seo tips News - SiteProNews https://www.sitepronews.com/tag/seo-tips/ Breaking News, Technology News, and Social Media News Sun, 30 Jun 2024 21:57:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.9.10 Crucial SEO Tips for Writing A High-Quality Blog Post https://www.sitepronews.com/2022/06/15/crucial-seo-tips-for-writing-a-high-quality-blog-post/ Wed, 15 Jun 2022 04:05:00 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=121586 Writing a blog post may be many people’s talent, but writing a high-quality blog post that can attract readers repeatedly has to be SEO-friendly. And, of course, well-written, that goes without saying.  It’s not true that writing for SEO purposes and captivating audiences is different; in fact, the goal is the same. The difference is […]

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Writing a blog post may be many people’s talent, but writing a high-quality blog post that can attract readers repeatedly has to be SEO-friendly. And, of course, well-written, that goes without saying. 

It’s not true that writing for SEO purposes and captivating audiences is different; in fact, the goal is the same. The difference is whether someone can do it or not, meaning whether someone can mix the two together and create something natural. 

That’s why here we will see some crucial SEO tips for writing a high-quality blog post. Let’s begin. 

There’s No Writing Without Structure

One of the main reasons why people leave a blog post is not the level of quality; it’s not whether it is long or short; it’s actually because no one likes texts that are not structured. 

What does this mean?

Every blog post must have a clear structure that provides an even more precise purpose for the text. As mentioned before, knowing how to write or knowing the topic well doesn’t by default mean that the blog post is going to be read by people if there isn’t a structure. Therefore, here’s what’s necessary:

  • Introduction – where you can introduce the topic 
  • Body – the main part of the post with the main message and info is written
  • Conclusion – at the end, where you summarize everything and make a conclusion

Of course, the body part is not so simple, which requires using headings and paragraphs, which we will address here as well. 

Headings, Paragraphs, Subheadings 

Most writers use paragraphs, but the challenge is how to use them in a proper way. One valuable tip is not to start every sentence on a new line only because it looks more beautiful. On the other hand, the paragraphs shouldn’t be too long, meaning lengthy sentences, and every single one should have its own subject. The goal is to summarize some ideas in the paragraph.

As for headings, they are also vital for the blog post. When used right, headings can help the reader understand what every part of the post is about. Also, headings give a clear look to the blog post, improving the structure in a significant manner. 

Furthermore, subheadings can also be helpful since they can lead readers, but more importantly, they are valuable for SEO. That’s why it is wise to use some of your keywords in some of your subheadings, but only some of them since using one in every subheading or heading will make the post extremely unnatural. 

Use Proper Keywords

It is vital to use focus keywords throughout the blog post, but stuffing it with too many of them can only cause two main problems: people will find it a lot less attractive to read, and the other is that it will hurt your Google rankings. 

This aspect is more and more important since Google focuses a lot more on natural posts with the proper info rather than on some that have a focus keyword in every other sentence. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should stop using them entirely since it understands the topic by recognizing keywords and other synonyms related to the focus keyphrase. 

Furthermore, you don’t have to bother a lot with synonyms since you are using them; naturally, they are always connected to what you are writing about. On the other hand, keywords can be a lot more challenging, and that’s why the SEO expert here is crucial, providing you with the essential keywords that have to be used in the blog post. This way, you will use keywords that are often searched for and are part of a search trend that is popular at the moment. 

Internal Linking Is a Must

If there is some content that’s similar to the same topic as the one you are writing now, make sure to link from and to these blog posts. You will make the reader become more interested since they will realize that they can be informed again and again on the same site, they can read related content, and you will navigate them to stay on your site. But more importantly, your link structure will be robust, which is one of the most important things when it comes to Google rankings. 

This type of linking is called internal linking, and it is more than valuable both for your readers but also for Google to recognize your blog posts. Therefore, make sure to create an internal linking on all of your blog posts. 

Write Long Blog Posts in 2022 

Google always makes some changes, and the ideal blog post length in 2022 is between 1,500 to 2,500 words. Still, some indications show that even longer blog posts are what is needed this year.

This length means that now Google is striving for longer blog posts, which requires you to write exceptionally well. If you write about a topic you are not so sure about, it is nice to keep a shorter length, but for a topic where you know you are passionate about and know the theme well, you can make long blog posts of up to 3,000 words. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that next year ‘’the rules’’ will be the same, but for now, Google most certainly is focused on longer texts. 

Transition Words

Last but not least, transition words are genuinely valuable since they help readers scan through the post and understand the structure even more. 

In essence, they should make the transition from one paragraph to the next extremely natural, which means that the reader will go from the beginning to the conclusion without even noticing how much time it took them. 
Just to give you a hint, and you’ll get the point, transition words are the ones like also, however, therefore, of course, in fact, accordingly, for example, hence, finally, on the other hand, and so on.

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16 SEO Tips for Newbie Search Marketers https://www.sitepronews.com/2022/03/21/16-seo-tips-for-newbie-search-marketers/ Mon, 21 Mar 2022 04:10:00 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=120714 You’ve probably heard of search engine optimization, even if you’re not a Digital Marketer. Whether you’re a small business owner or the CMO of a Fortune 500 corporation, search engine optimization drives business in today’s environment. It is something you can’t ignore. The higher your website ranks for relevant search queries, the more visitors it […]

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You’ve probably heard of search engine optimization, even if you’re not a Digital Marketer. Whether you’re a small business owner or the CMO of a Fortune 500 corporation, search engine optimization drives business in today’s environment. It is something you can’t ignore.

The higher your website ranks for relevant search queries, the more visitors it will receive. After all, a staggering 75% of internet users never look beyond the first page of search results. So, to get traffic and thus visitors, you need to be there on the first page, and more than that, on that very top.

Boosting SEO performance is a major priority for 67% of content marketing professionals. Another 73% of marketers questioned in a poll indicated that they employed SEO practitioners and tools to improve their content marketing results regularly. This means that you must learn how to increase your search engine rankings to stay competitive.

Here are some SEO strategies and search engine optimization ideas that even beginners can use in their work.

1. Use Well-Researched Keywords in Your Content

Keyword research is at the heart of any successful SEO campaign. Great content comes up when it is based on the use of primary and secondary keywords. And as such knowing how to use keywords no follow web pages several strategically in the content will drive traffic to your site.

The main focus of your landing page should be your primary keyword. It should be a strong description of the page’s content and possibly relate to what your company does.

Secondary keywords are words that support the primary keyword and go into greater detail about the subject. You’ll likely enhance your search rank by integrating these secondary keywords in your text – in a way that reads organically, of course.

Start your keyword research by considering some long-tail keywords that are relevant to your target audience and then tone it down to a single keyphrase.

Image supplied by Author

2. Use URLs That are Short and Descriptive

How you arrange your content’s URLs can enhance your SEO rankings, and it’s quite simple to accomplish for someone new to SEO. URL’s should include the following characteristics:

  • Use keywords in your URL: Your URL should contain one or more keywords that you want to target.
  • Be simple to comprehend: It should be designed to appeal to the human eye and make it simple for readers to understand what the page is about.
  • Be concise: It is advisable to have shorter URLs. Keep them to 60 characters or less. Many search engines are unable to parse lengthier URLs, which may cause you to be sent to a lower page of results.
Image supplied by Author

3. Get Backlinks From Websites With High Domain Authority.

Backlinks are an important ranking component, and there are two types: follow and nofollow links, with follow links carrying more weight. When other websites use your webpages as a source of information and hyperlink back to it, this is referred to as a backlink.

These links from other webpages tell search engines that you’re an expert on a subject and should be promoted higher in the rankings. The better your website ranks in online searches, the more high-quality links it has.

You can take a number of steps to increase the backlinks to your website. Consider the following strategies if you don’t know any:

  • Offer to write a guest article for other publications, especially if you have a cool infographic or something else to contribute.
  • Inquire with publishers about any original research or data you’ve compiled for on-site material.
Image supplied by Author

4. Attempt to Rank for Featured Snippets

Google’s Featured Snippets is a prized position that many digital marketers strive for. Featured Snippets show at the top of Google search results and have a high chance of receiving a large amount of organic traffic.

To get to this position, you must optimize your material in a specific way. First, decide which content will be featured as a ‘Featured Snippet’. You want to choose something that makes people want to click on the link. Also, pay attention to the keywords in Featured Snippets. A Featured Snippet is more likely to appear on content that raises a question, according to studies.

Image supplied by Author

5. Make Your Content Search Engine Friendly

It’s not just about the words you use; it’s also about how you format your information. While you want your material to be useful, easy to comprehend, and user-friendly, you need also think about how to arrange it for search engines. For example, in addition to keywords, you should employ headings and subheadings to make your material easier to interpret for search engines and increase your organic search ranks. Make sure you document this point for your writers in your content strategy.

6. Don’t Forget About Your Meta Descriptions and Page Titles

Page titles and Meta descriptions are two basic HTML components where you may use keywords to optimize your page and pack a punch, and they’re simple technical SEO modifications for beginners.

Typically, the platform you use to host your website provides a simple way to change the page title and meta description. For example, WordPress has two fields titled “SEO title” and “meta description.”

Image supplied by Author

7. Remove Anything That Takes a Long Time to Load

Are you aware that the time it takes for a website to load has an impact on your SEO? Bounce rates are greater on these pages. The longer it takes for your page to load, the less time a visitor will spend on it – assuming they even get to it in the first place.

Review your website and analyze. Are there any aspects causing the load time to be longer, such as superfluous plugins? After optimizing your page, you should observe a boost in traffic if you remove or rearrange them.

8. Combine Internal and External Links

When it comes to optimization, the links you use in your text are crucial. Internal and external links, as well as the anchor text utilized, have an impact on your SEO.

Internal linking strategy keeps people on your website for a longer period. Provide internal connections to bring users to even more valuable content to improve the user experience. Not only will this increase your page’s click-through rate (CTR), but it’s also likely to keep customers on your site long enough to purchase if you’re an e-commerce site.

Quality matters when it comes to external links. You should check your external links before adding them to make sure you’re not referring to low-quality material. Popular websites with great traffic that frequently offer authoritative, relevant information to your business are some fantastic external linking resources.

9. Include Hyperlinks in Your Graphics

It’s difficult to ignore a vibrant graphic or image that precisely captures the essence of a subject. If you produce such graphics for your website, remember to provide a link to them and consider letting others freely use them in their years blogs Page follow and articles. The more links you have, the higher your rating will be.

