Rank Your Site on Google Search Engine



One of the greatest questions in the SEO world is what exactly goes into Google’s ranking algorithm. If only we could Google the answer, right?! Although Google keeps its official list of ranking factors a secret, the key to get your business to rank higher on Google is not as mysterious as it may seem. In fact, we’ve cracked the code, and have a bunch of SEO case studies to prove it.

At SEOProfessionally, we are search engine detectives, sleuthing out all the possible ranking factors Google uses. But we don’t do it alone! We collect tons of data and use industry-leading SEO tools such as Moz as well as our own proprietary data platform to help unravel the great mystery of the digital age that is Google’s algorithm for ranking factors.

We hate to break it to you, but if you’re not on the first page of Google, you’re losing sales to your competitors. A whopping 97 percent of people DON’T click past the first page of results. Can you think of the last time you did?google ranking factors in 2018, average click-through rate in SERPs

Understandably, business owners are determined to get their business to rank higher on Google, ideally in the first three organic listings. To do this, it’s important that you understand the uncovered Google ranking signals, and optimize your pages for the best chance of being displayed to potential customers.

How Does the Google Ranking Work?
Google uses a variety of factors in its algorithm to determine what results will be the most helpful for the user.

Google’s algorithm is smart; it is constantly changing and adapting to give users the best experience and to prevent black hat SEO tactics from manipulating search results. Part of the mystery of Google’s search algorithm is that it takes a LOT of ranking signals into account before displaying results.

The reason for this is because one search term can have hundreds of meanings. For example, if I conduct a search for the word “bathroom,” Google has no idea of what I’m really looking for. Possible results could range wildly, including:

- Finding the nearest public restroom
- Defining what a bathroom is
- Emergency plumbing
- Bathroom remodeling companies
- News stories
- Home decor websites
- Cleaning advice

What Google is trying to do here is guess my intent and then tailor the results to what it thinks will be the most helpful result. Over time, Google’s algorithms have identified and adapted to the user’s search intent, and identified four main types:

- Know queries, where the user wants information about something. Ex: “Why won’t my toilet flush?”
- Do queries, where the user wants to take an action. Ex: “Best bathroom remodeling company.”
- Website queries, where the user wants to go to a specific website or webpage. Ex: “Wayfair”
- Visit-in-person queries, where the user wants to locate and visit a physical address. Ex: “Closest place to buy cleaning supplies”
- This changes a little bit for Google’s mobile search index, which focuses on micro-moments: google's mobile ranking factors are based on micro-moments

Micro-moments are the instantaneous moments when a user turns to a mobile device for an immediate need. They focus on:

- Know
- Go
- Do
- Buy

Google’s smart search algorithm both for mobile and desktop results has adapted to produce results based on historical data as well as its ranking signals to match the most common intent, and then provide the user with the most “helpful” answer. Knowing this can help you tailor your SEO strategy by matching your content to the most common intent people have when searching for that keyword. For example, when I search for the keyword “plumbing,” the top results are for plumbers in my local area. This means Google has learned that the most common intent people have when searching for “plumbing” is “I need a plumber to fix an issue.” As SEO experts, adapting content to users’ search intent and Google’s other ranking factors can help you win big time in the first-page real estate game.

Although nobody but Google knows the exact answer, SEO experts have been guessing and testing them for some time now, and have arrived at a list of over 200 factors used by Google’s search algorithm to rank websites and pages. But don’t let that list overwhelm you! Not all 200 Google ranking factors hold equal weight. So, what search engine ranking factors are the most important for your SEO efforts in 2018?

Before we dive into the most important Google ranking factors for your 2018 SEO checklist, you should know how the Google ranking algorithm works to put your business at the top.

Most Important Google Search Ranking Factors for 2018
At Blue Corona, we’ve identified the major areas that we predict will be big players impacting search engine ranking factors with Google’s algorithm updates in 2018:

- Secured sites (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
- Websites that are mobile-friendly
- Page speed
- Schema markup
- Webpage content quality
- Webpage content length
- Social signals
- Quality backlinks
- Optimized images
- Domain age

 We’re sure you’ve heard this one before, but content is still the king of the SEO world this year. User experience is Google’s big priority; creating quality content that is easy for the user to find and understand is key.

