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Sourced from wpbeginner

Let’s face it: getting your website noticed is incredibly important for its success. And in our experience, most websites get the bulk of their traffic from search engines.

More traffic means more customers, more sales, and more profit. So, you might be looking for a quality SEO tool to improve your search rankings and attract more visitors.

With so many SEO tools available, both free and paid, it’s natural to wonder whether paying for a premium plugin is worth the money.

In this article, we’ll share our firsthand experience using both free and premium WordPress SEO plugins. We’ll explore the extra features premium tools offer and the impact they can have on your website’s traffic and success.

Choosing the Right SEO Tool for Your WordPress Website

WordPress users have a lot of options when it comes to plugins that help optimize websites for search engines. But with so many tools that promise to boost your rankings, it’s hard to know where to start.

Here at WPBeginner, we get tons of questions from readers asking which SEO plugin is the best for making it to the top spots in search results.

In response, we created a detailed showcase of the best SEO plugins and tools. These tools can help you increase your website traffic by 20-30% within just a few months.

This list covers a wide range of use cases and includes leading plugins like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) and Yoast SEO, as well as standalone tools like Semrush and Ahrefs.

But here’s the catch. Many of these plugins offer both free and premium versions, leaving you with another decision to make.

While free versions provide a solid foundation for basic SEO, the premium upgrades promise to unlock advanced features designed to give your site an edge in search engine rankings.

So, are those premium features worth the investment? Do they really make a difference in your search rankings?

Let’s dive in and explore the unique capabilities of premium WordPress SEO tools and see how they can help your website make it into the top search results pages.

Tip: If you have the budget to spend money on SEO but prefer not to do the work yourself, then you can hire our affordable SEO experts at WPBeginner Pro Services to do it for you.

What Are the Benefits of Premium WordPress SEO Plugins?

At WPBeginner, we’ve been using premium SEO plugins for many years. Here are some of our favorite features and benefits:

1. Comprehensive SEO Audits

While free plugins provide basic on-page analysis, premium versions often offer more in-depth insights and recommendations.

They run comprehensive SEO audits on your website. This way, you get a clear idea of your site’s overall health from an SEO perspective. They scan all of your web pages and then highlight potential issues, recommending how to fix them.

We regularly use AIOSEO to analyze our content for readability, keyword usage, and overall optimization. It gives us access to an actionable SEO report inside our WordPress admin area that gives us a clear roadmap for improvement.

Complete SEO Checklist in AIOSEO

This is really helpful because search engine optimization is a complex procedure that takes time. Having a clear checklist of everything that needs to be improved simplifies the process so you can easily fix one issue at a time.

2. Advanced Sitemaps

Search engines need to find and index every page on your website before they can be displayed in search results.

Google recommends using sitemaps to help with this process. Sitemaps help search engines crawl up to 40% more pages, resulting in more of your content appearing in search results.

There are different types of sitemaps, such as XML sitemaps that help search engines discover and index your content and RSS sitemaps that notify them of updated content.

Enabling both of these will give you the biggest SEO benefits. With a premium WordPress SEO plugin, this is as easy as switching on a setting for each type of sitemap.

Enable sitemap

3. Powerful Redirects and 404 Monitoring

Broken links point to web pages that do not exist, leading to frustration and 404 error messages for your users. They are also bad for SEO and result in a 12% higher bounce rate.

Premium SEO plugins help you avoid broken links by automatically creating redirects when you rename a post or page or change its URL.

They also automatically track and log 404 errors so you can quickly redirect these URLs to existing posts as part of your regular WordPress maintenance.

404 Logs Under Redirects

This will make sure your visitors find the information they are looking for and avoid frustrating surprises when clicking links on your site.

4. Advanced Schema Markup

Schema markup is structured data that is added to your web pages behind the scenes. It helps search engines better understand your content and display it more prominently in search results.

For example, using recipe schema can make food blogs more visible in search results. It can increase your click-through rates by 30%, bringing valuable traffic to your website.

An example of a featured recipe snippet, in Google

But manually adding this structured data to your posts is very technical and time-consuming.

It’s much easier using a premium SEO plugin because it can add schema markup automatically. These tools also let you add more specific markup to individual posts with the click of a mouse, including FAQs, recipes, events, products, and more.

5. Internal Linking Suggestions

We always recommend that you add links to your own content throughout your website. This way, you help users find posts that are related to the topic they are reading about. These are called internal links and they are good for SEO, increasing page views by up to 40%.

The problem is that as you create more content, it becomes hard to find all the related blog posts you can link to. Searching for them manually becomes frustrating and takes a lot of time.

Premium SEO plugins help by automatically listing internal linking opportunities. With a click of your mouse, you can easily add these links to relevant posts along with an automatically generated phrase and anchor text, improving your SEO and saving you time.

Find internal link opportunities and orphaned pages

6. Social Media Optimization

We also use a premium WordPress SEO plugin for social media optimization because it allows us to control how our WPBeginner content appears when shared on platforms like Facebook and Twitter (X).

Instead of these platforms pulling random information and images from our posts, we can specify the title, description, and image that is used. This means that our posts are more likely to resonate with our social media followers, bringing more traffic to our site.

The WordPress social media sharing settings

7. Local SEO Optimization

If your business has physical locations, then premium SEO plugins can help optimize your site for local search results, including automatically generating location-specific schema markup that makes it easier for customers in your area to find you.

Potential customers will see your business on Google Maps and search results when looking for your type of business in their local area.

They will be able to see your address, phone number, and opening hours right from the search results page. Plus, they can even get turn-by-turn directions as they drive to your store.

Example of Google Business Profile

8. WooCommerce SEO

If you have an online store, you can also benefit from the specialized WooCommerce SEO features offered by premium plugins. These help you optimize your product pages so they are more visible in product searches.

Users will also be able to see customer reviews and star ratings, showing that other customers have had a positive experience with your products. This can help drive more traffic to your store.

Product Search Result Showing Star Ratings

9. Priority Support

When you’re running an online business website, having access to expert support can be invaluable. Premium versions usually offer priority support to help you resolve issues quickly.

This ensures that if you come across any problems or issues when using the plugin, then you can receive prompt help from experts and get back to the job of running your business.

For more details, you can see our guide on how to ask for WordPress support and get it.

What Is the Best Value Premium SEO Plugin?

If you’re serious about driving more organic traffic to your website, then subscribing to a premium SEO plugin like we have is a smart move.

Your next task is to decide which plugin or service to use. Your first question will probably be which plugin offers the best value for money.

All in One SEO vs. Yoast SEO Premium

AIOSEO and Yoast SEO are the leading WordPress SEO plugins and offer extensive features.

AIOSEO's homepage

However, there are important differences in their pricing and features.

When we compare the two plugins’ most affordable plans, AIOSEO is more affordable while offering comparable features:

  • AIOSEO’s Basic plan starts at $49.60 per year
  • Yoast SEO Premium starts at $99 per year

At first glance, the prices of their most powerful SEO plans look similar:

  • AIOSEO’s Elite plan costs $299.60 per year
  • Bundle pricing for Yoast SEO Premium, Yoast WooCommerce SEO, Yoast Local SEO, Yoast News SEO, and Yoast Video SEO costs $229 per year.

However, the difference is that AIOSEO’s plan covers 100 websites, while Yoast’s price is for a single site. Plus, AIOSEO offers a more comprehensive feature set.

When it comes to value for money, AIOSEO stands out. It offers a compelling package that covers multiple websites at a competitive price point.

You can learn more in our detailed comparison of Yoast SEO vs. All in One SEO.

You might also like to read about our journey switching from Yoast to All in One SEO to improve our SEO workflow and access the SEO features we need.

All in One SEO vs. Premium Standalone SEO Tools

If you don’t have the budget for standalone SEO tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, AIOSEO Premium offers a lot of impressive features for a great price.

To give you an idea, even when looking at the most affordable options, Semrush‘s most basic plan starts at $119.95 per month, and Ahrefs‘ lite plan starts at $99 per month.

While these tools are incredibly powerful, their starting prices come to more than $1,000 per year, which may not be justifiable for smaller websites or bloggers.

By contrast, you can subscribe to AIOSEO’s highest-tier Elite plan for far less money. It includes advanced features like local SEO, advanced WooCommerce support, and video SEO and costs less than $300 per year.

Besides that, AIOSEO focuses specifically on WordPress, making it easier to use and more tailored to your website’s needs. This makes it a cost-effective solution for agencies or businesses managing multiple WordPress sites.

Plus, if you run a small business or are just getting started, AIOSEO Premium’s features might be more than enough for your needs.

That said, if you’re looking for more SEO features at a lower cost, you can pair the plugin with an affordable tool like SEOBoost to get powerful content optimization options. This will give you AI-powered analyses, content audits, content briefs, and much more.

