Local SEO Citations for Google Maps

When it comes to local SEO, citations are almost the equivalent to backlinks in organic SEO.  Improving the authority and volume of your citation portfolio (the total makeup of your citations) is one of the best ways to improving your rankings in Google local search results (Google Maps).

One of the most common questions we hear is how do we improve the citations to my local business?

And hopefully this article will help to answer that question and put you on the path to higher rankings in Google local search.

Two citation distribution platforms for higher Google Maps rankings

1. Moz Local

We use Moz Local to gain citation distribution for our clients in the four major local business data hubs.  The four primary sources for local business data used by all major search engines are:  Infogroup, Acxiom, Localeze, and Factual.

These four data sources are used by major mapping applications such as Bing, Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Facebook.

Getting your citations accurately published in these four data sources can help you scale the distribution of your local business data across hundreds, even thousands, of local business end points.  And since you can control the accuracy of your local business data in Moz Local, you can control the accuracy of your business data in these four major sources.

The downside to Moz Local is the speed in which distribution is achieved.  We’ve seen it take as long as 6 months to achieve 100% distribution in the four major data sources with Moz Local.

But, it’s well worth the wait to achieve the authority of these distribution end points.

2. Yext

We use Yext to achieve speed and efficiency in the distribution of our client’s local business data.  With Yext, you get instant access to 55+ local business directories.  Your local business data will also be distributed to major mapping applications such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, & Yelp.

When using a combination of both Moz Local and Yext as your local business citation strategy, it’s important to make sure your local business data are exact matches in both systems.

See a full list of our data end point partners for citation distribution.

If you have a discrepency between Moz Local and Yext, you can end up with a large scale of inconsistent data published across the web.

And this inconsistency can cause downward pressure on your local rankings in Google Maps.

The best way to ensure your local business data is accurate in both platforms is to use your Google My Business listing as the starting point.

Make sure your profiles in both Yext and Moz Local are exact matches to your Google My Business listing.

Google Map Citations for Local SEO

Google Map Citations are instances of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) that are published on external websites and directories.  Search engines use citations to determine the accuracy and relevance of your business information.

What Are Local SEO Citations?

The most authoritative Google Map citations for local SEO are those that are consistent with your Google business page.

The way you publish your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on external websites and directories should be an exact match to the NAP on your Google business page.

Then every published Google Map citation on external websites and directories should be an exact match to that NAP.  If there were citations that spelled out the word “Suite” where my Google business page used the abbreviation “Ste”, then I would be creating inconsistencies with my citations, which would dilute the authoritative and impact of that particular citation source.

The businesses with the most authoritative citation portfolios are those who pay attention to these seemingly minor details.  By creating consistent Google Map citations across multiple sites, you’ll be creating a highly authoritative citation portfolio that will help you compete at the highest level in local search results.

What is a citation portfolio?
I’ve mentioned the term “citation portfolio” a couple of times already, so let me quickly explain what this means.  A citation portfolio is the collection of all citations for your business published on the web.  If you have 150 citations published for your business across 150 different websites and directories, then these citations collectively make up your citation portfolio.  This is similar to a stock portfolio that’s made up of shares from 150 different companies.

Google Map Citations for Local SEO Are Similar To Backlinks

Citations for local SEO purposes are similar to backlinks to your website.  Google uses citation analysis when determining the rankings for local search results, just like they use backlink analysis when determining the rankings in organic search results.

When it comes to citations for local SEO rankings, it’s important to remember that not all citations are created equal.  Google will consider many different variables in their citation analysis such as:

- The relevance and authority of the citation source.
- The volume of citations for your business.
- NAP consistency in your citations.
- The relevance and authority of the citation source.

When building out your citation portfolio, it’s important to consider the relevance and authority of the sites where your NAP is published.  There are two characteristics of authoritative citation sources for your business.

#1:  The relevance of your citation sources.
The relevance of your citation source depends on location and category of your business.  For example, if you are a florist in Atlanta, Georgia, the most relevant citations (NAP’s) for your business would be in a directory specifically for florists in Atlanta.  Finding hyper local directories like this can be challenging, so it may require some research to dig them up.  But putting in the time and effort is worth it because highly relevant citation sources can give your local rankings a substantial boost.

#2:  The authority of your citation sources.
The authority of your local SEO citations refers to the domain authority of the websites or directories where your citations are published.  For example, Yelp.com is a highly authoritative site for citations because it carries a PR7 (PageRank of 7) on their homepage.

However, it’s important to remember that that mainstream directories like Yelp are where all of your competitors are more than likely listed as well.  Which means having a citation on this site, although authoritative, doesn’t necessarily differentiate your local business from your competitors.

This is where hyper local directories can give your local rankings a substantial boost.  Having citations published on the mainstream (authoritative) directories is almost a given, but the hyper local directories will give you relevance that can far exceed that of your competitors.

#3:  The volume of Google Map citations for your business.
The volume of citations for your business refers to the total number of times your NAP is published on the website.  Each unique domain represents one instance of your local business citation.  For example, if you have a citation published on Yelp, YP.com, and Best of the Web, this would equal three total citations within your citation portfolio.

There are many different tools you can use to increase the volume of citations for your business such as Moz Local and Yext.  However, as I mentioned previously, these tools will get you into the mainstream directories in a relatively automated fashion, but they won’t help you getting into hyper local directories.  For the purposes of achieving citation volume distribution, using one of these automated solutions is definitely the easiest path to go.