10. Increase the Number of Words You Write

It’s critical to ensure that a piece of information is complete when creating it. This aids search engines in determining what your material is about and whether it addresses all of a searcher’s questions. It also indicates that you are an expert on the subject and should be rated higher. You can also include more keywords and backlinks with a higher word count. At the same time, don’t make your piece overly long, as this may cause search engines to slow down.

11. Make Original Content Available

It’s critical to publish fresh work and avoid duplicate content when adding new pages to your website. The more you differentiate yourself from similar websites, the higher you’ll rank.

Google’s algorithms, in particular, are geared to detect unique content. Those who use good SEO and publish unique material are more likely to rank higher in search results. Some websites have been banned from search engine results in the past for plagiarising content. As a result, individuality is crucial!

12. Create Content That Will Last Forever

For any inbound marketing plan, evergreen content is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s intended to be useful now and in five years’ time. This means that its traffic continues to increase over time, assisting in the increase of new users to your website. Few things need to be avoided while generating evergreen content like breaking news stories (or any other timely news), anything containing data that varies over time, seasonal content, pop culture news, and fashion news.

13. Frequently Conduct a Site Audit

You may increase the quality of your work by conducting an SEO audit on your website. These assessments are used to figure out what you’re good at and where you can improve. Furthermore, it determines that you need to use more connections to external sources, or that you need to improve your keyword game. If you want to get better at SEO, you shouldn’t be scared to evaluate your work frequently, especially as best practices change and new ones arise.

14. Make Use of a Basic On-Page SEO Checklist

On-page SEO is a fantastic tool for enhancing the SEO of individual web pages. Use an On-Pagefollow web SEO Checker to find the optimal keyword for a certain page and ensure that it doesn’t conflict with any other pages on your site. This will make your page more visible in search results. Then you can create a page that revolves around this keyword. For added impact, include it in your title and headers.

15. Research Your Rivals

You may determine how your website compares in terms of rankings and learn a thing or two about what’s driving their SEO performance by evaluating your competitors’ content. This analysis should cover a wide range of topics, including search engine rankings, keyword usage, backlinks, on-page content, traffic volume, and so on. While you get a sense of how your website stacks up against your competition, you’ll also learn where you may make improvements.

16. Continue Your SEO Learning

SEO is always changing as Google makes hundreds of adjustments to its algorithms as the web evolves. Marketers are constantly figuring out new best practices.

There are a few simple ways to keep up with SEO news and trends:

  • You can attend workshops on the subject or look for credential programs.
  • You’ll get access to fresh material as it becomes available if you join industry organizations.
  • You can also make contacts with individuals in the field who may be able to provide you with SEO advice.
  • It’s also a good idea to do some research on the subject.

Use These SEO Tips to Secure Tons of Organic Traffic

SEO is critical to marketing success, and every digital marketer should have a basic understanding of this crucial traffic-generating technique. The actionable SEO ideas in this post are a great way for newcomers to get their feet wet in the world of optimization and get started with organic marketing. When it comes to web rankings and traffic, even these tiny efforts will have a big impact. It’s a terrific opportunity to obtain hands-on experience with SEO by learning these simple strategies and putting them into practice right away.

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7 Essential SEO Tips for Beginners to Boost Traffic https://www.sitepronews.com/2021/11/29/7-essential-seo-tips-for-beginners-to-boost-traffic/ Mon, 29 Nov 2021 05:00:00 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=119586 Even if you’re not in a technical position, you’ve likely heard of search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization is a powerful tool that drives business in all industries, no matter if you own a small business or are a Fortune 500 executive. You can optimize your pages to appear higher in search engine results by producing […]

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Even if you’re not in a technical position, you’ve likely heard of search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization is a powerful tool that drives business in all industries, no matter if you own a small business or are a Fortune 500 executive. You can optimize your pages to appear higher in search engine results by producing high-quality content.

Your website’s rank for the correct search queries will determine how much traffic you can drive to it. After all, many internet users — a whopping 75% — tend not to look past the first page of search results. SEO is a must-have part of any digital marketing strategy to grow your company. With so many people using the internet to search for what they need, it’s impossible to ignore SEO.

In our recent State of Content Marketing Report, 67% of content marketing professionals surveyed indicated that improving SEO performance is a top priority for their company. Another 73% stated that they use their SEO skills and tools frequently to improve content marketing results. To remain competitive, it is important to learn how to improve your search engine rankings.

Do you feel lost? Continue reading to learn SEO tips and search engine optimization strategies that even novices can use in their work. These non-technical SEO tips will help you see quick results.

1. Create Content Around Primary and Secondary Keywords

Keyword research is the heart of any SEO strategy. Keyword research is the key to creating great content. Searchers will find your site by knowing how to use both primary and second keywords.

Your landing page should have your primary keyword as its main focus. The page should contain a strong description and possibly connect to your brand. These keywords should be the main focus of your content.

Secondary keywords are words that support the primary keyword and can be included in your content in a natural way to improve your search ranking.

Start your keyword research by identifying long-tail keywords that are relevant to your audience. Say you run a DIY home improvement blog. Using our Keyword Overview Tool, you can start by searching for “DIY home improvement” as your target keyword and then expand to include more keywords from there. You’ll see the search volume and difficulty of ranking for your primary keyword in your area, along with related terms that you might be interested in.

2. Use Short, Descriptive URLs

There are also some not-too-technical ways you can optimize your SEO efforts when it comes to on-page SEO. For those just beginning in SEO, it is easy to improve your SEO rankings by structuring your URLs.

A URL that is effective should:

  • Use keywords: Your URL should contain one or more keywords that you are targeting.
  • Be easy to understand It should be easy to read and cater to the human eye.
  • Be concise Using shorter URLs is preferable. Keep them under 60 characters. Search engines won’t accept URLs longer than 60 characters, which could cause you to be pushed further down the results pages.

3. High Authority Websites Have High Quality Backlinks

Link building is an important component of any SEO strategy. It’s also relatively simple to begin. Backlinks are an important ranking factor. They come in two types: nofollow and follow, with the latter having more ranking weight.

Backlinking refers to the linking of other websites to your website as a source for information. These links are a sign to search engines that you are an authority on a topic and should be pulled up in the rankings. Higher rankings in online searches will be achieved if your website has more quality links.

Bloggers, journalists, and other companies will recognize you as an expert in your field, and may link to your content. However, this doesn’t always happen instantly. You may have to do some research before you start.

You have many options to create links to your site. Here are some strategies to consider:

  • If you have something to share or an interesting infographic, consider writing a guest blog post for other outlets.
  • Reach out to publishers for any data or research you have done to support your site content.
  • Look for directories and listings in your industry and get your company listed. It may mean joining professional associations, networking groups or business organizations. However, it increases your credibility.

How do you determine where to get backlinks? Use our Backlink Gap Tool to compare the backlinks for your site with four competing URLs. This will allow you to compare which websites link to your site more than your competitor, and vice versa. To help you target high authority sites with your initial link building efforts, you can organize the list by authority score.

4. Try to Rank for Featured Snippets

Google’s Featured Snippets are a highly desired spot that digital marketers want to reach when it comes search engine result pages (SERPs). Featured Snippets are at the top of Google search results, and they have a high chance of attracting lots of organic traffic. Optimizing your content is key to achieving this position.

First, decide what content you would like to be a featured snippet. Choose something that will make internet users click on the link. You should also carefully examine the keywords in Featured Snippets. Studies show that a piece of content that asks a question is more likely to have a Featured Snippet.

5. Format Your Content for Search Engines

While the words you choose are important, how you present your content is equally important. You want your content to be clear, concise, understandable, and easy to read. However, search engines will also require that you adapt your formatting. To improve your organic search ranking, you will want to use headings and subheadings in your content.

It is important to know how to organize your paragraphs and sentences. A sentence should not exceed 20 words. You shouldn’t have more than 20 words per sentence, but you don’t want your paragraphs to be too long either.

6. Do Not Forget Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Keywords have a significant impact on the content you create, but did you also know that they should be included in page titles as well as meta descriptions? These two elements are basic HTML components that can help you optimize your page and pack a punch. They’re also easy to edit for beginners.

Most platforms offer an easy way for you to modify your page title or meta description. WordPress offers two boxes, “SEO title” or “meta description”, that can be edited.

These items will show up in search results. These short sections could be enough to convince an internet user to click on your site. This is a lot of power in so few words. Make sure your words are powerful.

7. Take Out Anything That Loads Slowly

Did you know that page load times can impact your SEO? Higher bounce rates are common for pages that take longer to load. 

Google PageSpeed Insights is a free SEO tool to check the speed of your site. You can add your URL to get a range from zero to 100 with 100 being fastest. You can also compare the speed of your mobile website to your desktop site.

Do yourself a favor. Take a look at your website. Do you have any plugins or elements that slow down your website’s load times? You’ll see an increase in traffic if you remove or restructure them.

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On-page and Off-page Optimization of Blog Posts to Get More Traffic. Simple Tricks That Work https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/07/31/on-page-and-off-page-optimization-of-blog-posts-to-get-more-traffic-simple-tricks-that-work/ Fri, 31 Jul 2020 04:00:34 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=109479 Blogging is a lucrative online business no doubt about it. A lot of people want to start a blog as a means of making money online. But in blogging, making money depends on the amount of traffic you get. There are two types of traffic in blogging. Free and paid traffic. Free traffic is the […]

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Blogging is a lucrative online business no doubt about it. A lot of people want to start a blog as a means of making money online. But in blogging, making money depends on the amount of traffic you get. There are two types of traffic in blogging. Free and paid traffic. Free traffic is the one you get from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Paid traffic is the traffic you get when you advertise your blog on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. But in this article, I will teach you simple tricks that you can use to optimize your blog post both on-page and off-page to get more traffic.

On-Page Optimization

On-page Optimization involves actions you take when creating and publishing your blog post for it to appear on top page search results. Blog posts that appear on first-page search results tend to get more traffic. Start doing the following:

Conduct Thorough Keyword Search

Keywords are important for your articles to rank on Search Engines. There are a lot of keyword search tools you can use for free. Some of them are Ubersuggest, Keyword Everywhere, Wordtracker, and Answer the Public. When conducting a keyword search using any of these tools, you should consider this;

Search Difficulty: This tells you how difficult or easy it is for your blog to rank for such keywords.

Search Volume: How many people are searching for the keyword.

If your blog is new, you’re likely to have a low domain score, so it’s advisable you go for keywords with reasonable search volume and a keyword difficulty of under 20.

