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What B2B Podcasters Need to Know About SEO

February 24, 2020 No Comments

By Joshua Nite.

There are few things more satisfying than clicking “Publish” on a shiny new podcast. All the hours of planning and recording are done. You ran down your podcast launch checklist. Now it’s time for the world to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

You can sit back and watch the downloads roll in, right?

Well… it depends on whether people can find your podcast. While the podcast market isn’t oversaturated yet, it’s still a crowded playing field.

Post-launch, your podcast promotion plan will likely include a mix of paid promotion, influencer amplification, and social media marketing to help build your audience. But before you record a second of audio, your organic strategy can help ensure your podcast is found and treasured.

Here’s what you need to know about SEO for podcasts.

Search Engine Optimization for Podcasts

We’ll get deep into how you can build SEO into your podcasts — as you would for any other type of content — in a few paragraphs. First, here’s a quick checklist of tactics that can help improve visibility.

Podcast SEO Quick Wins

1. Make Your Title Hyper-Relevant

Podcast directories like iTunes and Spotify rely heavily on your podcast title for ranking. What’s more, if your title does pop up in search, it needs to be immediately compelling. Make sure your title is something that clearly states what the podcast is about, and will inspire people to click — thereby sending positive signals back to the directory’s search engine.

2. Submit to Google Podcasts

You’ve likely heard that Google is indexing podcasts now. They’re even transcribing the audio to make it searchable. So yes, your podcast can show up in the SERP, right up top with a big play button next to it. But only if you have submitted to their directory.

3. Tag and Title

Your podcast host will have an option to add tags to your RSS feed. Use these sparingly; one or two phrases at most. For titles, focus on a clear benefit to the listener. Instead of, “Our Q&A with Bob Johnson,” make it, “Increase Your CTR with Tips from Bob Johnson.”

4. Use Keywords in Episode Descriptions

The majority of your clicks will come from your podcast title and episode title. But don’t overlook the description. Think of it like the meta description on a blog post. It should aim to draw your listener in as quickly and succinctly as possible.

5. Solicit Reviews and Subscribers

The other major ranking factor in a podcast directory is engagement. Every episode, you should encourage listeners to review and subscribe. It’s a good idea to include that ask in internal promotion and promotional emails, too.

How to Build SEO into Your Podcasts

Many podcasts in the B2B realm are produced as continuous conversations; informal Q&A sessions. They’re quick and easy to produce, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.

However, an informal interview/chat show usually involves talking to guests about their background, area of expertise, experience, that sort of thing. Then you listen back through and pull out key themes for your episode title and description.

Certainly, optimization can be done during production and post-production. But building SEO research and strategy into the planning stages will enhance your content and its visibility potential.

Plan Your Podcast Episodes Like a Blog Post

Google is transcribing your podcast and analyzing the content. What if your podcast episode was an audio power page for an entire keyword cluster? Imagine the SEO juice you can get from a pages-long transcript organized around a specific set of search terms.

Hopefully, you’ve already identified your overarching theme and topical pillars you want to cover. But as you’re planning each episode, do some additional keyword research to help ensure the topic or sub-topics are covered well. Find the topic that has the most interest, and the keywords (short and long-tail) that support it.

When you draft the questions (or topic notes) to guide the episode, use your research as the template. Treat each question as though it were an H3 tag on a blog post.

Make the Topic the Star

Now your questions will keep the conversation focused on what’s most relevant to your audience. For example:

Without topic planning: “Bob, tell us what you’ve learned in your five years with WidgetCorp.”
With topic planning: “Bob, based on your time at WidgetCorp, how do you optimize a widget assembly line?”

You can see how the focus shifts from Bob’s personal experience to tips that match your audience’s search needs. Bob’s response is likely to contain a whole host of long-tail keywords that match what your audience wants to know.

When you center your planning around keyword research, you’ll end up with a discussion that is naturally optimized for search. As with good written content, you won’t need to awkwardly shoehorn terms into the discussion. They’ll come up naturally because they will be relevant to the topic.

When you center your planning around keyword research, you’ll end up with a discussion that is naturally optimized for search. @NiteWrites on building SEO into #B2BPodcast planning Click To Tweet

Now when Google crawls your podcast, it will be easy for the algorithm to determine what it’s about and what queries it should match. What’s more, your podcast is likely to be more relevant to your audience, too. That can inspire more linking and sharing, which in turn boosts your search visibility.

Publish a Good Transcript

Google will use their own auto-generated transcript for displaying your podcast in search. But you shouldn’t rely on that transcript for all your SEO needs.

Instead, publish a blog or episode page that includes a full, edited transcript. Don’t treat it as an afterthought; use a transcription service, then polish their work for publication. Include H3 headers for each question or topic shift, pull out the most valuable quotes for click-to-tweets, and include key takeaways at the top.

For a 15-20 minute podcast episode, you will likely have 2,000+ words of optimized, highly-relevant content for Google to feast on.

Case Study: Tech Unknown

Our client SAP has seen the difference pre-planning makes in the second season of their Tech Unknown podcast. The first season was an interview format focused on a single guest each episode. The first six episodes did well; they beat benchmarks and found a healthy, relevant audience.

But for the second season, we wanted to take it up another notch. We organized the episodes around a single topic per episode, interviewed multiple guests, and assembled each episode around the central narrative.

The results so far: The new episodes are already among the most popular of the entire series. Episode 2 is smashing 30-day benchmarks after a single week. Focusing on a more edited, topic-driven format not only improved SEO, it also made for an even more compelling finished product. Hear for yourself:

Think Before You Cast

The barrier of entry for starting a podcast has never been lower. With enough time and know how, anyone can get a podcast up and running. Getting people to listen, however, requires a more strategic approach.

Plan your podcast like you would plan any other long-term content commitment: With an editorial calendar, solid keyword research, and always with audience value as the driving force. The best podcast SEO is to provide content people will love listening to and learning from.

By Joshua Nite.

Sourced from Top Rank Marketing

In News

Why SEO Should Be The Foundation Of Any Small Business’s Digital Marketing Strategy

February 16, 2020 No Comments

By Scott Keever.

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 Scott Keever.

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

In News

New study: Majority of consumers are unaware of how search engines work

January 29, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Search Engine Watch.

As brands and their marketing departments deploy strategies to capitalize on record ecommerce spending — which soared to $586.92 billion in 2019 — new research from leading provider of brand protection solutions, BrandVerity, has brought to light important findings and hidden risks pertaining to the journeys consumers are taking online.

In order to give brands a better understanding of the search experiences their customers are having and how they are impacting brand perception and customer experience, BrandVerity commissioned the “BrandVerity’s Online Consumer Search Trends 2020” research study in Q4 of 2019 to over 1,000 US consumers, balanced against the US population for age, gender, region, and income.

Amongst the many findings, three main themes stood out:

Consumers confused by how search engine results work

Only 37% of consumers understand that search engine results are categorized by a combination of relevance and advertising spend.

The other 63% of consumers believe that Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are categorized by either relevance or spend, or they simply “don’t know.”

