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State of Search: Top SEO Strategies for 2023

April 13, 2023 No Comments

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

The Gist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On-page SEO
Off-page SEO
Technical SEO

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

On-Page SEO

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

Content

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some content worst practices to stay away from include:

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

E-A-T Guidelines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search Queries

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

Types of search intent include:

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

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

Links

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

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

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

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

Visuals

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

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

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

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

Meta Title & Meta Description

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

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

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

URL & Slug

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

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

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

Other best practices for URLs include:

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

Off-Page SEO

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

Link Building

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

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

Some link-building tips to turn to instead include:

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

Brand Building

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

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

Social Media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technical SEO

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

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

Technical SEO includes:

Site Speed

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

To ensure fast website load speeds, you should:

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

Mobile-Friendliness

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

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

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

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

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

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

XML Sitemaps

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

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

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

Site Indexing

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

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

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

Search in 2023: SEO Strategy Remains Top Priority

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

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

By Michelle Hawley

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

Sourced from CMSWIRE

In News

How to Prep Your SEO Strategy for a New Website

April 8, 2022 No Comments

By Adriana Stein

From web development to branding and design, there are plenty of moving parts when launching a new website, but your SEO strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought.

In fact, your SEO strategy should be one of the primary considerations before you even start your website. To take things a step further, the best case scenario would be that your website structure is fully built based on the SEO strategy you already have in place. Doing this from the get-go saves lots of headaches for things like web development, content formatting and design, URL structures, and more.

So instead of fighting to make your website SEO-ready later on (which, trust me, is always an uphill battle), start with this holistic SEO checklist for new websites and save yourself valuable time and resources, and experience the beauty of good SEO (i.e. revenue) in a fraction of the time.

Why is SEO valuable for new websites?

New websites are like infants. They can’t comprehend language yet (no indexed pages), they don’t have many friends (no backlinks), and thus also have no authority (aka they can’t do much for society, yet).

As time presses on, Google starts to sniff out and apply changes as your website matures (assuming the SEO strategy is done right), and you’ll soon see that there are some big kids on the playground to contend with.

But don’t be afraid, all you need is a clever SEO strategy.

A baby website can start by focusing on longtail, low-competition keywords until it works its way up to toddler, then teenager, then full-fledged adult. Over time, with some tender SEO love and care, your new website can grow to compete and even overtake the strongest of competition.

So, if you’re ready to fast forward your baby website to an adult and beat the competition, just follow this SEO checklist for new websites!

1. Pick the right domain name (you can’t change it after!)

The right domain name is associated with SEO equity, so aligning your company and brand name with your domain name is critical. When you have a new domain, you’re essentially starting your SEO from scratch.

So, how do you find a domain name?

Here are some popular options to check if the domain you’d like to purchase is available:

Bonus points if your brand has a keyword similar to what you do as a business. It’s helpful, although not a must. If in doubt, choose a smooth brand name over a keyword.

2. Choose a high-speed website hosting provider

I personally recommend Siteground for its 100% uptime reliability, quick page time loads, and support (specifically for WordPress users). The host’s quality has a gigantic impact on your site’s performance, especially when it comes to a dedicated IP, SSD, HDD or other forms of storing, processor, and operational systems.

And, let’s be honest, the average Joe won’t wait longer than three seconds for a website to load, so ensuring an excellent host is the first step of your SEO strategy.

3. Set up Google Search Console

Google Search Console is like your SEO fairy godmother. It’ll provide you with tons of that that you need to achieve SEO success. With Google Search Console, you can check things like:

Page speed issues
Organic keywords that bring in website clicks
Your average click through rate (CTR)
Sitemap submission
Crawl and index errors
Page performance

…and much more!

But before we get too ahead of ourselves, make sure to verify your website in Google Search Console, so that it starts to collect data. You’ve got a few options to do this, which are outlined here.

Once you buy your domain name, Google Search Console is up and running, and you’ve got a speedy host, you’ve built the bare minimum for a website, and it’s now time to focus on developing your SEO strategy.

Quick note: at this stage, you may want to also consider adding Google Analytics to your website, as that is often the starter database for all of your marketing data. However, with recent updates regarding data privacy changes in the EU, I suggest not to rely too heavily on it and check for an analytics platform that matches your country’s customer data privacy laws.

4. Study your SEO competition

Once you’ve completed the essentials for your website, it’s time to study the competition. When analysing and making a list of your competitors consider these questions:

How is their company similar to yours? How is it different? Check out their unique selling points.
What topics do they write about?
What keywords are they already ranking for?

One super important thing to consider here is your true “SEO competitors”. Every business has product and service competitors (people who sell similar stuff), but that doesn’t mean they have an SEO strategy that’s worth trying to outperform. The key here is to identify who sells similar stuff, writes similar content, and is piling up top keyword rankings. Those are your “SEO competitors”, and they’re who you want to beat.

Once you’ve identified your SEO competitors, it’s time to perform a keyword gap analysis. A keyword gap analysis uncovers the keywords you need to rank for in comparison to competitors, in order to close the gap. And with a bit of intentional filtering, you can indeed use this information to soon outrank them.

Here’s a snackable checklist to perform a keyword gap analysis:

Add your root domain versus your chosen competitor root domains into an SEO tool like Moz.
Review the competitor overlap and shared keywords.
Export that into a spreadsheet and filter for the keywords that are relevant for your website (this is where the manual work comes into play, but it’s time that’s extremely well spent, especially because it helps you build your keyword map).

For more information on how to perform a keyword gap analysis with Moz, check out this guide and free template.

5. Research keywords and create your keyword map

Keywords are at the centre of your SEO strategy, because they’re what connects search queries to your content listed in the SERPs.

Google’s goal is to use the keywords used in search queries to identify and present the most valuable information to searchers, otherwise known as “search intent”.

For example, let’s say you live in Los Angeles and you want to order delivery pizza, so you Google “pizza delivery Los Angeles”. Something similar to the image below pops up (though it can vary based on your search history and IP address):

As the searcher, Google has understood that your “search intent” was to order delivery pizza from businesses in Los Angeles, so the SERPs directly show businesses that match that criteria. Google uses that concept to match keywords with content all day, every day, no matter whether someone wants to buy pizza, compare CRM software, or find socks for their boyfriend.

A keyword is only as powerful as the search intent it matches.

Say you want to make some vegetarian dishes, but you don’t have all the time in the world to do it so you type “quick vegetarian dishes” into Google.

You tap the first one and find it takes two hours to make.

“Ugh! That’s not the one” you think to yourself.

You’re onto the next one and then the next.

Finally the third link down only takes 15 minutes to make.

“Okay, now we’re talking!”

If there are enough people intending to find a quick vegetarian meal and discover that the third option delivers on that “quick” part, then chances are that page will rank higher for intent and keyword matches and eventually overtake the first option.

Let’s now put this into context for your SEO strategy.

Search intent and the buyer journey

If you can uncover longtail, low competition keywords that exactly match what you’re selling, that’s your direct path to ensuring SEO has a major impact on your revenue and long-term profitability.