Create a Long Quality Blog Post

Search Engines like Google and Bing value long content of 2000 words and above. It sends them the signal that such a blog post is detailed and can provide more value to the user.

Use H1, H2, H3 Where Appropriate

Using headings on your blog post helps Search Engines and users to easily understand what your blog post is all about. H1 is exclusively for your headline. H2, H3 are for subheadings.

Use Your Keyword Naturally

Your keyword should appear in your title and the first 100 words of your blog post. This makes it easy for Search Engines to crawl it when a search is performed on such a keyword. Also, your keywords should appear in your subheadings and be spread evenly in a natural way throughout your blog post. Avoid keyword stuffing because it reduces the quality of your content.

Use Appropriate Copyright Free Images

Images they say are worth more than a thousand words. They’re important in blog posts for illustrations. Use them where necessary.

You can get free images on websites like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pixels. Don’t forget to add alternative text to your images. Alt text is a ranking factor for Google because it considers disabled people. This kind of person can only make use of your blog through optimized images.

Add Quality Inbound and Outbound Links

Inbound links are links to articles you previously published on your blog. Outbound links are links to articles on another blog or website. When adding links, ensure that you add related ones that will add value to the content you’ve created. For outbound links, get them from authority websites. It will help improve the visibility of your content on search results.

Install Yoast SEO Plugin

If you run your blog on WordPress, I recommend you install the Yoast SEO Plugin. This tool is free to use. It will serve as a guide to ensure that you’re in line with most of the tricks I discussed with you here.

Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization involves all the activities you and others engage in after you have published a blog post. The aim is to increase its appearance on Search Engines results in order to get more traffic. A lot of bloggers relax after they publish a blog post forgetting that they can do a lot to increase the traffic to it. Let’s look at some of the tricks you can use to optimize your blog post after you have published it.

Social Shares

Sharing your blog posts with your followers on Social Media platforms is what you should start doing frequently. When your followers read and also share them, it sends a good signal to Search Engines, indicating that such content is valuable to users and therefore should appear more in search results.

Link Building

Share random posts with your fellow bloggers, inserting links from your blog posts where necessary. This helps to generate more traffic to your blog post. It also helps to build backlinks which you need to build authority and increase your domain score.

Make Use of Google Analytics – Track Behaviour

After you publish your blog post, it is important to track how people are reacting to it. The important metrics here are your bounce rate and average time per session. If your bounce rate is high (above 80), it’s a sign that users are leaving your page almost immediately. It means you need to look at your blog post again to see why this is so.

Conclusion

Blogging can be frustrating if you take time to create quality content and you don’t get traffic. That’s why you need to start optimizing your blog posts both Onpage and Offpage to get more traffic from Search Engines. The tricks I discussed above, if implemented, will increase the traffic you get from your blog posts.

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9 Killer BlogSpot SEO Tips for Bloggers https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/01/06/9-killer-blogspot-seo-tips-for-bloggers-2/ Mon, 06 Jan 2020 05:00:22 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=105606 Technology has changed the way we commute, communicate and conduct business. Back in the day, establishing a brand presence was a daunting task. Today, it’s easy to become an online celebrity overnight. The trouble comes with you having to sustain that reputation, monetise it and be consistent in your services. Blogging is a lifesaver for […]

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Technology has changed the way we commute, communicate and conduct business. Back in the day, establishing a brand presence was a daunting task. Today, it’s easy to become an online celebrity overnight.

The trouble comes with you having to sustain that reputation, monetise it and be consistent in your services. Blogging is a lifesaver for entrepreneurs who want to expand their reach and get more reader engagement.

The long-drawn battle between WordPress and BlogSpot is never-ending. BlogSpot is a sub-domain space owned and managed by Blogger.com. Here, bloggers have a platform for uploading, tweaking and holistically promoting their content. Check out these latest SEO tips to give your website a much-needed boost and outreach:

Getting Your Domain

First and foremost, you need to get your domain name. BlogSpot offers users the option of using the domain names they provide. However, with that, you will always have to bear the burden of BlogSpot’s branding.

Having a custom domain gives your blog its unique identity and space online. Purchase your domain from either BlogSpot or other dependable platforms to establish your presence. Customised domain names also make you more accessible and reachable.

Formatting the URLs

URLs determine the address of your blog. It is the pathway via which your readers can locate your content and differentiate it from the other numerous blogs out there. Permalink or permanent link should always be short and contain little to no stop words.

Stop words are usually the most common prepositions and conjunctions like “in”, “a”, “an” etc. These words are ignored by search engines and not indexed when they analyse search results.

BlogSpot gives you the option to edit the permalink and add the keywords that are relevant to your content. Adding the title of your post in the URL is another smart way to direct more traffic in.

Customising the Headers

The headers and sub-topics of the blog are of utmost importance. Each of your posts should have a suitable title for it. Also, try to have a summary and a meta description of 50 odd words in your content. This will give the reader a rough idea about what to expect from your blog. There are SEO tools for developers to edit the header as per their requirement. The trick is to keep the title catchy, unique and yet easy to remember. The audience should be able to identify with the content and get value from it.

Adding Relevant Keywords

Keywords are the most prominent and popular terms that users include in their online searches. BlogSpot offers bloggers the latest SEO technologies to check if the blog has the correct keywords and phrases that are trending online. Note that the keywords are integrated organically in your content. It shouldn’t look forced or stuffed unnecessarily. Most established bloggers try to keep a keyword density of 2-3%.

Linking Related Posts and Labels

Having related posts and labels related to your blog is an excellent way to distribute the traffic and generate more leads. Featuring other blogs and web pages also help you build better relations with other platforms out there. Ensure that your labels are not concentrated into one narrow channel though, spread it out evenly throughout your content. Having a name to club popular posts together also enhances its overall online visibility. Readers can now find your content and related posts faster.

Inserting Images and Graphics

Adding images and graphics to your blog makes it aesthetically appealing and attractive. However, there are some standard regulations that you need to follow when you’re working with images. Search engines like Google don’t usually read pictures unless accompanied by plain text. With BlogSpot, you get the option of adding text descriptions to images, making it readable. This can work wonders for your SEO ranking. Bloggers usually optimise their pictures by adding alt tags and title tags in every image that they post. Manually inserting the titles might seem like a cumbersome task but it does pay in the long-run

Integrating Meta Tags

Meta tags are HTML tags, used by search engines to analyse the page and rank it accordingly. The meta tags always mention the title of the blog post. This helps the SEO ranker understand the purpose of your post and the market it is targeting. Meta tags are slowly losing their relevance in the industry, though. You can use them to produce more keywords and target them to better sources.

Filtering Comments

Having a comments section is a great way to get immediate feedback on your content. Readers can now reach out to you with their opinions. It also gives you better insights into what  readers want and what they appreciate. Often, the suggestions given by your audience inspire better ideas for future blog posts as well.

However, keeping a space for comments also has a downside. The internet is full of trolls and spammers who will pile unnecessary, irrelevant comments on your blog. With filters, you can track and remove comments that are problematic, vulgar, offensive or promoting other businesses.

About NoFollow Links 

Adding external links is a lucrative way to widen your contacts and build more credibility. However, hyperlinking to third-party spaces might have a downside as well. With the Nofollow links option, you can keep search engines from tapping into your traffic. In BlogSpot, developers have the opportunity to add the “nofollow” attribute in their URL. This tells the search engine to ignore the URL without affecting the page rank in any way.

In Conclusion 

Blogging is a powerful tool used by brands to expand their reach and performance. It is accessible, intuitive and user-friendly even for people who have no prior technical experience. I hope that these SEO tips give you better insights into blogging and all that it contains.

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Need to Rank Your Website Fast? Try These 4 Easy SEO Wins https://www.sitepronews.com/2019/06/10/need-to-rank-your-website-fast-try-these-4-easy-seo-wins/ Mon, 10 Jun 2019 04:00:19 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=101813 As we all know, SEO can be time-consuming. It also takes a lot of effort to have your website rank on the top positions in SERPs. However, there are a few things you can do to boost certain pages or blog posts that are important to you.  But first, a caveat: I am in no […]

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As we all know, SEO can be time-consuming. It also takes a lot of effort to have your website rank on the top positions in SERPs.

However, there are a few things you can do to boost certain pages or blog posts that are important to you. 

But first, a caveat: I am in no way a fan of cutting corners. True SEO results happen with time and with constant effort. I explain this every time we onboard a new client for SEO writing at my agency. Yes, there are things you can do to boost one or two pages of your website. But consistency is key for long-term ROI.

Let’s dig in.

1. Get rid of bad/low-quality content

I know, you worked on each and every one of your pieces of content. So what’s the harm in keeping them online? Maybe they don’t do any good, but they don’t do any harm either.

In fact, they do. 

Google knows every word on your website. And when you didn’t hit the right keys and didn’t convey a clear enough message, your pages are demoted. 

Much like a credit score, everything on your website can work for you or against you.

So don’t hesitate to delete low-quality content. Not every piece you produce can be a masterpiece, right?

How do you identify which content needs to be deleted, you ask?

Start with Google Search Console. You can easily arrange your dashboard to show content with little or no traffic. 

But organic traffic isn’t everything, so take some time (OK, a lot of time) to re-visit your content manually. Think about what pieces are outdated. Surely some industry standards have changed since you began blogging, right?

Once you’re done with the poorest content pieces on your website, it’s time for the next step.

2. Improve existing content

Some outdated pieces can be easily revived by adding more content and/or replacing broken links.

This is one task you should always perform with your target audience in mind. Think about their needs and their expectations. 

Then proceed to adding new(er) research reports, statistics, media files and more. While you’re at it, you can also improve the headlines, the CTA and the readability.

Just like in the previous step, you can identify these pieces through Google Search Console. Take a look at the pieces of content that currently rank on the second, third or fourth page. They are very easy to improve.

Typically, you will just need to add some more paragraphs, new links and media files. The key here is writing more, enough to make sure that your content is in-depth and that it covers your topic thoroughly. 

But in order to make the most out of the time you spend revisiting old content, make sure the pieces you choose are relevant for both your audience and your business goals.

3. Up your internal linking game

A friendly link exchange between your own posts can be a major ranking booster, especially if you use the right anchors. It can also be a great opportunity to revive some old content.

When you start working on the step above, take a look at what other links you can add, too. Let’s say you found an older post that can use some boosting. You add some extra paragraphs, go more in-depth and add some media files, too.

When you’re done with all this, edit newer posts to link to the one you just improved on. 

It’s one of the easiest hacks you can do, but it’s still too often overlooked. Just think about all the link opportunities that appeared within your own website since you published that post. You definitely have a few new articles that can add some link juice to older ones, don’t you?