Or, if you need just a little extra help with keyword research, LowFruits is a great choice. It helps you generate keywords and analyze the SERPs to improve your rankings.

Premium WordPress SEO Plugins FAQ

Here are some questions we are asked most often about premium SEO plugins for WordPress:

What are premium SEO plugins?

Premium SEO plugins are paid versions of WordPress SEO tools that offer advanced features, enhanced optimization capabilities, and often superior support compared to their free alternatives.

How do premium SEO plugins differ from free SEO plugins?

Premium SEO plugins typically offer more advanced features like schema markup generators, content optimization tools, local SEO features, and dedicated support. Free plugins usually provide basic SEO functionality but may lack advanced features or regular updates.

Are premium SEO plugins necessary for good search engine rankings?

While not absolutely necessary, premium SEO plugins can significantly enhance your WordPress site’s optimization efforts, potentially leading to better search engine rankings. They often provide tools and features that can give you an edge in competitive markets.

Will a premium SEO plugin automatically improve my search rankings?

No SEO plugin can guarantee improved rankings. However, premium plugins provide advanced tools and guidance to help you optimize your site more effectively, which can contribute to better search performance.

How much do premium SEO plugins typically cost?

Prices vary, but most premium SEO plugins cost between $50 and $300 per year, depending on the features offered and the number of sites you can use them on.

Do I need to renew my premium SEO plugin license annually?

In most cases, yes. Annual renewals ensure you continue to receive updates, support, and access to new features. However, some plugins offer lifetime licenses.

Can I get a refund if I’m not satisfied with a premium SEO plugin?

Many premium plugin developers offer money-back guarantees for a certain period. Always check the refund policy before purchasing.

Currently, AIOSEO offers a 14-day money-back guarantee, and Yoast SEO has a 30-day guarantee.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn that, for many websites, premium plugins are definitely worth investing in. You may also want to see our guide on how to automate WordPress SEO or our expert pick of the best FAQ WordPress plugins.

By Editorial Staff | Reviewed by Syed Balkhi |

Sourced from wpbeginner

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By 

AI supplants conventional search engines, their loss of market share will change the digital ad landscape, says research firm Gartner.

A new report from the research firm Gartner, has some unsettling news for search engine giants like Google and Microsoft’s Bing. It predicts that as everyday net users become more comfortable with AI tech and incorporate it into their general net habits, chatbots and other agents will lead to a drop of 25 percent in “traditional search engine volume.” The search giants will then simply be “losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.”

One reason to care about this news is to remember that the search engine giants are really marketing giants. Search engines are useful, but Google makes money by selling ads that leverage data from its search engine. These ads are designed to convert to profits for the companies whose wares are being promoted. Plus placing Google ads on a website is a revenue source that many other companies rely on–perhaps best known for being used by media firms. If AI upends search, then by definition this means it will similarly upend current marketing practices. And disrupted marketing norms mean that how you think about using online systems to market your company’s products will have to change too.

AI already plays a role in marketing. Chatbots are touted as having copy generating skills that can boost small companies’ public relations efforts, but the tech is also having an effect inside the marketing process itself. An example of this is Shopify’s recent AI-powered Semantic Search system, which uses AI to sniff through the text and image data of a manufacturer’s products and then dream up better search-matching terms so that they don’t miss out on matching to customers searching for a particular phrase. But this is simply using AI to improve current search-based marketing systems.

AI–smart enough to steal traffic

More important is the notion that AI chatbots can “steal” search engine traffic. Think of how many of the queries that you usually direct at Google-from basic stuff like “what’s 200 Farenheit in Celsius?” to more complex matters like “what’s the most recent games console made by Sony?”–could be answered by a chatbot instead. Typing those queries into ChatGPT or a system like Microsoft’s Copilot could mean they aren’t directed through Google’s labyrinthine search engine systems.

There’s also a hint that future web surfing won’t be as search-centric as it is now, thanks to the novel Arc app. Arc leverages search engine results as part of its answers to user queries, but the app promises to do the boring bits of web searching for you, neatly curating the answers above more traditional search engine results. AI “agents” are another emergent form of the tech that could impact search-AI systems that’re able to go off and perform a complex sequence of tasks for you, like searching for some data and analysing it automatically.

Google, of course, is savvy regarding these trends, and last year launched its own AI search push, with its Search Generative Experience. This is an effort to add in some of the clever summarizing abilities of generative AI systems to Google’s traditional search system, saving users time they’d otherwise have spent trawling through a handful of the top search results in order to learn the actual answer to the queries they typed in.

But as AI use expands, and firms like Microsoft double– and triple-down on their efforts to incorporate AI into everyone’s digital lives, the question of the role of traditional search compared to AI chatbots and similar tech remains an open one. AI will soon impact how you think about marketing your company’s products and Search Engine Optimization to bolster traffic to your website may even stop being such an important factor.

So if you’re building a long-term marketing strategy right now it might be worth examining how you can leverage AI products to market your wares alongside more traditional search systems. It’s always smart to skate to where the puck is going to be versus where it currently is.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By 

Sourced from Inc.

By Mustafa Saeed

We live in a time where anyone can attract a large audience by sharing content online. Even the most innocent product review blog can attract millions of monthly visitors. This can be very lucrative, with some bloggers earning six figures—although this isn’t the case for everyone. But even smaller, more local/niche bloggers can earn a living and attract large brand deals.

As a creator, the bond you have with your audience can be invaluable—it enables you to build a trusting relationship focused on a specific niche or shared interest. Your audience can be an asset to brands—especially those in the beauty and personal care, fashion and apparel, and health and wellness categories. Having an army of bloggers ready to share the latest and greatest about their brand is an advantage many companies are willing to pay a pretty penny for.

There are many ways to monetize your blog content and garner an audience on multiple platforms. Below, I’ll share the tactics I recommend to the bloggers I work with. Many of these tactics are used by well-known bloggers as well.

Brand Sponsorships

Sponsoring posts is a common way that brands work with bloggers. For example, brands may share upcoming product launches early for bloggers and pay them to write honest reviews. You can make hundreds if not thousands per post—depending on your audience size, engagement, niche and the scope of the sponsorship. However, smaller bloggers may only be able to secure free products in exchange for a review.

To tap into brand sponsorships, create a list of brands that align with your niche and shared interests. Then send each brand a tailored pitch highlighting your audience reach, engagement and ideas for the partnership. Reach out through email, social media or special events/meetups.

Networking and building relationships are important for cultivating brand sponsorships. By forging strong relationships with brands, you can tap into a powerful synergy that not only benefits your blog’s profitability but also offers brands a unique and compelling partnership opportunity.

Affiliate Marketing

Instead of brands paying for a post upfront, you can work together through affiliate marketing—meaning you make a commission whenever your readers purchase a product using a unique tracking link or discount code. This creates a flexible relationship with the brand and can allow you to make more money as there’s often no limit to how many sales you can generate and when you stop earning commission from your posts.

Showing Ads

You also can make money by showing ads on your blog. Google AdSense is a popular tool to enable this. With AdSense, you can display ads that are tailored to your site’s content and audience. These ads, which may include text, images, videos or interactive media, are managed and sorted by Google. You can earn revenue either through clicks on the ads or through ad impressions.

While AdSense is widely used, one alternative is Media.net, which provides contextually relevant ads that seamlessly integrate into your content. Another option is Ezoic, a platform that uses AI to optimize ad placements for maximum revenue potential.

Email Marketing

The most successful bloggers usually have multiple mechanisms for bringing visitors back to their site—you can’t count on them coming back organically. Publishing an email newsletter and prompting your readers to subscribe gives you another way to communicate with your audience, and it can help increase your ad revenue by boosting your site traffic.

An engaged list of email subscribers can also be attractive to advertisers and gives you another platform to monetize. You can sell email placements as part of affiliate or brand sponsorship deals.

Optimizing For Search Engines

Use SEO tactics to increase your visibility on search engines and attract new readers. Most successful bloggers are constantly optimizing their posts and website for search engines. Make your blog more searchable by optimizing your content with relevant keywords, meta descriptions and internal links. Ensure fast loading speeds and responsive design. Invest in high-quality backlinks and monitor search performance through Google Search Console to adapt to evolving search algorithms.

Social Media And Community Groups

Create communities outside of your blog where readers can share like-minded content and interact with you and each other. This gives you additional platforms to monetize and promote your blog posts—similar to an email list. Popular platforms include Facebook, Discord, Slack and more. This also creates places for you to host engaging discussions, livestreams and events.

Be Transparent About Brand Sponsorships

Ensure that you disclose paid sponsorships, affiliate deals and endorsements to maintain trust with readers. This is especially important with the increased public scrutiny around celebrity-owned brands and paid influencer endorsements. Your ability to source sponsorship and affiliate deals depends on the trust you have with your readers. If they don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you.