Additionally, nearly 1-in-3 consumers (31%) say they don’t believe search engines (e.g. Google) do a good job of labeling which links are ads.

Consumers more inclined to click on the result that appears first

Without a clear understanding of how search results are served up, consumers are more inclined to click on the result that appears first, believing it to be the most relevant option.

With 54% of consumers saying they trust websites more that appear at the top of the SERP, this isn’t just an assumption.

Consumers feel misled by the websites they find in the search engine results

51% of consumers say that when searching for information on a product, they sometimes feel misled by one of the websites in the search results.

An additional 1-in-4 report feeling misled “often” or “always.”

Even further, 25% also say they often end up somewhere unexpected that does not provide them with what they were looking for when clicking on a search result.

“Against a backdrop where consumers have increasingly high expectations of the brands they do business with, and are holding them to equally high standards, companies must ensure that the entirety of the experiences they provide meet customer expectations,” said Dave Naffziger CEO of Brandverity.

“As these findings show, a general uncertainty of how search engines work, combined with the significant occurrence of poor online experiences, mean oversight of paid search programs is more important than ever for brands today.”

Sourced from Search Engine Watch.

In News

5 digital marketing skills to learn in 2020

January 9, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from engadget.

Give yourself a leg up in 2020 with these e-learning packages covering marketing’s hottest skills.

You don’t need to work in the ad sales department at Facebook in order to understand the importance of digital marketing today. And, if you want to land any of the growing number of lucrative positions in this constantly-evolving field, you need to be up-to-date with the latest tools and platforms. That’s why we’ve rounded up five of the best and most popular digital marketing training packages around to give you a leg up and set you up for success in the field. Read on for details:

SEO

The Complete 2020 Google SEO & Growth Hacking Bundle

stack

MSRP: $1400 | Sale Price: $25 (98 percent off)

No matter what industry you’re in, it pays for your site to rank on Google’s front page. Learn how to drastically increase the traffic to any website with this 7-course bundle that offers 44 hours of training on Google marketing, Facebook advertising and much more.

LinkedIn Marketing

The Complete LinkedIn Marketing & Sales Bundle

stack

MSRP: $1600 | Sale Price: $34 (97 percent off)

LinkedIn is more than just a platform for professionals to network on. With the right know-how, you can supercharge your brand’s awareness and ultimately generate powerful leads. Through 8 courses and over 600 lessons, you’ll learn how to fine-tune your resume, build powerful profiles, network with top players in your field and more.

Facebook Marketing

The Facebook Marketing Master Class Bundle

stack MSRP: $1887 | Sale Price: $35 (98 percent off)

With a user base numbering over one billion, Facebook is a platform you can’t afford to ignore in your marketing efforts. Companies get this, which is why they pay top-dollar for experts who know how to connect with audiences on Facebook. With nine courses and over 570 lessons, this bundle will teach you how to promote your business or brand by creating powerful Facebook ads that will attract new customers and increase conversions on your landing pages.

Affiliate Marketing

The Complete Affiliate Marketer Bundle

stack MSRP: $1592 | Sale Price: $29 (98 percent off)

You don’t need to be part of a corporation to cash in on the marketing scene. Start earning a passive income at home by learning how to become an affiliate marketing master. This 19-hour guide will teach you everything you need to know through eight courses that show you both the fundamentals and more advanced elements of this booming field.

Instagram Marketing

The Instagram Marketing Mastery Bundle

stack

MSRP: $795 | Sale Price: $25 (96 percent off)

Instagram is another social media powerhouse with a booming user base. Break into the lucrative world of Instagram marketing with this mastery bundle that will teach you how to build best-selling content strategies while harnessing the latest affiliate marketing models.

Prices are subject to change.

Sourced from engadget

In News

Does Dwell Time Really Affect Your SEO? The Answer May Surprise You

November 26, 2019 No Comments

By Aditya Sudhir.

Dwell time is one of those ranking factors which is proven to impact your overall site’s SEO.

It is a user-based metric that refers to the period or length of time that a user spends on a page after a click. It is not the most talked-about metric. But it is an important measurement that every marketer should be paying attention to.

Dwell time is a good indicator that can help in evaluating the quality of your website traffic. However, the results of this metric can be misleading at times.

In this article, we will discover more about dwell time and its relationship with SEO.

What is Dwell Time?

The concept of dwell time was first introduced in 2011 in a Bing article. The blog post written by Duane Forrester indicated how to build quality content. This was the first time that the idea of dwell time was talked about and now it seems that the whole digital marketing community is raving about the concept.

In the blog, dwell time was defined as the actual time duration that a visitor spends on a page before going back to SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Suppose I’m researching “Best digital marketing practices for startups in 2019”, I’ll type this into the search engine box. I’ll likely click on the results that interest me the most. Let’s say it took me 5 minutes to read the article I land on, and after reading the whole article, I return to the SERPs. The time between these two clicks is what dwell time is. So in this instance, 5 minutes is my dwell time.

Longer dwell times are considered as beneficial for businesses. If a person spends one minute or more on your page, then it is considered positive, and it concluded that the visitor is consuming the content. Duane considered it as a good signal. On the other hand, less than a couple of seconds time period is considered a poor result.

It is also important to understand that all three metrics, namely, dwell time, bounce rate, and average time-on-page are indicators of different results. These terms are not interchangeable.

Dwell time is not the bounce rate of the website.
It is not the average time a user spends on your page.
It is not the click-through rate. The role of dwell time only measures the results of what happens after the click. It does not measure or calculate the percentage of users who click on a result.
It is not session duration. The session duration is the amount of time a user is spending in clicking around your website. And in this case, the session didn’t begin with a keyword search. Therefore, it cannot end back at the SERPs, and it won’t calculate the time between those clicks.

Does dwell time really affect your SEO?

Now, let’s understand the relationship between dwell time and SEO. First of all, dwell time is a metric that we cannot measure. Only Google has access to measure the length of clicks. You can track a user’s engagement with the help of Google Analytics but can only measure dwell time with a third-party tool.

Classification of dwell time:

30 seconds or less than – The content was not up to the mark, and the user was not satisfied. So, he/she went back to find something better.
1 to 2 minutes – The content was useful for the user because they spent a couple of minutes reading the information.
15 minutes – The user finds the content super-useful.

On the basis of the above classifications, we can say that dwell time is a good indicator of the relevance and the quality of the content. It can have a big impact on SEO as it is an indicator of engagement and SEO is all about creating more engagement. Low dwell time is a clear sign that the users are not getting the desired or useful information on your site.

We all know the fact that every click is a visit. But as a businessman, all of us would like to engage with our customers for a longer duration of time and the dwell time is an exact measure of that time.

However, even if you click back after 15-20 minutes, Google will consider it as a bounce. Therefore, it is clear that bounce rate cannot give results about the level of engagement.

Instead of bounce rate, dwell time can be used as a ranking signal because people can bounce for a number of reasons. Also, it is easier for Google to calculate the data and measure the dwell time.

Dwell time can be measured by taking two other metrics into consideration – time on page and bounce rate. If the time on page is high and there is a low bounce rate, then it will be considered as high dwell time.