4. Up your external linking game

This is something that you can use for both older (but recently updated) and new content. You already know that authority content needs a lot of references to make it believable and in-depth.

Most likely, those resources also come from the web. Take some time to craft an email to send to all the bloggers, companies and media outlets whose content you used to support your own claims.

You don’t have to be pushy. A simple thank you email letting them know that one of their resources was extremely useful to you is enough. You can also ask them to share your article on their social channels – the more eyes on it, the better your ranking.

In an ideal world, they might even consider linking to one of your articles on their blog. But offering to exchange links is so 2010, so you might as well skip this proposal. Just keep it human and you’ll be fine.

Wrapping things up

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to SEO or SEO content. But there are some things you can test and play with. Try the tactics above on some of your articles, tweak when necessary, and watch your rankings soar. Then rinse and repeat. 

And, if you need SEO content that ranks well AND converts like mad, check out our content writing and copywriting services. My team of expert writers and I would be happy to help!

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Best SEO Tips to Optimize Facebook Marketing https://www.sitepronews.com/2019/01/10/best-seo-tips-to-optimize-facebook-marketing/ Thu, 10 Jan 2019 05:00:15 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=95868 Social media is the main component of any marketing strategy. While some marketing techniques may get a bit expensive, this one is free and may bring you big profits. It’s important to have your Facebook Marketing Page correctly optimized with some best SEO tips in order to maximize conversions. Facebook Marketing Pages are increasingly becoming […]

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Social media is the main component of any marketing strategy. While some marketing techniques may get a bit expensive, this one is free and may bring you big profits. It’s important to have your Facebook Marketing Page correctly optimized with some best SEO tips in order to maximize conversions.

Facebook Marketing Pages are increasingly becoming a “second home page” for online businesses. More and more Page owners are learning how to become skillful Facebook marketers. Facebook has recently created many new opportunities for Pages to get more traffic through the tried and true methods of you guessed it, SEO Tips. 

Below are some Facebook marketing tricks and tips I’ve discovered that have worked well for me.

Choose a Brand Name

When it comes to correct optimization, it is fundamental to find the right name for your Facebook Business Page because you choose it once and it is permanent. It’s key to remember that the first word of your Facebook page title is the most significant in the eyes of Google.

Second, don’t give in to the temptation to choose a fully generic page name like “Travel” or “Hawaii.” Because Facebook’s intention for Pages is that they authentically represent businesses, brands, or celebrities. Facebook has recently been disabling updates for generically named Pages – effectively neutering their ability to reach their Facebook fans.

Then, take a look at Google Webmaster Tools. See what search queries are sending people to your site. Are people coming to your site for a service or product you no longer offer? Have more people been searching for a certain product or service? Compare this with the data taken from Analytics and use that to develop an optimized content strategy.

Enhance Your Local Presence

Targeting your market is likely twofold: local surfers and seasonal visitors on vacation. While the locals may know of your shop, it’s unlikely that the tourists will. However, one of the first things those tourists will do is pull out their smartphone and search for surf shops in the area.

If your website isn’t optimized for local business, your shop might not show up at all. Set up social media profiles if you don’t have them. If you do have social media profiles, make sure you have them all listing your correct address. List your business on Yelp, Foursquare, Bing Places, Google+ Local, Citysearch and every other location-based listing service out there.

For more in-depth information on local search presence, check out these tips for improving your local search rankings.

Best URL Selection

Don’t ever settle for the standard issue Facebook URL that comes with your Facebook account. After your fan page has received 25 likes, Facebook will give you the opportunity to create a custom and unique URL for your business page.

Because URL’s hold high value to search engines, a unique Facebook website address should be in your bag of SEO tips and tricks to add to your social networks. Facebook vanity URL’s offer business owners a place for their business name with an easy to remember link that can help enhance your brand recognition.

Visit FaceBook.com/Username to check out some Facebook username options available. Once you land on the site, select your Business Page from the drop-down list. You will then see a box where you can enter your desired user-name.

Internal linking strategy

When search engines scan the web for new sites, they “crawl” through links. Whenever they finish scanning a page, they check the page for any links and then follow each of them to see if they lead to pages that haven’t been scanned yet. If so, the process starts over for that page.

Because of this, it is incredibly important that you have a great internal linking strategy. Pages on your website should link to other pages on your website with similar or relevant information.

Think of your entire website as a city, and each web page as a single building. The links are streets that get you from one building to another. The more streets, the easier your city is to navigate. However, exercise caution with your internal linking. There’s a fine line between optimization and overkill, as referenced in the next, and final, tip.

Go Live

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two years, you probably already know just how important video content is to Facebook marketing. One of the best video outreach tools is Facebook’s live video. According to Livestream stats, 82% of brand audiences prefer live video over any other form of social media posts.

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SEO in 2019: Your Definitive Guide https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/12/14/seo-in-2019-your-definitive-guide/ Fri, 14 Dec 2018 05:00:33 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=95564 Yes, it’s that time of the year again. It’s the ideal time to make plans for taking over the world, one SERP at a time. If that sounds like your plan, this guide is what you need. A quick note: this guide is not about predictions, trends and educated guesses. It’s a real guide, a […]

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Yes, it’s that time of the year again.

It’s the ideal time to make plans for taking over the world, one SERP at a time.

If that sounds like your plan, this guide is what you need. A quick note: this guide is not about predictions, trends and educated guesses. It’s a real guide, a collection of SEO tactics that work wonders today and are bound to work even better tomorrow.

Let’s take a look at what will work in SEO in 2019. 

1. RankBrain and user experience

Much like your entire marketing strategy, your SEO should also be consumer-centric. I’ve said it before: think about what your potential customer wants to read first, not about what Google wants to read. 

Ironically enough, Google agrees. They rank websites that consumers like higher. 

And in order to find out what consumers like, they use RankBrain.

Briefly put, RankBrain is the machine learning algorithm that Google uses to rank results. And it’s darn important.

In fact, Google said that “in the few months it has been deployed, RankBrain has become the third-most important signal contributing to the result of a search query.”

So how does RankBrain really work?

It takes a look at how users interact with the search results. Let’s say you search for “chocolate cake” in Google. You click on the first result, but it’s a terribly commercial article that simply wants to sell you some baking tools. So you get out of there pretty fast.

On the other hand, the third result is an amazingly detailed recipe on how to bake the perfect chocolate cake from scratch. So you read it thoroughly. You jot down the ingredients you need to shop for. Then you save it to come back to when you’re ready to begin baking.

RankBrain takes note of all that. And, if more users go through the same process you did, they will demote the first result and boost the ranking of the third one, with the amazing recipe.

RankBrain focuses on:

  1. The time users spend on your page
  2. The organic CTR (how many people click on your links from SERPs)

In other words, in 2019 you need to give the gift of relevance.

Make sure that you keep people reading by writing information-packed articles, not advertorials disguised as helpful reads. 

As for the CTR, this one may be quite tricky to boost.

First of all, because SERPs are now crowded by Google ads, featured snippets and related search suggestions. Your links have to be exceptionally good to get clicks.

You can start with two things:

  1. Write great headlines for your articles
  2. Write compelling meta descriptions that entice users to read more.

And, more importantly, remember that your entire content has to be truly exceptional. If you only trick people to click on your articles and they bounce back to search results, you’ve accomplished nothing.

2. Write in-depth, comprehensive content

Remember when Google used to look at how many times you mentioned a keyword in your content and at your tags to decide where you need to rank? Well, they still do that.

But today, this is just one of the less important factors.

What matters most is how comprehensive and in-depth your content is. How well you covered a certain topic.

For example, let’s say you plan to write a blog post about “the best coffee in the world.” It’s obviously not enough to say that it can be found in your coffee shop.

You need to describe how and where said coffee is planted, when and how it’s harvested, what it is treated with and roasted, how it is transported and packaged and how the final consumer should brew it.

This is just a VERY short summary of what a comprehensive article on this topic should contain. During your research, you may uncover other things that need to be mentioned.

Needless to say, an in-depth piece of content can’t be 500 words long. You need much more than that to cover almost any topic.

Thus, it’s not a coincidence that longer blog posts rank better. Or that bloggers and marketers have started to write more.

Research by Orbit Media (November 2018) shows that the word count of blog posts has been steadily growing since 2014.

Image via Orbit Media

Yes, bloggers spend more time and resources crafting blog posts. But the results speak for themselves.

 Image via Orbit Media

What does this tell us about SEO in 2019?

Two very important things:

  1. You need to publish content that is longer than 2000 words
  2. Your content needs to be evergreen and authoritative

This means that simply fluffing up your posts so you can get to 2000 words isn’t enough. Authoritative content is well researched and it has a lot of inbound and outbound links that show Google you’ve done your homework.

When you explore every facet of a topic, you are bound to use your main keyword often enough naturally and a lot of LSI keywords that work wonders for contextual optimization.

3. Aim to rank your content in featured snippets

Remember what I said above about SERPs being crowded with ads, related searches AND featured snippets? Well, you can turn the last bit of bad news into good news.

But be warned it won’t be easy.

Almost 11.4% of SERPs now have a featured snippet. You know it, it’s the box that pops up at the very top of your search.

Image via Moz

OK, now that you know for sure what it is, I’m pretty sure you want it. How do you get it? Do you even stand a chance to?

Well, Ahrefs tells us that 99.58% of featured pages already rank in top 10 of Google. If you’re not there yet, take another look at steps one and two above.

If you are, then:

  • Find the keywords that you already rank high for (and a few that are close to top 10 yet and can be easily upgraded)
  • Find out if those keywords have a featured snippet (you can use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush or a simple Google search for this)

Now it’s time to get to work.

In order to rank your content in a snippet, you have to choose one of the three formats that these pesky snippets come in:

  1. Paragraph (the answer to a question given as text)
  2. Table
  3. List

As you may have expected, the most common snippets are paragraphs. 

To rank for either of these types, you need to give the answer to specific questions in one of the three formats. Don’t forget to start your paragraph, list or table with the actual question in order to properly signal Google what you are answering to.

For paragraph snippets, make sure your answer is no longer than 40-60 words. If your topic is complex and needs a broader definition, condense it in no more than 60 words right after the question, then proceed to expand upon it.

Of course, you can’t expect to rank in a featured snippet if your entire article is a short definition. Take a look at what happens when you click on an answer box or featured snippet:

Image via Moz

You get a new box of related questions. Make sure that your article answers most (if not all) of these, too. 