You also need to be transparent to adhere to guidelines set by the Federal Trade Commission and other regulatory bodies. Clear, conspicuous and accurate disclosures are essential to ensure legal compliance and prevent misleading audiences.

Final Thoughts

The world of blogging presents a remarkable opportunity for both content creators and brands. As you build trusted relationships with your audience and hone your monetization strategies, you can achieve financial success through brand sponsorships, affiliate marketing, showing ads on your site, email marketing, SEO optimization and community engagement.

Other avenues to explore include courses, coaching programs, podcasts and memberships. These can help you diversify your income stream and solidify your position in the ever-expanding digital landscape.

Whichever monetization methods you use, make sure you’re being transparent about brand partnerships and complying with advertising regulations to preserve the essential trust you build with your readers.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Mustafa Saeed

Co-Founder & Growth Chief at Paul Street. Read Mustafa Saeed’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

By Tomek Rudzki

Search engines cannot discover and index every page on the web – they need to make choices in that regard. And, though all search engines serve the same purpose, they use different criteria for which pages to index.  

That being said, it’s generally good if a search engine can crawl and index as much valuable content as possible – it increases the odds that it will show users what they’re looking for.

I was curious about which search engine – Bing or Google – indexes more content in general. 

This article describes the different aspects of my research, and though I’d need more data to draw definite conclusions, I still managed to gather many unique and valuable insights.

Here is what I discovered about how Bing and Google index web pages.

Analysing indexing data: methodology and results

Index coverage of a random sample of WordPress sites

The first step of my research was to collect a sample of pages to check their indexing statistics.

I decided that a good starting point would be to use a sample of websites using the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. There was a practical reason behind choosing this plugin: it divides sitemaps by sections, which would let me analyse which sections are indexed the most.

I found a list of websites that use the Yoast SEO plugin on builtwith.com, a site reporting on websites using given technologies or tools. I chose a random sample of 200 websites from a list of sites using Yoast SEO.

Then, I checked the indexing statistics of those websites using ZipTie.dev, and the data that came out is very interesting.

Bing indexed more web pages than Google. 

Take a look at the charts below that show the indexing statistics for given sitemap categories:

chart comparing indexation of various sitemap categories in Bing and Google
chart comparing indexation of various sitemap categories in Bing and Google

The index coverage is the same for Bing and Google for the story and press categories. Moreover, Google did index more content in guides and locations. However, in all the remaining sitemap categories, Bing’s indexing exceeds Google’s – including important categories, like posts, products, and images.

But does this mean Bing is also able to crawl more pages than Google? Or do they crawl similar amounts of content but have different preferences when it comes to indexing?

Crawling data for a sample of our clients

To extend my findings, I checked the data for a few of our clients in both Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console.

These tools show the pages that the respective search engine knows about for a given domain.

In Google Search Console, I looked at the All known pages appearing in the Index Coverage report and checked the number of URLs for all four statuses (Errors, Valid, Valid with Warnings, and Excluded).

In Bing Webmaster Tools, in the Site Explorer section, which contains indexing data for the pages on a given domain, I filtered the view to display All URLs.

This showed me all the discovered URLs for each domain I analysed.

After comparing the data I got in both of these tools, I noticed that Google discovered more pages than Bing. 

On the other hand (assuming these findings are consistent across both tested website samples), we already know that the pages discovered by Google and Bing are more likely to get indexed by Bing. 

Keep in mind that these results are only for a small sample of sites and may not represent the whole web.

Index coverage of a sample of popular sites

The third aspect of my research was to check the indexing status of a few popular websites using ZipTie to see how it varies between Bing and Google.

I learned that Bing is much more eager to index these sites than Google. This confirmed my earlier findings for the sample of WordPress websites using YoastSEO.

Take a look at the data I got:

chart showing percentages of pages indexed by Bing and Google

Bing vs. Google indexing – initial observations

Can we tell that Bing is a better search engine based on the data?

Although Bing indexes more content, we cannot point out a single winner just by looking at the indexing statistics. We don’t know why Bing is indexing more than Google.

My hypothesis is that Google might be “pickier” than Bing. It’s no mystery that index selection is a thing.

We’ve been saying it for years – getting indexed by Google is becoming increasingly more difficult.

We also know that search engines crawl pages at different rates. 

Here is what John Mueller said about how often Googlebot crawls pages:

I think the hard part here is that we don’t crawl URLs with the same frequency all the time. So some URLs we will crawl daily. Some URLs maybe weekly. Other URLs every couple of months, maybe even every once half year or so. So this is something that we try to find the right balance for, so that we don’t overload your server. […] So, in particular, if you do things like site queries, then there’s a chance that you’ll see those URLs that get crawled like once every half year. They’ll still be there after a couple of months. […] if you think that these URLs should really not be indexed at all, then maybe you can kind of back that up and say, well, here’s a sitemap file with the last modification date so that Google goes off and tries to double-check these a little bit faster than otherwise.
source: John Mueller

I also found some interesting ideas in Bing’s documentation:

To measure how smart our crawler is, we measure bingbot crawl efficiency. The crawl efficiency is how often we crawl and discover new and fresh content per page crawled.  Our crawl efficiency north star is to crawl an URL only when the content has been added (URL not crawled before), updated (fresh on-page context or useful outbound links). The more we crawl duplicated, unchanged content, the lower our Crawl Efficiency metric is.

Bing may not want to go deep when crawling websites as doing so could provide little value and cause their KPIs to drop.

We know that Bing has been working on making crawling more efficient. For instance, Bing attempted to optimize the crawling of static content and identify patterns that would reduce the crawling frequency across many websites.

Also, consider the differences in how Google and Bing indexed the random WordPress websites – they were much smaller. In the case of very popular websites, they are much more significant.

This leads me to think that, in line with the fact that Bing openly admits they use user behaviour data in their algorithms, Bing heavily prioritizes indexing websites that are popular, while for Google, popularity is less of a factor.

Introducing IndexNow

Recently, Bing took it a step further by adopting the IndexNow protocol. You can use IndexNow to inform Bing and Yandex about new or updated content.

Through our tests, we found out that Bing will typically start crawling a page between 5 seconds and 5 minutes from when it’s submitted using IndexNow.

 

IndexNow is an initiative for a more efficient Internet: By telling search engines whether an URL has been changed, website owners provide a clear signal helping search engines to prioritize crawl for these URLs, thereby limiting the need for exploratory crawl to test if the content has changed […].We will continue to learn and improve at [a] larger scale and adjust crawl rates for sites implementing IndexNow. Our goal is to give each adopter the maximum benefit in terms of indexation, crawl load management and freshness of the content to searchers.

IndexNow allows websites to get their content indexed faster and use fewer resources for crawling. As a result, businesses can create a better experience for their customers by giving them access to the most relevant information.

We created a tool that will help you submit URLs or sitemaps to IndexNow even faster and easier.

functionality of IndexNow for submitting new pages to search engines

Crucially, IndexNow is an opportunity for smaller search engines like Bing and Yandex to add to their indexes from an extensive database of content. IndexNow addresses the issue that search engines, including Google, struggle with today – having to crawl and render growing amounts of content.

Time will tell if Google adopts the IndexNow protocol or creates an alternative solution that will allow site owners to submit pages for indexing.

Optimizing how pages are crawled and indexed

Another takeaway from my indexing analysis is how important it is to simplify crawling and indexing for search engines.

First, you need to create and maintain sitemaps that include your valuable URLs. Sitemaps are helpful for Bing and Google for discovering the content they should index. 

Search engines will struggle to pick up which pages are relevant and should be indexed if you fail to submit an optimized sitemap. For more details on setting up a sitemap and what pages to include, read our Ultimate Guide to XML Sitemaps.

Additionally, you need to have a robots.txt file containing correct directives for bots and properly implemented ‘noindex’ tags on pages that shouldn’t be indexed.

Wrapping up 

To define a clear pattern in Bing’s and Google’s indexing, I would have to inspect many more websites, but there are certain ideas we can get from my samples of data:

  • Bing indexes more content than Google.
  • Google discovers more content than Bing, suggesting that Google is pickier with indexing. The guiding principle for Bing is to crawl less and focus on the content that has been added or updated.
  • Bing prioritizes indexing of popular websites, while popularity is less of a factor for Google.

We can also see that content quality and optimizing your site’s crawling and indexing are vital aspects of SEO, and they can’t be underestimated or neglected. Moreover, these factors will likely continue to be crucial as the web grows and search engine algorithms become more sophisticated.