Factors which affect dwell time

Here are some of the factors which may affect dwell time:

Slow page load speed.
Your website is not mobile-friendly (Since a lot of users are using mobile phones, it is important for you to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly).
The title tag and description are inaccurate.

Improve your dwell time by improving your content and working on the above factors.

By Aditya Sudhir

Guest author: Aditya works as a Growth Assistant at AirTract.Com, a social platform wherein people ask questions and get answers, share knowledge and experience. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering and has been working in the field of Digital Marketing for the past two years. He is also a voracious reader and a big sports fan.

Sourced from JeffBullas.com

In News

SEO Audit Checklist – A Step-by-Step Guide in 17 Stages

September 26, 2019 No Comments

By James Hubbard

An SEO audit is an essential starting point for any new activity around a website, where the aim of that activity is to improve organic search performance. Some people say that SEO is to marketing what accountancy is to finance, in terms of the level of “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s” required. Nowhere is this more true than it is at the audit stage, where it is imperative to ensure that no stone is left unturned. Missing even relatively minor technical or on-page issues with a website could result in the client being left at a competitive disadvantage. I have created the following SEO audit checklist to help you avoid this scenario.

I have assumed that some readers might have limited SEO knowledge, so I have written this for beginners but also with more advanced SEOs in mind too.

Contents of this post

With this post my aim is to provide a definitive list of audit check points for 17 key stages of analysis. Similar to my post on technical SEO audit tools, this guide is a work in progress. There may be check points that I have forgotten or missed in my brainstorm. If I have missed an obvious check point, feel free to send me a message and I will add it to the list. You can use the jump links below to navigate to each stage of the audit process.

1. Google check points

Ensuring that the client is set-up correctly with Google is always my first priority when working with a new client. If the client has failed to verify Google Search Console, for example, then that has to be a priority fix before starting the work. Check points at this stage include the following.

Is Google Analytics installed correctly?
Are goals set-up and are the funnels correct?
Has eCommerce tracking been set-up?
Is conversion data showing and is it correct?
Is Google Tag Manager installed correctly?
Is the GA script firing via GTM?
Is event tracking in place?
Is event data pulling through to GA correctly?
Has Google Search Console been verified?
Are there any Manual Actions showing in GSC?
Have sitemaps been submitted in GSC?
Are there any coverage errors or warnings?
Has the URL Parameters tool been configured?
Is International Targeting set correctly?
Have there been any sudden drops in traffic, rankings and or CTR?
Is Google My Business set-up correctly for all locations?
Are GMB listings fully complete with descriptions, images and video?
Are the listings correctly categorised?
Does each listing have generally favourable reviews?
Are the listings kept up to date with frequent posts?
Is Google Optimize installed via GTM?
Are any GO experiments currently running?

Recommended tools

BuiltWith is useful for quickly seeing what is installed on a site. Otherwise, the checks at this stage need to be done manually.

2. Market research check points

Understanding what the client is up against is arguably the next most important phase of the audit process. Your analysis here might not appear at the start of the main audit itself, but it will help to define your recommendations to the client. You might want to consider creating a separate Excel sheet containing key competitor analysis information, and details of how the client fares in comparison to those competitors.

Who are the top 5 competitors and what do they rank for?
What is the DA / DR score for the top-ranking sites?
Do the top-ranking sites have industry and media backlinks?
Have competitors invested in good web design and UX?
Do competitor sites demonstrate high levels of E-A-T?
How do competitor sites fare in terms of value proposition, sales messaging, branding and pricing?
Are landing pages on competitor sites above average in quality?
Are competitors investing in a mix of online and offline marketing channels?
Do any competitors appear to be over reliant on organic SEO?

Recommended tools

SimilarWeb offer powerful tools for analysing the competition, especially when it comes to figuring out the channels they are investing in. However, their software may be prohibitively expensive for some. Cheaper alternatives include ahrefs.com, SEMRush, Majestic and Moz.

3. Crawling, indexing and ranking check points

Image via OnCrawl

The audit of the client’s website itself begins with various checks to determine how easy it is to crawl and if there are any indexing or ranking issues. At this stage you will need to consider the following check points.

Are there any noticeable issues when carrying out a Site:Search?
Are any important landing pages not showing in Google’s index?
Does the site rank for brand search terms?
Do sitelinks show when searching for the brand?
Does the site rank well for long-tail phrases?
Are any non-secure HTTP pages still showing in the index?
Is the staging site indexed?
Have URL Parameters been indexed?
Have any subdomains been indexed and do they present an issue if so?
Is there an excessive amount of ‘thin content’ in the index?
Has an excessive amount of non-HTML based content been indexed?
Have any pages containing ‘Lorum Ipsum’ placeholder text been indexed?
Have multiple versions of the homepage been indexed?
Has the ‘print’ version of the site been indexed?
Have any test URLs or empty template pages been indexed?
Does the site contain crawler traps?
Is crucial content loaded in an iFrame, Flash or other obstructive formats?
Is there a robots.txt file?
Are there any errors or issues within the robots.txt file?
Is there an xml sitemap or sitemaps?
Are there any errors or issues with the xml sitemap(s)?
Does the robots.txt file reference the location of the sitemap(s)?
Are robots meta directives in place on individual pages and do they present an issue?
Have unnecessary blog archives & taxonomies been removed from Google’s index?
Is old, low performing content using up crawl budget?
Does a review of log files highlight any crawl issues?
If the site is JavaScript based, can Google fully render the content?

Recommended tools

You will need to understand advanced search operators to perform several of the checks above (see the BuiltVisible link below). At this stage you will also want to initiate a site crawl using a good quality crawler tool such as Screaming Frog, SiteBulb or DeepCrawl. For log file analysis you will need to ask the client to provide the data via their web host, then you can use Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser to check crawl issues.

4. Crawler error check points

An excessive volume of internal redirects, 404s or server errors wastes crawl budget and provides a bad experience for the end user. Fixing these issues will provide a better user experience and ultimately should lead to improved website performance, particularly for large websites with many errors.

Are there any internal 301 redirects that need to be fixed?
Are there any 302 redirects that need to be replaced by a 301?
Are there any 404 errors that need to be fixed?
Are there any 500 server errors?
Are there any orphan pages that can only be crawled via xml?
Does log file analysis highlight crawl budget waste?
Does log file analysis highlight any issues with the crawl frequency of key category pages?

Recommended tools

See above but also check Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to view any errors detected by these search engines.

5. Page rendering check points

Image via Google

Does Google see what the end user sees after the page is rendered? For HTML based sites sometimes Google is unable to access critical CSS and JS files, perhaps because they are blocked by robots.txt. For JavaScript based sites it’s common for the source code to contain none of the content that appears on the actual page. So checking if a prerender solution has been configured correctly, and if there are no differences between the prerender and rendered page, is an important first step to troubleshooting any issues.

Are there any differences between un-rendered and rendered content?
Are there any issues in how content is rendered across different devices and browsers?
What is the outcome of page rendering tests?

Recommended tools

At this stage you will want to run some tests using the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console, Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, and the Fetch & Render tool by technicalseo.com.