Understanding search intent plays a major role with buyer journey stages, so ensuring that you’re crafting content that’s appropriate for buyers in the awareness, consideration, and decision stage is crucial to carrying out the most effective SEO plan.

I often create SEO strategies for the B2B world, so understanding where the reader is in their decision-making process is crucial. If someone searches “what is marketing automation”, you wouldn’t want to give them a full-blown software landing page, because they’re probably not even ready to buy it yet. They just want to understand what marketing automation is. That’s where SEO comes into play and provides that informational content in order to build up brand credibility — emphasis on the “informational” part there. When done correctly, that same reader will come back to you when they’re ready to buy.

As with all things in marketing, being helpful is always more successful than aggressively trying to sell something to someone who isn’t ready.

So when choosing keywords, you’ll need to consider both search intent and the buyer journey by asking questions like:

Does the keyword truly match my product or service?
Does the keyword match questions that customers have asked (or might ask) throughout their buying journey?
What is the keyword’s difficulty? (level of competition to rank for that keyword)
What is the search volume of the keyword?
What page types appear in the SERPs for this keyword? (blog vs landing page vs home page)

The number one SEO strategy essential: your keyword map

At AS Marketing, we make this keyword selection process simple by using an SEO playbook to create a keyword map, which ultimately becomes the content strategy for new websites:

Step 1: We review where the website is now in terms of what’s ranking, what the top pages are, and create benchmarks for key SEO and website engagement stats. With a brand new baby website, this probably zero, but that’s ok, because this playbook also turns SEO zeros to heroes!

Step 2: We do a keyword gap analysis based on top SEO competitors, expand on the keyword list with our own keyword research, and then create a website structure that can achieve the desired business goals. If we know where the website is versus where it wants to be, we can strategize to make that happen. We also consider how users will find content coming from Google organic search as well when searching around on the website, so we always strive to find a balance.

Step 3: We then build a thorough keyword list that spans across the entire buyer journey, including all relevant product or service keywords and organize that into the main content verticals (content that scales and compounds organic search volume over time). Content verticals are often website sections such as industry pages, the blog, use case pages, product pages, and more.

Step 4: Now it’s time for the keyword map – the most important part of your SEO strategy. When creating this map, we cluster keywords (put related keywords into groups), so we know exactly what pages to create in terms of landing pages, blog articles, services pages, or collections and products. Importantly, we’re also getting aligned on the most efficient keyword for a website to try and rank for. Once we know this, we write out the URLs, headings, meta data, and more.

To give you a better idea, here’s an example of a keyword map in a spreadsheet:

Now comes the fun part, building out your content calendar and breathing life into your website.

6. Build a strategic content calendar (and keep posting)

When done consistently and with intention, a strategic content calendar naturally attracts customers and helps you rank for keywords.

Here’s how to build such a content plan:

Prioritize sections of your keyword map: You might well end up with a keyword map that spans 100+ pages. This is actually a good thing, as it means you have a lot of space to accumulate organic traffic (remember, even multi-million monthly traffic websites like HubSpot began with zero!). To start, you’ll want to prioritize pages that your website needs right away, such as product or service pages, as those have the highest likelihood to result in conversions and generate revenue for your business.
Optimize your content: Writing content that ranks does take some best practice flex. Don’t forget to use keywords in the H1, URL, and metadata. If you’ve truly matched keywords with search intent, this comes naturally through writing anyways – keyword stuffing be gone!
Track your keyword rankings: Once you publish content, keep an eye on how it’s performing. Even if you start out way down at the bottom, content can absolutely move up over time as Google perceives your content to be trustworthy, you provide a good user experience, and your Domain Authority increases. Patience is a virtue here!
Post consistently: In order to improve those last three points, you need a consistent publishing schedule. There’s no one exact number, but I often recommend at least 4 new website pages per month. Remember that SEO has a compounding effect, so the more individual pages rank, the more likely it is that content across your entire domain ranks.

7. Ensure an optimized URL structure

I mentioned putting keywords in your URL briefly above in the content calendar section, but I’ll mention it again, because it is super important for ensuring that your content is being set up properly.

Here’s how this works with a fictional website:

www.catsinabag.com is your official domain
www.catsinabag.com/blog/ is the URL for your blog, in which /blog is the parent page
www.catsinabag.com/blog/cat-food-for-cats is the URL for a blog article focused on ranking for the keyword “cat food for cats”

In the words of Rand Fishkin, “if there’s other keywords you haven’t used, or URLs you haven’t targeted with certain keywords, you do so during this process. This way you’re covering your tracks, making certain there are words and phrases that are covered early on.”

Also remember that URLs are permanent, so changing one is like starting any SEO attached to that URL from scratch. It’s always best to choose a URL-friendly system and stick with it to avoid any sudden drop in organic traffic or rankings. And if you have to update them, be sure to redirect the old URL to the new one, so any backlinks attached to it don’t disappear.

8. Review Core Web Vitals and page experience

Just like you go to check your core vitals at the doctor, you should do the same for your website to steer clear of any unnecessary issues.

Why does this matter?

Here’s my two cents as a seasoned SEO plus a bit of information from Google on their related algorithm update:

SEO has been around for a while. There’s tons and tons of content out there and more is being published every day. This means that Google is having an increasingly tough time differentiating who to give the top spots, so CWV and page experience are a way to differentiate the SEO winners and losers. SEO is no longer just about putting keywords in the right places, it now also involves content format, design, page load speed, as well as user behaviour — like time on page and bounce rates.

In a nutshell, sustainable SEO success no longer ends with the click, you have to wholeheartedly satisfy your readers while they’re on the page in order to consistently rank.

The simplest way to review your website’s Core Web Vitals and site speed chops is to pop your domain into PageSpeed Insights.

While this is an extremely technical part of SEO, PageSpeed Insights quickly identifies errors and suggests how to fix them in plain English.

Here’s an example of what the results might look like:

If you have a score that comes up as yellow or red, you’ll see suggestions you can show to your developer in order to improve.

9. Observe accessibility

Accessibility simply means how easy it is for users (and search engines) to access the information on your website. This element is taken into consideration as a ranking factor. You want an accessible site for everyone, right? Of course, you’ll want to make sure that your content is being indexed and crawled correctly, but you can also take these steps to ensure that happens:

Optimize alt text in images (for screen readers)
Use enough contrast (make sure your colours are easy on the eye)
Correctly label elements like buttons
Make your font size big enough to read

10. Promote, promote, promote

Whether for SEO or not, your website content shouldn’t just be published and sit there. The phrase “build it and they will come” is completely untrue when it comes to SEO.

You have put in the effort to create your content, so it deserves to be shown to your audience. Think about where you already have a strong presence and harness that. Maybe it’s on social media, YouTube, or your email list. Whatever the case may be, think about how you can use other channels to drive even more traffic to your website. This in turn improves your SEO, because the more people who spend time on your website, the more Google identifies that you have trustworthy content.