Again, you need comprehensive, in-depth content to rank higher!

Bonus: writing your content this way (in a Q&A form) also helps you rank for voice searches. And we all know that they are on a continuous rise.

4. Be as mobile-friendly as possible

I’m not saying that you should forget about the desktop version of your website. I’m just saying that if you have to choose between which version looks and feels better, you should go with the mobile one.

The rolling out of Google Mobile First Index means that the search engine now considers the mobile version of your website to be the “primary” one. If that fails to perform, so will your entire website. 

Loading speed, mobile UX and accurate display of information are just a few of the factors that influence the quality of your mobile website. By the way, if you still have an old-school mobile website, it’s high time you switched to mobile responsive design.

Since most searches now take place on a mobile device, you want to make sure you give those users a flawless experience. No matter how good your content is, people will bounce right out of poorly designed mobile pages.

Wrapping things up

If you got this far, then you probably realized what the main takeaway is: write and design for humans, not machines. Forget about B2B and B2C – companies don’t make decisions for themselves, you’re still speaking to humans.

It’s the H2H (Human to Human) era. And no one emphasizes it better than Google. They are trying to make access to GREAT content easier for everyone by ranking higher those websites that truly take the time to write comprehensive and in-depth content.

If you want to help Google accomplish this goal (read: create content that both Google and human readers devour), my team of excellent SEO writers and I are just a click away. 

Let’s talk about how you’ll conquer SERPs in 2019.

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How to Create SEO Content for Personalized Searches https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/09/03/how-to-create-seo-content-for-personalized-searches/ Mon, 03 Sep 2018 04:00:35 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=94214 We all know that the results of a Google search vary from person to person. You will rarely get the same results as your colleague, your friend or your spouse. And if you do, they will most likely be shown in a different order. So how can you optimize your content for personalized searches? Isn’t […]

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We all know that the results of a Google search vary from person to person. You will rarely get the same results as your colleague, your friend or your spouse. And if you do, they will most likely be shown in a different order.

So how can you optimize your content for personalized searches? Isn’t this a futile attempt?

Not at all.

First, let’s take a look at the factors that influence personalization.

Personalized searches – how does Google decide what results to serve you?

Briefly put, personalized results are based on what Google knows about you and on ‘regular’ ranking factors.

Your location and your device are the first two things that bots look at. This way, they know how to serve you results that are relevant to your current location and results that match your screen size.

This makes search better, faster and more pleasant. For instance, you won’t have to look for ‘coffee shop in downtown Seattle’. You can simply search for ‘coffee shop’ and Google will start by listing the ones closest to your current location.

Even more, it will leave out websites that are not mobile responsive (if your search was on a mobile device), so you can enjoy a seamless experience and not waste time on websites you can barely read.

This is the information Google has access to if you are not logged into your browser or your social media accounts. If you are logged in, then Google knows a bit more about you: your browsing history, your social media accounts and your friends, other Google products (Maps, Calendar, Hangouts, Gmail).

Compiling all this info together, Google knows how to return the results that match your preferences. For instance, if you’re a regular at Whole Foods, when you search for a coffee shop near you, you will most likely be directed to an organic one.

Now that we got this covered, let’s see what you can do to make it work for your business.

How to optimize content for personalized searches

Whether your write your own content/copy or hire SEO copywriters to do it for you, personalization is something that should always be kept in mind. Yes, even if you don’t have a local business and even if you cater to international audiences.

Here’s what you can do to perform better in personalized searches:

1. Optimize for location

Again, even if you don’t own what is traditionally called a local business, keep in mind that some people are more prone to supporting local companies. So make sure that your address is clearly visible on your website. And even mention your city by name a couple of times in your content.

Keep your Google My Business listing up to date. Odds are that this listing will appear before your website in local searches. Aim for consistency across channels – you want all your contact data to appear the same on your social media profiles, website, Google My Business and any other channel.

2. Make sure your website and your content are mobile responsive

80 percent of ‘near me’ searches happen from a mobile device. In fact, the better part of any type of search now happens from a mobile device. You don’t want to be left out of this, so make sure that your website is mobile responsive.

But what about content? Can you really do something here?

Of course!

Think about what you like and what annoys you when you read something on a small screen. Large blocks of text are a no-no.

Instead:

  • Use bullet points to give the reader the chance to easily skim the text
  • Break the text in subtitles – some readers may not be interested in the entire article or web page, so they should be able to navigate easily
  • Bold and Italic fonts are a great way to emphasize key concepts
  • Use visuals to break down the text and to make it more reader-friendly. Photos, videos, table, infographic – everything visual is great for mobile readers

3. Focus on user intent

Instead of targeting broad keywords, try to aim for long-tail ones. Put some thought into user intent. 

What could drive readers to your website?

What questions can you answer for them?

How can you solve their problems?

This is what your keyword research should be focused on: understanding what drives your ideal customer in each phase of the buyer journey.

For example, a real estate agency could target ‘houses for sale in Austin’. However, that would be pretty hard to rank for. ‘Two-bedroom apartment for sale in Austin’, on the other hand, is much easier to rank for.

More importantly, such keywords speak volumes on user intent. A generic search for houses for sale could show that the user is still not sure what they want. The more specific the keyword, the better your chances of selling through SEO.

4. Target the right people

When we onboard a new client for copywriting or content writing services at Idunn, we invariably speak about their target audience. And when we mention personalized search, everyone thinks they should target as many people as possible.

But here’s the problem.

Try to write for everyone and you’ll end up writing for no one.

When everything is personalized, from email to search results, your potential customers expect you to deliver the same level of personalization in your content.

So dig deep in your research. Try to reverse engineer the Google approach. If Google takes into account a user’s history and social media activity to deliver personalized results, so can you.

Think about what else your audience is interested in. How they speak with their friends. Where they hang out (online and offline). What their other problems are.

Answer these questions and you’ll be able to zero in on your ideal customer and make sure that personalized searches work for you, not against you.

And if you need help with content that is optimized for both search engines and human readers, feel free to reach out to my team of amazing writers.

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SEO Tips for Startup Companies in Competitive Industries https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/08/24/seo-tips-for-startup-companies-in-competitive-industries/ Fri, 24 Aug 2018 04:00:00 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=94122 Within the digital marketing world, search engine optimization (SEO) is a very familiar term.  A majority of businesses understand the importance of SEO.  However, not many really know how to use it effectively to their websites’ full advantage and may need assistance from an experienced SEO expert. In tech markets especially, it is essential to […]

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Within the digital marketing world, search engine optimization (SEO) is a very familiar term.  A majority of businesses understand the importance of SEO.  However, not many really know how to use it effectively to their websites’ full advantage and may need assistance from an experienced SEO expert. In tech markets especially, it is essential to have high SEO rankings since your website has to compete against many others for online real estate and internet traction. You have to fight hard for users to notice you within the vast world of cyberspace.  

This becomes particularly challenging when you are a startup company trying to take on companies that have established online presences already.  It is a fiercely competitive market and there is an immense number of options that are available. It is critical to be relevant within         the search engine results pages.  Your ranking positions are determined by how effective your SEO strategy is. To maintain a competitive and strong edge within the digital tech world, integrate the following tips for your website to obtain more traffic and generate new leads for your business – no matter how new to the scene your tech startup company might be!

Create content around your keywords

Let’s begin with the basics (probably many of you are aware of them already).  There is SEO tracking software that is available that can examine any content that you publish online, and scan for keywords that are frequently used by users in their Google searches. The more keywords that it identifies – without being overused which is identified as spam by Google – the higher ranked your content will be in the search results for that specific keyword. What that means is that keywords are the very foundation of any effective SEO strategy, and it is imperative to use the right keywords. There is a precise science to selecting them, but it is a basic formula.  Go with keywords that are overlooked by your competitors, but that still provide high search volumes and relate closely to your services. Google AdWords is a useful keyword planning resource and tool that you can use.  

Publish content on a consist basis

The more frequently that you publish new content on your website, the higher your chances will be that you are recognized for your authoritative writing and information.  If you post regularly, you consistently will help to establish your website as being a credible resource which will help to strengthen your presence in the search engines. The easiest way to increase your content is to install a blog on your website and keep it updated weekly with engaging posts.  Write about subjects that relate to your industry – opinion pieces on ways that your readers can benefit from using your services, industry events, as well as market forecasts and trends. Remember to use your keywords in every post you publish and add a link to the landing page on your website.  

Optimize your website’s performance

Along with scanning the individual content pieces on your site, the search engine crawlers also make an assessment of the overall efficiency of your website. When determining your website’s rank on the search results pages, Google will make measurements of user experience including factors like readable formatting, pop-up management, mobile optimization, and loading speed. If those elements are not in good working order, this will impact your Google search engine positions. To make sure that the functionality of your website is aligned with SEO agency standards, it can be beneficial to frequently conduct a Site Performance Test.  The tool provides metrics and insight in real-time for you to be able to gauge how well your website is working, in both mobile and desktop configurations.

Use social media platforms 

After you have created a body of content around SEO-driven methods, it is time to ensure that your content is easy to share.  The most effective way to promote your content is to use social media since it has such a diverse and great reach potential. All type of demographics can be targeted and more traffic can be driven to your website since your social media followers and contacts will notice your shared posts in their newsfeeds, and then click over to your site or share your content.  Although it isn’t entirely clear if social media is tied directly to SEO ranking, it is true that social media is arguably the most accessible and efficient marketing tool that business can use in the online tech area.

Analyze all of your existing content

Another important step is creating an overview of all of your existing content – general copy pieces and blog posts that you have created in order to promote your company.  That will enable you to identify any gaps in your content or pieces of content that should be removed or updated.  Having an inventory of your content will enable you to organize all of your content on your website.  It will make it easier for you to have a content audit as part of your SEO efforts, and to examine how your content is currently performing and what you can do to improve it. Your content audit may be in spreadsheet form and list all of your published content with the following information: 

  • Page title
  • Page URL
  • Word count
  • Meta description
  • Type of content
  • Condition of content – re-used, out-of-date, off-topic, evergreen, etc.

If you haven’t written meta descriptions yet or set conditions for all of your pieces of content, then you can gradually fill these in, as you start to get your professional SEO expert  strategy better organized.  It can be quite useful to have everything on one spreadsheet for your reference.

