds companies are spending 10.5% of their marketing budgets on SEO, up from Gartner’s 8.5%.

StrategiQ’s report found that small companies dedicate a greater percentage of revenue to marketing.

StrategiciQ includes fewer channels in its report than Gartner. This is an important point because the fewer channels you spread your marketing across, the greater percentage you’ll spend on SEO. So, if you’re not spending any marketing budget on live events, digital audio advertising, or other channels, you could spend far more than 10.5% of your marketing spend on SEO.

What does your SEO budget get spent on?

When you’re setting an SEO budget, it’s important to understand how your spend will be spread across key activities:

  • Analytics: The insights that inform every part of your SEO strategy and reveal your biggest opportunities.
  • Content production: Every piece of content you create and optimize to rank in search engines.
  • On-page SEO: Optimizing your web pages and content to maximize search visibility.
  • Off-page SEO: Optimizing off-page signals with link building, content placements (eg: guest blogging), reviews and other factors outside of your website.
  • Technical SEO: Optimizing and maintaining the technical performance of your website (loading times, link profiles, URLs, etc).
  • SEO tech stack: The tools you use at every stage of your SEO strategy: analytics, competitive research, content planning, content production, etc.
  • Agency/consultancy fees: SEO services you require from agencies or consultants.
  • Outsourcing: Tasks you outsource to freelancers or external talent, such as content creation, copywriting, web design, etc.

That Oracle report found something else: 82% of companies were planning to change their marketing tech stack in 2022.

In today’s data-driven marketing environment, this is one of the most important aspects of your SEO budget. With the right tech stack, you can drastically increase the ROI of your SEO spend by improving the quality of insights, automating tasks and seizing opportunities before your competitors.

If you don’t have the budget or resources to build a competitive SEO tech stack, it’s worth looking at agencies that have already developed their own. By partnering with the right agency, you can tap into class-leading SEO technology at a fraction of the price.

Maximizing ROI with a high-impact SEO strategy

In 2019, Backlinko published a survey asking US business owners about their experiences with SEO services. The survey revealed that companies spending a minimum of $500/month were 53.3% more likely to be “extremely satisfied” with the results.

As a rule, we advise smaller companies that it’s difficult to gain meaningful SEO traction for anything less than £800/month (about $1000). This doesn’t stretch too far when you consider all of the expenses we looked at in the previous section (analytics, content production, SEO tools, etc.).

Obviously, larger companies should expect to spend significantly more but it’s not simply a question of spending more for better results.

Spending wisely is just as important as setting the right budget. Every business can maximize ROI with a high-impact SEO strategy using data science to identify and prioritize opportunities.

If you want to increase your visibility online, we can run a free analysis of your current SEO status and provide a quote. Click here for more information.

Feature Image Credit: Souvik Banerjee/Unsplash

By Dave Colgate

Sourced from The Drum

By David Amerland

Take these steps to break free from the SEO-chase game

When it comes to understanding the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) to a business the pendulum swings from “ignore it completely” to “understand and chase every Google update”.

The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly a website that is structurally flawed, slow to load and fails to display properly on mobile devices is losing an important chunk of online business. Similarly, a website that is search engine optimized to the gills but then fails to understand what those who find it actually want to do once they are there, is winning only one half of the online marketing game.

How to reconcile these two approaches requires a nuanced understanding of what SEO does and what a business exists for. Stripped of all its esoteric mumbo-jumbo SEO is there to help a business find its audience at the moment that audience is actively looking for it. A business, in turn, exists to solve a problem.

From this perspective search itself, for all its many iterations through Google updates over the years, has always been focused on delivering the best relevant results in response to a searcher query. Search becomes the bridging point between a business and its audience. This, logically, means that search is marketing. But that’s not all it is.

Human Behaviour Determines Search Use

The biggest threat to your business losing that bridging connection between itself and its audience lies in factors that are far outside the remit of search itself and, by association, any SEO activity you may engage in. Following the 2018 EU $5 billion antitrust enforcement against Android, Google is now making the placement of default search engine choices on its mobile devices free to competitors.

The majority of mobile device owners are not search experts. They don’t truly understand how search engines work which means qualified choices are based on purely subjective criteria. On that basis even at a conservative estimate, Google mobile search will experience a reduction in usage. The warning bells rang as far back as 2015 when it was flagged just how few mobile devices actually use Google search.

Back then Google search was dominant on mobile devices as it was the default setting that few mobile device owners bothered to change. In the years since Google has had to change that policy and the impact of that has not yet become obvious. In addition, mobile device owners use apps and social media accounts in lieu of a search engine to find what they need. Social media accounts connect them with friends and enable them to ask for recommendations while specific apps make it easier for them to engage in search behaviour.

How To “Search Proof” Your Business

The reason we are even talking about search engine optimization (SEO) right now is because, initially, as the web grew finding anything at all in it required the help of a search engine whose crawlers had indexed websites and organized the information they contained.

The web however, no matter how global in size, always has the most direct impact at a local level. The personal devices we use are geolocated and, increasingly, so are our laptops. This makes searching for something location-determined. The recommendations of friends and the ability of apps to know where we are at and use that knowledge to provide useful information make search the means through which we find solutions to problems we experience locally.