And if you aren’t getting the traction you hoped for when all your SEO efforts are said and done, you may even think about paid traffic for the first few months (after all, Google loves their money, and rewards those who pay). Doing this will help you to test your website design and content with pay per click visitors, so you can use this data to quickly adjust your SEO accordingly!

Now you’re set for SEO success

Ultimately, SEO is a marathon, and not a sprint. Your overall focus point should be laying down a strong website structure from the get-go, so you can scale easily and accumulate monthly organic traffic.

As you move along with your SEO strategy, continue to monitor and update so you can optimize for the best results. With ever-changing competitor strategies and trends, your SEO strategy should never be put in autopilot. Consistent hard work brings in consistent results.

Bam! There you have it – a bulletproof SEO checklist for new websites!

Sourced from MOZ

In News

Content Consistency Is The Key To a Successful SEO Strategy

March 31, 2022 No Comments

By George Philip

Starting a website is a positive endeavour, but most marketers forget to keep the blog section running. A blog section is imperative for your SEO. Having an updated blog means you are taking efforts to regularly update the content, which would further increase the credibility and draw more traffic towards your website.

The catch here is – your content is as important as any other element of your digital marketing strategy. This brings us all to one real question – Can we maintain consistency in the website blog? The answer is a simple yes. Consistency in posting informative content is the key to success.

Regular blogging improves Google ranking.
As per the Google algorithm rule, consistency in posting regular content will get you a push on the chain in the SEO world. SEO requirements keep changing and today, the content should be not only new and fresh but also has to be informative and appealing for the users. However, there is no hard and fast rule such as you must only post your content according to your offerings.

For instance, if you are a brand dealing with kitchen appliances, your blog posts can have ‘how-to’ articles or new recipes to keep your audience glued to your website.
Not only should you keep your blog updated, but you must also update the links. The more updated the content is, the more response it will get. Let us sum up the importance of blogging in the following points.

A blog makes it easy to get internal linking and backlinks

With your blog, you can easily create internal links and backlinks.

Check the content posted in your industry, write on the topics that others have written, and create a link to the topic to reach out to your audience. Plenty of authentic backlink tools are available for SEO experts to ease the creation of internal linking. The entire process helps the website to go higher in ranks and improve its search hierarchy.

Creating brand awareness
How does an individual know your brand? It is only through the content you post on the website. With more and more products, you need to post more information. It is this updated information, which will help you glue your audience to your products.
We know blogging daily is difficult, but you can keep a schedule of posting at least 2 blogs a week. Be sure to fill in your blog with information like product guides, new launches, the latest industry information, and so on. You can write about several things to keep your audience informed. It just needs a few minutes of brainstorming in the right direction.

Start blogging for better SEO in Kelowna with us.

Developing rapport and relationships with readers
Fostering a relationship with readers is vital not only for your SEO success but also for the success of your digital marketing efforts. You never know when a good reader will turn into a valuable customer.

When you retain consistency in your style of writing and the way you add information to the blog, it creates a feeling of familiarity; bringing more readers to your website. There is another prominent reason to blogpost regularly. It helps to gain REO (Referral Engine Optimization), which means gaining word-of-mouth referrals through regularly updating the posts. The more you write, the more opportunities will be opened to you.
Keep you at par in competition

One of the inevitable reasons to post regular content is to stay at the edge of the competition. Generating regular content will keep a sweet spot for you among the competition. Your competitors are investing in blog and SEO services in Kelowna, you cannot take a back seat here.

Studies have suggested that around 80% of the marketers around the world are leveraging powerful content to improve their SEO efforts.

Besides, 96% of the marketers depend upon customized content to strike a conversation with their customers; blogging being the best medium.
Not to mention that more and more customers are taking out time to read about the products or services they are going to spend online. So, keep updating your blog and achieve success.

Generate Leads
When your blog is being updated with fresh content regularly, the clients will be allured by new product and service offerings from your brand. With these blogs, you are building relationships. Strategically placed call-to-action words will bring leads to your marketing team. A well-linked blog encourages the users to click on the link and complete the purchase.

Final Word
An ample amount of data suggests the importance of regular blog posts and their positive impact on SEO efforts. With each piece of content created, you interact with your brand to boost brand awareness and improve leads.

A professional agency offering SEO services in Kelowna is your go-to place to schedule your blog content and boost your overall online marketing efforts. If you are looking for a reliable partner for SEO in Kelowna, we are here to help.

Jamie Barton is the author of this article. To Know more information about SEO Kelowna please visit the website.

By George Philip

George Philip https://www.betechwise.com

George is a technology content writer with years of experience. Specialized in mobile devices, personal computers and consumer technology, as well as software and applications. He explains all technological concepts so that users with less knowledge can understand them. If not writing, you may find him engrossed playing action games on his smartphone. Just so you know, he loves Xiaomi products a lot. You may contact him via his email – [email protected]

Sourced from Betechwise

In News

Supercharge Your 2022 SEO Strategy With Voice Search

December 1, 2021 No Comments

By Jeanna Barrett

‘Hey, Siri, grow my business’: The founder of First Page wants you to hop on the voice search train and watch your business skyrocket

It’s no wonder, really. After months of lockdown and social distancing, we had to talk to someone. In 2020 and throughout 2021, Alexa and Siri became a little less robot and a little more gal pal. Siri supported our online shopping habit without judgment, and Alexa gave us step-by-step instructions on how to make the perfect quarantine sourdough.

In 2022, expect voice search to level up yet again. Smart speakers are predicted to pop up in 55 percent of U.S. homes, and already, 65 percent of 25-to-49-year-olds talk to a voice-enabled device daily.

Voice search will change the way your brand does SEO. And if you want to grow organic traffic in 2022, you’ll need to get on board. So we’ve put together some of the top tips to help you craft an SEO strategy that really speaks to your target audience…literally.

Improve Domain Authority

Want your results to be on the tip of the tongue for voice-enabled devices? Focus on increasing your site’s domain and link authority by implementing a link-building strategy and boosting your backlink profile. High domain sites are the most likely to rank well in voice search.

Developing an effective link-building strategy means looking at your brand’s strengths. What do you have to offer that people would find interesting enough to share on their websites, social-media accounts, or in news articles or editorials?

Data stories are always compelling…if you can tell a unique story with your customer data. For example, check out how OKCupid collects data and shares relevant insights in its monthly blog.

In addition to data stories, using expert insights from your customers or influencers can help create unique, insightful content that resonates with people and often prompts them to share. Use a service like Cision’s HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to source industry thought leaders or respond to queries as a thought leader in your industry.

You also can build a lot of links just by being aware that links are important — lots of companies are already doing things in the community or with partners, or they’re doing things that are newsworthy. Ask for a link when it makes sense.

Keep It Simple

Most voice search results come in at a 9th grade reading level. Keep your content casual and conversational, and don’t forget to include those long-tail keywords that answer questions like “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how.” Do a quick Google search for your primary keywords, and pay close attention to the “People also ask” section below the sponsored and top results. This is an SEO gold mine. Incorporate those questions into your content to increase your chances of ranking on voice search.