6. Essential technical SEO check points

Image via Ahrefs.com

Technical SEO is a big topic and it’s not possible to list every single aspect of it in one checklist post. Some clients may have technical issues which are wholly unique to their web property and will require more in-depth auditing of the issues. However, in terms of technical SEO basics you will want to consider the following check points.

Are there any canonicalisation issues?
Are canonical tags correctly used across the site?
Are there any duplicate pages without a canonical tag?
Is the correct markup in place for paginated series pages?
Does the non-trailing slash 301 redirect to trailing slash?
Are there any unnecessary 301 redirects in place?
Is there any issue with redirect chains?
Are expired pages incorrectly redirecting to the homepage or a category page?
Are error pages returning a 200 status (soft 404)?
Is .htaccess configured correctly?
Does an HTTP headers check return any issues?
Does the site adhere to mobile-first best practice?

Recommended tools

Some manual checking of the site’s source code and the .htaccess file will be necessary at this stage, together with insights pulled from Google Search Console and your preferred web crawler.

7. Website performance check points

Having a consistently served and fast loading website has been a ranking factor for a number of years but has become increasingly important in the mobile-first era. At this stage you will want to check that the site performs well for both desktop and mobile users.

Are images on the site optimised for the web and under 100kb?
Are images served in next-gen format?
Have CSS & JS files been minified?
Is there an issue with render blocking CSS?
Is there an issue with render blocking JavaScript?
Are CSS & JS served in as fewer files as possible?
Are the number of resources making HTTP requests kept to a minimum?
Are there any issues with server location or quality?
Has a CDN been set-up?
Is HTTP/2 in use?

Recommended tools

Best tools for this stage of the audit include: Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Lighthouse for Chrome, GTMetrix and WebPageTest.

————————————————————————————————

8. Website security check points

A hacked website can have potentially catastrophic consequences in terms of organic search performance. Google, as well as other search engines and websites, want to be sure that they are not referring their users onto a site that is riddled with malware or that is serving critical content in an insecure format. An example would be an eCommerce site taking card payment details over HTTP rather than HTTPS. Ensuring that the client’s site is as secure as possible is an important component of an SEO audit.

Is there any evidence to suggest the site has been hacked?
If the site has been hacked, what attempts have been made to clean it?
Is HTTPS configured correctly across the site?
Are any resources accessible via HTTP?
What is the quality score for the SSL certificate?
Is there a HSTS policy?
Is two-factor authentication in place for entry to the CMS?
Is adequate security software installed within the CMS?

Recommended tools

GeekFlare offer an HSTS checking tool. For correct HTTPS configuration you will need to refer back to the crawl results from your favourite crawler tool. There are many website security plugins; Wordfence among the most highly rated for WP sites. You can check the SSL certificate for a site using SSL Labs.

9. Site architecture check points

A site might have exceptional quality backlinks from top tier websites but if the structure of the site and its internal linking is not optimised well, it will likely not reap the full benefit of those links. At this stage of the audit you will need to consider the following.

Is there a logical hierarchy to URL structures?
Are static rather than dynamic URLs predominently in use?
Are URLs short and without capitalisation, underscores or non-ASCII characters?
Is the main menu system coded well?
Does the main menu system only contain followable links to important landing pages?
Is the order of the links in the main menu system logical for users and search engines?
Have Login, Basket and other similar pages had ‘nofollow’ applied?
Does the internal link structure reinforce the importance of key category pages?
Is there good vertical linking between category and sub-category pages?
Is there relevant use of horizontal internal linking within the body copy of web pages?
Is breadcrumb functionality in place?

Recommended tools

A manual review of the site’s code is necessary at this stage. A review of the web crawl results from step 3 will also help.

10. Structured data check points

Structured data helps search engines to better understand what a web page is about, it helps to improve the appearance of search results and it can be used to reinforce entity targeting. At this stage of your audit you will want to consider the following.

Are there any errors or warnings relating to structured data across the site?
Is important business data marked up with LocalBusiness schema on relevant pages?
Is Organization schema firing on a suitable page?
Are FAQ pages marked up with FAQPage schema?
Are important people in the business marked up using Person schema?
Does the client have reviews that can be marked up using aggregrateRating schema?
If the client sells products, are the products marked up using Product schema?
Are breadcrumbs marked up using Breadcrumb schema?
Is the sameAs schema property used for social media links and other identifiers?
Are there any other types of structured data that could be applied, relevant to the client?

Recommended tools

Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool will be your main requirement at this stage.

11. Consistency and compliance check points

Inconsistent details within a website or across the web can contribute to diminishing the trust Google might place in a web property. Trust signals around a site can be heightened by ensuring that business details are the same across all pages, in citations elsewhere across the web and through high-quality, compliance and company information pages.

Is the company address, telephone, email, and other contact details, consistent across the site?
Are important business details such as the Company Registration No, copyright and compliance information up to date and consistent?
Does the site have a unique, GDPR-compliant Terms & Conditions page and Cookies page?
Can the end user opt out of unnecessary cookies?

Recommended tools

You’ll need to flex your advanced search operator skills again here (see part three above). Cookiebot offer a useful GDPR testing tool, with optional on-going compliance services.

12. On-page SEO check points

Similar to technical SEO, a website may have exceptional quality backlinks but if the on-page optimisation is not configured well, it may be unlikely to rank well. A common on-page error is the use ‘Home – [Brand Name]’ in the homepage title tag. Key considerations at this stage are as follows.

Does the site have good title tags and meta descriptions, based on kw research?
Do meta description tags contain good call to action messaging?
Does the call to action messaging in meta data match up with the landing pages?
Do the tags contain keyword modifiers?
Are the tags under the recommended character count?
Does the meta keyword tag need to be removed?
Has semantic markup been applied well across the site’s web pages?
Does each page feature just one, unique H1 tag?
Are H2 and H3 tags used for sub-headings?
Are appropriate file names and alt tags in use for images?
Do pages across the site feature useful, relevant outbound links to authoritative sites?
Is there an excessive number of internal and/or outbound links on important landing pages?
Are ordered and unordered lists marked up correctly?
Is any content hidden or contained behind tabs?
Is the homepage well-structured with clear in-content links to important category pages?
Does the homepage feature enough text?
Are high quality, original images & graphics used rather than stock?
Is the web copy across the site written well and devoid of spelling or grammar issues?
Do important landing pages feature multimedia, PDF downloads and other useful resources?
Do important landing pages have low TF-IDF for key terms?
Does the optimisation of page content match with user intent?
Do FAQs appear high up and marked up on key landing pages?
Have keyword stuffing techniques been used on any web pages?
Are there any doorway pages or near identical geographic pages?
Is the content on the site user-focused and easy to read/access?
Does the client have a content hub featuring expert information on their topic?
Are there any content gaps and do content hubs need building out?
Has entity targeting been considered in the content creation process?
Is the content across the site unique to the client’s domain?
Do individual pages on the site feature a lot of “boilerplate” duplicate content?
Do important eCommerce category pages feature a unique, well-written description?
Is the text on product pages copied from the manufacturer’s website?
Is the blog updated frequently with good quality content?
Are the blog tag and category archives optimised?
Does long form content on the site feature jump links?
Does the sidebar or footer of the site feature any keyword-heavy anchor text links?
Are there an excessive volume of links in the footer or sidebar area?
Does the footer contain links to Privacy & Cookie policies?
Is the copyright statement and current year showing in the footer?
Do any advertising links have ‘nofollow’ applied to them?
Is ‘nofollow’ used correctly on other internal links?
Is sharing across social networks encouraged?
Have tags for Facebook Open Graph and Twitter Cards been applied?
Is rel=author or rel=publisher attribution in place?
Are high quality information pages in place such as About Us and Meet the Team?