There’s a lot that goes in to creating quality content, but the basic idea is that Google will recognize and reward content that helps users find the information they were looking for. Think of it like a farm would you rather have a hundred tomatoes that are semi-ripe and hard as a rock, or would it be better to have a dozen vine-ripened, cheery red tomatoes? When it comes to content on your website, the pages should be the juiciest tomatoes ever.

Quality content means not falling for the most common SEO mistakes, such as keyword stuffing, scraping content, or writing thin content that has little or no value to users. Google’s overall priority is user experience, so if your content doesn’t deliver on this, it won’t rank well.

Careful, purposeful keyword usage is big for SEO in 2018.

A recent Google algorithm update called the Google Maccabee Update was aimed to improve user experience. It did this by penalizing keyword permutations, which are multiple phrases or long tail keywords that basically mean the same thing. An example of this would be creating a page about “how to thaw frozen pipes” and stuffing it with keyword permutations like:

- Thaw frozen pipes with hairdryer
- How to use heat on frozen pipes
- How to thaw frozen pipes that burst
- Start thawing frozen pipes
- Thaw frozen pipes outdoors

Unless the content is incredibly in-depth, these keyword permutations disrupt the natural flow of the text and can create a bad user experience. The key to a high keyword ranking in 2018 is creating helpful content.

Does Google have a specific length requirement for getting your content indexed? Nope, that’s part of the mystery. Thankfully, thorough our data and data from other reputable SEO sources, we’ve got proof that the highest-ranking pages on Google DO tend to have longer content. In fact, the average content length for a web page in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words.

SEO ranking factors - Content length

That being said, it doesn’t mean you should make every piece of content into a book–you should take cues from your target audience by monitoring your bounce rates and tracking leads.

When we tested it, the most successful blog posts in terms of conversions and organic traffic were between 695 and 929 words.

At Blue Corona, our data-driven approach to optimizing content is finding the balance between content length and conversions, which will continue to be an important search engine ranking factor in 2018.

From a very young age, we’ve been using pictures and other visuals to gain information about the world around us. While that approach works for humans, pictures are still tough for search engines to make sense of. The SEO solution to adding photos without missing out on ranking opportunities is to make sure you are optimizing photos on your website.

We’ve written a great guide on how to optimize photos on your website, but here’s the basics:

- Reducing the file size for faster loading times (another ranking factor!).
- Choosing a descriptive file name that includes keywords you’re trying to rank for.
- Including a caption can help consumers find what they’re looking for more easily.
- Adding an alt tag helps search engines understand what the image is about.
- Giving a title to your image provides additional information for a better user experience.

Along with content, backlinks are the bread and butter of SEO. When your website is associated to a trustworthy site via a backlink, it also makes your site look more trustworthy to search engines. Google keeps score of what sites have quality backlinks through PageRank.

PageRank is essentially your “link score.” One of the algorithms that skyrocketed Google to fame, it evaluates both the quality and the quantity of links to your site, giving it an authority score of 0 to 10.  You can’t afford to have spammy, low-quality links in 2018!

Social shares and signals such as Facebook “likes” and shares, tweets, Pinterest pins, etc. most likely influence your Google rankings. Besides just promoting your company, social media has a positive impact on your company’s SEO efforts. When a person finds something they love on social media, they may share that link with others. This increase in inbound links to your site can both improve your credibility and tell Google your content is popular, which can boost your company’s social profiles to the top of branded searches.

We’re calling it now—2018 will be the year businesses will finally catch on to the idea of prioritizing their website’s mobile experience, rather than it being an afterthought. This is especially important as Google gets closer and closer to prioritizing mobile-friendly content—aka the mobile first index.

The mobile first index means Google will begin basing rankings based on how it crawls a site’s mobile version instead of its desktop version. Google is still testing this, but when it rolls out, it will rock the SEO world as webmasters and SEO experts rush to adapt their content to a mobile audience.

Blue Corona is ahead of the curve, and has already begun preparing clients’ websites for the rollout of the mobile first index. If you haven’t, you have some serious catching up to do in 2018!

Google revealed that 40 percent of mobile searches have local intent, making it an important area of opportunity for businesses in the home services industry! Resisting the change to prioritizing your site’s mobile version will hurt your business in the long run.