Snag Those Featured Snippets

More than 40 percent of all voice search results come from Google’s featured snippets. Featured snippets are typically in the top position on search engine results pages (SERPs), otherwise known as “position zero.” While landing a zero-position result is still shrouded in mystery, you can improve your chances by optimizing your content around long-tail keywords that answer specific questions.

The “People also ask” questions mentioned above will help you narrow down keywords that are relevant to your brand and write crisp, concise answers to them.

Other ways to increase your chances of getting your content in a featured snippet is to carefully consider formatting choices. Use bulleted or numbered lists, tables, and heading tags. Above all, structure your content to make it easy for Google to understand and pull answers to the questions people are searching.

Don’t Ignore Local

No matter how big your brand, it pays to have a local presence. Voice searches on mobile devices are three times more likely to be locally based than text searches. Be sure to include your location within your long-tail keywords when appropriate, whether it’s your brand headquarters, regional offices, or the communities where your employees or leadership are located and in which they’re involved. If your brand is local, you’ll need to own that market if you want to rank well in voice search. Make sure directions to brick-and-mortar locations are correct and simple to understand, and optimize for “near me” searches.

Make sure your Google My Business and local directory listings (like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and specific industry directories) are complete and up-to-date, including all locations and map listings. Engage in local partnerships and community initiatives where it makes sense for your brand. Doing this can help with link building as well as with your authority and credibility within specific regions.

Create Content With Context

SEO without killer content to back it up won’t get you too far. Make sure your content gives your SEO strategy a lift by building your content around your ideal personas, and answer key questions like:

Who are they?
What keeps them up at night?
Why do they need what my brand provides?

Then, reflect those answers in your content. Keep it concise, conversational, and relevant. Consider adding FAQs with more specific questions, and reinforce this with schema mark-up, whether it’s FAQ schema, reviews schema, or video schema. This helps give more structure to your content and ensures Google can easily understand it.

Make sure the content you’re creating fills a need or solves a pain point. Create valuable tools and downloads that provide something useful and fulfil search intent. Be sure you’re also using multimedia, like infographics and video, to make your content engaging and shareable.

Also, if there are specific issues, problems, or trends that are impacting your customers, cover them in your content. For example, if most of your customers are in California and feeling the effect of wildfires there, be sure to mention it. Bottom line: If they’re talking about it, you should be, too.

Find a Professional SEO Consultant

The way we search is changing. We want clear, concise answers, and we want them yesterday. Flowery, long-form content might be great for your existing desktop audience, but if you want to capture new visitors through voice search, you need to optimize and adapt your SEO strategy. A professional SEO consultant can help you implement all the tips above and a lot more, like technical and on-page SEO.

You want to grow in 2022, right? Who doesn’t? But if you haven’t jumped on the voice search bandwagon yet, you’re putting your brand at a disadvantage. If you want to be the brand everyone (or at least, Alexa and Siri) is talking about, make sure voice search optimization is part of your 2022 SEO strategy.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jeanna Barrett

Sourced from Inc.

In News

How To Earn Media Backlinks For Your Website

November 19, 2021 No Comments

By Amine Rahal

Gone are the days when you could publish keyword-loaded blog articles and rank seemingly overnight. These days, any successful SEO strategy has to go the extra mile by building authentic inbound links from distinguished sources. It’s not always enough to publish valuable content; you also want reputable domains to cite it.

There are two ways you can generate inbound links to your content: through paid link building (considered “black hat SEO” and worthy of penalization) or through earned media exposure. As the founder of two digital marketing agencies with decades of experience in SEO, I’ll always recommend the latter to my clients.

The problem is that some website owners think that earning their links isn’t worth the effort when they can simply pay for them. Not only is paying for links a bad idea in its own right, but earning them is also easier than you might think. In this article, I’ll explain how and I’ll comment on why I think earned media is the cornerstone of any successful SEO strategy.

Earned Media 101

Earned media is the opposite of paid media (and technically, it’s also the opposite of owned media, but that’s beyond the scope of this article). Below, I’ve laid out their respective differences.

• Paid media refers to content that you pay an outlet to publish on your behalf.

• Owned media refers to content that you publish on your own platforms.

• Earned media refers to content that other platforms publish for you freely (e.g., news coverage or by-lined articles).

Although the early SEO days saw many small domains rise to the top via paid media strategies, that’s a major no-no these days. Today, paid backlinking is often considered a manipulative marketing tactic because it usually tries to pass itself off as an unpaid citation. In reality, paid-for backlinks are no more than paid advertisements.

As I’ve written about before, buying links through a private link-building network is considered a black hat SEO technique that can land you costly Google PageRank penalties. To avoid having your ranking position penalized, it’s always a better idea to score backlinks by creating genuinely interesting and useful content without paying for it.

How To Earn Media Backlinks For Your Website

While this is by no means an exhaustive list, these are a few core strategies that I employ when garnering earned backlinks for my clients.

1. Provide Expert Commentary To Journalists

This one’s the easiest of the three for earning media citations because it generally requires the least amount of effort and time. This method involves using online reporter-source networks such as HARO (“Help a Reporter Out”) or Qwoted to provide expert commentary for news articles.

These platforms are home to hundreds of journalists who need outside sources to provide well-thought-out comments or testimony for their stories. That’s where you come in. Find the journalists who specialize in your website’s niche, and provide them with a paragraph or two that assists with whatever article they’re currently working on.

For example, if your website specializes in finance — like many of my own clients’ do — then you’re going to want to filter for journalists in this niche. Do your research and provide thoughtful and insightful commentary and, if you do this well, they may reward you with a citation in their article.

Make sure you respectfully request that they include a link to your web property if they decide to use your quote.

2. Issue Press Releases For Events, Surveys And Launches

If you want to make the news, you have to produce something newsworthy. For some, this could be an innovative product launch or partnership with an established brand. If your website has done something (or intends to do something) that could generate buzz, write a press release and submit it to a PR software platform such as:

• PR Newswire.

• Cision.

• Meltwater.

• eReleases.

For a fee, these services will publish your press release or announcement to newswire services. If your release announces something interesting or newsworthy, a journalist who’s interested in covering your story might pick it up.

Major upcoming events (e.g., a charity fundraiser) or provocative survey data (e.g., “20% Of Americans Have Nothing Saved For Retirement, Surveys Show”) make for excellent press release material. An easy hack I use for generating interesting press releases is to conduct a nationwide survey using an online survey tool and then publish the resulting data in the form of a press release.

3. Be A (Tactful) Social Media Superstar

Nobody appreciates when someone relentlessly self-promotes on social media. However, when you do it tastefully and respectfully, advertising your content on social media can earn you some interesting media coverage.

The key is to find dedicated forums, groups and community networks dedicated to your website’s niche. Then, join these groups and provide helpful advice, support or information for the other community members. Without obnoxiously self-promoting, assert yourself as an authoritative source of support and knowledge within your niche.

For example, some of my clients are involved in the alternative investing space, so I frequently share some of our original content if I genuinely think it could assist the community. I find branded infographics and videos to be especially useful because they lend themselves well to viral peer-to-peer sharing on social media.