Keyword research

After you have set your goals, it can be quite useful to see how your wider business can be helped by services from a SEO expert.  You can use keyword research to help you discover new opportunities for content, and improve the content you already have as well.  Focusing on the right content and right audience will help you better understand the content that your audience is more likely to enjoy. That is where keyword research can be very useful in providing you with new ideas and opportunities for content to get to the top of the search results. You can get started by compiling a list of keywords that you would ideally like to target. There will probably be many popular keywords on the list, meaning that as a new startup it will be difficult to get to the top spots in the search results.  Your next step is to conduct keyword research using a tool to find new keywords to target.  You might have more opportunities targeting long tail keywords to get higher search results rankings.  You can also do manual searches to check out the top pages on the keywords you would like to target.

If you are a new business owner and are looking for an effective search engine optimization strategy that will take your new business to the top, then you may want to consider reaching out to a Houston SEO expert. We guarantee a top 3 spot on the first page of Google.

The post SEO Tips for Startup Companies in Competitive Industries appeared first on SiteProNews.

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15 SEO Techniques to Achieve a Better Ranking https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/08/08/15-seo-techniques-to-achieve-a-better-ranking/ Wed, 08 Aug 2018 04:00:50 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=93929 Every website on this gigantic web wants to make it to the top of the search results, and one way to do it is through Search Engine Optimization.  Search engine optimization, when done correctly, can not only boost the traffic on your website but also portray it as a reliable resource, since people mostly trust […]

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Every website on this gigantic web wants to make it to the top of the search results, and one way to do it is through Search Engine Optimization. 

Search engine optimization, when done correctly, can not only boost the traffic on your website but also portray it as a reliable resource, since people mostly trust something that ranks high.

If you have done enough research on what it takes to get to the top of the search results, then you may have realized that it takes a ton of work. Backlinks from good domain authority websites, keyword research, informative blogs, etc., but have you ever wondered – what are the most actionable techniques to improve your website’s ranking? 

Here are 15 best SEO techniques you can consider to achieve a better ranking:

Optimizing Keywords Research 

Keyword optimization plays a major role in every aspect of Internet Marketing from content strategy to link building to how your site content should be organized. When it comes to SEO, the success of your organic search efforts depends largely on how effective you are at discovering, researching, analyzing and selecting the right search engine keywords.

You should begin optimizing root keywords rather than drooling over long-tail keywords as they are no more effective. Root keywords are the middle of the pack search terms with higher search volume than long-tail.  They are more competitive and may require more time and quality content to rank.

Moreover, you should consider investing time in proper keyword research before targeting any specific keywords. The Adword Keyword Research tool is one of the best tools available to target the right keyword. However, if you are comfortable with spending money on better keyword research and analytics, then SEMrush might be the right tool for you.

Pay attention to LSI Keywords 

LSI keywords (latent semantic indexing) are simply keywords related to the topic your page is about. They include not only synonyms, but also other words that often occur when a certain topic is searched. The idea of LSI keywords is to naturally include them in your content for better visibility. 

For example, if a website is talking about Apple, how do search engines know if the website is talking about the brand or the fruit? This is where search engines look for latent semantic indexed keywords to figure out what the page is specifically talking about.

Page Title and Meta Descriptions

The page title is an HTML element in the header of each web page. It is displayed at the top of your browser in the search engine results pages as the clickable headline and can be utilized by social networks when your content is shared. A meta description is an HTML element that provides a concise summary of a web page.

Page titles and Meta descriptions provide a first impression for a webpage and are important because they tell the search engines, and your users, the focus of each page. Well-written page titles and meta descriptions impact how likely a person is to click on the result (click through rate).

URL Optimization 

SEO for your page URLs is important because keywords in the URL are a ranking factor and short and descriptive URLs can help with link building and user interaction. Like your visitors, search engines read a URL to get a clue about the content of the page.

Good URLs should include the target keyword, are less than 255 characters, short, descriptive and use hyphens to ‘-‘separate the different parts.

Here are some good examples:

Page load speed 

Users may leave a site if they have to wait awhile for each page to load. This will instantly affect the number of times your website page is viewed. 

As per Smith, senior programmer at OnlineAssignmentwriting, “There are many ways to improve page load speed including using a caching plugin or making sure the code is clean and streamlined.” But, you must also optimize images, use as few plug-ins as possible and minimize redirects.

Layout and formatting

Proper formatting and a user-friendly layout can help improve user experience and make your content easy to scan and digest, so your readers will spend more time on your site and surf through your website’s information.

Here are some tips you can consider 

  • Use font size and typography that are easy to read.
  • Use bold type and colors – sparingly and strategically – to call out important information and make the content easy to scan.
  • Use short paragraphs and ample line spacing in between – nobody likes a wall of text.
  • Use bulleted or numbered lists for clarity.
  • Use techniques such as sliders, tabs, progressive layouts, structured grids, modal windows, rollover elements, accordions and mega drop-down-menus to organize content and add interactivity.
  • Break up content into sections with subheads. Proper use of header tags that include keywords also helps improve SEO ranking.

High Quality Relevant Content 

Dwell time is the amount of time visitors spend on your website, and it can affect SEO ranking. Based on research, content between 2,000 – 2,500 words seems to rank the highest in search engine results.

Although word count does not rule the SEO world – nobody will spend time reading something that is not helpful to them – longer content does give you the opportunity to provide more value, include more keywords, incorporate more outbound links, and of course, get people to spend more time reading to increase dwell time.

Density of Keywords 

This is a very important factor you should take care off when writing content for a webpage. Always try to keep keywords usage balanced enough so that your content does not appear promotional in nature.

In addition, LSI keywords must be used with main keywords. As per Adam Smith, content manager at Thanks for The Help, “Promotional content is not liked by any user resulting in an increase of bounce rate and hence drop in rankings.”

Add numbers and stats more often 

The psychology of numbers and how they drive conversion is not new but it may be more useful than ever in an attention economy where time is precious, and the focus is rare. Numbers in titles highlighting percentages from research can leave a positive impact in readers’ minds. Here is a good example:

Image Optimization + Proper Image Size

Image Optimization includes providing better names for images related to context and keywords. Since bots are not able to understand the meaning of an image, it can only be expressed through the use of an image title or alt text. You can also use keywords in your alt tags, if they contextually relate to the page content and description. 

Many website developers ignore the importance of including proper image size on a website. Image dimension is one of the major factors in increased page size, site load time and reduced SEO scores.

Including 1024px X 768px images when the HTML design only calls for 400px X 300px images can result in a lot of overhead which is unhealthy for your website. 

Mobile friendliness 

A mobile phone is a take anywhere gadget and almost 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. This means that if your website is not mobile friendly, you are already losing half of your potential traffic.

What should you do?

First make sure your website is mobile-friendly – check your website using Google’s Mobile Friendly tool. Secondly, check your website like a real user would to make sure everything is working well and the website is pleasing to the eye.  

Have you tried Schema Markup? 

Schema markup founded by Schema.org is a form of microdata which once added to a webpage creates an enhanced description which appears in the search results. The schema is nothing but a simple marketing strategy that informs and provides contextually relevant information to your audience. Schema markup is one of the best innovations in the evolution of search engines.

Schema can be used to display rich snippets that could manipulate the mind of a consumer to choose your product over an alternative. 

Guest Blogging 

Guest blogging is experiencing an upward trend, and the whole Internet Marketing world is leaning towards it. Unbelievably, guest blogging today is the most powerful tactic available to better a website’s ranking. 

Even though honing the art of Guest blogging takes time, it will help you build relationships. All you need to be is consistent in your activities and trust the process. 

So if you want to spread your brand’s message and win the trust of your target audience, start contributing content to other blogs related to your market or niche. 

User Engagement – a Massive Ranking Factor

Any change in a search algorithm can result in a minor to massive change in rankings, but aside from algorithm changes, you should consider investing some time in user engagement. You may be surprised to learn that there are more than 26 variables inside Google’s search algorithm that are actually based on user engagement and satisfaction. 

So given the importance of user engagement, here is a great feedback plugin you can include if you are a WordPress user –  MyEffecto. 

Social Signals 

Social signals refer to a webpage’s collective shares, likes and overall social media visibility as perceived by search engines. These activities contribute to a page’s organic search ranking and are seen as another form of citation, similar to backlinks.

So much of sharing today takes place on major social media platforms, which is one reason why social signals may become as important as quality content. 

Google’s partnership with Twitter, which has resulted in tweets being added to search results is further evidence of the growing importance of social media.

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4 Proven Ways to Get Quality Backlinks that Support Your SEO Efforts https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/08/03/4-proven-ways-to-get-quality-backlinks-that-support-your-seo-efforts/ Fri, 03 Aug 2018 04:00:50 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=93861 Remember the (not so good) old days when black hat SEO “experts” used to add links to your website on various directories and create spammy content that repeated the same keyword ad nauseam? Thankfully, those days are gone. Companies that are serious about their SEO avoid spammy content and keyword stuffing at all costs and […]

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Remember the (not so good) old days when black hat SEO “experts” used to add links to your website on various directories and create spammy content that repeated the same keyword ad nauseam?

Thankfully, those days are gone.

Companies that are serious about their SEO avoid spammy content and keyword stuffing at all costs and invest in exceptional content that positions them as an authority in their field. As for backlinks, they now have to be earned, not bought for pennies.

This is exactly what I want to talk about – how to earn quality backlinks that help your website rank better.

But first, let’s take a brief look at the basics.

Why do you need backlinks?

We already know that backlinks are one of the three ranking factors that Google themselves deemed relevant.

Having Google tell us directly that backlinks matter a lot to your rankings should be enough to get you to focus on them more. 

Here’s why: Google bots consider every backlink to your website a vote of confidence. When someone else links to your content, it means they trust what you are saying. It means you are an authority in your field. So you deserve to rank higher.

Obviously, the more links pointing to your website, the higher your authority. And your ranking. Of course, the authority of the website linking to you also matters a lot. So don’t rush into getting links from any website. In fact, you should disavow the links coming from websites with poor authority.

Now let’s see how you can get those quality links the right way.

4 Tactics to get Quality Backlinks to Your Website

1. Publish GREAT content

Good doesn’t cut it anymore. Everyone publishes content, so you have to stand out from the crowd.

Great, authority content is the way to get there.

Long form blog posts are the easiest way to turn you into an authority in your field. But don’t go long form just because you have to hit a certain word count.

Write exhaustively on your topic. Offer explanations, give sources and point to other resources. Write as much as you need to write to give your readers no reason to bounce back to the results page.

But don’t go overboard. Don’t drag it for too long. You will get boring content that’s torture to read.

Producing excellent content that people want to link to is the first step to affordable SEO. 