By Tomek Rudzki

Sourced from ONELY

By Luke Dormehl

You know that a technology’s changed the world when it becomes a verb. It speaks to a level of popularity and ubiquity that goes beyond the wildest dreams of marketeers. “I’ll WhatsApp you.” “I spent the evening YouTubing.” Disrupting any of these aforementioned brand-name products is beyond difficult — it requires a change in the default way that we relate to some standard action.

“To Google” is a verb — and a powerful one. In Google’s own words, its reason for being is no less than to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

And Richard Socher wants to disrupt it.

Richard Socher standing in front of a whiteboard
Salesforce

Socher (pronounced soh-chur) is the former chief scientist of Salesforce, one of the world’s premier customer relationship management platforms and makers of enormously successful enterprise apps. During his career, he has started and sold the A.I. company MetaMind, and been published broadly in fields ranging from computer vision to machine translation to summarization within natural language processing. His new search engine — You.com — seeks to challenge the single gatekeeper of search that is Google. He’s not about to let a pesky thing like a near-$2 trillion giant stop him, either. Even if it is a gosh-darned verb.

“My first thought was, you know, it was a verb ‘to Skype,’” Socher told Digital Trends at the start of a video call to showcase You in action. “And you know what we’re [speaking] on right now? Not Skype.”

A different approach to search

The idea driving You is to be the “not Skype” to Google’s Skype. The contention of Socher and co-founder Bryan McCann is that the world is at an inflection point when it comes to search. The company’s publicity materials drive this claim home: “Today, a single gatekeeper controls nearly 90% of the search market, dictating everything you see. The advertising and SEO biases of current search engines result in a lack of control over what people read, watch, research, eat, and buy. All of this makes people an object of artificial intelligence algorithms designed to monetize them rather than utilizing technology to harness the world’s information in relevant ways that build trust and confidence with every search.”

laptop with google search open

The most noticeable difference between Google and You comes down to aesthetics and operation. Socher points out that, for years, search engines have all looked kind of the same. They assume that information can be — and, more importantly, should be — arranged in a text-based list, neatly sorted from the number one slot (most useful) downwards. But is this really the best way to arrange information? And, even if it once was, is it still? You, by contrast, leans more heavily into widgets, with a design that owes a bit to the tile layout of kanban boards or social media platforms.

The tiled search results on You include the likes of Amazon pages, news stories, Yelp discoveries, Wikipedia pages, Reddit posts, Medium articles, coding snippets, LinkedIn listings, eBay sales, tweets (which can be retweeted and liked inside the search window), and more. Rather than Google’s sequential list of search results, You offers something more akin to a topographical view of the internet that lets people view the different content islands at once before zooming in to explore the ones that seem relevant.

“Can You displace Google? Can anything displace Google? This remains to be seen.”

“It actually took us a lot of iterations and thinking about design constraints and thinking about mobile,” Socher said. “When you think about Instagram and TikTok, people are very used to swiping left, right, and up and down. If you’re on Instagram, you swipe left to see more pictures of that story. Then, if you swipe down, you see the next story. We don’t want to have this massive engagement track of social networks. We want to help you search less and do more. Get things done, save your time, and summarize the web for you. But these are still very convenient ways to interact with content and are very intuitive — especially to younger generations.”

screenshot of you.com
A screenshot of the You.com search results with “the metaverse” used as an example query

These individual tiles can be upvoted and downvoted in something akin to Reddit. Searches consist firstly of preferred sources, followed by neutral sources, and then downvoted sources. Personalized search is nothing new: Google has been doing it since 2004. But You’s degree of transparent manipulation, the same way you can juggle around the apps that appear on your mobile home screen page, is fresh. In an effort to escape the filter bubble effect — whereby users may be shown slanted search results without realizing the slant — You makes it easier to separate the personalized searches from the objective ones. “That is something that no one else does, really,” Socher said. “To give that kind of agency and control to their users on a search engine.”

You also emphasizes privacy in a big way. Again, this isn’t a wholly unique claim to fame. DuckDuckGo has been leaning into private search for years. But You’s combining of this (the company won’t sell private data and promises an impressive incognito mode) with its new reinvented approach to search could be enough to lure in some users.

Taking on the mighty Google

All of this, of course, brings about the trillion-dollar question: Can You displace Google? Can anything displace Google? This remains to be seen. Search engines have certainly fallen before, replaced by faster, sleeker, better offerings. Remember W3Catalog, World Wide Web Wanderer, WebCrawler, Lycos, Jump Station, Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista? All of these launched, rose to semi-prominence and were then crushed underfoot to varying degrees in the decade before Google established itself. Others like Yahoo and, more recently, Bing, have been successful in their own way — but there’s no doubt which search engine trumps rules the roost.

Logic dictates that, at some point, Google will falter. Empires have a habit of doing that, in the corporate world as much as anywhere else. Just 10 percent of the Fortune 500 companies for the year 1955 have remained on the list in the years since — and more than 89 percent have gone bankrupt, merged with or been acquired by others, or fallen off the Fortune 500 companies list at one time or another. When it comes to search, however, Google is a tricky customer to dislodge.

you.com logo with search bar

The search engine business today is bigger and more profitable than it’s ever been. Google generates piles of cash that would have been unfathomable for the companies that preceded it. Furthermore, through deals with the likes of Apple (Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to remain the default search engine for iOS), many of us use Google even when we don’t explicitly think we’re using Google. This money means that Google can continue to innovate in search, hoovering up the best minds and, when needed, startups to fortify its castle walls.

You has raised a not-impressive $20 million to date. But that’s small potatoes next to the $183 billion that Google parent company Alphabet raked in in revenue in 2020, the overwhelming bulk of which came from advertising.

Socher is under no illusions about the challenge of taking on a Google. However, he also notes that Google’s focus on selling advertising could ultimately hurt its ability to nimbly experiment with new approaches and search layouts. (After all, if someone’s paying to be top of a list, they’re unlikely to be happy if they are suddenly one entry in a much larger grid.) At some point, the need to do pure search conflicts with the moneymaking model of selling ads. “It’s becoming harder and harder to find just naturally relevant content [on Google],” he said.

The start of a journey

It’s still the start of a long journey for You. The search engine has just entered a public beta, opening it up for critique and usage by the general public. There are also obvious ways that You could improve its offering — most notably in making it a touch-friendly interface for mobile.

“The interface is made to go on mobile, and we will very soon make more progress [in that area],” Socher said. “But the experience right now is much, much better on the desktop. We haven’t really put enough … we’re just a small startup. We just haven’t had the time and resources to make it work on different kinds of platforms. [But over] the next couple of weeks and months, we’ll continue to improve the mobile experience.”

One thing’s for certain, though: As tough a challenge as You has ahead of it, it’s got a whole lot of promise. Search is only going to become more important, and its requirements will continue to shift as the internet evolves. You has a smart team behind it, and some big-name investors, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Now it just remains to be seen if it can deliver.

Taking on the mighty Google is an incredibly tall order. But then so was challenging Yahoo when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to build a page-ranking search algorithm for their Ph.D. thesis. And that turned out pretty darn well for them.

 

 

By Luke Dormehl

Sourced from digitaltrends

 

 

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Investing time into SEO strategies — no matter how basic or advanced — gives a web presence to your brand that is within your control.

Increasing your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) is a worthwhile payoff. Many people use major search engines like Google and Bing to discover new brands. According to findings from SEO analytics software Moz, “66% of distinct search queries resulted in one or more clicks on Google’s results.”

Ultimately, SEO is one of the single-best marketing channels for optimizing return on investment (ROI). The data speaks for itself: According to Statista, SEO has been the most profitable form of marketing in the past four years — even topping content and email marketing.

This is why brands should prioritize SEO in their marketing efforts. Likewise, brands with in-house marketing teams of their own should be actively implementing marketing channels related to SEO. Before we jump into the specifics, it’s important to first understand what SEO stands for.

What is SEO?

SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to a website through organic search engine results. SEO encompasses the relationship between a brand and major search engines. Essentially, brands develop a rapport with prominent search engines to establish their credibility as an authoritative source for information, especially as it relates to their industry.

There are effective, proven and practical steps to increasing visibility in major search engines. In fact, many of those steps are free of charge and fairly simple, even for beginners. Why is it so crucial, though? Here are three reasons you should pay attention to SEO for brand marketing.

1. SEO increases visibility in search engines and boosts consumer awareness.

Investing time into SEO strategies — no matter how basic or advanced — gives a web presence to your brand that is within your control. If your brand is new to SEO, it’s a good idea to link your URL with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. From here, you can get your feet wet and familiarize yourself with SEO data related to your website. These programs help you learn which specific keywords and phrases people type or speak into a search engine to find your brand’s website.

Additionally, while many people searching for brands may already be existing customers, SEO increases visibility for new and prospective customers. A brand’s search engine visibility can be optimized based on location. For example, a dispensary brand based in Atlanta can be optimized to show up in results for “Atlanta dispensary.”