The Importance Of Earned Media For SEO

Earned media is helpful for transferring “link equity” from high authority websites to your own website. In fact, this is the only legitimate way to do so because paying for links can jeopardize your ranking if Google catches on and levies a penalty against you.

In short, you may have trouble ranking if reputable websites don’t refer back to your content. But you can’t generate those all-important backlinks (at least not legitimately) without implementing an earned media strategy and staying away from paid-for black hat techniques. By working the three pillars of my earned media strategy into your SEO campaign, you too can earn these crucial backlinks and improve the odds of ranking above your competition.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Amine Rahal

Amine is a tech entrepreneur and writer. He is currently the CMO at Regal Assets and CEO at IronMonk Solutions. Read Amine Rahal’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How to Outsource Your SEO Strategy the Right Way

September 17, 2021 No Comments

By Timothy Carter

Search engine optimization (SEO) is intimidating for newcomers, and I totally understand why. SEO requires your attention in multiple areas; you’ll need to improve your website, write content, research the competition, build links, and take care of a hundred other responsibilities. On top of that, you’ll need the experience to do all of these actions — well — and you’ll need to jump through hoops to stay current with the latest Google algorithm changes.

Outsource Your SEO Strategy the Right Way

Accordingly, most businesses that practice SEO end up outsourcing it in some way, either by hiring an agency or working with contractors. While this can be an effective strategy for supporting your SEO campaign, it can also work against you — so it pays to be cautious and do your research.

How SEO Outsourcing Goes Wrong

Let’s start by identifying some of the most critical ways that SEO outsourcing can fail.

Black hat practices and penalties. Some agencies build their business around “black hat” tactics. In the SEO world, that means using techniques like spamming links, writing low-quality content at high volumes, and even keyword stuffing. In some cases, these tactics can get you a short-term gain – just long enough for your contracting agency to cash the check. But in all cases, eventually, you’re going to face a Google penalty for doing this, ultimately negating any benefits you might have gotten along the way.
Scams and lack of work. Some companies don’t really exist; they’re shell organizations meant only to scam you out of money. For example, someone might claim they’re “optimizing your site,” but they might not actually be doing anything. These outright scams tend to be rare in the SEO community, but they can result in a total loss.
Cost and value. It’s also important to consider the balance between cost and true value. High-quality SEO services are necessarily expensive since it takes expertise, time, workforce, and other resources to execute effectively. But if you’re stuck paying $10,000 per month for SEO services, and you only see $9,800 in value, that’s not a good trade. SEO is a strategy that’s truly worth investing in, but if you’re not careful, you could end up paying too much when outsourcing.

Researching Potential Partners

So how can you prevent these problems?

Your best option is to seriously research your prospective outsourcing partners before hiring anyone. Generally, you’ll have two main options for who to hire:

Agencies. SEO agencies tend to be a bit more expensive. But, in exchange, you’ll typically have access to a bigger roster of experts – and support for every step of the SEO process. You’ll also typically have your own account manager and built-in guarantees to make sure you’re satisfied with the work that’s done.
Contractors. Contractors tend to be less expensive and more flexible. You can hire individual contractors to help you with specific needs, like link building or writing, or mix and match to build your own team. Either way, you might save money – but you’ll also need to expend more effort and face higher risks.

Whichever direction you go — you’ll want to research the following in every prospective hire:

Expertise. What kind of expertise does this potential partner have? Are they new to the SEO industry, or does the team have decades of combined experience? Are they familiar with your company and your industry, or is their experience mostly from a general background?
Services offered/high-level strategy. Figure out what services this partner offers and what kind of high-level strategy they’re going to follow. If they can’t answer your questions in this area, or if they try to avoid the subject, it’s a bad sign. Any SEO practitioner worth working with will explain the entire process to you and work to convince you that they’re capable of creating high-quality work. Good SEO strategies are a mix of technical onsite improvements, quality content generation, and value-focused link building with authoritative publishers. Link spamming and content spamming simply aren’t going to work.
Quality of work. You’ll also need to do your own investigating to figure out what quality of work this individual or organization is capable of. The best way to find this out is to ask to see examples. What are some examples of the best content this organization has written? What are some of the best live links currently pointing back to their site? If you’re not satisfied with this component, you may need to move onto someone else.
Reviews and testimonials. Next, look at the reviews and testimonials about this company left by its previous clients. Generally, when an agency or contractor follows black hat practices or scams people out of money, they have a cascade of bad reviews to show for it. Of course, good reviews and good testimonials aren’t a guarantee that you’ll get great service, but it’s a promising sign.
Past results. In line with this, see if you can get proof of past results. For example, does this agency or contractor evidence the ranking increases they’ve gotten for other clients in the past? New professionals in this industry still have a chance of getting good results for you, but you’re better off working with someone who has a long track record of success.
Communication. Reach out to promising candidates you’ve found throughout your research and start talking to the account managers and professionals who will be responsible for managing your campaign. Are they polite, prompt, and articulate? If so, it’s a great sign that you’re going to get the customer service you deserve.
Price. Of course, you’ll also need to think about the price of the services you’re getting. A company may check all the boxes above, but they may not be worth it if their service packages are too pricey.

The Working Relationship

Researching and hiring the right partner is a great first step, but you’ll also need to invest in the working relationship to see good results.

Push for transparency. A transparent SEO outsourcing agreement is ideal. You should be able to see everything your SEO partner is doing, down to the words they write for offsite content and the backend code changes they make to your website. If your agency or contractor refuses to report on their work, or if you’re not sure what they’re doing, consider it a red flag.
Insist on regular reporting. It’s also important to insist on regular reporting. Your partner should be showing you not just the work they’re actively doing on behalf of your brand, but also the results they’re getting you. How have your rankings changed over time? How much traffic is your website getting? Combine these metrics with your onsite sales and conversion statistics to calculate your overall return on investment (ROI).
Ask questions. If you don’t understand something, don’t assume that your SEO expert is taking care of it – or even that they know more than you. Ask questions. The more you learn about SEO in the process, the better you’ll be able to direct and make decisions about your campaign. And if your partner can’t answer a question or if they dodge a question, it might be a sign of trouble to come.

Hold the team accountable.

Finally, hold the team (or individual) accountable for their results. For example, if you drop in rankings for a specific keyword, ask them what they’re going to do about it. If you’re not getting the results, you wanted after several months of work, push them to make up the difference or give you a partial refund.

Conclusion

Outsourcing SEO can be incredibly valuable. In a best-case scenario, you’ll get to tap into some of the most creative and experienced minds in the industry while supporting your site with white hat tactics and saving money in the process.

But the worst-case scenario should be enough to scare you into doing your due diligence well in advance. In addition, not all SEO companies will give you a return on your investment (ROI), so keep that in mind during your research.