When you hire SEO writers, make sure they are accustomed to writing for human readers and that they won’t simply stuff your content with keywords and call it a day.

Getting links on your content’s own merits is, of course, the best tactic. But you have to help your content along its internet journey.

The best of blog posts is worth nothing if no one gets to read it. So promote via ads, emails or reach out to the experts you linked to in your content to make it famous.

2. Guest blog

Write for other platforms. Share your knowledge with new audiences and get backlinks to your website at the same time. 

You are now reading a guest post. 

Writing for platforms like SiteProNews is a great way for me to establish my authority in the field, get backlinks back to my own website and even get clients. The vast majority of articles I publish as a guest blogger result in leads.

People read them, click on the link to my agency’s website and reach out to us for copywriting, social media or marketing strategy services.

If you choose your guest blogging platforms wisely, you will have nothing to lose by producing more content. But you stand to win a lot!

3. Become a source for reporters (HARO)

Don’t worry – you don’t have to witness world-changing news to become a source.

HARO is a platform that connects journalists and bloggers in every imaginable field with reliable sources. Remember those “10 experts share their views on…” articles? This is one of the ways they become reality.

The process is simple and completely free. There are also paid options on HARO, but you can always start with the basic, free one.

You sign up as a source, then wait for the first email from HARO. They typically send two per day.

Scroll down to your field of activity – you can find anything from bioengineering to gossip. You will get instructions on how to contact the journalist that needs help and details on what they need help with – a brief, if you will.

4. Reach out via email

There are two situations in which you can reach out via email to someone you’ve never met, but think they may be interested in linking to your website.

First, you saw that they mentioned your brand, but didn’t link to you. This is an opportunity you should seize immediately. 

Reach out to them, thank them for the mention, then ask if they could also link to your website to help their readers who are interested in what you do find you easily.

Secondly, you can reach out to someone who hasn’t mentioned you, but wrote about something that’s close to home.

For example, a few months ago I published a collection of 50+ websites for entrepreneurs and business owners. Since that blog post does extremely well in search engines, a lot of people have read it and send me suggestions of other websites I could add to the list.

Some suggestions come from the owners of said websites, while others are from people who genuinely love a certain website that they’re not affiliated with in any way, but would like to help make it more popular.

I sift through the proposals and accept the ones that I deem fit to make my list and reject the rest.

It’s incredibly easy to do the same for your own content.

Whatever your field of industry is, you can surely find articles that speak about products/service providers. Or articles that complement your own. Or articles that could benefit from your latest amazing infographic.

You get the drill.

It may seem like a time-consuming endeavor, but once you get the feel for what works and what doesn’t in cold emailing, it will become much easier.

Conclusions

The best way to earn quality links is to be a responsible “internet” citizen. Don’t do to others what you don’t like done to you.

Don’t comment with spammy links. Comment when it’s relevant. Try to bring some value with each comment you post and each email you send.

And, most importantly, create amazing content of your own. Give people something they want to link to.

If you need help with creating that precise kind of content – the kind that earns links easily – reach out! My team of SEO writers and I would be happy to help you!

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SEO 101: Top 7 Ranking Factors that Matter https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/07/23/seo-101-top-7-ranking-factors-that-matter/ Mon, 23 Jul 2018 04:00:04 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=93715 There are few industries more shrouded in mystery than SEO. We all know it’s not an exact science.  Any SEO ‘expert’ who tells you they know exactly how high you will rank if you use their ‘unique methods’ (and pay for them dearly, of course) is a crook. You should run as fast as you […]

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There are few industries more shrouded in mystery than SEO. We all know it’s not an exact science. 

Any SEO ‘expert’ who tells you they know exactly how high you will rank if you use their ‘unique methods’ (and pay for them dearly, of course) is a crook. You should run as fast as you can.

The truth is we need to test to see what works and what doesn’t. The Holy Grail of rankings changes from country to country and from industry to industry – to mention only two of the hundreds of factors.

But this doesn’t mean we’re flying blindly when it comes to SEO. We do have a framework. We know most of the things that help websites rank. 

How to use them and how much time to spend on each is a matter of testing. And this is exactly what we’ve been doing at Idunn in the past few years. 

We test every new theory on our own website and only then recommend it to our clients. 

While I can’t claim my team and I know everything about SEO, I can claim we have tested a few factors heavily. 

This is what we have found to work:

1. Frequent content updates

HubSpot recommends 16+ blog posts per month if you want to improve your lead generation and your traffic. That seems a bit excessive, doesn’t it?

Sure, 16 or more blog posts per month won’t hurt. Quite the opposite. But, in my experience, some companies do extremely well with two or three posts per week.

The key, however, is to update those posts when their ranking begins to drop. Similarly, web pages should be frequently updated with new content.

2. Content that answers search queries

40% of adults make a voice search per day. The rise of voice-assisted search has also changed the way we type. It has changed our reflexes.

A few years ago we would have searched for ‘house sale negotiation tactics’. Now we search for ‘how do I sell my home at a higher price’.

As content marketers, we have to adapt to this trend.

And the best way to do it is to create content that answers these type of queries.

The example above can be the very headline of a blog post. Followed by a few short bullet points, it can even get you the coveted answer box in search results or ‘position 0’.

Not sure how to find this kind of topic?

Type your target keyword in the search bar on Google. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and take a look at the related searches. This will give you a pretty good place to start.

3. E-A-T content

It’s been more than four years since we first saw the Google guidelines for content that ranks high. One of the acronyms they use to describe the ideal content to post is EAT. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. 

How do you check all these boxes in your content?

Let’s see!

  • Prove that you are an expert. List your qualifications, expertise and experience in your bio.
  • Write authority content. Authority is strongly connected to quality. Your content needs to be well-researched, thorough and well-explain.
  • Build trust on every one of your website’s pages. Testimonials, social proofs or even links to your social profiles help people get to know you better. Their trust in you grows implicitly.

Google say that E-A-T is one of the top three factors that establish a page’s rank. In case you haven’t paid enough attention to the quality of your content, it’s high time you did it.

4. Y-M-Y-L pages

Another acronym that we first learned about in the same Google document, Y-M-Y-L stands for Your Money or Your Life.

In Google’s own words:

“There are some pages for which PQ is particularly important. We call these pages Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages. They are pages that can have an impact on your current or future well being (physical, financial, safety, etc.). YMYL pages should come from reputable websites and the content should be created with a high level of expertise and authority.”

Examples of such pages include:

  • Parenthood advice
  • Pages that ask for your credit card info
  • Safety advice
  • Legal advice

How do you tackle this?

Briefly put, you ensure that your Y-M-Y-L pages are written with E-A-T in mind.

I know, too many acronyms, right?

But it’s fairly simple: pages that can affect the well being of a reader have to be on reputable websites and written by trustworthy, expert writers.

5. Number of quality links pointing to your website

Don’t do link exchanges with shady websites.

Don’t add your link to countless online directories without vetting them first.

The days when these tactics were working are (thankfully!) gone.

Instead, try to obtain quality links honestly.

First off, take a look at the points above. When your content is GREAT, people will link to it without receiving anything in return. It’s a “virtuous circle”, if you will: other bloggers know that authority content means they have to use outbound links. And they will link to your content if it’s great content.

Secondly, you can always drop a line to thought leaders you mention in your own content. They may not link back to you, but they are quite likely to at least share your post on social media.

Pro tip: focus on micro-influencers in your field. The “big guns” are already receiving tons of links every day, so they might ignore your emails.

6. Unique content

Don’t plagiarize others. That one’s obvious, right? Stealing content from other websites will get you penalties from Google.

But also don’t plagiarize yourself. Make sure every new piece of content is unique. Don’t “borrow” whole paragraphs. If you’re looking to make the same point in two different pieces of content, rephrase.

7. Content that satisfies user intent

Isn’t this the same with creating content that answers search queries?

Not really.

It’s one thing to use the right keywords and another thing to create content that truly answers readers’ questions.

How do you measure the latter?

Start by improving engagement rates. Time spent on page, low bounce rate, pages per visit and the goal conversion rate are all metrics you should be monitoring.

Next, answer the question as completely as possible. This way, the user won’t have any reason to hit the back button.

In essence, Google “rewards” content that users find satisfying. If they don’t need to go to another website to get their answers, you’re good to go.

Conclusion

Want to rank higher? Do what Google does: worry about your users’ experience and satisfaction and little else.

Go back to your buyer persona to find out what they need to read and what tone of voice they need you to use to make it easier to understand. Then take a look at the “related searches” section in Google to find out how to be truly comprehensive.

If you need help with content that checks all the boxes above and more, get in touch with me. This is precisely what my team and I specialize in.

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DIY SEO Tip… Don’t DO This! Please! https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/07/12/diy-seo-tip-dont-do-this-please/ Thu, 12 Jul 2018 04:00:53 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=93579 Local SEO 101 Some people want to manage their own website. I get that. Maybe you have had some negative experiences with outside “expertise” in this department in the past and you don’t trust anyone else to do the job now. Again, I sympathize. So if you are going to go it alone and do […]

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Local SEO 101

Some people want to manage their own website. I get that. Maybe you have had some negative experiences with outside “expertise” in this department in the past and you don’t trust anyone else to do the job now. Again, I sympathize.

So if you are going to go it alone and do your own SEO then let me lend a hand with some helpful advice. If there is one mistake that I see website owners make that pains me more than any other it is this: Buying Links

This is my advice on how to buy links. Don’t….not ever. Never, nada, no damn way. And here is why. Because this is one sure way to get your website a penalty. Unless you have been schooled in SEO and link building it is almost a guarantee that you are going to buy something harmful. It’s just the nature of what you are buying.

Guaranteed to get a Penguin Penalty

There are many places that you can buy links online, and they are going to have 5-star ratings and 300 positive reviews which appears encouraging to those who do not understand a good link from a bad one. And honestly, I could not give someone enough instruction in 100 articles like this one that would give you the knowledge to make correct choices in this regard.

So you must be wondering how these vendors get so many positive reviews for their link building service when I am warning you not to ever go there? How can people just keep buying this service and not eventually either get bad reviews and/or run out of potential customers after enough get stung by their bad links?

The answer is somewhat complex but I will simplify it by saying that SEO has a dark side. Some call it “black hat” SEO after Matt Cutts called it that in an interview once. I guess it’s a cool name.

The fact is, there are some types of web properties that you can point these kinds of “bad” links to and it is actually an effective tactic to get them to rank higher. You can point them at properties that you do not own such as your Facebook page or a Youtube video. Often this will help those pages rank higher just like a quality link can help your main website rank higher.