Although many experts would claim that SEO marketing can be done without media awareness, I fundamentally disagree as an expert on both SEO and public relations (PR). When you develop relationships with reputable journalists who write for credible news outlets, their reporting can — and does — show up in search results. These results are organic, meaning any interviews or quotes can help boost your brand’s rankings in searches. While boosting your search results of course helps you reach more potential customers, having credible news coverage puts you on everyone’s radar, including other journalists who could write about you in the future or even investors looking to fund new projects.

2. SEO is easy to implement.

Even if you’ve never done anything with SEO marketing for your brand, it’s fairly simple to get started. Even a little effort can be worthwhile.

Rather than hoping search engines will work in your favour naturally, brands can take simple steps to ensure visibility. Even if a brand is already notable and gaining traction on search engines without a planned, coherent strategy, these tips will still help. Here are a few practical steps.

1. List your website on Google, Bing and any other engines you might want.

2. Conduct simple beginner keyword research.

3. Add a “press” page on your website.

4. Sync all of your social media to your website so it’s in one place.

5. Add meta tags.

Beyond the fundamentals, I’d recommend brand leaders consider collaborating with an established marketing firm to develop a long-term, data-driven SEO strategy.

3. SEO is extraordinarily cost-effective.

You don’t have to pay to be listed on major search engines. Google, for instance, crawls — or scans and reads — listed websites multiple times a day for new and credible information to include and reflect in its results pages.

This is why SEO is a free form of marketing compared to paid advertisements in magazines, on billboards and beyond. Although specialty SEO software can be expensive, the basics are completely free. Plus, because of the low overhead costs, hiring an SEO marketing team will typically be less expensive than traditional print media — or even social media marketing campaigns — on average.

Do the SEO basics, reap the search engine rewards.

Implementing SEO into your brand’s marketing is fairly simple. To do the basics, you don’t need to be an expert. Any marketing professional can learn from scratch and gain some knowledge even in a short amount of time by putting free training and resources to use.

However, keep in mind that since search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, marketing teams need to be frequently monitoring the latest trends, tips, tricks, data and more as it relates to SEO. Brands without the capacity to take on SEO marketing internally should consider partnering with an experienced SEO firm to do so on their behalf. In the meantime, get optimizing.

Feature Image Credit: snowing12 — stock.adobe.com 

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Sourced from RollingStone

Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Rolling Stone editors or publishers.

By Shubham Agarwal

“Advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results,” Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, argued in a research paper when they were still working out of their Stanford dorm rooms.

Today, Google is synonymous with the web — but it’s also far from the sort of “competitive and transparent” search engine Brin and Page set out to develop decades ago. Google’s journey into the dictionary and becoming a trillion-dollar empire demanded a slate of fatal modifications to its original blueprint. The result is a search engine that buries organic links under an avalanche of ads, keeps tabs on its visitors’ every move and click, and manipulates results by tapping into the giant pool of data Google harvests from the rest of its services.

An emerging roster of competitors thinks it can offer you a better deal. Their search engines vow not to track you or even show ads if you’re willing to shell out a couple of bucks. Can they save us from Google’s invasive and monopolistic rule, or are they doomed to fizzle out after fighting fruitlessly against an unstoppable behemoth?

The rise of private search engines

Josep Pujol, the chief of search at Brave browser, calls Google the web’s “toll-booth” where “producers of information have to abide by certain rules or directly pay to be reachable.”

Screenshot of Brave Browser on mobile and desktop.
Brave Browser

Google may appear simply as one cog in the larger internet machine, but it has more sway than you’d think. For most people, it’s the main avenue through which they access information online, and if something can’t be found via Google, it practically doesn’t exist. Therefore, having only one (or two) ways to access the web is very problematic, Pujol adds.

The startup behind Brave browser, which now hosts about 34 million users, rolled out its search engine a few weeks ago. Unlike Google, it doesn’t profile users and claims it won’t use any “secret methods or algorithms to bias results.”

Brave is indexing the web’s trenches from scratch, which means it ultimately won’t rely on aggregators like Bing and attempts to be everything Google is not. It’s private, offers you more control over how anonymous you want to be while searching, and most importantly, it doesn’t have a vested interest in showing you ads.

Would you pay for a private search engine?

While Brave plans to offer both ad-supported and ad-free premium subscriptions, Neeva, a new private search engine from a pair of ex-Googlers, believes as soon as advertisements enter the picture, the focus shifts away from the user and to figuring out how to “squeeze an additional dollar out of another click” for advertisers.

iPhone screens comparing what it's like without Neeva versus with Neeva.
Without Neeva versus with Neeva Neeva

Neeva’s CEO and co-founder, Sridhar Ramaswamy, who previously spearheaded Google’s crown jewel (its $115 billion advertising arm) for over a decade, says, in a way, people are already paying for search engines like Google — by letting them siphon up their personal data, settling for a “bad user experience with wall-to-wall ads, and substandard content.”

Neeva, therefore, has an upfront $5 monthly fee, and in exchange, it gets you a private, ad-free search engine that can also surface your information from third-party apps like Gmail, Dropbox, and Microsoft Office 365.

Although Neeva could potentially shape up to be a compelling, ad-free alternative for those who can afford it, experts say its success and the underlying pay-for-privacy model, in general, present a difficult socioeconomic problem.

“If it’s necessary to pay for privacy,” Dr. Shomir Wilson, the director of the Human Language Technologies Lab at Penn State, said to Digital Trends, “then it becomes a luxury that not everyone can afford.”

Not a level playing field

Neeva and Brave aren’t the first ones to challenge Google, however, and there’s a good reason why it’s been nearly impossible for competitors like Bing to even put a dent in its monopoly. Google controls over 90% of the search engine market, and going up against its swathes of resources has been an uphill battle for newcomers offering alternatives. It has accomplished that by practically starving its opponents of any room to grow.

Google pays platform owners such as Apple, Mozilla, and others billions of dollars to be the default search engine on the most popular operating systems and browsers, including Macs, iPhones, Android phones, and Google Chrome. And there’s little chance users of these platforms will go out of their way to switch search engines, let alone be even aware of choices.

“We build durable habits around search engines,” Dr. Wilson said. “Once a search engine is familiar and useful, going back to the one we like can be kind of reflexive.”

But as awareness for privacy-first products soars among people and Big Tech faces its greatest antitrust battle, Kamyl Bazbaz, vice president of communications at DuckDuckGo, a private search engine that has been up at arms with Google since 2008, is hopeful that the tides are turning.

DuckDuckGo has witnessed unprecedented growth over the past year, and its active users have doubled from 50 million to 100 million. It’s also now the second most used search engine on phones in several countries, including the United States. In addition to a search engine, DuckDuckGo offers tools to protect your identity from third-party trackers and other malicious online practices.

Fighting for a future without Google defaults

Cooper Quintin, a senior security researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agrees breaking Google’s default power is key for competitors to thrive, but it would take “strong action on behalf of the government to actually enforce such antitrust laws.”

Luckily for Neeva, Brave, DuckDuckGo, and rest, the Justice Department — along with eleven state Attorneys General — has sued Google on those exact grounds.

“Google’s control of search access points,” the antitrust lawsuit says, “means that new search models are denied the tools to become true rivals: Effective paths to market and access, at scale, to consumers, advertisers, or data.”

If history is any indication, the odds are against Google. Last year, the search engine giant lost a similar suit in Europe and now allows Android users to pick their default search engine at startup instead of making that choice for them.

Whatever the outcome of these lawsuits may be, Google’s rivals have a long way ahead of them before they even have a chance at threatening its search engine monopoly, and they realize that.

In the meantime, though, Pujol says Brave is focusing on what it can do, which is building an alternative. “We are crazy or bold enough to try because we know there’s a demand out there.”

By Shubham Agarwal

Sourced from digitaltrends

 

Sourced from wpbeginner

Recently, one of our readers asked us how to submit their WordPress site to search engines like Google?

Search engines are the largest source of traffic for most websites. That’s why it is important to ensure that they can easily find and rank your website pages.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily submit your website to search engines and start getting traffic to your site.

Since this is a comprehensive guide, please feel free to use the quick links below to jump straight to different sections in this article.

Do You Need to Submit Your Website to Search Engines?

No, you do not have to submit your website to search engines. Most search engine bots can automatically find your website if it has been mentioned on other sites.

However for WordPress websites, we recommend submitting it manually because it will help you get discovered faster.

Why you should submit your website to search engines?

If you are just starting a new business or a blog, then search engines are the most important source of free website traffic. This means you can grow your business online without a lot of money.

Unlike paid traffic from ads, organic search traffic is free, and you don’t need to pay search engines for that.