Feature Image Credit: yan krukov; pexels

By Timothy Carter

Timothy Carter is the Chief Revenue Officer of the Seattle digital marketing agency SEO.co, DEV.co & PPC.co. He has spent more than 20 years in the world of SEO and digital marketing leading, building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams. When he’s not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach — preferably in Hawaii with a cup of Kona coffee. Follow him on Twitter @TimothyCarter

Sourced from readwrite

In News

How to Establish a Viable Long-Term SEO Strategy

March 5, 2021 No Comments

By Gideon Kimbrell

The ABCs of SEO have changed a bit over the years. Usability and mobile experience have become more important elements in the past five years by an order of magnitude. Beforehand, they weren’t really part of the ranking algorithm much at Google or other search engines. However, as a builder of websites, I find too many clients and counterparts in the SEO and Web development space treating these metrics as if they are the only ones that matter.

More than anything, content absolutely remains king — and always will. Google has stated that even if a website has a horrid design and janky user experience, it can still rank first if it has vastly superior content.

In my experience, a good SEO strategy involves 30 to 40 percent creation of high-quality, original content, including well-researched, in-depth articles; 30 to 40 percent link-building in a manner that’s as organic as possible; and the remaining 20 to 30 percent is UX, Core Web Vitals (such as CLS), bounce rate and session duration (for sites that use Google Analytics), and all these other remaining trends.

Just because these other trends represent only 20 to 30 percent of the ranking factor does not mean you should ignore them. When you are competing for highly competitive search terms, these may make the difference that can push you onto page one. This is especially true if your competitors already match your quality with content and links and if you’ve maxed out your edge on those leading factors.

Remember, when it comes to SEO, you don’t have to be number one. You just have to be in front of everyone else.

The men in black

Many small businesses still trust or default to more “black hat” SEO tactics for two primary reasons: speed and cost. Black-hat SEO techniques can be appealing to small and mid-size businesses because they can provide quicker boosts than playing by the rules does. But as rapidly as the boost came, it will go away.

Back in 2004, when WordPress was only a year old, I was one of the first to figure out comment spam. I created a bot that scoured the website for blogs and left comments on them, linking back to the company I worked for. Within three days, we were number one on Google for every search term we wanted to rank for. Of course, this didn’t last long, and Google caught on. I don’t employ black-hat techniques like this anymore, but the process taught me a lot about page rank, authority and hub sites.

Six steps for proper SEO

Proper SEO can seem expensive at first, but it typically yields a much lower cost per acquisition than pay-per-click, print, TV, etc. A host of viable SEO strategies are available to employ in 2021. Here are six steps for proper SEO that are both highly effective and are personal favourites of mine.

1. Perform competitive analysis

Remember with SEO that your placement is relative; there is no absolute placement in the search engine results pages. You simply must analyse what your competitors are doing: Where are they getting links? What kinds of sites? How long have they had those links? You need to do as well or better.

What about their content: How deep is their research on various subjects, and how large is their semantic net? Your site’s vocabulary on these subjects needs to be slightly broader. This applies to all SEO metrics. In Montana, we have a saying: You don’t have to outrun a grizzly bear; you just have to outrun your friend.

2. Start small

Go for the less competitive key phrases, then work your way up. Many tools, including SEMrush and Wordtracker, can help with long-tail keyword research (and normal keyword research). It may seem counterintuitive, but with SEO, it’s better to lock-in placement and traffic for less competitive search terms (usually the longer multiword phrases, also known as “long tail”) before trying for the more competitive ones. The idea is to get users onto your site in the short term and get the ball rolling.

3. Make use of structured data

When you search for cookie recipes in Google and see a carousel of recipes appear before the actual search results, those rich snippets are from websites that provide Google a special markup, in the Schema.org format, called structured data. This is how Google knows it’s a recipe and not just a blurb about cooking.

Ten years ago, Google was just a list of Web results without these carousels and accordion elements. Now, most of the first page of a search query on Google are snippets, carousels and accordions (expandable elements) provided using structured data. It’s important to describe everything on your website — products, videos, reviews, etc. — using JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON. This is how you can get more visibility when Google knows the searcher’s intent. Just make sure to not abuse this, like by using structured data to tell Google that your products, say, have five-star reviews when they actually don’t just to have five stars appear on Google next to your website.

4. Get creative

If you have developers, try creating widgets or badges that link back to your site and that customers, vendors or affiliates can put on their websites. This is an excellent, legitimate link-building technique that can result in exponential growth in the right situations. TripAdvisor is one of many such companies that offer badges to users for interacting with its site and submitting reviews, thereby boosting SEO efforts.

5. Start blogging

Unleash your inner writer and create your own blog with well-researched, in-depth blog posts — 2,000-plus words. Having blog content on your site is especially handy if you run an e-commerce website. When you are trying to get other sites to link to you, it’s easier to get them to link to a blog post than an e-commerce store; it appears less “spammy” to them and their users. And please, do not use content spinning — using software to tweak your article just enough to trick Google into thinking it’s a separate article — or similar hacks to generate content. These tricks are not good for real users and, therefore, not good for SEO in the long run.

6. Consider guest posting

Another valid way to gain new visitors is guest posting on other blogs. Then you can publish content that links back to your website or blog. Just make sure the content you write is rich, original and authentic and that the site where you post is reputable. Keep in mind that you are creating the content, which should do the following:

Provide information that real humans would find useful. (Would complete strangers link to it from their sites because they found it informative?)
Be original. (Can it all be found on another single web page?)
Be authentic. (Are you giving both the pros and cons and being as neutral as possible on the subject matter?)

Just remember that none of this matters if you don’t track all your key SEO metrics over time and in relation to your competitors. Tracking is key.

By employing the white-hat techniques above, my clients have enjoyed years of steady SEO growth without suffering the major drops in the search results that many complain of when Google makes a major update — and they’ve never suffered a manual penalty either. Writing expert-level, researched, in-depth articles has yielded considerable returns, with top websites linking back to the material. The formula may change a bit, but the path to successful SEO is still paved in solid content.

Feature Image credit: Westend61 | Getty Images

By Gideon Kimbrell

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor, Co-Founder and CEO, InList.com

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

4 Reasons Why It’s Time to Refresh Your SEO Strategy

September 3, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from appPicker

When was the last time you gave any real thought to your approach to search engine optimization? If you’re having trouble remembering, that’s a sure sign that you need to make some changes. With the help of a professional with one of the Toronto firms offering SEO services, it’s possible to take an objective look at what you have in place and decide what needs to change. Here are some of the reasons why you should call a professional now.

Old Methods No Longer Work

SEO is not a fixed science by any means. Over the years, things change in ways that make older methods obsolete. That’s not obsolete as in no longer working. It could mean obsolete as in methods that now hurt rather than help your search engine rankings.

Stepping away from old methods is the first thing that needs to happen. The next thing is replacing those older and now worthless strategies with new ones that fit into today’s world. When that happens, you will notice that traffic to your pages begins to increase again.

People Search in Different Ways Now

You also need to understand that people search for things online in different ways today. Using a search engine is still one of the major ways to find everything from places to eat to where to purchase gift cards. The thing is that they may be conducting those searches using social media sites or apps designed specifically for searches.