Recommended tools

There are hundreds of tools you could use to help assess the quality of a site’s on-page SEO. There are too many to list here, so take a look at my guide to audit tools for inspiration. That said, many of the checks above either need to be carried out manually or with assistance from your preferred web crawler.

13. Website accessibility & W3C Standards check points

Whilst W3C compliance is not a ranking factor, it’s important to fix any issues that may be causing page rendering issues. In addition, ensuring that a site is accessible to all users, regardless of any impairment they may have, is both good practice and should contribute to improved engagement metrics.

Do pages on the site pass W3C markup validation checks?
Is there high contrast between the colour of text and the colour of the background?
Does the alt tag for images adequately describe the image?
Are written transcripts of video and audio content available?
Can text be enlarged without impairing the function of the page?
Are hyperlinks clearly visible and distinct?
Can all parts of the website be accessed without a mouse?
Is it easy to find the contact page?

Recommended tools

W3C Markup Validation Service and AChecker are useful for this stage.

14. User Experience and CRO check points

Image via Interaction Design Foundation

A technically sound website with strong on-page optimisation is no longer sufficient for maintaining high visibility on Google and other search engines. Sites must demonstrate expertise in their field, provide exceptional quality content and intuitive user experience. Considerations at this stage of the audit include the following.

Are content and navigation elements clear for users?
Is the quality of the content generally outstanding?
Is the page both useful and unique for the end user?
Is the quality of the web design of a very high standard?
Does the layout of pages facilitate ease of scanning?
Are there any mobile usability issues or errors?
Is clear call to action messaging showing, above the fold?
Is it clear what the primary action a user should take is?
Does the site have a clearly defined user journey?
Is the quality of experience comparable on desktop, tablet and mobile?
Are there easy to complete forms on key landing pages?
Is there good use of CTA buttons and panels?
Do product pages feature clear ‘add to basket’ messaging?
Are product page images of a high standard with zoom functionality?
Has one-step checkout been set-up for eCommerce websites?
Is there a clear and intuitive basket to checkout process for eCommerce sites?
Is there a minimal amount of advertising banners above the fold?
Does the site avoid oversaturation of text ad links?

Recommended tools

If the client has Hotjar or a similar type of heat mapping software installed, you will want to request access to that for this stage of the audit. Tools such as mobiReady are good for checking how a website looks and performs on different types of devices. Otherwise, the steps to this stage are mainly manual checks.

15. International SEO check points

If a client has attempted to target users in multiple countries, or is looking to do so in the future, your audit will need to assess the current set-up and how it can be implemented or improved. This will involve assessing the following check points.

Has the client attempted to implement international SEO activity? If so…
Are the correct language and country codes used for regional variation pages?
Are foreign language versions translated well without errors?
Has hreflang been implemented correctly?
Is X-default in place on all pages and correct?
Are SEO-friendly navigation links to regional variations of the site in place?
Are there any forced redirects in place based on IP / location?
Is OG:Locale set correctly?
Are there any backlinks pointing to international versions?

Recommended tools

Again, your preferred web crawler tool will assist you with this stage of the audit. You might find the hreflang testing tool by technicalseo.com useful too.

16. Local SEO check points

If a client has multiple shops, factories or offices within a certain territory, local SEO will invariably be an important component of the SEO strategy. If this is the case, you will need to consider the following check points in your audit.

Is the client using P.O Boxes or virtual office addresses?
Is the client using 0800 or premium rate phone numbers?
Is GMB set-up and complete (see Google Check Points)?
Are NAP details consistent across the web?
Has the client moved address recently?
Are unique, well-written pages set-up for each of their locations?
Are the above pages interlinked to the relevant GMB profile and vice versa?
Are the tags for their location pages optimised for the relevant town, city or county?
Does each location page provide genuine value to the end user?
Does each location page feature important information such as opening hours?
Is the information on location pages marked up (see Structured Data check points)?
Are URL structures for location pages over-optimised?
Does the client have a plan for gaining more reviews?
Are there any deep links pointing to the location pages?

Recommended tools

BrightLocal, Whitespark or Moz Local will come in handy here. As with most stages in an SEO audit, you will need to manually review many of the steps above.

17. Off-page SEO check points

Whilst many SEOs are predicting the increasing power of entity associations, backlinks are still likely to remain an important ranking factor for years to come. Understanding what good and bad backlinks look like is essential to this step of the audit. You’ll want to consider the following.

Are the backlinks pointing to the site generally of a high standard?
Are the backlinks generally earnt or built?
Is the rate of link acquisition steady?
Is there a good level of domain diversity in the backlink profile?
Is there a diverse range of backlink types linking to the site?
Is the anchor text distribution balanced well?
Is there any evidence of spam links or link exchanges?
Are there any broken inbound links?
Are they active on social media with an engaged audience?
Is there any evidence of PR, outreach and offline marketing?

Recommended tools

Already mentioned earlier in this guide: ahrefs.com, SEMRush or Majestic.

10 Marketing Services to Build Your Business

August 15, 2019 No Comments

By Dan Moyle

From small businesses to solo entrepreneurs to major brands, growth is always a goal. It may be the top goal.

Of course marketing is part of that discussion; it’s a major building block. Whether you call it lead generation, inbound marketing, digital marketing, growth, or some other buzzword, the root of it is marketing.

Marketing is essentially starting a conversation with an ideal prospect, in hopes of turning them over to sales.

While there’s a lot you (or a team) can do on your own, sometimes partnering with an expert in the field can help you put your growth into hypermode.

The question is, where do you concentrate your efforts? Which marketing services will help you truly build your business?

The list is long, but it’s better to start somewhere. Below you’ll find 10 marketing services to help you build your business. Even if you pick one or two, you’re making progress.

What are you waiting for?

10 Marketing Services to Help You Build Your Business

Website Optimization / Design

Not every business needs a new $30,000 website. That shouldn’t automatically be the answer from a marketing agency. Instead, they ought to look at your current website and your business goals, and see if there’s an opportunity for optimize your current site for conversions.

Strategically adding calls to action (CTAs) to your home page or most-visited pages can begin the process of optimizing your website.

Also, making smaller changes to the design like a hero image, cleaner navigation, and new images could go a long way to giving your site a new feel. And you wouldn’t have to blow everything up and start over.

This is why a website assessment is important. You should find out what’s working, where you can make minor adjustments, and where you can really dive in and make bigger changes. It’s time to work smarter, not harder.