Again, these are valuable tools in achieving the goal of volume with your local citations.  But I strongly recommend using Google to search for hyper local directories that are relevant to your specific metro area and business category.

How Google Map Citations Improve Your Local Search Rankings

We’ll conclude with talking about how Google Map citations can improve your rankings in local search results.

Citations are really just one piece in the overall puzzle of the local search algorithm.  Because you are able to control the creation and distribution of your citations, any local SEO consultant worth their weight will advise you to focus on building out an authoritative citation portfolio.

The more citations you have in your portfolio, and the more relevant that are to your location and business category, the more authority you’ll be adding your Google business page compared to your competitors.  And the more authority your Google business page has comparatively, the higher your local business will rank for targeted keyword phrases.

It’s important to know that citations alone will not give you a top ranking in the local search results.  There are many other factors to focus on while engaging in your local SEO strategy.

Source: https://bippermedia.com/

Share:

Read More

Advantages Of Doing Guest Post SEO

A detailed discussion on how guest posts are advantageous for the guest bloggers and the blog site is presented here:

Establish Authority
Quality of blog posts is of great importance for making a website popular and relevant. By encouraging well written and authoritative blog posts and articles, a website stands to establish itself as an authority on the subject. The search bots love sites that have authentic information to offer. The guest blogger benefits from posting on sites that promote authentic articles by way of exposure to the readers of a niche category who are genuinely looking for information. Thus the guest blogger establishes His/Her authority as a quality writer.

More Link Juice
A website is of no use if it does not earn a single dime. It’s a fact that no one can afford to ignore. Hosting a website entails utilizing resources – time, efforts as well as money. Why waste the efforts? By guest posting you will earn not only money, but will also figure on the higher pages of the search engine results.

How? Well, one of the many criteria for search engines is the quality of links that point towards a website. These are called off page links. The more links you have from relevant websites that point towards your site, the greater your chances are in making it to the the top ten or so list on the search results page. By guest posting on websites that are related to or are similar to your website you are increasing the level of ranking via quality back links.

Improves Writing Skills
There are great writers and then there are Great Writers. No one is perfect in writing great stuff from the go. Great writers have one thing in common. They practiced to arrive at their masterpiece. Write and blog about topics that really interest you and have a genuine readership. By combining these magical ingredients, you will certainly succeed in creating a niche readership. Blogging sites are always on the lookout for genuine and authoritatively written articles. Your writing skills will ensure them legitimate traffic thus improving their rankings and traffic conversion ratio. Hence, practice and practice even more.

Social Networking Benefits
In the Web 2.0 age, it is only logical to link your content and become part of the ‘inner circle’. Guest posts are shared by readers and discussed about on a variety of social networking sites and forums. This allows a writer to understand different perspectives on the same subject thus adding to his/her knowledge base which in turn makes him/her a better writer.

Website Financer
Though making only money is frowned upon by the blogging community, it is beneficial if you are paid for writing authentic guest blogs, directly or indirectly. Writing guest blogs should be mutually beneficial. As mentioned earlier, hosting site costs money. An e-commerce blog is based on the profitability module; it makes no sense for it to not earn money! Of course, by encouraging guest blogging a site offers a quality value added service to its audiences. But if the audiences do not convert, the website might as well shut down and save upon the resources or put them to more profitable uses.

For the guest blogger, writing for websites that are based on profitability would mean earning a steady income to run the site he/she hosts. It also attracts potential customers if it is a site that offers complementary products to the blogging site it has guest posted on. E.g. A guest blogger whose site caters to servicing of electronic items would benefit by writing about How to Keep Your Air Conditioners in Working Order during Summer and posting it on an e-commerce site that sells air conditioners!

Branding
Guest Posting is a great way of building your own brand name. You have the idea. You have the content. You just  have no way of telling others about it. Guest posting will ensure that you share your ideas with readers who are genuinely interested in the information you have to offer. Your niche writing establishes you as a brand. Many websites publish the author’s picture to lend authenticity to the posts. Thus you have the guest blogger as a brand by itself!

Encourages Reciprocal Writing
A community of writers is born due to guest blogging. A guest blogger more or less gives another blogger a break by writing on his/her blog! It helps to offer a different perspective to the bloggers site. And a long term relation is established which in future would mean that the blogger would be more than happy to offer you his/her guest post.

Awareness
For people, who feel sour at the mention of ‘money’, we have a reason to make you smile – guest blogging is also not about only making money. It is also about making readers aware about various issues that affect them in real life. Many web revolutions have been spawned due to heartfelt write ups written by bloggers only with the intention of creating awareness.

Guest posting is an excellent means of communicating with the right people for the right reasons. Its advantages cannot be ignored by a writer/blogger. It offers budding writers an opportunity to express themselves via guest blogs which otherwise they would not have a chance to do so. It encourages good writers to voice their opinions on various subject matters to kick start a healthy discussion. Authority writers cannot ignore guest posting as it allows them a chance to increase their brand awareness and reaching out to the ever growing community of internet users.

Share:

Read More

6 Strategic SEO Tips From the Experts to Get Massive Traffic

Are you up to date with the latest search engine optimization (SEO) tips?

If not, that’s a big problem.

SEO means optimizing your content so it shows up more often in search results.

Get it wrong, and your content might as well be invisible.

But if you get it right, you can reap the benefits of increased traffic, which can lead to more conversions, improve lead generation, and boost sales.

And every business wants more traffic, leads and sales, right?

The trouble is that SEO ranking factors have changed a lot over the years (find out how in our keyword research guide). That means the search engine optimization techniques that worked 5 years ago won’t fly today.

That’s why we’ve recruited some expert help so you can make sure you’re using the best SEO strategy for the coming year.

Our six experts share their favorite SEO tips and tactics for building big traffic in 2018. As you’ll see, if there’s one theme that unifies them all, it’s creating better content, but some of our experts take their own unique approaches.

Recommended Resource: Need more website traffic? Learn how to rank #1 on Google with our Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2018.

1. Improve the “Almost” Posts
Andy Crestodina: Rewrite the posts that almost rank high. There may be lots of them. Look for them in Analytics in the Acquisition » Search Console » Queries report. Set an advanced filter to show just the phases for which the average position (rank) is greater than 10 (on page two). Eureka!

Now give those articles an overhaul. Add details, examples, answers, statistics, images, contributor quotes and anything else that pages it a better piece.

If you go big on quality, you’re very likely to add length and keyphrase usage naturally. Make it a page that you’re so proud of, you want to print it and frame it on the wall.

Here are three ways to make this tactic even more effective:

- Check all the rankings of the page, so you’re sure not to hurt the relevance for an even better phrase
- As you rewrite, work in the semantically connected subtopics, which are visible on the search results page in the answer boxes and in the “related searches” at the bottom of the page.
- Do this as a regular, quarterly content marketing audit.

2. Tap the Potential of Video
Shilpa Shah: One of the best SEO tips is quality over quantity. If you have a large number of indexed pages, it doesn’t always mean your site will attract more organic traffic.

Get rid of shallow posts on your blog that have either low word count or superficial content.

Focus instead on meaningful content that is truly engaging and makes each visitor want to read through the complete article.

Also, videos have a lot of untapped potential – great for SEO and make for good user engagement. Chances are, that your user might quickly run through a 1-minute video but may not have the patience to read your 100-word article.

3. Build Something Useful
Ian Cleary: We are doing outreach to build links and have focussed on brand mention links.  When a brand mention us and doesn’t link to us we reach out to them and generally get a link.  We get a lot of mentions online so we have an opportunity to really grow our link profile and generate substantially more traffic.

The other approach we are taking is building useful utilities.  This is pieces of software that provide significant value to our audience but we make available for free.  We then do a 301 redirect from the site with the utility back to our site and generate a lot of links.  We also do a lot of outreach to promote these tools.

4. Optimize, Amplify, Distribute
Heidi Cohen: To maximize 2018 SEO results, marketers will continue moving away from disposable, once and done content. To accomplish this, tap into the 4Cs of content: Conditions, Creation and Circulation to build your Community.

Create content based on your business’s conditions (business goals, audience needs and content context) to achieve your 2018 SEO goals. Focus your content on strategic keyword silos.

Support your 2018 search objectives with 3 content types:

- Renovate existing content: Audit existing content. Then update and re-promote it.
- Develop new content: Based on your content gaps and keyword needs, create the 5 core content types (foundational, FAQ, cyclical, crowd pleaser and long-playing content) to meet audience and business needs.
- Transform new content: Extend content longevity by converting content into other formats (images, video and audio) and related pieces of content to live on owned, social and third party media.
- Recommended Resource: Do social media shares count the same as backlinks? Google says no, but are they telling the whole story? Find out the truth in our guide to Social Media and SEO: Do Social Shares Really Matter for Ranking?
- Optimize your content. Make your content work for customers, social media, search, influencers and your business. Create off-ramps to collect email addresses.
- Amplify your content. Focus your first 3 days of promotion to maximize reach. Use amplification platforms, influencers and paid advertising (especially Facebook).
- Distribute your content. Continue promoting your content on free and paid media. Publish your transformed content over time to maximize results.
Lastly measure your results and support your growing community.

5. Maximize User Engagement
Max DesMarais: Focus on user engagement. Whether it is updating an existing post, or creating an entirely new one, the page should be created in such a way to maximize engagement. The page should:

- Be easy to read. Content utilizes whitespace, headings, short paragraphs, and relevant images to make the page easier to absorb, and increasing the user’s time on the page.
- Include highly relevant links and offers on the page. Offering relevant internal links that will answer a reader’s question. This often can significantly decrease bounce rates, and get users further into your site.
- Use LSI keywords, and answer additional questions that users may think of after viewing the content. Simply offering only the content that a user searches for is no longer enough. Pages need to supply additional information a user may be seeking. Providing additional information will help retain the user, and tell search engines that the page’s content is not only answering the search query, but providing additional value that other pieces of content may not be.
- Contain multiple ways for users to absorb the content. Include images, infographics, video, and text. This will capture readers’ attention, and keep them more engaged on the content.
- Employing these tactics will ensure that your pages are highly valuable to the readers, and search engines will mark these pages as high quality content.

6. Make Old Blog Posts New Again
With SEO in mind, you should now routinely go through old blog posts and do the following:

- Update any information that’s no longer accurate or relevant.
- Add new stock photos and remove any old ones that looked dated.
- Write/optimize title and alt text for all images.
- Rework old titles to be more SEO-friendly.
- Add subheads to posts that have none, using keywords when possible.
- Review title tags and meta descriptions for keywords and relevance.
- Weave additional keywords into posts that seem lacking.
- Check existing links to make sure they still work and add links to newer pages that are relevant.
- Lengthen posts by adding more detailed content as Google now favors longer, information-rich pages.
- Proofread for mistakes. It’s amazing what you can catch with fresh eyes.
- Susan Greene has been a professional copywriter for over 25 years. She has a deep understanding of Internet marketing and a conversational writing style that converts prospects into customers. 

That’s the end of our roundup on search engine optimization tips and tricks.

Over to you to put these SEO tips into practice. When you’re done, make sure your new strategy is working by checking out our guide to measuring content marketing ROI.

Share:

Read More

12 Important SEO Tips for Your Website

Today, we’re talking about optimizing your whole site, not just a single page, for search engines.

After choosing the right SEO keywords but before writing a ton of content, you have some choices to make. So think through this carefully.

Before you begin, you need to know the following:

    What your site is about
    What the purpose is
    How committed you are

Once you’ve settled on those three things, then it’s time to get to work. So, let’s begin, shall we?

SEO Tips

To optimize your whole site for search engines, you’ll need to follow these basic tips:

1. Make the website about one thing.
It can be about other stuff, too, but choose one primary topic that is most essential to your message. This step is important, so you may want to do a little keyword research before choosing a topic.

2. Mention keywords where they matter most.
Include your “one thing” in the site title, domain name, description, tagline, keywords, blog categories, page titles, and page content.

If you’re on WordPress, you can change a lot of this in the General Settings or through a plugin like All in One SEO Pack.

3. Link to internal pages on your site.
A lot of content management systems automatically do this, but if yours doesn’t, you’ll want to be intentional about linking to your most important pages directly from your homepage and cross-linking them with each other.

4. Use a permalink structure that includes keywords.
Some sites have “ugly” permalink structures that use numbers to identify pages. Don’t do this. It’s bad for SEO and just doesn’t look good. Use a URL structure that includes text, and make sure you include keywords in your URLs. 

5. Remove anything that slows down your website.
Page load times are important, so get rid of any non-essentials that bog down your website. These may including music players, large images, flash graphics, and unnecessary plugins.

6. Use keywords in your images.
Include words that reflect your site topic in the image title, description, and alt attributes. Also, re-title the file name if it doesn’t reflect your main keywords (e.g. writing-tips.jpg instead of d1234.jpg).

7. Link to other websites with relevant content.
You can do this by including a blogroll, link list, or resources page on your website. Of course, do it sparingly, as each outbound link is a “vote” for another site. However, if you do it well and people click your links, this tells search engines you are a trusted authority on your particular topic.

8. Update your website frequently.
Sites with dynamic content often rank higher than those with static content. That’s why blogs and directories (like Wikipedia) do so well on search engines. They are constantly being updated with new content.

9. Make sure your website is indexed in search engines.
A lot of search engines will automatically find and index your content, but don’t count on it. You want to be sure engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are crawling your site, so that people are finding you online. (You can add them directly, if they’re not.)

10. Have other websites link to you.
This is really, really important, when it comes to SEO. The bummer is that it’s not something you can necessarily control. Other than creating excellent content, the only thing you can do is ask (which occasionally works).

My counsel is to spend the time you would trying to convince somebody to link to you on just writing great content. And, start guest posting on other blogs.cRegardless of what you do, know that inbound links are essential to SEO.

11. Stop changing your domain name.
The age of your URL is a factor in your site’s search ranking, so be patient. If you’re launching a new blog every six months, you’ll never see your site get the value it deserves.

12. Write like a human.
None of the above matters if you create content that sounds like a robot wrote it. Write great stuff, follow the steps above, have patience, and you’ll see results.

We realize that many of you have already started blogging, but many of these tips can be applied retroactively. And once if you done this, you can start writing regular content.

Source: https://goinswriter.com/

Share:

Read More

Sites DA70-DA100 to Increase Your Domain Authority

While climbing the rankings on Google and the other major search engines, getting higher quality, trusted backlinks is really now one of the only ways to go. The days of sending thousands of spammy, low quality backlinks is over - for pure whitehat methods at least.

Google stopped updating the public Toolbar PageRank, so that metric is out the window. Now SEOs are relying on new metrics in search engines which hover around trust and authority.

Measuring Trust
The main thing we need to do to improve a sites authority is to improve its TrustRank. TrustRank per Wikipedia:

"TrustRank seeks to combat spam by filtering the web based upon reliability. The method calls for selecting a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once the reputable seed pages are manually identified, a crawl extending outward from the seed set seeks out similarly reliable and trustworthy pages. TrustRank's reliability diminishes with increased distance between documents and the seed set." (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrustRank)

So how can we go out there and get links from these high authority seed list websites, and at the same time, not have to build thousands of links and stay within 1 jump from the seed site (not diminishing the distance with multiple jumps)? The answer is simple: Social.

Unnecessary Natalie Dormer Image
Platforms Which Deliver Trust
Social media profiles in fact. Now you may have already built the typical Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and so on when you do SEO for yourself or for your clients; but I bet you didn't know that there is a massive list of high domain authority social sites that you probably have never even heard of, that have a DA (Domain Authority - a moz.com metrics)of 70-100 that are just waiting for you to put your link on.

Today I am going to share with you my secret sauce list of 35 social media sites that I ALWAYS build when I start a new campaign for myself or if I am working on a clients site at my agency. The best part - they are all free!

Top 35 Domains With High Trust And Domain Authority (DA70-DA100)
Facebook.com
1) Facebook.com (DA 100) This is one of the most trusted and most used sites in the world, so it's a given that your main site gets a link from Facebook. Whenever a business starts out, they always build a Facebook page and so should you.

Twitter.com
2) Twitter.com (DA 100) You can't say enough about Twitter. Creating a profile is super easy, and so is putting a link on here too. Another massively popular major website, this is one of the most trusted platforms you will come across.

YouTube.com
3) YouTube.com (DA 100) Being owned by Google, creating a YouTube channel not only allows you to put 1 backlink on their, but up to 5 on the channel page. This is great to link to your website as well as other social media sites, such as the ones listed in this post.

Google.com/business
4) Google.com/business (DA 100) If you are doing local client SEO consulting, every business should be setting up their Google My Business page. What better way to get a link than from Google themselves. Make sure you fill out all of the information perfectly.

LinkedIn.com
5) LinkedIn.com (DA 100) The most popular website for networking and meeting other business minded individuals, it's no surprise that this one is a domain authority 100 website. Millions of people use this seed site to not only meet others, but to link out to their own websites.

Pinterest.com
6) Pinterest.com (DA 100) This one came onto the scene and has been a major powerhouse as far as social media sites go ever since. When you create your profile, you can put your link back to your main site, as well as getting it verified too. Make sure to pins your other sites as well.

Reddit.com
7) Reddit.com (DA 99) One the most popular social booking marking sites, Reddit gives you the ability to create a free profile account. The thing here is to create a bookmark of your main site, getting you a backlink from a high DA website isn't all too bad.

Delicious.com
8) Del.icio.us (Discontinued) (DA 98) Another one of the most popular social bookmarking websites, Delicious gives you a profile where you can add a description about your business as well as a great link back to your main site.

Stumbleupon.com
9) Stumbleupon.com (DA 98) You can tell by now, social bookmarking websites are not only very popular, but very high authority. The thing about this site is to add your other social media profiles to it, as well as bookmark your main site, this gives you tons of links.

Vimeo.com
10) Vimeo.com (DA 98) One of the most popular video sharing websites in the world just behind YouTube, Vimeo is great because they allow you to add a ton of backlinks to your profile, not only do you want to link to your main site, make sure to add all of your other profiles too.

Tumblr.com
11) Tumblr.com (DA 98) Some might call this a Web 2.0, but it's no question that Tumblr is a huge powerhouse. Create a profile, and start adding links out to your other profiles, this gives you a huge social stack from a major website (Being owned by Yahoo is just an added bonus).
Instagram.com
12) Instagram.com (DA 97) Now owned by Facebook, Instagram is the main app you have on your smart phone that helps you add filters to your photos and make them look amazing. At a DA of 97, create a profile on your phone, and make sure to add your backlink on the website.

Disqus.com
13) Disqus.com (DA 97) Disqus has come on the scene to be a contender as the main commenting system on websites such as Wordpress, replacing the default commenting system. Your Disqus profile gives you a chance to place your backlink on this great website.

SlideShare.net
14) SlideShare.net (DA 95) This fantastic site for sharing such things as your powerpoint and keynote presentations, Slideshare also allows you to link back to your main site, as well as link out to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles.

Yelp.com
15) Yelp.com (DA 94) One of the most popular online review websites, you cannot have a local business without having a Yelp profile. Yelp lets any business set up a free account, and put up company and business information such as the link to your main site.

DailyMotion.com
16) Dailymotion.com (DA 94) Another one of the top video sharing websites in the world, Dailymotion, similar to what appears on the YouTube channel page, you can add 5 other social media websites, so make sure you add your main site, along with 4 other social profiles too.

SoundCloud.com
17) Soundcloud.com (DA 93) Want to get a backlink from this power house audio sharing site? Well, how about lots of links instead! SoundCloud is great for adding a ton of your other social media profiles, this makes your social stacking that much more powerful.

Behance.net
18) Behance.net (DA 92) This one may not be familiar to you now, but is going to be one you are going to keep in your arsenal from here on in. Behance is an Adobe website that allows creative designers to showcase their work. It also lets you put more than one link as well.

Diigo.com
19) Diigo.com (DA 92) This popular social bookmarking website gives you multiple opportunities to link back to your websites, by offering a company page as well as a profile page, that you can start to bookmark all of your social sites and your main site too.

Scribd.com
20) Scribd.com (DA 92) This super popular book reading website offers a powerful high domain authority link to point back to your main site, or another social profile site for that matter. Scribd is one of those sites that every SEO should use to help with their rankings.

DeviantArt.com
21) DeviantArt.com (DA 92) This is one of my favourites. Deviantart is a fantastic site that lets creative artists showcase their amazing work. The best part is, your profile includes a live link that you can use to point back to your website. Did someone say domain authority 92?

About.me
22) About.me (DA 90) As soon as you start your back linking campaign for yourself or your clients site, you should jump onto creating your About.me profile. A really neat website that not only lets you display your talents, but also links back to your many other social properties.

Flavors.me
23) Flavors.me (Discontinued) (DA 89) This one is cousins to About.me. You will find a similar concept in Flavors.me, but cannot go wrong with this super popular site that also allows you to place a link to your main site, and link to other social properties as well, giving you that extra boost.

Moz.com
24) Moz.com (DA 88) We all know Moz. We also all know Moz's very popular Open Site Explorer which gives us all of these DA values in the first place. But did you also know that your Moz profile is a great place to link back to your website from, and your Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Storify.com
25) Storify.com (DA 87) This big content curation site lets you link back to your website from the details section of your profile. Whats better is that you can bookmark tons of your other websites as well creating this monster page of links back to all of your important properties.

IconoSquare.com
26) Iconosquare.com (DA 86) This one is a little bit of an addition to your Instagram profile. You see, Iconosquare lets you get key metrics about your Instagram account, and show them publicly. The other neat thing is though, your backlink shows on this page too.

CrunchBase.com
27) Crunchbase.com (DA 86) Whether its your own agency business, or a client you are working for, get a company profile on here for sure. You not only can add information like products, team members, and more, you can also get a juicy backlink from here as well.

Scoop.it
28) Scoop.it (DA 86) Setting up your account on Scoop.it is super easy, and gives you the chance to get your other social profiles bookmarked on the site, giving you a power domain stacking monster. Make sure to add your main site to your profile too.

InstaPaper.com
29) Instapaper.com (DA 85) I love Instapaper because it is one of the cleanest and minimalist website bookmarking tools out there. But under that top layer of skin is a super powerful site that gives you the ability to get all of your links clipped and on there.

WattPad.com
30) Wattpad.com (DA 79) Not many people have heard of Wattpad, but for a DA 79, this site is not bad after all. You see, its a huge community of readers and writers, and also lets you create a profile with a nice little backlink for your website. Now wasn't that easy.

Envato.com
31) Envato.com (DA 78) Unquestionably one of the most popular and best online market places for plugins, themes, videos, stock images, and so much more, this site gives you a profile page where you can put not only some information about you, but your backlinks as well.

RebelMouse.com
32) Rebelmouse.com (DA 75) One of the top content curation websites out there, think of Rebelmouse like a Pinterest. Whats better, is you add all of your websites, and now when you power up Rebelmouse with links, you are also passing the juice to your other sites as well.

AboutUs.org
33) Aboutus.org (DA 72) A neat little website that lets you create a custom profile, setting up one is not that bad, you can use some html coding skills to format the content, but once you get it set up, you can not only add your main site, pop in some other links as well.

AuthorStream.com
34) Authorstream.com (DA 72) You can think of Authorstream like Slideshare, its a website where you can upload presentations, like powerpoint or keynote. When you get your account set up, pop in your link, and its good enough to link to an inner page of your site to.

Pearltrees.com
35) Pearltrees.com (DA 71) Another popular content curation website, this one is almost as powerful as Rebelmouse, so make sure you do the same, and add all of your social profiles and power up this bad boy to get the link juice flowing to all of your properties as well.
Now, let me point out some very important steps that a lot of people are NOT doing properly. When you do your backlinking with these sites, you don't want to send all the links pointing back to the homepage of your main site (money site).

What you want to do in fact is to send some of them at inner pages, such as your about us page, a contact us page, an FAQ page, a services page, etc. You get the idea. The reason for this is simply how power (link juice) is transferred through a website.

Let's take two scenarios:
Scenario 1: All links pointing to the homepage

First of all, we need to be as natural as possible, and for a site to receive all of its links pointing back to its homepage is certainly not kosher in Google's eyes.

Next, when all links point to the homepage, the ability of that domain to increase its domain authority is a lot harder, as domain authority takes into consideration the power of a sites inner pages as well, and when all links point to just the main page, well it's more difficult to move up the domain authority across the entire website.

Scenario 2: Most links pointing to inner pages.

This is the most natural back linking profile.

And when you are sending high DA links pointing back at your inner pages now, you make it so much easier for the DA of the domain to rise across the board because as the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.

Source: https://www.serpwoo.com/

Share:

Read More

Tips to Boost Your SEO Ranking

What comes to mind when you see the term “SEO“? Where do you focus all your energy when you’re trying to improve SEO ranking of your website?

Most people focus a large proportion of their time on “keywords” and not much else.

However, if you’ve been working diligently on keyword optimization but are still not getting the results you want, you may need to consider other factors that affect SEO ranking.

Search engine algorithms not only rate the relevance of your keywords on pages, and in the meta data, in relation to a user’s search terms, but they also evaluate information such as the duration visitors stay on your site, bounce rate, broken links, pages viewed, inbound and outbound links and so on…

Getting users to stay on your website and interact with your content can boost your website’s ranking, and you can do so by improving the user experience and usability of your website.

Using keywords to get visitors to click through to your site is only half the story. If you approach SEO as “optimizing your website for people who use search engines,” the notion of user-friendliness becomes an important factor.

In this article, I’ll look at the various aspects of website usability that impact website ranking, how to improve SEO rankings by improving website usability and what to do when there seems to be conflict between usability and SEO “best practice.”

What is website usability?
Website usability encompasses many elements of website design, most of which are also tied to conversion.

Here are a few that can affect your website ranking:

- Effectiveness: can users achieve their objectives when they land on your website? e.g. Can they find the information they need, order the products they desire, or contact the company for customer service?
- Efficiency: adding to effectiveness is efficiency. Besides being able to achieve an objective, how quickly can a user complete a task? If visitors cannot find what they need effectively and efficiently on your website, they’re more likely to navigate away. The shorter time they spend on your website may have a negative impact on the SEO ranking.
- Learnability: can users learn to navigate your website quickly? Are the calls-to-action that are clickable consistent so visitors know how to interact? When visitors spend too much time trying to figure out how to use your website, they’re spending less time consuming your information or looking at your products. Plus, when they can’t find what they need, it’s likely that they will get frustrated, navigate away and never come back.
- Memorability: can users re-find your website next time they go onto a search engine? Repeat traffic can help you get a Google ranking boost. Visitors may find your website and then navigate away for a number of reasons. They may remember it later and try to search for it again. Is the keyword associated with that particular search memorable enough so they can find your site again?
- Error Prevention: certain errors on a website can affect not only user experience but also SEO ranking. e.g. A 404 Page Not Found error, a link that says one thing but displays something else, or a broken link that is no longer valid.

How does good website usability improve SEO ranking?
Search engines reward sites that are user friendly, which means they have high usability. Google favors sites that are not only rich in keywords, but also demonstrate user engagement.

SEO ranking improves when visitors stay on your site longer, view more pages, and repeat their visits. The more user-friendly your site is, the more likely this is going to happen.

Let’s have a look at 13 elements that not only increase usability on your site, but also help improve SEO ranking:

1. Useful, high quality, relevant content
“Dwell time” is the amount of time visitors spend on your website and it can affect SEO ranking.

When you provide useful content, visitors tend to stay longer on your website to consume the information and therefore increase the dwell time.

Based on this research, content between 2,000 – 2,500 words seems to rank the highest in search engine results.

Although word count doesn’t rule the SEO world – nobody will read your stuff if it’s 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.

Another reason to create highly useful content is that when visitors bookmark your content on Chrome, it will improve SEO ranking of your website in Google.

Content around 2,500 words gets the most Google juice.

2. Page load speed
Both Google and Bing take page-loading speed into account in their website ranking algorithm.

Users may leave your site if they have to wait even just an extra few seconds for each page to load. That would hurt your dwell time, increase your bounce rate and reduce the number of pages viewed – all of which could hurt your SEO ranking.

There are many ways to increase page load speed, some of which include using a caching plug-ins, making sure the code is clean and streamlined, optimizing image sizes, reducing the number of plug-ins, and minimizing redirects.

Properly optimizing images can help reduce file size and improve load speed.

Research has shown that using good quality images can increase conversion rate. Properly optimizing your images can help you take advantage of using photos to generate empathy, increase trust, and improve a visitor’s experience without hampering load time which could affect your SEO ranking.

3. Image optimization
Besides image file format and sizing, there are other ways to make sure your images are working hard for you on the SEO front.

You can signal relevancy of your content to search engines by using keywords for your image file name, alt tag, title, description and caption.

4. Header tags
Nobody likes running into a wall of text.

Good formatting of your content helps improve the user experience of your website tremendously. It makes readers more willing to spend time to read your content and come back for more, which will ultimately signal your relevancy to search engines.

Proper use of header tags can help break up your content into sections that are easier to read and utilize.

It’s easy to insert header tags in WordPress to improve user experience and improve SEO ranking of your website.

Search engines also rate keywords in header tags more heavily. By including relevant terms in your header tags, you are also boosting your SEO ranking against those keywords.

5. Outbound links
To make your content more useful and relevant, you can link out to authority sites for more in-depth information your readers can use.

Linking out to well-respected authority sites will not only increase the relevancy of your content and time readers spend on your site, but it is also believed to send trust signals to Google and improve SEO ranking.

However, more is not necessarily better. Too many outbound links can be distracting and make the content hard to get through.

6. Different multimedia
Images, videos, slideshows and audio can help enrich the user experience and allow you to deliver information in a way that is most suited to your ideal site visitors.

They also act as a signal of quality content to search engines… after all, you have put in the work to make your content look good and interactive!

Video marketing has become an increasingly integral element in driving user engagement and conversion. It’s found that websites using videos can achieve a 4.8% higher conversion rate, compared to a 2.9% average on websites that don’t use videos.

Videos get visitors to spend more time on a website and retain more information.

7. Broken links
Who wants to get a 404 page after clicking on a link? Broken links make for bad usability.

Not only that, search engines consider a large number of broken links as a signal of an old, neglected site and this can impact your SEO ranking.

Thankfully, you don’t have to go through every single page on your website and test the links manually. There are many tools and apps to help ensure that your site is free of broken links, such as:

Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Google Webmaster Tool
W3C Link Checker

8. Readability
Even if you have a well-educated audience, they probably don’t want to be deciphering a PhD dissertation every time they visit your website and read your content. You don’t want them to give up reading your content and click away because it’s too difficult to digest.

Making your content easy to read and understand helps make it useful to your readers. Some experts also believe that Google takes readability into account when ranking webpages.

You can use a variety of tools to test your content’s readability, including:

Readability-Score.com
The Readability Test Tool
Readability statistics in MS Word

9. 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 stay on your site longer and consume your website’s information.

Formatting can help dramatically improve a webpage’s usability by making the content easy to read:

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.

10. Contact us page
According to this Google document (p.98), websites that have sufficient contact information are considered to be more trust-worthy and therefore may rank higher by search engines.

Including a Contact Us page on your website and putting the link in the navigation not only makes for good user experience (especially if you have an ecommerce site) but can also potentially earn you some Google juice.

It’s found that a well-designed contact form increases user participation in a company’s online presence. It also helps generate new business opportunities, capture new leads, improve customer service, and more.

11. Site architecture and navigation
When visitors can’t find what they need on a website right away, they most likely leave the site and this contributes to high bounce rate, low dwell time and low number of pages viewed.

A well-thought-out site architecture reflected in clear navigation is critical in helping visitors find what they want on your site, accomplish their goals and come back repeatedly (repeated visits can improve SEO ranking.)

A “flat” site architecture not only makes content easier to find, it can also help improve SEO ranking as it surfaces links of all critical pages making it easier for search engines to crawl the entire site.

12. Mobile optimization
As of April 2015, Google has started to penalize sites that are not mobile optimized by bumping down their search engine ranking.

More and more users are consuming content on mobile devices, and not being mobile optimized is going to affect user experience and conversion.

It is particularly important for B2B marketers. Research has shown that 77 percent of executives use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business.

Business executives use mobile devices to research products and services for their businesses.

It’s not just for B2B websites either. Companies like Yelp that act as search directories connecting consumers to businesses found that 55% of all searches comes from mobile devices.

If your website has been around for a while, it’s time to test it to make sure it’s compliant.

Number of users accessing the Internet via mobile devices has surpassed the number using desktop.

13. Social sharing
The number of Facebook shares, Tweets, Pinterest pins and other social media mentions can influence SEO rank.

Installing social sharing buttons on your website not only makes it easy for users to share your content, and thereby improve user experience, it can also help you rank higher on searches.

Social sharing also helps drive purchasing behavior: Nearly 4 in 10 Facebook users report they have gone from liking, sharing or commenting on an item to actually buying it, while 43% of social media users have purchased a product after sharing or liking it on Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter.

In this case study, a pest control company boosted organic traffic by 15% in just 2 weeks after running a campaign aimed to increase social sharing.

Peep Laja managed to get over 40,000 unique visits to his site in month number one, having most of the traffic generated through social media sharing.

To get you started, here are a few social share button plug-ins to try:

SumoMe
Shareaholic
WP Social Sharing
Resolving the conflict between usability and SEO “best practice”

In most cases, elements that contribute to good usability also improve SEO ranking. However, there are instances when conflict my occur:

Many content creators “stuff” keywords onto a page to get SEO juice, but that could undermine the readability and user experience of the content.
The attempt to get keywords into an article can affect the vocabulary choice of the writer, sometimes making content hard to comprehend.
Outbound links can be good for SEO, but too many of them can be distracting and if they are not directly related to the topic at hand, it can impact the reader’s experience.
Overloading footers that contain every single page on the site may help improve SEO ranking, but it also creates confusion when a visitor is trying to look for certain key pages.
Sometimes, particularly in the short term, you may have to make a trade-off between more traffic from SEO and optimal user experience.

Don’t get lured into just comparing numbers – such as visitor numbers and page views. Traffic from SEO may give you higher numbers in the short term, but better user experience can often result in higher conversions.

In the long run, with an eye on conversion and ultimately revenue, it’s often a smart move to prioritize user experience instead of milking every last SEO trick.

Source: http://www.jeffbullas.com/

Share:

Read More

Benefits of Doing SEO

Seach Engine Optimization (SEO) has become widely adopted as an online marketing strategy because of its effectiveness. Below are the top 5 benefits of doing SEO for your sites.

The digital landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years, but SEO still remains an effective and important marketing strategy. While there are many benefits to a good SEO strategy, we have outlined the top 5 to help you understand (or remind you!) why SEO is awesome.

Increased Traffic - Top positions on the search engine result pages receive a majority of the impressions and clicks, so ranking in these top positions can result in significant traffic increases for your website. SEO also focuses on creating informative and keyword relevant title tags and meta descriptions, which show up in the result pages. Having optimized tags and descriptions helps to increase click through rate, which also promotes increases in qualified web traffic.

ROI - SEO provides trackable and quantifiable results, regardless of whether you are an ecommerce or non-ecommerce site so there are no qualms when it comes to ROI. SEO agencies are able to track nearly every aspect of their strategy, like increases in rankings, traffic and conversions. Comprehensive analytics also provide the ability to drill down at a granular level and see demographic information and other engagement metrics for individuals who have interacted with your website. For Ecommerce sites, SEO agencies can see which paths users take in order to complete a sale, all the way down to which keyword they used to search for you prior to purchasing. For non-Ecommerce sites, you can attribute values to your lead conversions, like a 'contact us' form fill-out, and calculate the value of your SEO strategy that way.

Cost effectiveness - SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies because it targets users who are actively looking for your products and services online. SEO's inbound nature helps businesses save money as opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling. While cold-calling can still be an effective strategy, the leads generated cost 61% more than leads generated by an inbound strategy like SEO. And since SEO also targets users who are actively searching for products and services like yours, the traffic resulting from SEO is more qualified than many other marketing strategies, resulting in cost-savings for companies.

Increased site usability – In an effort to make your website easier to navigate for the search engines, SEO simultaneously helps to make your website more navigable for users as well. SEO consists of rearranging the site's architecture and links to make pages within the website easier to find and navigate. This not only makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and find pages, but also makes it easier for users to find information on your website as well.

Brand Awareness - Since top position rankings result in significant impressions, having your website in these top positions on the result pages translates to more exposure for your website. Plus, being on the first page for your targeted keywords not only helps users to associate your brand with those keywords, but it instills trust, since companies on the first page are generally perceived to be more trustworthy. The more your pages and content rank in high positions in the search engines, the more chances you have for users to see your content and associate with your brand.

Like what you read? For more information on how SEO could be beneficial to your website, or for a free SEO consultation, please contact us and we would be happy to help.

Share:

Read More