You need to tap into each of these options. That includes establishing social media accounts and using practical SEO methods to create posts. It also means using SEO to attract attention from those apps so that your business shows up in those searches. A professional will know how to help you with both approaches.

There are Tools Available Today That Didn’t Exist a Few Years Ago

You also need to learn about all the SEO tools that help you capture data about visits to your pages, where mentions of the company are showing up in social media and other online spots, and even how many of those visits in mentions are converting into cash. You’ll also need to learn how to use tools to see how effective your banner and video ads are these days. All this information will help you make better decisions about your online marketing efforts.

Your Blog and Website is Looking Dated

The layout for your blog and the website is still good, but it’s beginning to look a bit like a turn of the century effort. Now is the time to talk with an expert and see what can be done to refresh the look of those two important parts of your online presence. Along the way, you can also look into what it would take to ensure those pages display properly on smartphone and tablet screens. Given how many people use those types of devices to access the Internet, this change would be in your best interests and possibly boost the traffic.

An expert can help you identify and evaluate the immediate constituents of any SEO strategy and what they mean for your business. With a few simple changes and adding a few new things to the mix, you could reach many more consumers and enhance along with your revenue by a significant margin.

Sourced from appPicker

In News

How Organic and Paid Search Inform SEO Strategy

February 2, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from Clutch

Businesses structure SEO strategy based on the SEO services they prioritize and the shifting customer buying journey.

The SEO services that businesses prioritize, the challenges they face, and the benefits they target determine how they structure SEO strategy.

How exactly do these factors shape businesses’ SEO strategy?

We partnered with Ignite Visibility (link is external), a leading digital marketing agency that specializes in both paid and organic SEO, and surveyed 300+ U.S. businesses to answer this question.

In particular, we examine the impact of focusing on paid search versus organic SEO services on businesses’ approach to SEO.

We also analyze how businesses prioritize SEO services to adapt to the new customer buying journey.

Our Findings

Only 19% of businesses that invest in SEO focus on paid search.
More companies will prioritize social media marketing (20%) than any other SEO service over the next 12 months.
Nearly all businesses (94%) that invest in SEO also invest in social media.
Two-thirds (66%) of businesses rely on in-house staff for SEO services.
Over half of businesses (55%) partner with an expert firm for help with SEO services.
The main challenge businesses experience with SEO is proving return on investment (25%).

Paid Search Complements Organic SEO

Most businesses that invest in SEO focus on organic services, or unpaid activities that you perform manually to improve search rankings for your website.

Examples of organic SEO services include:

Content marketing
Link building
Optimizing individual web pages or categories
Fixing technical errors that limit a website’s rankings
Using social media marketing to promote pages

Over 40% of businesses focus on either mostly or only organic SEO. Fewer businesses (19%) focus on mostly paid search (source: https://scottkeeverseo.com/seo-tampa/).

Do companies focus on paid search or organic SEO?

The small percentage of firms that focus on paid search (19%) stands out to John Lincoln, CEO of Ignite Visibility. Lincoln identifies paid search as a good starting point for an effective search engine marketing strategy (paid and organic services), particularly for new websites.

In addition to the 19% of businesses that focus mostly on paid search, 39% focus on paid and organic services equally.

Paid search complements organic SEO services by providing feedback in areas such as:

Keyword research
Audience targeting
Ad copy
Synergy in relation to organic rankings
Brand strength and organic click-through rates (CTRs)

“You get immediate feedback on several different pieces [from paid search]: The keywords that have the highest conversion rates, which type of audiences get the highest conversion rates, and which type of ad copy and landing page copy get the best results,” said Eythor Westman, Head of Paid Media at Ignite Visibility. “You can leverage that [information] to develop a more effective SEO strategy, rather than blindly deciding to target certain keywords for SEO.”

Lincoln agrees that paid search campaigns provide valuable insight that businesses can use to inform their organic strategy.

“While you will get a better ROI on organic search long-term, brand new websites should always start with paid. Even mature websites that get millions of visitors a month from organic should invest in paid. The two complement each other. Paid is a bit more precise and controllable,” said Lincoln. “Organic SEO drives the bulk of traffic online. It’s all about knowing the right time to use each one and when to use them together.”

Whether a business focuses on organic SEO versus paid search plays a major role in shaping its overall SEO strategy.

Below, we explore the impact of paid search and organic SEO on businesses’ SEO strategy.

SEO Services Priorities Reflect Changing Customer Journey

The SEO services that businesses prioritize reflect a recent shift in the customer buying journey. The new customer journey emphasizes mobile search (link is external) in addition to longer consideration and decision-making periods.

In 2018, Google expects to introduce a mobile-first index (link is external), in which search results will favor mobile-friendly sites. Adapting your site for mobile search improves search ranking and drives conversions.

“The ways that people convert on mobile are a lot different than how they convert on a desktop. The customer journey has totally changed. Now, somebody Googles a keyword. They click on a top ranking term like ‘SEO company.’ They read our blog and click on social media. Perhaps they subscribe to a newsletter or our YouTube channel. They also might look at review sites,” said Lincoln. “Then, they convert three weeks later, after they feel comfortable with you.”

“The customer journey has totally changed.” – John Lincoln, CEO, Ignite Visibility

Customers now use mobile devices to research potential business partners before converting on a product or service. They check out the business’s website, read blog content, and inspect social media posts.

One-fifth (20%) of businesses list social media marketing as a top SEO services priority over on-site optimization (16%) and creating content to earn links (15%).

Companies' Top SEO Priorities for 2018

The top SEO service priorities businesses listed — social media, on-site optimization, creating content, and mobile search optimization — position them well both for the new customer journey and Google’s new search guidelines.

Social Media Supports SEO Services & Facilitates the Customer Journey

Businesses consider social media a key element of their SEO strategies.

Social media correlates with search rankings (link is external): If you regularly post on social media about your business and target search terms, the chances that your posts appear on relevant search results increases. Social media helps build branded traffic and provides more exposure for content, which can result in more links.

In addition to the 20% of businesses that list social media as their primary SEO priority over the next 12 months, nearly all businesses that invest in SEO also invest in social media (94%).

Top marketing channels for companies that invest in SEO

SEO service providers agree on the importance of social media to an SEO strategy. Ignite Visibility, for example, provides social media services with all SEO services, according to Lincoln.

Social media facilitates the customer buying journey through various means:

Reaching additional audiences
Providing information about your company to audiences
Increasing traffic and leads
Allowing content to be found in social media search engines and feeds

“It takes between 7-13 touches to deliver a qualified sales lead,” said Scott Holstein, Marketing Manager for Computrols, Inc (link is external), a Louisiana-based building automation manufacturer, citing an Online Marketing Institute study on customers shifting conversion habits (link is external).

“We cannot simply depend on one source to reach [audiences],” said Holstein. “Someone may search for your service but not click on your result if they are not familiar with your brand. If you are already in their social feed, it’s likely that your [click-through rate] will increase as well.”