Video Marketing

Your customers are human, right? Well, then they’re probably watching videos. And beside face-to-fact interaction, video is one of the most powerful tools to help you to connect with them on a human level.

This appealing and authentic medium gives businesses a longer reach, higher engagement, increased conversion rates and ultimately, more sales than many other marketing tactics.

Like websites, video has quickly become a requirement of doing business in the digital age. In fact, almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before making a purchase. Fortunately for businesses like yours, video is more affordable and more accessible than ever before.

When you’re ready to go beyond a cell phone video and make remarkable videos to get remarkable results, finding the right partner for video marketing services is key.

Look for an agency who will teach you, who will work with you collaboratively, who will fit with your culture, and who will bring you the quality you’re looking for in your videos.

Conversational Marketing

Direct, one-on-one messaging is bypassing our clogged inboxes and unanswered phones to become the world’s preferred way to communicate. And better communication means a faster, more efficient buyer’s journey in which you’re uncovering the right questions and tactics to deliver the most relevant message possible to potential customers.

That’s the world of conversational marketing. It includes chatbots and live chat, but goes beyond just the tools. It’s another strategy; it’s a mindset.

When a potential buyer is ready to talk, we have to be ready. When they want to use a social messaging platform, we need to be there. When they’re just browsing, we shouldn’t go in full-force for the close.

Adding conversational marketing to your business growth plan can help set your brand apart from the crowd.

Content Strategy

The magical cornerstone of inbound marketing is this: deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. When it comes to crafting that message, you’ll have to know what to say, and how to say it, for every different buyer persona. The right content creation crew should help you say what you really mean, while sounding like you belong, for maximum impact in every conversation and medium.

The web is full of valuable information. How will yours stand out? Think of a downloadable resource created for your ideal customer. Maybe it’s an eBook about DIY plumbing, a software training video or a mortgage calculator. Premium content is a free, downloadable offer that prospects trade their contact information for. But they have to see value in it.

That’s where content strategy shines. Then, from setting the strategy to executing on the plan, your marketing services partner should be there to ensure the ship is headed in the right direction.

Customer Lifecycle Mapping

Maybe you don’t need new leads. Maybe you need to connect with your most valuable (and often untapped) market. It’s the one you’ve already mastered– your current customers!

Not only is it possible to retarget and sell to your current customers, but it’s also faster, easier and more cost-effective than finding new ones.

They’ve already made a purchase. So what?

It’s time to map your customer lifecycle, and see how you can continue to serve them. It’s for your benefit as well as theirs – after all, they liked you enough to do business with you before! The average customer spends more in their third year than their first. So why are you spending five times more to acquire new customers?

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be mysterious.

As a business owner or someone working on a business, SEO can feel overwhelming. Working with the best marketing services partner on SEO could include setting up and maintaining an SEO strategy so that you don’t have to worry about it.

By using the right keywords for your customers and business, you’ll get more exposure, more traffic, more leads and more customers. Keeping a current SEO strategy allows you to maintain an advantage over your competitors.

Sure, it’s tempting to try it yourself, but it really does take an expert. The landscape of SEO changes daily. You need the right tools to analyze it and adjust. That level of hands-on work is an agile SEO strategy that maintains your competitive advantage.

Let our team of SEO experts help you set up and maintain a successful SEO strategy.

Buyer Persona Development

Before you can successfully craft any marketing message, you have to know who you’re talking to.

If you’re getting discouraged by poor response rates, no conversions and few results, it’s because you’re shouting your marketing message out of a megaphone, to no one in particular.

Well-defined buyer personas turn ideal customers into real human beings, making it easier to locate and talk to them effectively. Drive revenue for your business by knowing how to speak to people about what they’re interested in, when they’re interested in it.

Email Marketing

Even today, email is one of the most effective marketing tactics, when it’s done right. Email isn’t dead, just bad email practices. Plus, there’s simply too much of it that it’s hard to be heard through all of that noise. This leads to frustration and lazy practices.

Instead, crafting an email strategy that serves prospects and customers well can set you apart and help you grow your business.

The strategy behind successful email campaigns isn’t always apparent, but a precise and strategic message is vital for cutting through inbox clutter. It’s your most important tool to nurture prospects into customers with both intent-based and time-based marketing.

Landing Page Creation

Landing pages can be powerful in helping you grow your business. Even in the anti-form era, landing pages can be one of the most important marketing tools in the digital world.

A well-optimized landing page can have conversion rates of 25 – 50%, compared to the .5 – 3% conversion of most web pages.

These conversion powerhouses have a single purpose: to convert site visitors into leads by exchanging personal information for valuable content. Although they seem simple, with streamlined copy and a simple contact form, these pages require experience and strategy to succeed.

Harness the power of landing pages that convert to make them work for your business.

Pay Per Click Marketing

Find your tribe. Faster.

When pay-per-click ads make sense for your goals, they hypertarget the exact customers you’re searching for.

Want to advertise only to 30 year old stay-at-home moms in rural Oklahoma that have recently purchased a new car? You can do that.

Pay-per-click marketing on Facebook, Google and even Bing can deliver fast results and instant traffic to your site. It’s the perfect way to boost promotion or market a product launch with incredibly trackable results.

Unfortunately, you can waste a lot of money if you’re not considering your whole conversion strategy, or constantly testing and adjusting your campaign.

Working with an experienced, creative marketing services partner can help you supercharge your growth strategy when it comes to pay per click marketing.

Building Your Business with the Right Marketing Services

You need to build your business. And you need to do it without the budget of McDonalds or Bud Light.

Choosing the right marketing services to build that business is critical. These 10 services above are a great place to start.An even better place to start is to see how your current marketing – and your website – stack up. Run your numbers through our conversion report calculator below. Let’s see how you’re doing, and how you begin to improve.

Building blocks photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Camel conversation photo by Kawtar CHERKAOUI on Unsplash

By Dan Moyle

Dan Moyle is a marketing strategist who prefers helpful, engaging marketing over interruptive advertising. Coming to marketing from the TV news business, Dan brings a wealth of knowledge from writing to video production to multimedia content creation. He says, “I’d rather help someone reach 50 ideal customers rather than 5,000… View full profile ›
Read more at https://www.business2community.com/marketing/10-marketing-services-to-build-your-business-02211250

Sourced from Business 2 Community

In News

Overview on Using Search Intent for SEO Content Research

July 26, 2019 No Comments

By Sean Si

Search intent is one of the primary reasons we do SEO. After knowing what the people are searching for, focus on why they search for that particular content. Search engines detect the pages they want to rank according to the quality and relevance of the content, and this is where search intent comes in. Pages who rank the highest fit the search term well which is why it is essential for you to optimize your site’s content to cater to a specific search query.

Reviewing Search Intent

Using search intent for keywords alone would not be a wise decision on your part. Branching out to content using intent-based research can help you climb up the ranks simply because you are generating rich content based on specific queries. Search intent is the reason behind a query through a search engine. It is vital to optimize your site according to this because it is a way to know how customers can reach a particular business.