More importantly, the submission process is quite simple, free, and gives you access to several tools that will help you grow your business later on.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to submit your WordPress website to search engines.

Submitting Your Website to Google

Google is the largest and most popular search engine on the planet. For most websites, Google is often the biggest source of their traffic.

To submit your website to Google, you need to sign up for Google Search Console. It is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners see how their website is performing in search results.

Signing up is free and easy. Simply go to the Google Search Console website and click on the ‘Start now’ button.

You can use your existing Google account to sign in or create a new account.

Next, Google will prompt you to enter your website domain name. We recommend using the URL prefix option here as it’s easier to verify.

Using the URL prefix method to add your site to Google Search Console

After choosing this option, use the HTML tag method to verify your website and submit it to Google. You simply need to click on the HTML tag option to expand it, and then copy the code by clicking the ‘Copy’ button.

Copying the HTML meta tag from Google Search Console

Now there are multiple ways to do add this code to your website. We will show you the two easiest methods, and you can choose one that best suits you.

1. Adding Verification Code in WordPress using All in One SEO

The easiest way to do this is using All in One SEO, which is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It allows you to optimize your website for search engines without learning any SEO jargon.

First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Next, you need to visit the All in One SEO » General Settings » Webmaster Tools page and click on the Google Search Console option.

The Webmaster Tools page in All in One SEO, to select Google Search Console

After that, you need to paste the content value from your HTML meta tag into the ‘Google Verification Code’ box. The part you want is the long string of numbers and letters.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the top of the screen.

Entering your Google verification code (from the HTML meta tag) into All in One SEO

2. Adding Verification Code in WordPress using Insert Headers and Footers

If you are not using the All in One SEO plugin, then you can use this method to add Google Search Console verification code to your WordPress site.

First, you need to install and activate the Insert Header and Footers plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to the Settings » Insert Headers and Footers page in your WordPress admin. Then, simply paste the whole HTML meta tag into the ‘Scripts in Header’ box.

Pasting the Google meta tag into the Insert Headers and Footers header box

Then, make sure you click the Save button at the bottom of the page.

After adding the meta tag to your site through either method, go back to Google Search Console and click the ‘Verify’ button for the HTML tag method.

You should now see a success message in Google Search Console to let you know that your site has been verified.

If you need more help, check out our step by step guide on adding your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Creating an XML Sitemap with All in One SEO

An XML sitemap in WordPress is a list of all the content on your website, including all your posts and pages. It helps search engine bots discover your content faster and start showing it in search results.

In the WordPress 5.5 update, XML sitemaps were added as a built-in feature. However, these sitemaps are very basic and can’t be easily customized.

We recommend using All in One SEO to create your sitemap.

All in One SEO is the complete WordPress SEO toolkit and includes a comprehensive sitemaps generator.

It allows you to customize your XML sitemaps by excluding unnecessary or duplicate content. They also have powerful custom sitemap for WooCommerce, news sitemap, and video sitemaps. This gives you a bonus advantage in SEO as your business grows.

First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, All in One SEO will automatically create your sitemap.

To view it, simply go to the All in One SEO » Sitemaps page in your WordPress admin. Then, click the ‘Open Sitemap’ button.

Click the button to open your sitemap, which has been automatically generated by All in One SEO

You will then see the sitemap index for your site. This links to all the sitemaps that All in One SEO has created.

The index of sitemaps in All in One SEO

Note: All in One SEO creates multiple sitemaps because it is best practice to split up large sitemaps. By using different sitemaps for different types of content, your sitemaps will load quickly and be a manageable size even as your website grows.

Please keep this page open or save the page URL as you will need it later in the tutorial.

If you want, you can click on any of the links to see the content listed in each individual sitemap. Here is the sitemap for the pages on our demo website.

The list of pages in the All in One SEO pages sitemap

Add your XML Sitemap to Google Search Console

Now that you have generated your XML sitemap, the next step is to help Google discover it quickly.

The easiest way to do that is by using the Google Search Console.

Simply login to your Google Search Console account, and then click on the Sitemaps link in the left-hand toolbar:

The Sitemaps tab in Google Search Console

Google Search Console has already put your website domain here. All you need to do is to type sitemap.xml into the box and click the Submit button.

Entering your sitemap URL into Google Search Console

Search Console should show you a message to let you know the sitemap has been successfully submitted. You will also see your website sitemap in the ‘Submitted sitemaps’ list.

Your sitemap should appear in the table after you submit it to Google Search Console

How to Submit Your Website to Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo

Google totally dominates the search engine market with a whopping 92% market share. However, other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo can still be a significant source of traffic for your website.

Submitting Your Website to Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo

To submit your website to Bing, you need to sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools.

Just click the Sign In button to get started. Then, sign in using your Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account.

Next, Bing will prompt you to add your site. We recommend using the ‘Add your site manually’ option. It works reliably and doesn’t require you to have verified your site with Google Search Console.

After that, simply enter your website’s domain name (URL) then click the ‘Add’ button.

Adding your site manually to Bing Webmaster Tools

Next, you will see some verification method options. First, click on the HTML Meta Tag method. This will open up the details. Then, click the ‘Copy’ button to copy the meta tag.

Getting the HTML meta tag from Bing Search Console

The easiest way to add the meta tag to your site is to use All in One SEO. In your WordPress dashboard, go to All in One SEO » General Settings » Webmaster Tools page.

Then, click on the Bing Webmaster Tools option.

Selecting the Bing Webmaster Tools option on the All in One SEO Webmaster Tools page

This will open up the box where you can enter the Bing verification code. This is the long string of numbers and letters that forms the content value in the Bing meta tag.

Entering the Bing verification code from your Bing HTML meta tag

Alternatively, you can install the free Insert Header and Footers plugin for WordPress.

Upon activation, go to the Settings » Insert Headers and Footers page in your WordPress admin. Then, simply paste the whole HTML meta tag into the ‘Scripts in Header’ box.

Copying the Bing meta tag into the Header section of the Insert Headers and Footers plugin

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button further down the page.

After that, you need to return to Bing Webmaster Tools and click the Verify button. You should see a success message to let you know your site has been added.

Next, click on the Sitemaps tab on the left-hand sidebar. Then, click the ‘Submit sitemap’ button.

Submitting your sitemap to Bing Search Console

You need to paste in the URL of the sitemap index that All in One SEO created for you. This should be your domain name with sitemap.xml at the end.

After that, just click the ‘Submit’ button.

Entering your sitemap URL for Bing

You will now see your sitemap in the sitemap table in Bing Webmaster Tools.

The table of sitemaps in Bing

Your Site Will Also Appear in Yahoo and DuckDuckGo’s Search Results

Now that you have submitted your website to Bing, it has also been automatically submitted to Yahoo.

DuckDuckGo also uses Bing’s search results. This means that by submitting your website to Bing, you will also get it indexed on DuckDuckGo as well.

How to Check if Your Website Has Been Indexed

The easiest way to check whether your website has been indexed is to simply go to your chosen search engine’s homepage and type in site:yoursitename.com as the search term.

For WPBeginner website, we would type site:wpbeginner.com into the search engine.

If your site has been indexed, then you should see a list of your content. Your homepage will normally be at the top.

Google results showing that the WPBeginner site has been indexed

This works for all popular search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.

Should You Use a Website Submission Service?

No, you should not use a website submission service to submit your WordPress blog or website to search engines.

There is no additional benefit to using a website submission or search engine submission services. They charge you a premium fee to do something that is free, and you can do it yourself.

More importantly, these submission services may submit your website to spammy sources which may harm your website’s SEO.

Troubleshooting and FAQs about Submitting Your Website to Search Engines

Since WPBeginner is the largest free WordPress resource site, we have heard just about every question related to this topic. Here are some common problems and FAQs we hear about submitting your site to search engines.

1. How long will it take for my site to appear in search engines?

It could take several days or several weeks for your website to appear in search engines.

It is up to search engines to index your site. You cannot force Google or any search engine to index your site faster.

However, you should follow our instructions above to help search engines find your site as easily as possible. Getting plenty of backlinks to your site can also help speed up the process.

2. I submitted my website but it isn’t showing up in search engines?

First, check that your site is visible to search engines. In your WordPress admin, go to the Settings » Reading page and make sure that the box ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is not checked.

Make sure the box to discourage search engines is not checked in the Reading settings

If the box is checked, then it is stopping search engines from crawling your WordPress site. Simply uncheck it then click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

If this setting is correct, then you simply need to be patient. It can take a day or so for Google Search Console to process your sitemap.

3. My site is listed on search engines but I am not getting any traffic?

If you are not getting traffic to your site, then that could be because it is ranking very low in search engine results. You should use All in One SEO to get detailed recommendations about your site’s SEO (search engine optimization).

In particular, it’s important to use keywords appropriately in your site’s content.

You can also use these keyword research tools to write more SEO optimized content, and implement our 27 proven tips to increase your website traffic.

4. How can I submit my website to search engines for free?

All the methods we have covered above are free. We recommend that you do not pay to have your site submitted to search engines.

It is free to create accounts with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Neither of these charges any money.

5. How do search engines find my site?

Search engines use automated software to constantly look through the web for new web pages. This software is often called: search bots, web crawler, or spider. The process of looking for new pages is called ‘crawling’.

The web crawler goes through links to find new pages. This is why an XML sitemap is so important. It has links to all the content on your site and information about them that the web crawler can understand.

6. Is there a submissions site list I can use?

You don’t need to worry about submitting to lots of search engines. The most important one is Google.

Once you have submitted your site to Google, it’s a good idea to also submit it to Bing. This helps Yahoo and DuckDuckGo find your site too.

The other search engines you should consider submitting to are local ones. For instance, you could submit your website to Yandex if you want to get more visitors from Russia.

7. How do I track website traffic coming from Search Engines?

The easiest way to track search engine traffic is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and allows you to see where your users are coming from, what pages they are viewing, and what they do while on your website.

For detailed instructions, follow our step by step guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to submit your website to search engines. You may also want to see our guide on the best email marketing services to connect with your visitors after they leave your site, and our expert list of the best WordPress plugins for all websites.

Sourced from wpbeginner

 

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In my line of work, I’m often asked, “What is this SEO thing I’ve been hearing a lot about, and why should I care about it?” These days, businesses already have to worry about website design and social media, so most business owners may not even be aware that search engine optimization (SEO) is a thing. If this sounds like you, then this guide might be of some help.

What is SEO?

Simply put, SEO is the process of optimizing your website in order to get organic or unpaid traffic from search engines like Google or Bing. It increases both the quality and the quantity of traffic to your site.

This means making changes to your website’s content and design that will make it rank highly on different search engine results pages. But why should you care about your website being the top result on Google? Why is generating organic traffic better than paying for ads?

The Internet’s Librarians

Imagine that you are one of the librarians for the most complete repository of knowledge and data that humanity has ever created. Imagine that millions of people come to you every day looking for information on a specific subject—for example, on Nietzsche or the Oscars or how to cook the perfect steak.

In order to help each person find the information they are looking for in a fast, efficient manner, you will need to know a bit about what each book in your library is about. You also need to arrange all the books according to some type of system—perhaps alphabetically, year of publication or by topic or keywords.

Search engines act like the internet’s librarians. They try to match the user’s search terms with the most relevant information in their database, and we need to understand how they do this in order to understand why SEO is so important.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines work in three steps. First, they send crawlers through all available content on the internet—webpages, images, audio, video and so on. Crawlers are bots that send snapshots of all accessible content back to the search engine’s servers.

Next, the information is organized into a searchable list. This huge list is called a search index and can serve as the basis for a raw keyword search. But good search engines like Google and Bing go one step further.

These search engines rank all the pieces of content relevant to a searcher’s query, using an algorithm to order the generated list from most relevant to least relevant. These algorithms are always changing, with Google, in particular, making constant adjustments.

Search engines that consistently deliver relevant results gain repeat users. These loyal users learn to depend on that search engine above all others. Recent data shows that Google and Bing make up almost 85% of all internet searches. This indicates a high level of user trust in these search engines.

Getting Ranked

Recent market share statistics show that most people begin their online experiences through a search engine. That’s why it is important for your website to rank highly on search engines: A high rank indicates high relevance, and high relevance brings trust in your brand and your website.

Google determines its ranking through a mix of hundreds of different ranking signals, but three have remained consistent: quality on-page content that satisfies the searcher, links pointing back to your site, and RankBrain, which uses artificial intelligence to simulate a human “gut feel” approach to interpret difficult searches.

Content Marketing

Google and Bing employ metrics such as clicks, page views and time on page to measure the levels of user engagement throughout your website, which indicate how satisfied users are with the information they find on your site.

The more quality—and, therefore, more relevant—content you have on your site, the higher your pages are more likely to be ranked by the search engines. Good content makes satisfied users!

Links To Your Site

Another way search engines measure a website’s relevance is by external sites that link to it. The quality of the backlinks is just as important as quantity, as search engines will ban sites that attempt to spam backlinks.

A better way to build backlinks is to build relationships with the community. Fans and other satisfied users will link back to your website when they write about it and mention it on social media. This builds organic backlinks that are far more valuable than a hundred spam links generated by bots. Quality content is more likely to be shared.

SEO Versus Paid Ads

So, why use SEO instead of other methods of increasing traffic, such as paid ads? After all, Google itself offers a paid AdWords system where advertisers bid on keywords.

It helps to return to the library metaphor we used earlier. Imagine a book’s publisher launching a multi-million-dollar marketing campaign to increase awareness of a new book about, let’s say, building birdhouses. There are television ads and radio spots, print ads in newspapers and Google AdWords for the keyword “how to build birdhouses.”

These campaigns may boost sales of the book temporarily, but eventually marketing campaigns end, and the next clueless nest box enthusiast will have to go down to the local library and ask a librarian to recommend a book on building birdhouses. This librarian will most likely recommend a book that has satisfied previous birdhouse queries before, whether it was a bestseller when it was first released or not.

That’s the beauty of SEO and why it is the foundation of any small business marketing plan. It may take some upfront time and investment to set up properly, with quality content and a network of organic backlinks. But a well-designed website that follows the principles of SEO will continue to generate a steady stream of organic leads and traffic for your business, for free.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By

Founder and CEO of Scott Keever SEO; a full-service digital agency who specializes in results-based ROI. Read Scott Keever’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

By Neil Patel

Digital marketing is going to change drastically in 2019. And sadly, you aren’t going to like a lot of the changes.

And no, I don’t mean change from a competition standpoint. You already know that each year marketing gets more expensive and more competitive. That’s just a given.

Just look at the graph above: that’s Google’s annual revenue. As you can see, during the last recession, Google made more and more money. They didn’t even have a down year.

One of the big reasons we are seeing digital marketing change so much is because of the adoption of new technologies. But also because the web is getting saturated… there are 1,805,260,010 websites on the web.

That means there is 1 website for every 4 people in this world. That’s crazy!

So, let’s dive into it… here’s how digital marketing is going to change this year.

Drastic Change #1: SEO won’t look the same

I’m starting with this one because I know you are going to hate this. SEO is moving to voice search.

In 2018, 2 out of every 5 adults used voice search once per day. But in 2020, 50% of all searches will be done through voice search according to ComScore.

And it won’t just be people speaking into their microphone on their cell phone or laptop, 30% of web browsing won’t even take place on a device with a screen. That means more people will be searching through devices like Google Home or Alexa.

I know you don’t like this because every time I blog about voice search, no one really reads the article. It’s one of those topics that SEOs just wish didn’t exist.

Why?

Well, being on page 1 doesn’t matter when it comes to voice search. Either Google pulls from your website or they don’t.

And secondly, conversions from voice search will be lower because people won’t be going to your website. Google will just be giving them the answer. At least, until we can figure out how to solve this as marketers.

But instead of looking at voice search as a bad thing, just think of it this way, no one cares to read articles about it, which means most SEOs won’t be prepared for it.

This is your chance to get ahead of your competition and gobble up that traffic before the market shifts into using voice.

Here are some articles that will teach you how to maximize your voice search traffic:

Drastic Change #2: Expect algorithm updates to be more complex

According to the Moz algorithm changelog, there were 12 updates in 2018.

Although it sounds like a lot, it isn’t. In 2017 there were 13 updates and in 2016 there were 11. In other words, Google has been averaging 12 updates per year if you combined the confirmed updates with the “unconfirmed” ones.

But let’s look at the older updates…

On July 17, 2015, Google released Panda 4.2. I know you may have hated the Panda update, but it wasn’t too bad. All Google did doing was get rid of spammy sites with low-quality content.

They didn’t want to rank sites that had thousands of 300-word blog posts with duplicate content.

Could you blame them for that?

And what about the change Google made on September 27, 2016, the Penguin 4.0 update?

If you built spammy links, they no longer would just penalize you, in most cases, they would devalue those links instead.

That means if you did something shady like buy a ton of backlinks and get caught, those links would just be de-valued instead of causing your whole site to get banned.

Now if you look at the latest algorithm updates, they are getting more complex and harder to beat. And it’s because technology is evolving so fast.

Google no longer has to just look at metrics like content and backlink count to figure out if a site ranks well. They can look at user metrics, such as:

  • Are users spending more time on your site than the other ranked sites on Google?
  • Are people bouncing off your site and heading back to the Google listing page?
  • Are your brand queries increasing over time? Or do people not see you as a brand?
  • Do people find your site more appealing… in other words, is your click-through-rate higher?

If you want to beat Google, you have to shift your mindset. It’s not about understanding Google, it’s about understanding users.

Google has one goal: to rank sites that users love the most at the top. That causes people to come back, keep using Google, and increase their overall revenue.

If you can put yourself in your users’ shoes, you’ll be better suited to do that.

The first step in doing this is to realize that when someone performs a search for any keyword, they aren’t just “performing a search,” they are looking for a solution to their problem.

By understanding the intent of their search, you’ll be more likely and able to solve their problems. You can use tools like Ubersuggest to help you with it as it will show you long tail phrases (problems people are trying to solve for).

Once you do that, you’ll be able to create the best experience, the best product, or even service that people deserve.

This is how you make your site continually rank well in the long run even as they make their algorithm more complex.

Drastic Change #3: You can’t build a company off of 1 channel

You familiar with Dropbox?

Of course, you are, it’s a multi-billion-dollar company… and you probably have it installed on your computer.

When they first came out, they tried to acquire users through Google AdWords. Can you guess how much it cost them to acquire a customer?

It ranged between $200 and $300.

Do you know how much Dropbox costs?

$60 a year.

The math doesn’t work out. Why would you spend $200 to acquire a user who only pays $60?

Even when someone pays you $60, it’s not all profit. Because of that, Dropbox had to grow using growth hacking.

dropbox flow

Dropbox gives you more free space the more users you invite. That’s a great example of growth hacking. And it’s how they grew into a multi-billion-dollar company.

Nowadays, if you created a similar invite flow within your company, it won’t work that well. You can no longer build a company using one channel like how Dropbox grew.

And do you remember how Facebook grew?

When you signed up, they would tap into your email address book and send out an email to every single one of your contacts inviting them to use Facebook, even if you didn’t want them to.

facebookfriends

That one channel helped Facebook grow into the multi-hundred-billion-dollar company that we know today.

Nowadays, if you get an email saying your friend is inviting you to join a new site or social network, you’ll probably just ignore it.

Again, you no longer can build a big business leveraging only one marketing channel.

So, what does that mean for you?

First of all, popular marketing channels that are profitable get saturated fast and you are going to have a lot of competitors.

Due to that, you have to leverage all channels. From content marketing and paid ads to social media marketing and SEO to email marketing… you have to leverage all channels out there.

It’s your only option to doing well in the long run.

One channel won’t make your business anymore. But if you combine them all, you can still grow your business.

And hey, if something happens to one channel like an algorithm change, at least your business won’t go down too much because you are diversified.

No matter how much you love one form of marketing, never rely on it. Adopt an omnichannel approach.

Drastic Change #4: Blogging won’t work too well

I got into this a little bit at the top… the web is saturated. There are just way too many sites.

Sure, most of those 1.8 billion sites aren’t being updated and a lot are dormant.

Now out of those 1.8 billion sites, roughly 1 billion of them are blogs. That’s roughly 1 blog for every 7 people out there.

When I started my first blog in 2005, there weren’t as many people online creating sites or producing content. There also weren’t as many people using Google.

Nevertheless, Google loved content. Everyone was saying how content is king because if you produce high-quality articles Google would rank them due to one simple fact… they lacked content in their index.

But as time went by, Google no longer had a shortage of content. I would even go as far to say that there is too much content for them to choose from.

For that reason, they can be pickier if they want to rank your website or not. It’s not just about backlinks or optimizing your on-page code, it’s about providing what’s best for the end user.

That means Google is going to rank fresh content that isn’t regurgitated.

If you want to take the route of just writing dozens of articles each way and trying to rank for everything under the sun, you can. It’s still possible, but it will take more time and it will be harder as there is more competition.

More so, the way content marketing is changing in 2019, and we saw a little of this in 2018, is that you need to update your content.

No longer can your strategy be to write a lot of content. You are going to have to plan on updating your content on a regular basis.

For example, I have one person who works for me full time going through my old blog posts to update them. Also, I now only have time to write once piece of content each week. There is no way I can go through my blog and update over a thousand blog posts.

You’re going to have to do the same if you want to maintain your search traffic. If you are established and have an old blog, spend half your time updating your old content. If you are a new blog, you don’t really need to spend more than 5% of your time updating your old content.

Drastic Change #5: You’ll need to focus on new search engines and new content types

We can all agree that text-based content is saturated.

If you don’t agree with me, just scroll back up to Drastic Change #4 😉

We all know it takes forever to rank on Google. If you aren’t willing to give it a year, you shouldn’t spend much time doing traditional SEO.

What if I told you there was another form of SEO in which you can see results very, very fast?

So fast, that within 30 days (or even a few days!) you can rank at the top. And, better yet, those rankings mean you will get traffic.

Just look at my search traffic from this different kind of search engine:

youtube search

Can you guess that what search engine this is?

YouTube!

I generate 198,380 views every month from YouTube search. And those people watch my content for an average of 559,237 minutes a month.

I’m generating over 388 days of watch time each month just from YouTube search. That’s crazy!

YouTube isn’t nearly as competitive as Google. Nor is optimizing for the iTunes store if you have a podcast.

Don’t just focus your efforts on Google.

Focus your efforts on less-saturated forms of content like video and audio while optimizing for less common search engines like YouTube and iTunes.

Plus, these new channels have a very lucrative audience as they are engaged. Did you know that 45% of podcast listeners have a household income of $75,000 or more?

Here are some articles that’ll help you out:

If you don’t have a big marketing budget no worries. These channels aren’t as expensive or competitive yet. You also don’t need a studio to film or record. You can just bust out your iPhone and start recording yourself.

Believe it or not, a lot of people prefer that over studio quality content as it is more authentic.

Drastic Change #6: Budgets will start shifting into conversion rate optimization

At the beginning of this post, I broke down Google’s yearly revenue.

As you can see it has continually increased even during recessionary periods.

Sure, some of it has to do with more people coming online. But also, the cost per click is rising.

Same with Facebook Ads. I literally know hundreds of affiliates who used to make over a million dollars a year in income because Facebook Ads were so affordable.

But in June/July 2017, Facebook crossed a point where they had more advertisers than inventory… at least in the United States.

Over time, that trend continued into other countries, which mean Facebook Ad costs drastically increased.

Just look at the graph below. As you can see, companies spend the majority of their budget on Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.

marketing by spend

Now let’s look at what channel produces the highest ROI. Can you guess what it is?

marketing roi

SEO, right?

Although the chart shows SEO produces the biggest ROI, in reality, it is the second runner up.

What’s hard to see because it is classified as “other” in the chart and it is grouped with other marketing channels, is conversion rate optimization. And that channel produced the biggest ROI by far. It beat SEO by leaps and bounds.

It was just hard to see that because not enough companies spend money on conversion rate optimization. And when they do, it is a very small portion of their budget.

In 2019, start running A/B tests. Whether you use Crazy Egg or any other solution out there, don’t forget to include it in your marketing arsenal.

Drastic Change #7: Marketers will learn what funnels are

You may have heard of marketing funnels or sales funnels, but I bet you aren’t using them.

And no, a funnel isn’t something as simple an email sequence.

Because ads are getting more expensive, you’ll find yourself doing things like running more A/B tests (as I mentioned above), but it will only help so much.

As your competition also starts running A/B tests, you’ll find that ad prices will go up again.

So, what should you do?

You are going to have to upsell and downsell your visitors. I learned this tactic from Ryan Deiss years ago and he was spot on.

The best way to generate revenue isn’t to get more customers, it’s to get more money out of your existing customers.

Sure, your customer base is only going to spend so much. But if you offer upsells and downsells you can see increases in revenue from 10% to 30%. And some cases you’ll even double your revenue.

The key points with upselling and downselling are as follows:

  1. Offer at least 2 or 3 upsells (or downsells).
  2. If people don’t take the offer, considering offering the same offer again with monthly installments.
  3. The best offers are speed and automation. In other words, if you can help people get results faster or in an automated way, they are much more likely to take it. People are lazy and impatient, hence speed and automation always win when it comes to upsells.

At this point you are probably wondering how to do all of this upselling or downselling, right?

You have to build a marketing funnel. The good news is, you don’t have to hire a developer, you can use solutions like Click Funnels and Samcart.

They are easy to use, and you can get started in minutes.

Conclusion

Expect 2019 to be a crazy year. What worked once, won’t work in 2019.

Technology is more sophisticated and with things like machine learning and artificial intelligence knocking at the door, we are going to be on a crazy rollercoaster.

Don’t be afraid, though!

If you take the concepts above and start working on them now, you are going to be in for a much smoother ride with fewer downs and more ups.

By Neil Patel

He is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.