Google rose to prominence because of the quality of its results. Search results that are delivered within the tight boundaries of a location always have the potential to be higher in quality because the two bugbears of search: disambiguation and veracity can be resolved that much faster when the information from which a pool of answers, to a search query, is drawn, is limited by nature.

The limitation imposed by geographic boundaries reduces the level of ambiguity that is created by massive amounts of information that is similar in nature but does not amount to the same thing. It also makes it easier to filter what is real from what is fake. The context of local search then makes it easy to come up with a formula that helps “search proof” your business.

Whatever happens to search next, whatever fresh updates occur in Google’s algorithm or whatever app, recommendation engine or even human-word-of-mouth channel is used they all require the same two key ingredients to work:

  • Experience – A taste of what your business does, how it does it and why it does it.
  • Confidence – A sense that your business is capable of totally solving the problem the searcher is facing, easily, quickly and at level that is good value-for-money.

Find ways to make this come through the content you create. Truly connect with those who come to you to find the solution they need to the problem they experience and you will find that fretting over SEO will be a thing of the past for you.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By David Amerland

Sourced from Inc.

By Shane Barker

Augmented reality (AR) is already making waves online. From Rihanna’s sparkly diamond headpiece to Kylie Jenner’s bold lipstick shades, AR filters are all over Instagram. That’s indicative of the trend that AR is gaining popularity.

In fact, a study estimates that there will be approximately 1.7 billion mobile AR users worldwide by 2024. That’s huge, right? With more internet users embracing AR, you can expect users to change the way they browse the internet.

There are big changes coming in the next few years, all of which are likely to impact search engine optimization (SEO). In this post, let’s look at some of the ways the evolving AR landscape is likely to change search engine optimization.

1. Local SEO will become more important.

Local SEO is already a focus area for anyone who wants to get ranked on Google. With AR, you can scan a code via a mobile device and get all the information you need about a business. You can check reviews and ratings and get images.

With apps like Wikitude or Yelp, you can give out location-specific AR experiences. For instance, you can give a special offer to someone who is close to your business’s location.

As a business owner, you’ll have to ensure that all of your business information is updated in local listings to make the most out of the popularity of AR.

2. Immersive digital experiences will become more mainstream.

AR will change the way you design your website. It opens up the possibility of giving users a truly immersive and engaging experience. Such experiences could have a mix of physical as well as virtual elements, and they have varied applications.

IKEA is one of the big brands that has already jumped on the bandwagon. They let customers preview their furniture items within their homes or any other living space. Through their special app, IKEA Place, users can check 3-D renderings of more than 2,000 IKEA products from different angles.

If you are buying a new sofa for your living room but aren’t sure whether it will fit in a corner, you can place it on the app and check. Similarly, fashion brands can offer virtual dressing rooms where customers can try out different outfits. Real estate companies can offer virtual tours for properties they want to sell.

This example is for an app, but there is a chance of such experiences being replicated on websites in the future. With a better user and immersive experience, you can expect to have a positive impact on your SEO. That’s because such elements can increase the overall time spent on a website and reduce the bounce rate.

3. Visual search and interactive content will become widely used.

In their quest to provide a better user experience, Google has included image and voice search features. To further elevate the experience, they are also investing in AR projects like Tango and virtual reality (VR) projects like Daydream. Overall, its vision is to maintain its lead as the most widely used search engine worldwide.

As AR-based content becomes more popular, you can expect it to gain more space in the search engine results pages (SERPs). For forward-thinking businesses, AR should become a part of the overall content marketing strategy.

With multimedia elements like 3-D objects and videos added as a part of the mix, you can expect visual searches to become more mainstream. Eventually, interactive content is also likely to become an integral part of the virtual world. As a content marketer or an entrepreneur, you’ll have to make sure you deliver such immersive experiences and match up to the changing search trends.

4. Social media will impact SEO more.

Everyone already knows that your social media presence has an impact on your SEO. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that AR will likely increase this effect. That’s because AR allows social media companies to provide engaging and immersive experiences that can boost engagement and conversion rates.

For instance, Facebook’s 360-degree videos allowed users to fully immerse themselves in whatever they were watching on their screen. Because of this, you could take a tour of the Louvre in Paris while sitting in your bedroom.

When it comes to AR, this is just the beginning. If you’ve used Snapchat or Instagram, you know how popular their 3-D effects are. You can see social media users get creative and experiment with them to create unique Stories.

Brands have already been using them to market their products and increase their brand awareness. With the increasing popularity of AR, you can expect more social media channels to come up with AR-centric features. That means the impact of AR on your SEO strategy is likely to increase. In a nutshell, AR should be a part of your social media strategy to make sure your SEO strategy works well.

For inspiration, consider the creative AR social media campaign created by Browns Fashion. The luxury retail brand came out with a sparkling AR filter to boost brand awareness. It gained more than 2 million try-ons. Even celebrities like Vanessa Hudgens and Heidi Klum used it on their Instagram profiles.

Augmented reality has the potential to change the way people interact with products and make purchase decisions. It is a technology that can also enable businesses to better understand their audiences and provide better user experiences. If you are looking to level up your SEO strategy, think AR. It’s still a new and fairly unexplored territory, so you can get the early mover advantage, too!

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Shane Barker

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. Read Shane Barker’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes