Seo Knowledge: 2016

Friday 11 March 2016

Importance of Site Speed in SEO Efforts : A SEO Technique

Importance of Site Speed in SEO Efforts

There are many search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that bloggers and website owners could apply to be able to improve page ranking and make websites known to a wider audience. One of the things you must not overlook when doing SEO is ensuring that your web site has decent site speed. Why is site speed important and what can you do to improve yours?

Poor Load Time Affects Readability

Google includes site speed as one of the so-called “signals” in its page ranking algorithms, although it “doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page.” According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, there’s currently less than 1% of search queries that are affected by the site speed signal.

Relevance is what drives online users, upon landing on your page, to want to know more about what your website offers, to navigate deeper into your website pages. However, if it takes too much time to load your site, then all the hard work you put in producing relevant content would be wasted.
Negative Impact for Your Website Ranking

According to an article from Moz.com, poor site speed could negatively hurt your page ranking if your pages take a dreadful amount of time to load. It’s something that could hit you if for instance, your relevancy scores and link metrics are pretty close to that of your competitors’.

Enhanced User Experience

It’s true that the negative effect of slow site speed to your page ranking is minimal and presents no serious cause of alarm, but you might be missing out on chances of further improving your rank if you don’t optimise the speed of your site.

Google, as we know, aims to provide the best experience to online users by constantly fine-tuning its search engine results pages—awarding higher ranking to reputable sites and “punishing” those that try to spam online users. Focus on improving your on-site processes, as much as you implement off-site SEO techniques, and you can bet that Google, and your readers, will surely love you.

Improving Site Speed
Smaller websites usually are easier to optimise for site speed. There are many tools you can use for improving site speed, many of them, Google itself provided. To optimise the loading time and response rates of your pages, you may also try the following basic fixes:

The problem with your site could be not the site speed itself, but your Internet accessibility. Make sure you have fast internet connection and if that still doesn’t improve the speed by which your pages load, then you need to make some on-site adjustments.

Combine all of your CSS into an external file and link to it from the <head> section of each page rather than loading it in the HTML of a page.

Make sure your images are optimised for the web.

Reduce HTTP Requests so the pages will load faster. Do this by reducing the number of items needed to be loaded for each page such as images, scripts, and style sheets.

Combines images used in the background into one image, by using CSS sprites.

Server side caching should be used since it creates an HTML page for a URL.

Use Gzip to compress the size of the page sent to the browser. It can also reduce the file size by up to 70%.

Use a content delivery network (CDN) system so that users can download information from your site faster. Use services like Amazon CloudFront, which is an affordable type of CDN.

301 Redirects force the browser to a new URL. This requires the browser to wait for the HTTP request, slowind down your site. Lessen its use or don’t use it if possible.

Use webmaster tools for tweaking your site speed such as YSLOW and the HTML suggestions in Google Webmaster Tools.

Keyword Planner has replaced Keyword Tool

With Keyword Planner, we've combined the functionality of Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator to make it easier to plan search campaigns. That's why Keyword Tool is no longer available. You can use Keyword Planner to find new keyword and ad group ideas, get performance estimates for them to find the bid and budget that are right for you, and then add them to your campaigns.

Note
The external Keyword Tool is also no longer available. If you want to get keyword ideas using Keyword Planner, make sure to sign in to your AdWords account.

We've also added several new features with Keyword Planner. As you start to use Keyword Planner, you'll likely notice some differences between Keyword Planner and Keyword Tool. Read on to learn more about what has changed.

No match type data for search volume

With Keyword Tool, we showed you broad match statistics by default with the ability to get data for other match types, like phrase and exact match. But with Keyword Planner, you'll get historical statistics only for exact match. To decide what match type to use, add the keyword idea to your plan and review the traffic estimates for each match type. This change will help you get an accurate estimate of how much traffic you can expect to get with different match types. There’s quite a bit of overlap between broad and phrase match keywords, and the search volume statistic in Keyword Tool didn't take that overlap into account. Traffic estimates like click and cost do take this overlap into account, so checking those can help you decide which match type to use.

For example, let's say your keyword is dark chocolate. If you want to check that keyword's average monthly searches, we'll show you the same stats whether you use a broad, phrase, or exact match type with dark chocolate. Traffic estimates like clicks and cost, on the other hand, do take into account keyword match types. For example, if you get estimates for a list of broad match keywords, we'll take into account any overlap between those keywords.

No device targeting

Keyword Planner doesn’t let you specifically target mobile devices, like tablets and mobile phones. By default, it targets all devices, which is in line with recent changes made to AdWords campaigns. We’re working on a feature that’ll allow you to get traffic estimates by device type and set bid adjustments for mobile devices.

Note::::::::::

In general, you'll notice that the average search volume data is higher in Keyword Planner as compared to the exact match search volume data you got with Keyword Tool. That's because we'll show you the average number of searches for a keyword idea on all devices (desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and mobile phones). With Keyword Tool, we showed you average search volume for desktop and laptop computers by default.

Other changes in the data columns

In Keyword Planner, you'll notice several different data columns than those that you were used to seeing in Keyword Tool. Here are the differences:

Local monthly searches and global monthly searches: These two columns have been replaced by the "Average monthly searches" column, simplifying the search volume data you can get. The average monthly search volume is specific to your targeting settings, and you can get data for an entire country or individual cities and regions within a country. Note that you can still get global monthly search data by targeting all locations.

Ad share: This column is being replaced with a new column called ad impression share to help you look for potential impressions.

Google Search Network: This column has been replaced by the network option within the targeting settings. To get data for the entire Search Network, select the "Google and search partners" targeting option.
Search share: This column has been retired.

Approx. CPC (Search): This column has been replaced by the "Avg. CPC" column. You'll get more accurate data in the average cost-per-click column than you did in the approximate cost-per-click column.
Local search trends: This column doesn't appear in the Keyword Planner interface. However, you can still get search volume trends by hovering over the icon in the "Avg. monthly searches" column. You can also see these trends segmented by month when you download your historical statistics from Keyword Planner.

Extracted from webpage: This column has been removed from the Keyword Planner interface. However, you can still get the webpage the keyword idea came from when you download your historical statistics from Keyword Planner. Note that you'll only get this data when you search for keyword and ad group ideas based on a URL, like a webpage on your website.

Next steps

Learn how to use Keyword Planner.

Get more details about the historical statistics and performance estimates you can get with Keyword Planner.
Keywords
Using Keyword Planner to get keyword ideas and traffic estimates
Understanding your Keyword Planner statistics and traffic estimates
Keyword Planner has replaced
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4 Reasons to Spend More on SEO

Google has made dramatic changes in 2013, with the May 22 Penguin update having the biggest impact for small business websites. After some severe reductions in traffic, some webmasters are at least seeing traffic increases in August due, in part, to a Panda softening from Google.
In response, many webmasters are making big shifts in SEO tactics. While long overdue, this is the right move.

Few businesses are looking to move to lower quality SEO services as they now fear Google more than ever. But small businesses run very close to the margin and traditionally resist increasing the SEO budget, regardless of the consequences. Here are four reasons why small business owners should reconsider.

1. Google Asked You To

While many will dismiss this as PR, Google has clearly communicated that they no longer will tolerate SEO tactics that used to work in 2008. Article spinning, keyword stuffing, excessive bookmarks, reborn domains, paid links, thin content, and duplicate content are all not OK.
Even if you haven't received an unnatural link warning, the writing is on the wall. Quality must increase for continued success in SEO. While this message is clearly self-serving for Google, it's important to respect their power in the industry.

2. Recovering From Google Updates is Expensive

There are plenty of websites that have partially recovered from Penguin downgrades, but each case is different. The level of returning traffic varies.
Technical issues on-site are the easiest to fix and should be addressed quickly using Webmaster Tools as the guide. Duplicate content needs to be removed immediately.
Keyword-stuffed titles need to be edited. Thin content, a favorite among many, should be replaced with real content marketing.

Off-site issues, such as bad link building, are particularly hard to fix. It is very ironic that firms now exist to send "link removal request" emails to other firms who were previously retained to build those links.
Small business needs to stop doing bad link building and embrace content marketing. They need to get creative and experiment with newsjacking.

All of these activities cost money. Smart business owners are thinking toward the future and deciding to spend more on SEO now (via higher quality services) to avoid repeating this activity in 2014.

3. SEO Has Merged With Marketing

Many small business webmasters were using a "set-it-and-forget-it" SEO strategy, believing that they need not worry about SEO after hiring a firm. This violates one of the major tenets of business process outsourcing, which is to outsource process and execution, but maintain strict performance monitoring and accountability.

It isn't surprising that many small businesses are feeling buyer's remorse, wishing they had done greater due-diligence in the vendor selection process and better understood the risks associated with SEO.
It should be clear at this point that SEO is no longer a technical exercise and is rapidly merging with marketing and public relations. Smart CEOs recognize the strategic importance of SEO in our digital world. For this reason, they find ways to amplify SEO in allmarketing activities. Ironically, many companies have SEO opportunities they don't harness.

For example, every employee should maintain a "work" Twitter account and share industry news, blog posts and company specials to help spread content. This type of integrated SEO marketing execution is the future, and will draw more budget dollars.

4. SEO ROI Remains High

The data suggests that SEO is still a great investment. This means that small business shouldn't necessarily shop for the cheapest SEO vendor, but consider the return they can make on their money if they spend more:

SEO remains a very high ROI activity.
The cost-per-lead for SEO is still very attractive.
Google has significantly tightened the requirements for high-quality SEO.
Integrated marketing strategies have big efficiencies.

Conclusions

All technologies and industries mature, and price-points typically change dramatically along the way. SEO is following the same playbook as most other young industries.

In the last few years we have seen SEO move from infancy to adolescence, with the Google algorithm updates as mileposts. While SEO will become more difficult and expensive to execute, the return on investment remains high for small business. In the end, ROI is more important than the absolute number of a budget line item.

Advantages and Benefits of Hiring SEO Company

There are lots of Advantages and Benefits of Hiring SEO Company for your own business or services which you are offering to your clients.

See, If one does not have enough knowledge about SEO and he/she themselves take any decision to promote their website in Google then there are highest chances to miss important aspects which may break company’s growth in this high competitive business environment.

Let’s see few Benefits and Advantages of Hiring SEO Company…

- Fully Dedicated Team

- Perfect SEO Plan

- Point to Point SEO Strategy

- Dynamic SEO Changes as per Search Engine Algorithm

- Research of Keywords for Advance Next Gen Business.

These are the main Benefits and Advantages of Hiring SEO Company for your corporate business. Again Hiring SEO Company, will deduct your burden of inhouse SEO which may take more time and less output.

If you are in search of Hiring any SEO Company then you must check above quality in all available options of SEO Companies from which you are going to choose a final one…

Is there any SEO Company in Gujarat ? ?

Yes of course… there are lots of SEO companies in Gujarat. While searching for SEO Company it’s equally important, you make sure about the quality of service it offers.

There are so many companies that do black hat SEO activities which may drop off your ranking and also there are chances to lose visibility from Google. Black hat activates may give fast results so, for the short time you can get benefit but for long time it can diminish your business. So while choosing SEO company, be careful by selecting the SEO company that follows ethical activities and Google standards.

Benefits of choosing SEO company in Gujarat:

    - Affordable rates
    - Guaranteed results
    - Timeliness
    - 24/7 availability

We The Developers – one of the leading SEO companies in Gujarat offers Guaranteed Google Page 1 Ranking service at a very affordable rate. Hurry !!! Take the advantage and give your business a new dimension …
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Google May Be Updating Their Algorithm But They Won’t Confirm It

Many SEOs and webmasters were complaining that their rankings in the Google search results have declined drastically. In addition, many sent me images of their analytics, showing a clear significant drop in traffic from the Google organic source.

I asked Google about both these updates, and for each one, they said they have “nothing to announce.” Meaning, they won’t confirm if there was or was not an update.

We can confirm that the various search results monitoring tools, such as Mozcast, SERPs.com, SERP Metrics and Algoroo all showed volatility on August 21st. Since the September 4th chatter began this morning, we will have to wait for tomorrow to see if the tools show activity for today (the tools are about 24 hours delayed).

Although, there are hundreds of comments on the August 21st post and well over fifty comments on the September 4th post in less than seven hours.

Google does not always confirm updates but we think you should be aware that on August 21st and September 4th, there was enough noise to report to you that Google may have done some sort of algorithmic update.

For more info on the more popular Google updates, see our Google Panda and Google Penguin categories.

5 Tips on Dealing With Small Budget Search Clients

I've been working in online marketing for nearly 10 years now. My experience has ranged from being both in-house and agency side as well as running my own freelance company. Today I run an agency (with other people too) with offices in two countries.

One thing this varied experience has done for me has given me insight into clients who have budgets from $400 per month all the way up to in excess of $40,000 per month. You learn a lot about client relations from both budget spectrums, however, I have found that the smaller the budget, the higher the proportion of maintenance that the client requires (from my experience).

Here are some potential issues you may encounter with small budget clients and solutions for managing expectations from the outset.

For this post, let's assume that "the client" is a new lead that has come in and has a budget of $500 per month. Let's also assume that the client is a "one man band" (up to 5 people), is less than 2 years old, and has no other marketing budget set aside.
1. Expectations of Hours Spent
When I was a freelancer much earlier on in my career I said yes to pretty much any job that fell in my lap. While this was great at the beginning, over time I found that I was working too much in proportion to what my client was paying. As it was early in my career, I was perfectly willing to work extra hours to ensure client retention. But eventually there came a point where it was too much.

Solution

Create an hourly rate and stick to it, even before any contract is signed. Here, the client has $500 to spend each month and you have to consider any outgoings you may have attached to that budget. An example would be to charge $75 per hour, giving you 6 hours of work per month plus $50 to spend.

This expectation may not please your client as that $500 is important to him/her. Six hours may not sound like a lot, but this has to be fair on you too. For $500 the client can't expect a "virtual member of staff" who is on call to answer everything at any point – especially if your hours are fulfilled. The client has to remember that you will have many clients just like him/her, and that they too will have their own expectations.

2. Managing Those Limited Hours Wisely
The term "SEO" is now only part and parcel of a general online marketing strategy that requires work on various aspects, including on-site, content, outreach, CRO, analytical research, social media integration, and reporting. For that $500, you will have to manage this each month to ensure that they have the best quality work done with consideration of that budget, noting that month-on-month you will have to concentrate on different things.

Solution

Each month you will have to set out how much time you want to spend on each task. You can make it slightly easier using a project management document to ensure everything is organized for all clients. Luckily I have created a free project management template for Google Drive which can help you with this.

One thing to note: the client should always be informed of your plans ahead of time as their priorities may not match your own. Concentrate more perhaps on converting visitors rather than sacrificing the majority of your time with outreach.
3. Sacrificing or Simplifying 'Non-Essential' Tasks
Managing those hours may still be tight for you. If you're faced with a task that could potentially take 2 hours to complete, you should seriously consider if there is a way to compress it into a one hour task without loss of quality to the client.

Solution

Create an extremely simple report containing limited data that will, in effect, reduce the time it takes you to produce it. One tip here would be to include less commentary or create a streamlined Google Analytics Dashboard for your client to view that can give them up-to-date information without you having to produce another section about analytics in your report.

Something else to consider is logging the work you do. Trello and Toggl will help you out with this, but having to report on every minute detail of your work is inefficient and has no real value to anyone when the general budget is small – there's no need to log every email you send just for the sake of the client if you're organized enough.
Agree on KPIs
You need to understand the client's business from the outset. The client is investing a lot in you despite having no guarantees of any ROI – SEO is something that can't be measured or forecasted with precision (especially with low budgets), and SEO takes quite a few months to see real results.

However, you still need to decide on what these key performance indicators (KPIs) are and you need to ensure that the client understands that short tail is pretty much impossible unless their short tail keyword targets is a general long tail.

Solution

Let's say that the client is an accountant. You need to ensure that you know what their average client makes for them as one client may make them $2,000 per annum (assuming that the client keeps them year-on-year).
I would also advise to have an agreement of no less than 6 months so that the client understands that no work you do will show any real effect for at least 3 months and that you will need months 4, 5 and 6 to analyze results and prove you have fulfilled your agreed KPIs.
Try to Increase Budgets over Time
Let's say that 6 months have now passed and you've fulfilled the KPIs you agreed at the beginning of the contract. The client may insist that no ROI has been generated, however, you must refer back to your agreed KPIs – if you fulfilled them, then you did your job correctly. Of course, KPIs will be connected to ROI, but sometimes the work you do is only so much.

Using the accountant as a client example again, one KPI would be that you need to increase conversions where a conversion would be defined as an email form completion or telephone call. Once that email is sent or call is placed you have no control as to whether that conversion will turn from a lead into a client for many reasons – the client may not be able to service that lead as intended, there may be a seasonal slump, or the salesman answering the calls and emails may not be good him/herself at converting leads.

Solution

Translate to the client, and be clear, that fulfilling KPIs and ROI aren't always the same thing and ROI is something you can't solely control and therefore can't be held to it to decide on any renewal.

You may also want to suggest (if your first 6 months can prove it) that their budget needs to be increased to show more significant results. The client may always say that they intend to increase their budget, but until they actually do it, they simply won't receive what they expect to receive.

How to Target Multiple Cities with Your SEO

When operating a local business, it is rather easy to garner traffic to a website. When operating throughout multiple cities or wanting to reach those audiences, however, it becomes a bit more difficult to effectively target each location. Nevertheless, there are plenty of search engine optimization strategies that can be utilized to get your business the attention it deserves in more than one city. We will outline a few basic tricks that you can use to begin having your site or business appear in search results in any and every city you wish to target.

Create Separate Pages

Search engine experiments show us that you can only effectively optimize any given page for three to four locations before “overdoing it”. Generally speaking, we are referring to minor and major metropolitan areas; targeting micro-communities within the same metropolitan area can be done rather effectively from one central page. By these standards, a business offering services or products in Los Angeles, New York City, London and Tokyo would want to create separate optimized pages for each locale. Similarly, smaller cities within a state or region may need this approach as well. This helps search engines and gives them the impression that you are not trying to “stuff” the search results.

Use Maps

One of the best ways to optimize your page’s location reputation is by using an embedded map that shows the location you serve or the building from which you operate. Google Maps is excellent and obviously works well with its fellow search engine algorithms. You can easily embed a map of any location by searching for it via Google Maps, clicking the ‘Link’ icon in the upper-right hand corner, followed by copying and pasting the selected HTML code into any part of your web page. This not only shows customers where you are, but also lets search engine spiders and bots know as well.

Try Out Some Keywords

Implementing a variety of different keywords and phrases into each locale’s page design is vital to improving the likelihood that search engines are going to view you favorably. We recommend sticking to 2-3 phrases per page so that it does not appear that you are attempting to circumvent the algorithms set forth by Google, Bing and others. If you are struggling for keyword and phrase ideas, try using Pingler’s Keyword Suggestion Generator, which takes a phrase or words that you put in and suggests alternative keyword and phrase ideas.

Use Google Places

Google Places is a great way to garner attention for your site or business at the local level and is quite simple to setup. All you need is a Google account associated with your website to begin. You can target a specific location and provide the contact information or address of the establishment which will then be reflected in search results for a variety of phrases. When people search for “[specific type of business][city]”, your site will be reflected in Google Places’ results. Google Places is fairly well indexed alongside regular Google algorithms, so the better you perform in the search engine, the higher spot your business or site will have in Places.

Wednesday 9 March 2016

8 Ways to increase the Relative Traffic of your site

High volume of traffic is not the key, if the user bounces, your website has probably failed. Driving relative traffic to your site is vital for your Business. Have in mind that only 0.5% to 8% of the traffic is converted in to sale. The average is around 3.5%.

You want traffic or sales? Consider the quality vs. quantity of your visits and plan your next step.

In order to achieve your targets you need to:

Lower your Bounce Rate
Get more Relative Traffic in your site
Convert this traffic into sale

In this article we will study 8 simple ways to increase your Traffic:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Start an SEO campaign to promote your site in the Organic Results of search engines. Find the current SEO Status of your site by creating a full Web SEO Analysis.

The structure and the content of your website is the key factor of your Search Engines performance, keep it clear, valid and friendly to the users and to the Search Engines as well. Based on the results of the report consider doing the following: Redesign your site in order to make it search engine friendly, make a keyword analysis for your web pages and optimize them for the correct keywords, build quality links with the correct anchor text and submit your site in all the major search engines. Remember that Search Engine Optimization equals quality content and not tricks, black hats or magic.

If you need a strategic plan don’t hesitate to search for a reliable consulting from a professional SEO agency.

2. Link Strategies:

Having quality links is the Alpha and the Omega but it is not an easy task. Note that the reason why someone links to your website is the quality of your content. High PageRank links with relative to your content keywords can affect your Ranking in search engines and bring lots of Relative Traffic to your site. You can start by submitting your site to directories and portals. Then ask from other professionals to link to your site. Try to avoid Link-farms. Use our site submitter tool to get some extra links.

3. Write about your site

Create a blog and communicate with other bloggers to write about your site, submit your news in forums and inform the users for products or services that might find interesting.

Also keep in mind that submitting Articles and Press releases is something worth doing.

4. E-mail Marketing

Email Marketing can bring to your site traffic with minimal cost. Buy or download a free newsletter tool and send newsletters to your clients informing them about new services, products or special offers.

Add a form in your site in order to collect email addresses from the people that want to get your newsletters.

Additionally you can setup an E-mail application and use E-mail signatures.

It is not advisable to start buying mail lists, avoid spamming your users at all costs.

5. Social Media

Be part of the discussion around the globe using the social networks. Open an account or a page about your company in Facebook. Create an attractive Facebook application. Build embassies in various social networks and get feedback of your online presence and increase your publicity in terms of awareness and website traffic. Become a member in social networks, start writing on Twitter etc. Social Bookmarking can bring lots of traffic to your site. Place in all of your pages a Javascript Bookmark button. You should check the number of bookmarks that your pages receive by using our Bookmark Tool.

6. Paid Traffic

Start a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign on the important keywords of your site. You can use the services of Google (Google Adwords) or Microsoft’s Adcenter. Also you can place ad banners in high traffic websites. Be extra careful with the bidding management in order to save money instead of losing. Ask an advice from an online marketing agency and avoid any wrong moves.

7. Traditional Strategies

Print your website on your business cards and envelops. Promote your site by using the traditional media (Radio, Newspaper, Television, outdoor etc)

8. The success mix

Combine all the ways above in order to achieve maximum results. Give a boost to your website performance by running an interactive campaign using social networks and other media to send your message to the desired groups. Get connected with your consumers, listen to their needs and return solutions. Offer quality, freshness, innovation and a chance to involve the clients with your business.

Personalization

Personalization has been a part of Google’s search results for years, but it’s become more important now and will be in 2016. There’s no question that Google is a powerhouse for data analytics, mining, and optimization. Personalization occurs when the search engine user is logged in. Some marketers don’t realize that it’s also a part of incognito searches.

Personalization is the term given to search query results relative to certain information obtained from the user. This can be an IP address, geographic location, and previous searches. When a user logs in to Google, Google takes much of the user’s previous activity into consideration when displaying results. Even using different browsers can have various search engine results.

You can try it out for yourself. Do a search while logged in and then perform a search while logged out. If you have the capability, perform a search from a different IP in another country. You’ll notice completely different results. The reason behind this is that Google wants to give the user the most relevant results.

SEOs need to take this data element into consideration when analyzing search results and rank. It can also be used as an advantage. If you rank well for one query, you can rank well for others. One part of personalization is that Google ranks a site more prominently if the user continues to click on the same site for various queries. If Google believes that the user prefers your site from other queries, it’s possible that your site will rank due to personalization for other queries.

There isn’t much to wrap up with personalization, but it’s an important part of Google’s AI. Always consider this factor when performing keyword analysis or doing any research for your brand.

When doing your research, consider these factors for personalization:

    The user’s location and search history make a difference in ranking
    Even a different browser can change the way search results are shown
    Third-party analytics software must use different proxies to see results from different Google top-level domains, but they still can’t take user personalization into account
    Engaging users and creating campaigns that help them remember your brand will increase your rank even within personalized results

Did we cover everything? Not even close. The days of understanding and gaming Google are for the most part behind us. In 2016 and forward, adhering to the fundamental SEO practices that have worked for years and integrating those with new media delivery platforms is going to be the recipe for success.

Tuesday 8 March 2016

Mobile and Search

SEO-termed “mobilegeddon” was this year and 2016 promises to be more competitive in mobile searches and even app development. Mobile continues to be a dominant force in Internet traffic, and Google has put more pressure on site owners to make their sites mobile friendly. Google announced that it made mobile friendliness a part of its algorithm ranking for mobile queries. With mobile such a dominant search force, site owners are doing themselves a disservice by ignoring this directive.

The benefit to site owners of going mobile friendly is Google’s deep linking. Site owners who build mobile apps for their site and products can publish the app online and have it show in mobile queries. For instance, do a search for Pinterest on your mobile device. A few search URLs down the list and you’ll find the Pinterest app. Above the app link is the actual site itself, so the mobile app link is prominent against other ranking URLs.

This phenomenon also occurs for search queries unrelated to brand searches, and it’s still a relatively untapped market. There are plenty of big brands using mobile apps in search as a marketing tactic, but many small businesses are still unaware of this benefit. This marketing strategy should always be combined with good analytics and tracking. Track where users are coming from, where they engage with your app, how they find your app, and most of all – watch your apps reviews in the app stores.

A new type of optimization has been developed for mobile app development. App Store Optimization (ASO) is a form of SEO for apps. Combine ASO with brand presence, and you can drive traffic just from having links and keyword directly in your Google Play apps.

Mobile app development is still new for smaller, local store owners. But it can greatly improve visibility and potential customers. Some points to remember:

Google searches links and content within the app, so optimize them for search and users

Use responsive web design to allow desktop and mobile users to view your site regardless of screen size

Add links to your mobile app on your site

Always publish the app in the Apple and Google Play stores (or at least one of them)

Test your responsive site to ensure it meets mobile quality guidelines – this can be done through Google PageSpeed Insights

Ecommerce

Ecommerce is one of the most competitive areas on the Internet. It’s no longer enough to use a template site, throw some products up with a few unique sentences, and do a little SEO to rank well. The big brands dominate the organic search results. Between small shops and big brands, it makes it even more difficult for a local store or even a startup to compete.

The good news is that you no longer need to compete directly with these brands. You can use them to rank your sites and gain visibility with potential traffic. Take Amazon for instance. Amazon is actually a Google competitor, because 44% of consumer searches start directly at Amazon. Amazon has become its own ecommerce search engine.

Amazon allows you to set up shop, sell your products, and you can even ship product to their warehouses and use their Prime Membership benefits. This leverages Amazon’s domination for your own search engine benefits. The next time a search user performs a query for your product, they could land on your Amazon sales page.

YouTube can be used in a similar way. YouTube gets millions of searches a day, and it’s a central point for video content. Site owners can leverage YouTube by uploading How-Tos and Tutorial style content that helps users better understand their products. These videos then link back to the brand and the site, which then brings more visibility to the site.

Indirect marketing is key in 2016. Instead of blasting links, articles and social media directly to a site, the new goal is to leverage dominate sites to rank the brand site.

Other beneficial SEO methods are rich snippets, reviews, and PPC campaigns.

Ecommerce site owners should:

Do competitor analysis to see what big brands currently rank for search queries
Leverage big brands for your own brand visibility and sales
Always keep content unique and optimized for sales and engagement
Use YouTube to gain visibility through How-To and Tutorials

Link Building in 2016

Let’s start off with a hot topic – link building. Link building has become the red-headed stepchild of the SEO world. Everyone does it, but no one wants to admit it. Link building has become more of an issue in 2012 when Google released the Penguin algorithm. It continued to make iterative updates once or twice a year, and any SEOs caught buying links were caught in its filters. At work, the site owner received manual action that indicated that Google had reviewed the site and found that it was buying links.

After Penguin, you’ll hear many SEOs claim that link building is dead. Link building isn’t dead – it’s evolved. Instead of automating the process with directory links and article submissions, SEOs must look for opportunities within networks, brand recognition content, social signals, and content research.

Another change to link building has been anchor text and PageRank. Toolbar PR is no longer updated, so SEOs are unable to identify the true PR for any web page. Moz’s Domain Authority is often used to evaluate the value of a backlink from any particular site. In 2012, Google filed a patent that was later approved in 2014 for algorithm technology that identifies implied link. An implied link is a link that only mentions the site but does not have the hyperlinked code. This type of link still passes reputation of the brand, and some SEOs assume that this implies that no-follow links still count positively in link building.

When building a link campaign, it’s important to:

Identify targets that will help build a brand not just links
Find link markets that drive traffic and don’t just attract search engines
Obtain social media mentions for the brand
Perform outreach campaigns for guest posts on authority sites
Identify hot topics using competitor analysis for guest posts and content marketing

Content Marketing

Google recently announced its latest algorithm named RankBrain. RankBrain is an AI change that attempts to “understand’ the context of the content on any given site. It essentially eliminates the idea of keyword density, because the challenge is to understand the content and its value to search engine users.

There are two types of content marketing: on-site and off-site. Onsite content should be relevant and well-written enough to engage users and drive more social shares across multiple media sites. Google released an algorithm change that penalized sites for too many ads above the fold. It can then be assumed that the content should not only be well written, it must target real users (not bots) and can’t have poorly placed ads that interfere with user experience.

Years ago, it was common for an SEO to create 10 articles and post them to article sites such as Ezine articles. These links were seen as strong backlink signals, and most SEOs claimed that the method worked. With the release of Penguin, these links are toxic for any site. AI and the changes in Google’s algorithm have changed the face of off-site content marketing. Well researched guest posts that target the direct market are favored over article marketing. This doesn’t mean you should guest post on any blog. Blogs that could be seen as selling links would fall under Penguin or even lead to manual action.

For content marketing, always:

Curate your content into categories and keep related content available to users for better engagement
Network with bloggers and site owners in the industry or a related industry
Use competitor analysis and Google Trends to find the right search engine phrases for emerging markets
Upload branded content on sites such as YouTube and SlideShare

Absolute Links vs. Relative Links – SEO Value

The debate between absolute links and relative links continues to live on in the SEO world. The individual significance of each has been contested, but it is widely regarded that absolute links provide better SEO value on the whole than relative links.

Many believe that absolute links have less potential for getting messed up when search engines index your page. It shouldn’t really make a difference, but many conclude that this is reason enough.

Furthermore, content scrapers and RSS services may ‘repurpose’ your content legitimately (or not). In either case, shouldn’t a proper back-link be attributed to your site? This situation favours absolute links. Although this is a minor argument, it’s still worth considering.

3 Big SEO Mistakes You Probably Make and How to Avoid Them

There is a lot of competition in the modern, online marketplace. Countless eCommerce vendors exist today, and the battle to land high on search result pages and drive customers to one site or another is fierce. SEO is one of the many powerful tools that online vendors have at their disposal to help attract attention, drive website traffic, and generate revenue.

Generally speaking, SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of creating original website contentthat helps improve a site's standing in search results. However, if there is one certainty with SEO, it is the fact that mistakes are inevitable. In this post, we'll cover the common SEO mistakes eCommerce vendors make, and offer advice on avoiding these problems.

Ineffective Product Descriptions

Product descriptions are the biggest obstacle for many eCommerce websites and their SEO efforts. No product descriptions, weak descriptions, or manufacturer descriptions all spell disaster for your online shop when it comes to search results. While high quality images are important for your customers because they want a visual of what they are browsing, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others are built to read words with equal (if not greater) value.

In order to remain competitive in search engine rankings, it is a necessity to produce unique content that describes your merchandise in detail. This, coupled with quality images or media, gives you a huge advantage on eCommerce sites that sell the same or similar products. However, if you simply use the manufacturer's description you're only going to blend into your competitors. So how can you stand out from the crowd and drive traffic to your site?

First and foremost, never copy and paste the product description from the manufacturer's website. This will do more damage than having no product description at all because it registers as duplicate content when search engines crawl through your page. To help generate website content for your eCommerce business, consider working with a content writing service. Professionals working for these services make a living generating unique content.

Never Ignore Metadata

When consumers shop online, they interact with metadata each time. In simple terms, metadata is best described as the advertising platform contained within a search engine. As shoppers enter search terms online, the results they see include eCommerce website names, an official link to the site, and descriptions of the exact product they queried.

The standard approach for most eCommerce vendors is to simply use duplicate information from a product page, such as the title, description, and keyword for the individual item. The problem with this is that search engines are trying to differentiate results based upon those bits of information (title, description, etc.) on your site. If your metadata information is the same (or roughly similar) to competitors, search engines will not differentiate your product and you will rank lower as a result.

Lack of Related Content

Mastering the art of metadata and providing engaging product descriptions are both critical to improving SEO. However, there is an entire website that extends outside of the product section. Some of the most engaging eCommerce stores have created outlets where they are able to consistently post new, relevant content that engages customers and can be crawled by search engines. The most popular example of this is a blog.

If your eCommerce site doesn't have a blog, start one. These archives filled with unique articles not only increase SEO, but also provide relative information that benefits the consumer. New industry trends and innovative ways to use your products are a few samples of posts that can be linked back to a product page on your website. While you're at it, create or expand unique content for other pages on your site, such as the "About Us" and "Shipping & Return Policies" pages.

While it is visible that the best SEO success stems from tracking your efforts and recording results, there are always companies that have paved the path and made it a little clearer as to where to focus your efforts. The strategies listed above are just three examples of major SEO tactics than can surprisingly be overlooked. Even though competition is high, and mistakes are inevitable, minor tweaks to your eCommerce site such as unique product descriptions, strategically worded metadata and relevant content could be the differences between ranking on the first, or the third search engine results page.

Myths of SEO

Search engine optimization. We talk about it a lot here, as most hosting companies do, because it is daunting and shrouded in mystery. Literally, that’s not one of my usual exaggerations for comedic effect. Google, as an example due to its popularity and nearness to taking over the world, keeps its algorithm a secret. Like government agency secret; probably not “If I tell you, I’d have to kill you” secret, but pretty close.

Why all the secrecy? Well, several reasons. It is difficult to have valid results for the searcher if websites know exactly what to do to get their website at the top of whatever list they want. Further, you as a website or small business owner understand the importance of having a good ranking in relative terms, so if Google were to release their secrets to the masses, it would be even more difficult for small businesses to compete with larger companies.

This mystery adds a lot to the importance of your website’s content. One thing has always remained true throughout the course of website searches – content is king. If your content is specific and relative to your business, you will find that your ranking will naturally be high in the keywords most relative to your search. The mystery also creates bad practices due to rumors, or outdated and incorrect information. Or, even worse, someone finds a way to cheat the system, and that method spreads across the internet. Suddenly, rankings go haywire, and when Google updates its ranking methods again (usually once or twice a year) all those websites tank in rankings. Search engines keep track of those instances and it becomes very difficult for those sites to recover in ranking.

So, how do you know what’s a valid tip and what isn’t? That’s what I’m here for. I’m going to help ease some of the rumors or old information that is still floating around and tell you what’s true and what isn’t. It’s my own little digital myth busting, but with less explosions, and no moustaches.

Adding a location to your website increases your presence in local searches.

A lot of people don’t want to put their location anywhere on their website, especially if they don’t own a storefront. But, don’t do that. I’m not suggesting you put your address, phone number, birth date, and social security number on your site, just your city and state. After all, if you didn’t pay for domain privacy, your information is publicly available on the internet anyhow.

Google now customizes searches to such a high degree, that a search for the exact same keyword with the exact same search history will result in different results if the searches are performed in different locations. If I am looking for a plumber, I don’t care who the best plumber in New York is. I want someone in Virginia Beach, Virginia because that’s where I’m located.

CONFIRMED.

You can use this to your advantage by putting an area map on your site. Also, if you are a business and list your service areas, you will have a broader search radius. If you are not a business, try to focus some of your content on local items. If you have a food blog (like me) post some recipes using local foods, or talk about some local events you attended.

Higher rankings locally will drive traffic to your site. And traffic increases your overall ranking, so getting local traffic will help your site grow in popularity worldwide.

Lists show importance, so I should list a bunch of keywords on my home page.

Yes and no, but mostly no.

Yes, lists show the scanning bots that the information included in those lists is important. So, if you have a set of skills, certifications, or services to offer, put them in a list on your home page. But, don’t flood every page with lists of random keywords.

Relevance and readability are still factors, even to search engine bots. So, make sure your lists make sense or use complete sentences if possible. Also, as with everything, make sure your keywords are relevant to your website. Search engine bots are so advanced now, they can determine if something will make sense to someone reading it. If too many flags come up (like say, a smattering of random words) it will hurt your rankings more than help them.

BUSTED. MOSTLY.

Don’t ignore this just because it’s not your chosen keyword that needs to be on the list on your page. Drawing attention to important words on your website is always a good thing. Plus, you never know what someone is searching for, so you don’t want to give up on something just because you don’t think it’s important.

Take advantage of this when developing your content. Don’t stop at lists, and use italics, bold, and underline. Anything designed to draw attention to certain aspects of your site will be a way of adding a private note to the bots that this information is most relevant to your website.

Keywords are the most important factor in SEO, so it is best to flood your website, HTML tags, and code with hundreds of keywords.

Please don’t do this. It’s not helpful, and even if it were, your ranking would be all wonky and your site would show up places it doesn’t belong and that wouldn’t help you or your customers at all. And, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times when discussing SEO, relevant keywords are what really matter.

Also, like I mentioned before, bots can tell when a keyword is just inserted on a page. So, make sure that what you use matters, makes sense, and is relevant to the other information around it.

BUSTED

So, how do you get more keywords into your site? Well, first do your research and select the most relevant keywords to the information you are providing. Then, only use 3-5 for each page of your website. This will give your pages focus and will reduce the stress of fitting 30 keywords onto one page.

When you are writing for your HTML tags, remember that they don’t matter as much as they used to. Title tags are the most important, and after that, photo descriptions, everything else is just a possible bonus. Bots don’t crawl tags as much as they used to because the information on your site and the information others say about your site is much more important.

Bots don’t read punctuation.

This is actually true. Bots don’t care about punctuation as much as the words on the screen, so you can increase the number of relevant keywords in an HTML tag or page by creatively using punctuation to your advantage.

For example, if your key word phrases are:

Hosting

InMotion

InMotion Hosting is awesome

You can put all of these together in one short sentence.

“Dedicated to the customer is what InMotion Hosting is. Awesome hosting is hard to come by.”

Notice that we have hosting in there twice, InMotion Hosting is in there, and paired with awesome hosting, and it all combines to make the phrase InMotion Hosting is awesome. That is also the perfect length for a HTML Tag, full of keywords and not too long.

Did you catch the bonus keyword? “Dedicated” is the start of the sentence. Paired with the repetition of the word hosting, we are in a good place to be found when someone searches “Dedicated hosting” or dare I say, “Awesome dedicated hosting”.