What good is an SEO provider if it does not deliver the right kind of answers to people, right? This can be answered simply with search intent. To know more about this, here are the types of search intent according to Yoast.

Informational Intent

Informational intent is from those who have a specific query that they want to learn from. For example, there are those who search for Virtual Office in Manila. In return, a Landing Page will supply them with the information on what it is and how it can help them in for their particular question. Content that is centered on informational intent would mostly consist of facts, significant benefits, history, overviews, summaries, etc.

Navigational Intent

Navigational content is the type of search intent wherein people use the search engine to go to a specific website. A navigational term would be great if you want clients to find your business instantly. If a broad keyword is from the navigational intent type, chances are that your competitors are also aiming to rank for it so you should generate content that can pull up your ranking and increase your organic traffic.

Transactional Intent

Transactional search intent is for people who are looking to find a site that can give them the best value for their money. Obviously, as the name suggests, this intent type is focused on the goal of the search query ending in a transaction with both the business and the buyer receiving a benefit from it.

Commercial Investigation

Similar to the transactional intent but with people looking into more options instead of focusing on one. They may not be ready to buy immediately, but they are investigating which are the best products or services they may purchase in the future. So keywords would be about finding the best plugin, an alternative to a current tool, or just a simple product comparison.

Importance of Audience Analysis for Search Intent

To go deeper into a viable content strategy centered on search intent, it would also be a big help if you look at the people who visit your site and how you can cater to their intent. By looking at users who are actively on your site and have a brief overview of your services, you can provide an analysis based on data from Google Analytics.

Audience Analysis Based on Age

It would be impossible for you to know each one of your site visitors so looking into a simple demographic based on their age would tell you that these are the people who intend to be on your website. It may seem stereotypical but look at their age to determine how your content could be of interest to them. Additionally, trends can help you set up a content strategy since the trend that is popular for a particular age group will also attract them to your content so you should consider reading up on what they would be interested in.

Interest Overview

Of course, your site has a particular niche in your industry but you should also consider that the site visitors have other interests aside from your own. Content should never be subjective, you will know that it passes a high standard of quality when you satisfy the needs of your audience. It pays to know a little more about them so why not use this data to make a solid audience analysis?

Intent-Based Research for Content Relevance

All in all, the main essence of focusing on search intent is for your content to stay relevant, not only for the SERPs but for users as well. Content relevance would go a long way in relating your site to a particular search term or topic. Churning out content would be a waste if you do not optimize it according to search intent.

A content strategy would be for nothing if it does not boost relevance and quality for SEO. Search intent keeps you relevant because it gives out the signal that you are well-optimized to provide answers and solutions to user query. Also, you should also keep in mind that content relevance is an important ranking factor and a way for you to establish authority. These are the reasons behind why you should consider doing intent-based research the next time you are planning around your blog or site content.

By Sean Si

Sean Si is a motivational speaker and is the head honcho, and editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker and God and You. Check out his SEO School and SEO Services site.

Sourced from SEO-HACKER

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Listen: What is SEO?

July 23, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from audioburstsearch

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Here’s what you need to know about image optimization for SEO

July 15, 2019 No Comments

By Romain Damery

Google’s updated image search interface isn’t the only tool keeping the spotlight on visual content and product discovery.

A lot can be said about web performance and images. This post aims to provide an overview of key aspects of image optimization to help with your SEO efforts, from quick wins to slightly more complex techniques.

Why image search matters

Although there aren’t exactly official numbers, Google stated that every day hundreds of millions of people use Google Images to discover and explore content on the web visually. According to Moz, image search would represent 27% of all queries generated across the top 10 US web search properties:

About a year ago, Google updated the “View Image” button from Image Search to “Visit [Page].” As a result, analytics platforms began recording an increase in sessions specifically driven from image search and content visibility for the host pages increased (instead of random image files without context). Besides supporting content and improving user experience, images are once again an important source of traffic and should not be ignored.

Properly naming and describing images for SEO

One of the easiest and often overlooked optimization opportunities is the actual image file names themselves. Those should use a few carefully chosen keywords – ideally, keywords the image could rank for – while omitting stop words (a, the, in, of, etc.) and separating keywords by hyphens (e.g., IMG-458752.jpg would become brooklyn-bridge-night.jpg).

Image alt and title attributes (of the <img> HTML tag) are the next simplest settings that not only help images rank higher in search, but also build the page’s relevancy and improve user experience, eventually all ranking factors. In the case of image links, those attributes also provide context to search engines regarding the destination page, further helping it rank. Unlike file names, write those attributes in a grammatically coherent and concise way: alt attributes are played out loud by accessibility software and screen readers and title attributes appear when visitors hover over images, so do not stuff keywords there and vary it up!

For e-commerce and product images, it’s often a good idea to also add SKUs, ISBNs or model numbers to alt attributes as we sometimes look for very specific products. Note that on-page image captions and keywords in the surrounding text area also help search engines derive more context for images and improve their ability to rank.

Note that the host page’s HTML title tags are also now displayed in image search results so you should ensure that those are somewhat relevant to the image as well if possible (see above screenshot).

Choosing the right image formats, sizes and dimensions

Image file size can disproportionally affect page load time so it’s important to get it right. JPEGs are usually more SEO-friendly than PNGs, especially if you do not need transparent backgrounds, as they offer better compression levels. Logos and other high-resolution, computer-generated graphics can typically also use the vector-based SVG file format (make sure that your server caches, minifies, and compresses that format as well). The GIF format should be reserved for simple animations that don’t require wide color scales (they are limited to 256 colors). For large and lengthy animated images, it may be best to use a true video format instead, as it allows for video sitemaps and schema.

What matters most is the actual file size (in Kb) of the images themselves: always strive to save them under 100Kb or less whenever possible. If a larger file size must be used above the fold (for hero or banner images for instance), it can help to save images as progressive JPGs where images can start progressively displaying as they are being loaded (a blurry version of the full image first appears and gradually sharpens as more bytes are downloaded). So start by selecting the best format for your needs and then select the best settings for those!

Although Google Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights audit tools recommend even more specific compression formats (Next-Gen formats such as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP), those are not necessarily compatible with all browsers yet; some CDN providers do, however, offer WebP conversion when visitors use applicable browsers.

As for dimensions (image height and width), ensure that images are not wider than the most popular largest desktop screen resolutions (which is typically 2,560 pixels in width at most. Otherwise browsers will unnecessarily scale them down) and that your CSS makes your images responsive (images adjust automatically to screen or window size). Depending on the visual needs of your website, this might mean saving different versions of the same image in various dimensions to only dynamically serve the most optimized image based on the user’s screen (mobile, tablet, expanded or resized desktop window, etc.). This can be done automatically through the use of plugins or by using the <picture> and/or <srcset> elements.

A few popular image compression tools:

GIMP: cross-platform, downloadable image editor
TinyPNG: uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG and JPG files
Smush: image compression and optimization plugin for WordPress
MinifyWeb: free service for compacting web files online:

Note that at this time, Google does not use EXIF metadata but may use IPTC metadata particularly for copyright information.

Properly hosting and caching images

Not only can images significantly increase page load times simply based on file size, but they can also dramatically increase the number of requests made to the server before the browser can finish loading the page, competing with other critical resources and further slowing down the page.

In the past, we used “image sprites” (multiple images saved as a single one and relying on CSS to be displayed) and hosted images on a cookie-less subdomain to speed up the process of retrieving and loading images (commonly referred to as domain sharding). Today, however, with HTTP/2 now allowing for multiple concurrent server requests, this is no longer critical. Depending on your specific setup, it may be faster to host images on the same host as your HTML files.

As previously mentioned, Google Images (until last year) directly linked to the image locations themselves so many webmasters and SEOs felt that it was then even more important to host images on their domains to capture any potential link equity from anyone “hot-linking” or embedding your images into their content.

Additional benefits of hosting images on your domain or subdomain include cache control, branding, and control of redirects. There are few benefits (if any) in exclusively hosting images on third-party sites unless it is on a content delivery network (CDN) which can speed up load times by serving images closer to the user location. When using a CDN, make sure to link a custom subdomain you own (CNAME DNS) to your CDN endpoint (in other words pointing one of your custom subdomains to your CDN provider’s server so that fd5dfs4sdf69.cdnprovider.com becomes images.yourdomain.com). This makes things much easier when changing CDN provider because you will not have to update and redirect your image URLs and provides obvious branding benefits as well.

In any case, ensure HTTP/2 is enabled for your subdomains or your third-party CDN.

When it comes to caching, also make sure that server expirations are set for all image types. Images should be some of the resources with the longest caching times (usually many weeks).

Sample cache control directives using .htaccess file’s mod_headers (left) or mod_expires (right)

Properly loading images on your pages

Images can not only slow down a page due to their file format, file size, and quantity, but they can also slow things down based on how they are being loaded.

Even though the latest HTTP/2 network protocol improved the process of loading multiple images at once, lazy loading below-the-fold images (especially larger ones) can provide significant performance improvements in some cases (particularly long-form media heavy articles or image galleries for instance). The lazy loading technique allows the page to finish loading even though many off-screen images will only start loading once a visitor scrolls down the page. Although this technique can improve page speed, it can adversely impact image indexing if not implemented correctly.

Note: if you are implementing an infinite scroll experience, make sure to support paginated loading, potentially using additional <no script> tags for images, etc.

Image sitemaps help as well with indexing if discovery and crawling are problematic. Including images as part of your page structured data also increases the likelihood of a carousel or rich result (images badges).

Scale your images to their actual display size: ensuring that you are not serving larger images than necessary to display in the browser window properly is another area of optimization often overlooked. Pages often load images that are then scaled down by browsers to fit users screen configurations: it is important not to serve images that are wider than the user’s window can display to save on unnecessary bytes.

In your web browser, right-click on an image, click Inspect, and hover over the img element to see the original (or “natural”) image dimension along with the browser’s scaled down version. Ideally, those should be as close as possible.

Use regular image tag for indexing: it is also important to note that if you want your images to get indexed and rank in Google Images, you should use the regular HTML <img src> tag; Google has historically not indexed resources loaded as background images using CSS. Also, ensure that your robots.txt rules do not prevent crawling of your images.

How to audit images on your site

Site owners, developers, and webmasters can usually simply sort their FTP image folder(s) by size to spot the worst offenders quickly. Audit third-party sites with crawlers like Screaming Frog by examining the Images tab and sorting by size:

Select an image URL and click the “Inlinks” tab below to view the embedding page and check that those large images are being lazy-loaded and/or can use better compression

Google Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights audit tools can further report on image compression and cache settings on a manual page by page audit (note that there are ways to batch process URLs using a command line interface as well):

Image search performance reporting

Reporting on image search using Google Analytics has typically not been easy. Over the years, Google updated image traffic a few times (switching between referral to organic, from google.com/imgres to images.google.com, etc.) to eventually recently concede that the easiest way to report on your site’s image search performance is in Google Search Console.

To view image performance on Google, log in to your verified Search Console property, then go to the Performance report, set the search type to “Image,” and hit “Apply”:

Filtering to images in Search Console

From there, you will be able to access the same KPIs and data as search queries including clicks, impressions, average CTR, position, queries, pages, countries and devices.

Good to know regarding Search Console image reporting:

You won’t see the actual image file names displayed in SERPs but the pages they are embedded on instead (host pages); this means that the tool doesn’t differentiate between different images on the same page
For positions, the number of results shown per row and page partly depends on the width of the screen so the position describes only very approximately how far down the image appeared (position are counted from left to right and top to bottom)
If an image is displayed in the regular web SERPs (and not the Images tab), its clicks, impressions and positions will be reported separately in the regular Web results
Only clicks that bring the users to open the page hosting the image(s) are counted as such; on the other hand, impressions record everything (thumbnail or expanded image) but only count once per host URL (multiple images displayed in SERPs from the same URL would only record a single page impression)

Image recognition and new image search features

With Google’s reverse image search capabilities, Google Lens, and newer AI and machine learning products like Vision AI (which you can test here by uploading a picture), it is clear that Google is making strides at understanding what’s within images, both in terms of objects and text, and it would make sense for images to play a larger role for SEO shortly.

With the recent release of “shoppable ads on image search,” it seems that more changes around Image Search are still coming. It is now more important than ever for e-commerce websites to add product schema markups including carefully chosen images. Although only mainly active on mobile, we can see where Google is headed with their recently updated Product markup page where schema “product” labels include price, availability and reviews right within Image Search:

Product rich results enhancing Google image search results

Google, like marketers, understands image search’s potential as an inspirational and visual discovery tool that can be further monetized and leveraged for traffic, as the interest for Amazon Spark and Pinterest (which just went public) have shown.

Conclusion

When it comes to images, there is likely more than meets the eye. Often overlooked and underestimated, images on the web have been getting more attention lately and their importance is growing for a variety of reasons ranging from purely supporting user experience and content to enabling users to visually find more products directly from image search itself. Optimization and implementation can vary greatly depending on your business type and goals so start with the end in mind and communicate the best strategy to your editorial team to capture as much (transactional) traffic as possible!

By Romain Damery

Romain Damery is a senior strategist and technical SEO lead at full-service digital marketing agency Path Interactive in New York, NY. With over a decade of agency-side and client-side marketing experience, his sweet spot is the overlap between the web technology stack and online marketing.

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Contents of this post

1. Google check points

Recommended tools

Further reading

2. Market research check points

Recommended tools

Further reading

3. Crawling, indexing and ranking check points

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Further reading

4. Crawler error check points

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Further reading

5. Page rendering check points

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Further reading

6. Essential technical SEO check points

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Further reading

7. Website performance check points

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8. Website security check points

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Further reading

9. Site architecture check points

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10. Structured data check points

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11. Consistency and compliance check points

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Further reading

12. On-page SEO check points

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Further reading

13. Website accessibility & W3C Standards check points

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14. User Experience and CRO check points

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15. International SEO check points

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16. Local SEO check points

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17. Off-page SEO check points

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Website Optimization / Design

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