However, there are so many other factors besides just having a link pointing to your website than just the link itself. And these factors do not each contribute to the cause in isolation. Each factor about the link is interconnected to every other factor. For example, the anchor text of the link is a very critical element of the link. Anchor text is the words the clickable link is embedded in, meaning the word or series of words that you actually click on to move to the other website.

But again, the anchor text of the link you just acquired has to be weighed in combination with all other anchors of every other link that is pointing at your website currently. Yes…..Google looks at the entirety of all anchors pointing at your site, not just the individual one you just built. So, as you might imagine, not having access to SEO tools that can measure and scan this information is alone a serious setback to the person “ just wanting to get some links” because some SEO dude on Youtube said it would help and, after all, the guy selling them on Fiverr has 300 positive reviews and those SEO guys are so freaking expensive….I mean really…..how hard can this SEO thing be anyway????

Ah……….it’s hard enough let me tell you.

All links and all the anchor combinations of all the links pointing to your site are just one factor in this equation. The entirety of all SEO factors, as they pertain to the position that your site ranks is so far beyond the scope of this article it is laughable to think that someone from John or Jane Q Public could just spend $20 on Fiverr and replace all the time I have spent ( literally 1000’s of hours) and get the same results as any competent SEO practitioner would get with this amount of training.

It is actually not laughable since the damage I have seen it do on several occasions is quite severe and ultimately avoidable if people would, at the very least, consult with someone in my field before proceeding down the road to link building disaster.

But people like to save money. If only it were this simple!

But I sympathize. It is hard to trust something that is little understood. Not to mention there are no central authorities that train or license those in the SEO field that you can call and no diplomas on the wall to create some trust for those who pay for our services either. That’s a tough situation.

My advice…..use some common sense first. If you are thinking about either doing your own SEO vs not doing it at all….. don’t do it at all. Seriously. It was one of the hardest things I ever learned and it is still ever evolving and I am having to learn new aspects of it every week. A business owner is far better off to concentrate on their craft and earn the money to hire a pro than create an even bigger mess for that pro to have to inevitably clean up after the damage is done.

In fact, I know people in my field that won’t even take on someone who has messed up their site with bad links because it is so much of a setback to future progress and you can only guess who gets blamed when things don’t go perfectly in the cleanup phase when the White Night SEO Squad comes in with all their link detox tools to the rescue.

It’s just a whole lot easier to go get a client without that kind of baggage. This is why the people who specialize in fixing these kinds of link building disasters are so damned expensive. Trust me…some of them are $2000 just to do the analysis before they even agree to do the job. Personally, I hire the job out to people who specialize in fixing these kinds of problems. They are more qualified to do the job. This should be a clue to website owners who want to DIY their way to the top. I am wise enough to hire my betters even though I could probably do a link cleanup gig just fine. I know when not to!

So what does a website owner do to assure they are hiring someone who is competent in the SEO field?

1) Ask them for a few references. It’s common in many fields and if an SEO person doesn’t have a few people that you can talk to regarding their success then they are not very smart business people. It’s kind of standard practice in any field where trust is hard to come by via traditional standards like credentials and licenses. Not that diplomas and pieces of stamped government paper are any kind of guarantee mind you. They are illusory comfort elements at best.

2) Ask them to do some small tasks for small money and see how they treat you during this time. Get them to build out a few social profiles or a Google My Business page for $30 and see what kind of job they do. Get them to do a small on-screen video showing the steps they took while they explain each step to you. You will get a feel for their attitude and skill level through this.

Really, you are going to have to narrow down the choice of who to hire for this job and eventually make a leap of faith over the void of uncertainty which will inevitably be awaiting you near the decision point. You can never remove all risk from a decision like this. You just have to remove as many risk variables as humanly possible.

3) So now that I have seemingly told you not to do your own SEO let me tell you some things that you can do as a website owner.

Do your on-page SEO. Make sure your site title is filled out fully and don’t repeat your business name in the title. This is a waste of an opportunity to place a keyword or phrase in the title. This is a strong cue to Google as to what you want to rank for. If your business is plumbing in Chicago then you may want to make your site title ” Plumbers Chicago | Chicago Plumbing Contractors ” so as to take advantage of that search. So often I do an analysis of a potential client and find that their website name is joesplumbing.ca and their site title is Joe’s Plumbing. Such a waste of an opportunity.

I have started with clients that are stuck on page 2 for all their keywords, changed their site title to a keyword phrase and within a week they pop up to the bottom of page 1. Amazing what a simple change can make sometimes.

Build your citations. Citations are free directories that you can use to put your name, address, and phone number plus a naked URL link to your website. They are critical for ranking in the Google Map Pack. They are a small pain in the ass to fill out and a bit time consuming but they are worth your time. Make sure your name, address and phone # are identical to your Google My Business page info. How do you find your citations? Simply place your competition’s web address in a search query like this “competitor.com” and look at the search results for their citations. The top ranking competitors will most assuredly have filled out citations.

Build out your social profiles. Obviously, you should already have a youtube channel, Facebook Page, Pinterest, Linkedin, and Twitter but there are many other lesser known social profiles that you can fill out that also lend authority to your web domain. You can go to “knowem.com” and find a list of available sites there. There are literally hundreds of these available to you. This is a standard part of the service we provide for our clients.

Build up some videos of some aspect of your business and put them on Youtube. I know, I know….. you are camera shy. Tough…. If you want to be successful then suck it up and get the camera rolling. If, for example, you are an HVAC pro, do a few videos of yourself on the job and talk about what problem you are solving as you work at the task. You will probably be thinking through the steps as you work anyway so just speak them out as if you are teaching an apprentice and record that. You could probably do 20 of these little 2-5 minute videos in a week and put them on Youtube. You would be amazed how many people I know in various industries that have pulled in business with Youtube. And it’s FREE!!!!!

Facebook….don’t waste your time. Facebook has become the domain of advertising and that’s the final word on that. Spend your time elsewhere.

These tasks will keep you busy for a while and in many cases, will bring you some results. If you are in a competitive niche, then don’t expect massive success. You will need a pro for that.

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What Is the Ideal Blog Post Length from an SEO Perspective? https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/07/11/what-is-the-ideal-blog-post-length-from-an-seo-perspective/ Wed, 11 Jul 2018 04:00:07 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=93560 This is one of the most frequently searched, asked and debated questions in SEO content writing.  How long is long enough for a blog post? Remember the not-so-good old days when a 300-word blog post was the norm? And it had to be stuffed with keywords to ‘work’? Luckily, those days are behind us now.  […]

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This is one of the most frequently searched, asked and debated questions in SEO content writing. 

How long is long enough for a blog post?

Remember the not-so-good old days when a 300-word blog post was the norm? And it had to be stuffed with keywords to ‘work’?

Luckily, those days are behind us now. 

Search engines are smarter and they penalize blog posts that add little or no value for the reader.

But how is this connected to blog post length? Can’t you get value from a 300-word blog post? 

Of course you can!

Seth Godin is an excellent example for making a great impact with very short blog posts. But, to be honest, Seth Godin doesn’t need to be found in search engines. 

People know him. So he can write as much or as little as he pleases.

If you’re not Seth Godin, read on and find out what the ideal length of a blog post is from an SEO perspective.

Let’s take a look at the context first.

Ranking factors and user experience

There are hundreds of ranking factors. No one can name them all or tell you the exact order in which they matter.

What we do know for sure is that user experience is one of the most important ones.

And so is the length of the text.

In fact, there is a correlation between them.

Write too much on a topic and the user will get bored and walk away from your website. This will increase your bounce rate and lower your average time spent on page – both of them ranking factors.

Write too little on a topic and the user will go elsewhere to look for the info that’s missing from your blog post. You get the same results as above.

Speaking of user experience, we all know that attention spans get shorter by the day. 

Does this mean we should keep things short and sweet?

Not really.

There are people who want to read a lot on a certain topic because they want to learn all about it. You can’t cover the basics of SEO in 200 words now, can you?

So what’s the magic number?

Sadly, there is no one-size-fits-all for this question.

As the owner of a digital marketing agency that offers SEO content writing services to its clients, I, too get asked a lot about the ideal length of a blog post.

To answer it, I look at two very important metrics:

  1. Who is the target audience made up of
  2. How many words do you need to explain a topic thoroughly

As you can imagine, both of these metrics vary from industry to industry.

Let’s see what the statistics are saying on this matter.

Numbers don’t lie…or do they?

A study from 2016 says that the average length of a blog post that ranks in the first page is 1,900 words.

Moz says that the average length of the first 10 results is more than 2,000 words.

In fact, most research points to that number – 2,000 words. For the clients at my agency, I have discovered the same thing – posts over 2,000 do great in SERPs.

On my agency’s blog on digital marketing, the length varies between 500 words (in our early days) to 5,000 words for comprehensive guides. Most of our blog posts are around 2,000 words, as well. Still, we have the occasional blog post that’s barely 1,000 words or that barely hits 1,500 words.

But that’s not because of the numbers above.

We all look at studies and statistics to get an idea of where to start. But we also know that numbers can be easily manipulated.

For instance, when our clients ask about post length, I could tell them they should always write as much as possible. This means we would get paid more.

However, the clients that stayed with us for more than three years didn’t do so because we gave them advice that benefits us, not them. They stayed because we got results for them.

And, in order to get results, you should only look at the stats to give you a starting point. Fill in the blanks yourself.

Here’s how.

Go beyond the numbers

If you set out to hit a certain word count for every blog post you’re missing the point of SEO entirely.

Your goal shouldn’t be to ‘trick’ search engines. It should be to offer the best possible content on a certain topic. 

No one is going to read a 3,000-word review of running shoes. 

But they just might read ten 300-word reviews of different types of running shoes.

On the other hand, a comprehensive real estate guide needs more than 300 words to help the potential buyer make a decision.

You get the point.

My go-to strategy for being comprehensive enough to make both Google and readers happy has two simple steps:

  1. Map out the content before writing a single word. Jot down the main points you need to focus on.
  2. Write naturally and trim down any unnecessary words. Stop when you feel you have nothing useful left to say, irrespective of what the word count is at that point.

That’s it!

Conclusion

Search engines aren’t trying to punish you by updating algorithms and changing the rules of the SEO game frequently. In fact, they are trying to do the same thing you are – offer users a better experience and more relevant results.

Focus on that instead of counting words and you’ll see your rankings soar.

And, if you need help with SEO content writing that hooks your readers and helps your rankings, my team and I can help. Check out our copywriting and content writing services and let’s talk!

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