Long story short, if you have questions about improving your search engine rankings, you should remember what I said at the start of this post: “Content is King”. When in doubt, ensure that your content is well written, informative, and full of diverse media.

There are so many myths about SEO, and the internet is flooded with bad information, and this short post only scratched the surface.

Additional On-Site SEO Elements

While the title tag and the meta description are the most important SEO elements, they are not the only ones. Be sure to incorporate the following into your website’s page content for further search optimization.

Internal Links – Link building isn’t just reserved for external sites linking to your website. You can help search engines learn more about your website by internally linking to other pages on your website within your content. As an example, this blog post utilizes internal links when linking to other posts on the KISSmetrics blog.

Header Tags – This blog post utilizes three different levels of HTML header tags that help break the content into sections as well as let search engines know more about what each section of content is about.

The <H1></H1> tags surround the post title – there should only be one set of <H1></H1> tags per page.

The <H2></H2> and <H3></H3> tags surround subheadings on the page – there can be multiple instances of both.

Using header tags helps both readers and search engines break up your content into digestible sections.

Image Name & ALT Tags – If you use images on your website, you should think of good keywords for both the image name and the alt tag.

On the first image within the post, we use <img src=”on-site-search-optimization-seo-title-tag.png” alt=”On-Site Search Optimization SEO Title Tag” /> as the goal is to optimize it for the keywords on-site search optimization.

This helps search engines find good images for their image search based on the keywords specified.

Bolded Text – You don’t want to get too crazy with this one, but occasionally bolding a selection of text to get a reader’s attention can also help search engines distinguish other important information and keywords in the page’s content.

Why You Need Content

If you keep up with the latest in online marketing news, then you have likely read about content development and content marketing. Content is great for both your website visitors and search engines. The more content you have, the more likely your visitors will stick around on your website. And the more content you have, the more likely search engines will be to put more of your website’s pages in the search index.

The key to pleasing both search engines and visitors is to have quality content on our website. Quality content can include a variety of things including, but not limited to, the following.

Blog Posts
Industry Articles
Tutorials & How To Guides
Infographics
Videos
Podcasts

Creating quality content for your website can be a huge investment, but it is worth it. Search engines will love it, and visitors will love it so much that they will share it on social media, leading to even more visitors. You can start out by simply creating blog posts on your website, and as your audience grows, you can expand your content inventory to additional types of media. To learn more, see the Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing.

Off-Site Optimization (aka Link Building)

Link building is probably one of the most talked about (and debated about) SEO tasks. The basic goal of link building is to get other websites to link to yours. If you think about ranking at the top of search results as a popularity contest, then links are like votes saying your website deserves to be ranked highly.

Getting links with keyword anchor text will help you rank specifically for the keywords that are linked to. For example, Adobe Reader ranks number one for the keywords click here because so many websites linked to it using the anchor text click here to download Adobe Reader.

So how do you get links? There are lots and lots of ways to do it – some good, and some not so good. If you read enough about link building, you will hear ultimately about three kinds of links and link building techniques.

Organic Links – These are links you don’t have to ask for, and they are the best kind. Especially if you can get them on sites with high authority such as major news outlets and other well-recognized name websites.

    Whitehat – This basically stands for good, quality link building (the kind you should strive for).
    Blackhat – This stands for spammy, low-quality link building (the kind you should avoid).

Most websites will have a hard time generating enough organic links to raise their rankings in search engines. This is why link building is such a popular services. But you can get started on building quality links by doing some of the following activities.

    Submitting guest blog posts to popular blogs in your industry. Generally, you will get a link back to your website in an author box at the top or bottom of your post’s content.

    Reaching out to related (but not competitive) businesses to see if they will link to you. A good way to do this is to see if the businesses you work with have link pages on their site for partners, vendors, suppliers, etc.
    Create local search profiles (if applicable) and social media profiles. While the links do not always count towards search rankings, they can attract clicks which will generate more incoming traffic to your website.
    Submit your website to applicable industry directories or, alternatively, buy advertising. For example, anyone in the wedding business could get listings with a link back to their website on The Knot, The Wedding Channel, and other similar sites. Bypass low-quality directories that have nothing to do with your industry or ones that link to shady websites in the adult, pharmaceutical, or online casino industries.

Create link worthy content. Infographics are a great example – you create a beautiful image representing important information and allow others to use the infographic on their own website in exchange for linking back to yours as credit.

For more information about link building the right way, don’t miss our post on Natural Link Building 101!

Search Engine Optimization

Because it takes more than luck to get seen on results pages.

Search engine optimization used to be all about keyword stuffing and feeding search engine ro-bots exactly what they wanted. But these ill-advised SEO tactics will now get you penalized, and keep you from ranking high with search engines.

In order to rank high today, you have to put into practice ethical SEO tactics that work within the rules and accepted practices of search engines. Search engines like Google and Yahoo have re-fined their algorithms to make sure that websites that rank high do so because they offer a rewarding user experience, not because of a certain number of words or links. At 5 Stones Media, we help you rank high by giving your audience exactly what they want and need.

Rather than focus on keyword density and thousands of links back to a site, we approach SEO with a “users first” mentality that ensures that you reach your target audience without being penalized by search engines.
Helping you rank high with proven SEO tactics

At 5 Stones Media, we know that the foundation of any good SEO campaign is quality content and rock solid architecture. Web surfers rely on places of authority to gather information and make purchases. And that’s exactly what we do: make you an authority figure in your field.

But how?

There’s a lot of talk about citations and backlinks, and while these do have an impact on your ranking, there’s no use focusing on these elements if you don’t have a solid foundation to build upon. Before we decorate the walls with backlinks and citations, we roll up our sleeves and get to work on making sure your structure (website) is sturdy and sound.

Each web page should have a specific focus, built around logical and highly-searched key-words. These pages should provide the user relative information, in an engaging manner, which includes offering images, videos, graphs and more.

SEO isn’t a game of pin the tail on the donkey, where we walk around blindfolded hoping to hit our target. As part of our SEO services, we dig deep into market trends, data and research to determine how best to boost your rankings. This includes, potentially, taking a new look at your desired keywords, as well as determining how best to use social media and active blogging to your advantage.

Most importantly, by committing to only legitimate (white-hat) SEO tactics, we can ensure our clients will never be penalized by one of Google’s many algorithm updates that come down the pike.
Things to consider in search engine optimization

SEO isn’t like search engine marketing; they’re two separate approaches. SEO does not yield instant results. Google and other search engines take many things into account when ranking web-sites organically, including:

The age of your domain
Your competition
Number of quality inbound links to your site
The content of your site

In other words, SEO is a longterm commitment, but one that’s worth investing in, as most web surfers trust (and click) the organic results they find atop the list on results pages. No matter where you rank right now for your current target keywords, we can help you rank higher. Let’s get to work.

Monday 7 March 2016

9 SEO Blogging Tactics to Maximize Your Online Visibility

Creating a blog for a business is part of an overall content marketing strategy that simultaneously builds credibility, increases exposure and traffic, and increases conversion rates. But for your efforts to pay off, your blog content has to reach your intended audience. Here are some proven ways to get the most out of each blog post and fully enjoy the benefits of blogging.

Use Plugins

If you're using the WordPress platform, the first thing to do is install a plugin like All In One SEO Pack or SEO Yoast. Both are free and highly effective ways to give your content an SEO boost. These two plugins differ in their specific features, but employ the same general concept. Basically, they streamline the on-site SEO process by generating automatic META tags, optimizing titles for each post, optimizing SEO descriptions, and more.

Both are user-friendly and relatively easy to learn. By spending a few extra minutes to fill out the fields on these plugins, you can give your content a significant edge over other bloggers who don't utilize them. This can often mean the difference between appearing on the first page of search results vs. elsewhere.

I recommend using Google's Adwords Keyword Tool for keyword research. By entering a broad word or phrase, you will have access to a list of potential keyword ideas. Browsing through the list should offer plenty of ideas for blog post titles to choose from. These can be taken as-is or a few additional words can be added if necessary.