Social media increases businesses’ exposure and creates familiarity. This increases the possibility that audiences engage with your brand and convert into paying customers.

Businesses Rely on Both In-House and Expert Firms for SEO Services

Businesses depend on both in-house teams and expert firms for SEO services. Two-thirds (66%) of companies rely on in-house staff and 55% of businesses hire an SEO agency, SEO consultancy, or digital marketing agency.

55% of businesses partner with an expert firm for SEO services

The resources businesses turn to for SEO depends on whether they focus on organic services or paid search.

Over three-fourths (76%) of businesses that invest in only organic services rely on in-house staff. On the other hand, 68% of firms that invest in paid search partner with SEO experts.

How Companies Invest in SEO Resources: Organic vs. Paid Search

Businesses that focus on organic SEO trust their in-house teams to drive SEO strategy. More than twice as many businesses that focus on organic services rely on in-house staff (76%) than an expert firm (37%) for SEO services.

In-House Staff Handle Social Media, Content Marketing

In-house SEO staff are often “jacks of all trade” marketers who are more familiar with general digital marketing efforts, such as social media and content marketing.

Companies that rely on in-house staff for SEO services invest heavily in social media marketing (82%) and creating content to earn links (73%).

Most Common In-House SEO Services

In-house marketers often lack both the technical capabilities and time to carry out more complex SEO services such as on-site optimization and link-building.

The relative ease of social media marketing efforts makes it an investment target for in-house teams, says Rand Fishkin, a leading SEO thought leader and founder of Moz (link is external), an SEO software company.

“Social media is an easy-to-invest-in activity. You don’t need any engineering or dev resources – most executives have a basic grasp of it, so it gets resources and prioritization,” Fishkin said.

Lincoln said in many cases, businesses that depend heavily on in-house teams are either smaller in size and tend not to be serious about SEO or large businesses with sizable in-house teams.

“[In-house staff] usually have a more limited knowledge of link building or SEO. In almost every case, they’re a jack of all trades and also spread thin,” said Lincoln. “They do a little bit of content marketing, but they don’t know how to optimize it or how to report on it. They do a little bit of social media.

In-house teams create content that help businesses engage with their digital audiences. However, without the knowledge to optimize that content, it may still be difficult to actually find audiences to engage.

Expert SEO Companies Hired For Complex and Costly SEO Services

Businesses look to SEO experts for technically complex and costly services. Businesses that focus on paid search are more likely to hire an expert (68%) than use in-house staff (64%) for SEO services.

The “paid” aspect of paid search motivates businesses to partner with SEO experts.

Which type of SEO services providers work best for your firm? Learn more

With a pay-per-click campaign using Google AdWords, for example, companies are required to bid specific prices on their target keywords. Your company must understand how the AdWords platform works and have a bidding strategy in place.

While many businesses may have in-house knowledge of AdWords or PPC campaigns, expert PPC companies are typically more experienced and less likely to waste your company’s money on a misguided or mishandled paid advertising campaign.

Return on Investment Presents Main SEO Challenge

Businesses experience challenges tracking and proving key metrics for their SEO strategies. For 25% of businesses, the main challenge with SEO is proving return on investment (ROI).

Top SEO Challenges

The challenge of proving ROI aligns with the challenge businesses experience tracking analytics (17%) to determine the success of an SEO campaign.

The challenge of measuring ROI results from two different factors:

Google’s mission to make measuring ROI difficult
The disconnected nature of organic search traffic from actual customer conversions

“Google’s worked very hard to make [measuring ROI a challenge] by removing keyword data and making SEO a difficult-to-track channel,” said Fishkin. “Given how disconnected a search visit often is from a future conversion event (sometimes there’s multiple months and dozens of visits between a first-visit and a conversion), raw organic traffic is actually a sensible metric to use.”

Since the customer journey now consists of so many different points, proving the exact investment that drives conversions presents a significant challenge for businesses.

Tracking and measuring the best metrics and analytics may also prove a challenge for some companies that want to increase brand exposure rather than increase revenue through SEO services.

“Sometimes there are companies that don’t care about ROI. What they want is to rank for a couple of keywords. They want the brand exposure. Other companies need the technical assistance,” said Lincoln. “In other cases, ROI becomes an issue because the SEO company providing services does not have the ability to achieve ROI. Some companies, like ours, offer forecasts. That really helps set expectations.”

Best Practices Challenge Businesses That Focus on Paid Search

SEO challenges depend on whether a business focuses on paid search or organic SEO. For businesses that focus on paid search, 21% say their main challenge is maintaining best practices.

Top SEO Challenges: Organic vs. Paid Search

Maintaining best practices for paid search is particularly challenging given the consistent updates made to popular ad platforms.

For example, for a company using AdWords for a PPC campaign, the value of the keywords are subject to change: Companies need to stay alert to changing approaches to retain value from their campaigns.

Failure to stay aware of the most recent updates also threatens the ROI of a paid search campaign.

“With major changes that have come out, not adapting the campaigns to those best practices can result in a loss of returns. If you do not leverage [ad platforms] as effectively as possible to compete, you can start to get outbid,” said Eythor Westman.

Expert firms are aware of platform updates and understand how to use them to maintain the success of their clients’ campaigns.

Businesses that fail to keep up with updates or other industry shifts risk losing out on target keywords and other paid ad opportunities.

Services Priorities, Customer Behavior Shape SEO Strategy

Businesses shape SEO strategy based on their SEO services priorities, challenges, and changing consumer habits.

The impact each of these factors has on how businesses approach SEO depends on whether they focus on organic SEO or paid search.

Businesses that mostly focus on paid search are more likely to partner with an expert firm for technically complex SEO services like link-building and on-site optimization.

In-house SEO staff, on the other hand, are “jacks of all trades” marketers that excel at general services like social media and creating content to earn links.

Finally, the shift in the customer buying journey drives businesses to prioritize SEO services that allow them to engage with increasingly mobile and informed consumers, particularly through investing in social media.

About the Survey

Clutch and Ignite Visibility surveyed 303 marketing decision-makers at U.S. businesses about their businesses’ SEO strategy.

Eighty-nine percent (89%) of businesses surveyed have more than 10 employees. 35% have between 100-500 employees.

Ninety percent (90%) of the respondents hold a position of manager or above.

Sourced from Clutch

About Clutch

A B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm in the heart of Washington, DC, Clutch connects small and medium businesses with the best-fit agencies, software, or consultants to tackle business challenges together and with confidence. Clutch’s methodology compares business service providers and software in a specific market based on verified client reviews, services offered, work quality, and market presence.

About Ignite Visibility

Ignite Visibility (link is external) is a premier Internet marketing company based in San Diego, dedicated to providing the highest level of customer service in the industry. By establishing mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with clients, Ignite Visibility creates custom solutions uniquely tailored to meet the specialized business objectives of each client. Because a company is only as good as the promises it keeps, Ignite Visibility holds itself accountable to clearly defined key performance indicators established at the outset of every campaign. Ignite Visibility’s core services are SEO, social media, paid media, email marketing, Amazon marketing, and conversion rate optimization.