Use Your Keywords Wisely

After choosing the right keywords, it's time to put them into action by strategically inserting them throughout your content. In the past, keyword stuffing was a common phenomenon where search engines could be manipulated by placing an abundance of the same keyword throughout the body of a blog post.

Thanks to algorithm updates like Google Panda, Penguin and Penguin 2.0, things have changed dramatically. Now, keyword stuffing is an outdated black hat SEO tactic, which Google easily identifies and penalizes.

Here are some best practices when inserting keywords:

Place your primary keyword (for which you want the page to rank) once in the main title of each post
Use once within the first 100 words
Use once in the conclusion or final paragraph
Place in title tags and meta descriptions
Place in sub-titles when appropriate
Naturally use related keywords and phrases throughout the article

Speed Up

Site speed is a growing factor in the ranking algorithm. Cloud hosting solutions are gaining popularity as Google continues to give more emphasis to site load times. I even saw a study that concluded that as much as 40% of users will bail if a website takes longer than 4 seconds to load.

Pingdom has a great speed test tool that can tell you how long your site's load time is. If it's above 4 seconds, I recommend looking into a new hosting provider or making other changes to optimize your speed. Dotcom-tools.com has a fantastic tool as well, which allows you to test speed from 20+ locations around the world.

Understand Your Optimal Article Length

When blogging, there can be a major disparity in terms of the length of each piece of content. Some bloggers keep it relatively brief with 400 words or less and some go all out with 2,000 words or more. While it's debatable what the ideal post length is, a study by ViperChill.com showed that choosing the optimal word count depends upon the industry. The data was based around the top five blogs in each niche and breaks down as follows:

Gadgets - 181 words
Gossip - 183 words
Web news - 329 words
Politics - 465 words
Health - 666 words
Marketing - 1,085 words
Finance - 1,225 words
Personal development - 1,470 words

This goes to show that choosing an "ideal" article length will greatly depend upon the industry you're in. Unless you're in the gadgets or gossip niches, it's usually best to keep posts at a minimum of 250 words. Otherwise, it's easy to get passed up by search engines for longer content.

In general, it's been shown that longer content tends to rank better in search engines. Why? It could be that Google regards longer content as being more in-depth or thorough, and thus higher quality.

However, variety is the spice of the life, and also of the search engines. If all your posts are always around the same word count, that doesn't look very natural. Instead, try to mix it up.

Include Images

Besides providing readers with some eye candy, inserting an image or two within a blog post has some SEO benefits. In order to take advantage of these benefits, include the keywords in the file name and incorporate ALT tags into the HTML code. This can be done by including alt="keyword or phrase" within the code. Try to keep the keyword or phrase as brief as possible and highly relevant so search engines can easily pick up on it.

Strategically Interlink Your Articles

By inserting links in one blog post to another relevant blog post, you accomplish two things. First, it makes it easier for visitors to further explore your blog with more convenience. Second, it gives credit to other blog posts, helping their rankings in the search engines. This should ultimately help your entire blog rank more highly in search engine results.

In the same vein, it's smart to include additional links in the sidebar by installing a "categories" and "recent posts" widget. This allows visitors to quickly find other blogs posts that they might be interested in without extensive exploration. Another idea is to install the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for WordPress blogs. This will automatically display similar posts at the end of each blog post.

Post Frequently

The single most common mistake that most bloggers make is updating their blog too seldom. Not only can this minimize the number of readers that follow your blog, it can hurt your rankings in search engines as well. According to Darren Rowse of Problogger, "The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks."

Consequently, it's important to maintain a fresh stream of content and avoid going long periods without a new post. At the same time, you shouldn't go overboard and barrage your audience with a never ending stream of posts either. A good balance of somewhere between two to five posts per week for most niches should be sufficient.

Get Active in Social Media

Finally, reposting content on any social networking sites you're a part of can be advantageous from an SEO standpoint. It only takes a minute to do this, but immediately increases your blog's visibility because each post will pop up in all of your followers' streams. Additionally, it generates social signals, which have been shown to improve search engine rankings.

This is a simple way to drive more traffic to your blog with only a few clicks. If anyone shares a post with others, this means even more traffic with no additional work. While social shares don't typically carry the same weight as traditional backlinks, a significant quantity has been known to improve rankings.

Blogging for SEO: five beginners’ tips

A blog can still take you to the top. If you do it right.

Everyone loves free information. And free information reels in customers. That’s why blogging is one of the best ways to do content marketing. How else are you going to bombard customers with a steady stream of content without scaring them away?

According to Neil Patel, “Companies with blogs typically receive 97% more leads than companies without blogs.” Customers might ignore your ad, but your blog? That’s something they want to read. Blogging creates a human side to your website or company or organization.

And blogging is most definitely a way to keep your face in front of current and potential customers.
Use WordPress

Matt Cutts, SEO guru and chief spam buster at Google, has said that WordPress is the best platform for optimized blogging. He uses it himself.

WordPress is easy. It’s free. And it handles search engine optimization like a pro.

It solves 80-90% of your SEO problems. And that’s saying a lot, because SEO is a many-faceted thing.

WordPress has a permalink setting that you can set to Post Name so that when you write a blog, it will be www.coolblog.com/dog-collar-fashion-trends instead of www.coolblog.com/?=123. Guess which one the Google robot is going to like the best?

It also has plugins for almost everything. Some SEO must-haves are a sitemap generator, a webmaster toolkit, and a meta/SEO tool.

A sitemap will make it easier for search engines to find all your pages and posts, which will help you move up in search results. The webmaster tools will help you spot problem areas with your site. And the meta/SEO tools will make it easy for you to keep your site optimized for more exposure to the masses.

What’s more, WordPress can make you look good with a few clicks. If you suck at web design, you can still have a fantastic-looking blog, thanks to WordPress’s almost endless lineup of premium themes.

Quality, quality, quality

Search engine bots are looking for sites with authority and trust.

They want to know that your site knows what it’s talking about and that the online neighborhood agrees. In case you’re wondering, the neighborhood is the collection of other sites, business, social media influencers, and the like that are in your field or area of interest. If they’re sharing your content, the search engines take notice.

What’s your bounce rate? Do visitors click and leave or are they staying long enough to read all of your amazing blogs? The length of engagement matters (and marriage is around the corner).

Use normal language. If your blog sounds like an elementary school child or someone with English as a second language wrote it, Google will know. And so will your site visitors.

Google bots will also know if your site has duplicate, repetitive, or mass-produced content. When it comes to content, quality is better than quantity.
Keep it fresh… and keep it coming

Google and Bing bots love fresh content.

They score the freshness factor of a web page from the date it was first discovered by the bots or the date it was last updated substantially enough to warrant notice.

Content needs to be fresh – not wilted, stale, outdated content that’s been on your site since 1999. To solve this dilemma, you can repurpose existing content. Or you can create new content via your blog. A new blog = a new page on your site. You’ll score some points with the search engines for that.

But don’t just churn out robotic content. Switch it up every so often. If your site is starting to sound predictable: why you should make papier-mâché… blah, blah… how often you should make papier-mâché… blah, blah… when you should make papier-mâché… you need a new angle, a new idea, a new topic – something!

A blog is an excellent platform for all manner of content – articles, infographics, podcasts, videos, news updates, how-to-guides, white papers, case studies, memes – anything that keeps you in front of the faces of current and potential customers.

Don’t ever let them forget you’re alive.
Linking – a fine line

Every good blogger knows that a site with multiple, quality links is going to gain kudos with the web crawlers.

However, due to link schemes (a practice where links are used to manipulate search engine rankings) links coming into your site (backlinks) are scrutinized by the search engine bots.

Where are your links coming from? Are they coming from trusted sites? Or are they coming from seedy neighbors, such as link farms?

You can build quality links by guest posting on sites with a high authority (or high trust) rating. Just make sure they’re in your your industry or niche. For instance, if your site is about bird watching, look for home and garden sites, wildlife blogs, and the like.

You can also build relationships with other webmasters by placing outbound links in your on-site blog posts. Here again, make sure every link is on-topic i.e., don’t link to a page on catnip if you’re writing about luxury cars, unless you’re actually writing about the relationship between luxury cars and catnip.

Blogging is about building quality relationships – both with your readership and with websites in your neighborhood.
Commit to the long haul

Blogging won’t necessarily get you to the top of Google and Bing overnight. It’s a long-term strategy to build trust, value, and momentum. There is no McBlogging shortcut.

While not every blog post may be sensational, every post does need to provide value to the reader. Ultimately, that’s what you’re after. Because more engagement and more shares lead to higher rankings, more visibility, and more customers.

What have you got to lose?

This post was originally published on our sister site Search Engine Watch, but we thought the ClickZ audience would find it useful.

New Google Publisher for WordPress: Simple SEO and Adsense or Another Pointless Plugin?

Having just come across Google's new Publisher plugin for WordPress, I wanted to investigate whether it (a) makes life easier and (b) has any real SEO value.

The idea behind the plugin is to make signing up for Google's Webmaster Tools easier and make adding AdSense faster. The latter might not be appropriate for every site, but it's no surprise the two are bundled. After all, if Google can get you to put AdSense on your site, the company profits too.

If the Publisher plugin works as promised, it could be a great SEO strategy for people who hate SEO. Webmaster Tools provide detailed data reports on sites, and Google says the new plugin lets you install the tools with a single click.

It's quick, it's easy, but...

Although Google provides adequate documentation, the only way to really test a plugin is to install it on a live site, which we did via WordPress' quick and efficient auto-installer. Rather than take you through every little detail, suffice it to say that everything is relatively quick and painless. The plugin would appear to do all the things it says it will do.

The question is, why?

What we can't see, at this stage, is any real value. Yes, you need Webmaster Tools for your site (or sites), but even if you've never installed it before, Google's help pages are pretty clear. You may or may not want AdSense, but although the plugin puts both tasks in one place, it still requires the same application process. There doesn't seem to be an option for those who already have AdSense accounts, so if you have more than one WordPress site you need to add code the same way you always have. You also, currently, can't use the full range of ad sizes.

To be completely fair to Google, the company is keen to point out that this is a beta release, for self-hosted WordPress sites. It doesn't work with Wordpress.com blogs - but they can't carry ads anyway. If Analytics set-up and management were included, the value might be more apparent, but it's not there at the moment and there's no suggestion that Google intends to add it in future.

Dumbing down?

Using Google's Publisher Plugin might save you a few minutes - but we're not talking about enough time that you could use valuably elsewhere. But in taking this shortcut, there's the danger that small business people and entrepreneurs won't learn the basics of SEO that can be extremely important to them. You may not like SEO, but ignoring it is foolish.

For many beginners, there's an inclination to want to do everything quickly. Sometimes, however, there's huge benefit in understanding the whole process, from selecting a web host and installing WordPress, to setting up a Google account, verifying at Webmaster Tools and implementing analytics. Through doing those things, you learn more about how each functions.

Practical SEO, the kind that everyone can implement, doesn't come from discovering "the secret". It comes from experience.

Monday 29 February 2016

6 SEO Strategies That Can Generate Highly Targeted Traffic

Developing SEO strategies that can drive an immense amount of traffic to your site within a month is not an easy task, especially if you want your site’s visitors to convert into profits. Generating highly targeted traffic or visitors that have the intent of availing the services or products that you are offering is the best way to really earn from your website.

The good news is that there are many ways that you can do to hasten the process of having your site noticed by people who are in need of the information, services or products that you provide. Here are some of the ways that you can do to generate specifically targeted online visitors in under a month.

1. Target easy to rank long-tail keywords through blog posts

If your site has no blog section yet, then you better start including one. Blogs can benefit your business in so many ways, and consistently driving traffic to your site is one of them. Using long-tail keywords in your blog posts’ titles (eg. How to learn SEO), can extremely help your site’s performance in terms of traffic generation, seeing as this strategy can very much take your blog posts on top of SERPs without further improving them through off-page optimization or link building.

Blog posts can naturally rank on their own basing on its topical relevance as seen by search engines, and taking advantage of low competition keywords will make your pages rank on the top page of SERPs in no time, which means more organic traffic to your site.

2. Targeting 3 -5 keywords for each page on your site

Creating your pages or blog posts with the intent of ranking for more than 2 keywords is always a smart move, since it will allow your site to draw more relevant traffic along the process. Say, if your site has 15 blog posts or pages on its first month, and each page are targeting 3 different keywords. Doing the math will give you a result of 45 keywords giving you constant traffic within a month.

Doing this strategy is very simple, wherein you just have to use or combine your targeted keywords on your page or post’s title, URL and on the body copy (eg. Top 10 advanced on-page SEO strategies). With the given example of a post title you are able to target 7 keywords that you can use within the body of the content, including:

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3. Dofollow blog commenting

Commenting on blogs with the same theme as your site – particularly blogs that allow dofollow attributed links on their comment section – is one of the most effective ways to promoting your site as well as in improving your keywords’ search rankings. This technique has a lot of advantages and can certainly take your campaign a long way, given that this method allows you to acquire relevant backlinks and can possibly build relationships with other bloggers related to your niche.

Networking with other bloggers is extremely beneficial, especially with higher value link placements such as special mentions, in-content links (used as a resource), guest blogging opportunities and sponsored reviews. Anyway, leaving comments on blogs with the use of your keywords as anchor texts can help improve its search rankings in just weeks, particularly if the links that you’ve built are from topically relevant pages and are dofollow attributed.

4. Guest blog posting

Guest blogging has been known to be a link building method that’s really advantageous in terms of driving relevant traffic, acquiring high quality links, passing through Pagerank and in improving SERP rankings. It’s best to choose blogs that are relevant to your site, have high page ranks and receives a lot of traffic on their site (can be based through Alexa traffic rank).

In choosing the topic to write for guest postings, writing topics that are strictly about the keywords you are aiming at is the most effective way to get most out of this technique, since the link that you’ll be able to build through your author bio will have higher scores basing on its relevance as well as in targeting the audience that will be able to read it.

5. Forum participation

Forum posting is a good start for any campaign, especially if you choose to participate on high PR and high traffic forum sites. The best way to benefit from this method is to establish an expert or knowledgeable image through this channel, and not just focusing on building links through your signature.

Establishing yourself through forum sites and being genuinely active in participating with the community can bring you targeted visitors and interested clients within a month, so spending 30 minutes a day on 1 or 2 authority forums around your site’s industry is certainly worth it.

6. Article submission and converting your articles

This link building method has proven its worth over the past decade and is still known to be one of the most effective ways in generating consistent traffic as well as highly relevant links that can boost your search rankings. The best thing about article marketing is that it’s capable of building solid links as it gets syndicated naturally, particularly if you have written a solid and informative article. Submitting an exceptionally written article to several highly trusted article directories (such as Ezinearticles, Articlesbase, Goarticles, Amazines, and many more) can enhance its chances of getting scraped or used by other sites that are seeking for quality content to be posted, which gives you more extra links and of course, more traffic.

But there’s more to this method than just the traditional article marketing, you can as well convert your articles to other formats for more exposure and external links pointing to your site. Converting your articles to PDF, podcasts, slide/powerpoint presentation and videos, and then submitting them to their respective directories can extremely amplify your site’s traffic in a short period of time, given that these formats have higher chances of ranking high on search engine result pages.

Microblogging Sites List

1. http://Twitter.com

2. http://Plurk.com

3. http://Tumblr.com

4. http://Identi.ca

5. http://Meemi.com

6. http://Hictu.com

7. http://www.spotjots.com/

8. http://yammer.com

9. http://dipity.com

10. http://bentio.com

11. http://blip.pl

12. http://flattr.com

13. http://plerb.com

14. http://twitxr.com

15. http://tout.com

16. http://heello.com

17. http://friends-hood.com

18. http://rememble.com

19. http://weiboenglish.com

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