Another big thing to adapt your SEO strategies for in 2018 is voice search and digital assets. According to Google, 1 out of 5 searches already come from voice queries, and we’re expecting a bigger shift towards that in the coming years. Because of this, focusing your SEO efforts on long-tailed keywords will benefit you. In fact, we’re seeing it already with Google’s RankBrain.

RankBrain is the name of Google’s machine-learning artificial intelligence (AI) system that helps Google sort through the billions of pages it has indexed in order to decide which pages will be the most relevant for search queries. Specifically, RankBrain helps Google interpret long tail queries to bring the searcher results. Using long tail keywords in 2018 can help increase your conversion rate and adapt to voice search!

A crucial foundation to SEO work in general, Google’s shift to ranking sites that are fast and secure higher will continue to be a priority in 2018.

Page speed has a massive impact on user experience. In 2018, search engine users want answers, and we want them fast! Increasing your page’s loading speed not only helps your bottom line, but it has been confirmed by Google to be a ranking signal. This year, aim to have all of your pages load in two seconds or less.

Encryption has also been confirmed by Google to be a strong ranking factor. Encryption means that your website is secure, which can be seen by the addition of an “s” at the end of the “http” part of a URL. With the increase in technology from hackers and identity thieves, Google is making an effort to ensure its users are protected from these malicious intruders by making website security a key search ranking factor. Secured sites protect a user’s connection and ensure a user’s activity cannot be tracked or have their information stolen. If your site isn’t secured in 2018, you’re going to have a huge wake-up call; finally adding that “s” to your site will prevent your site from sinking in the rankings.

Schema markup is a type of structured data added to websites that make it easier for search engines to interpret content. Boring, right? Well listen to this: structured data can improve click-through-rate (CTR) by 30 percent! Adding schema markup with the help of sites like schema.org can help the leads roll in!

Domain age is a sneaky search engine ranking factor. Although Matt Cutts (the head of Google webspam) has said that domain age doesn’t play a big role in how well your site ranks on search engines, there’s tons of evidence out there saying it does. It can be difficult to get leads to a new website, but the new year means another candle on your website’s birthday cake! Cheers to an older and wiser (and more authoritative) 2018!




SEO Professionally
Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com
Phone number: +1 646-948-9882
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Social Media Marketing

What is Social Media Marketing?

In today’s marketplace, organizations need effective, profitable social marketing strategies. Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that implements various social media networks in order to achieve marketing communication and branding goals. Social media marketing primarily covers activities involving social sharing of content, videos, and images for marketing purposes, as well as paid social media advertising.

Before you begin creating social media marketing campaigns, consider your business’ goals. Starting a social media marketing campaign without a social strategy in mind is like wandering through a forest without a map - you’ll only end up lost. Using social media for marketing can enable small business looking to further their reach to more customers. Your customers are interacting with brands through social media, therefore, having a strong social media marketing plan and presence on the web is the key to tap into their interest. If implemented correctly, marketing with social media can bring remarkable success to your business.

Create a social media marketing plan and brainstorm about your goals: what are you hoping to achieve through social media marketing? Who is your target audience? Where would your target audience hang out and how would they use social media? What message do you want to send to your audience with social media marketing?

Social media marketing tips

Planning - As discussed previously, building a social media marketing plan is essential. Consider keyword research and brainstorm content ideas that will interest your target audience.

Content - Consistent with other areas of online marketing, content reigns king when it comes to social media marketing. Make sure you are offering valuable information that your ideal customers will find interesting. Create a variety of content by implementing social media images, videos, and infographics in addition to classic text-based content.

Consistent Brand Image - Using social media for marketing enables your business to project your brand image across a variety of different social media platforms. While each platform has its own unique environment and voice, your business’ core identity should stay consistent.

Blog - Blogging is a great social media marketing tool that lets you share a wide array of information and content with readers. Your company blog can also serve as your social media marketing blog, in which you blog about your recent social media efforts, contests, and events.    

Links - While using social media for marketing relies primarily on your business sharing its own unique, original content to gain followers, fans, and devotees, it’s also great to link to outside articles as well. If other sources provide great, valuable information you think your target audience will enjoy, don’t be shy about linking to them. Linking to outside sources improves trust and reliability, and you may even get some links in return.

Track Competitors - It is always important to keep an eye on competitors - they can provide valuable data for keyword research, where to get industry-related links, and other social media marketing insight. If your competitors are using a certain social media marketing technique that seems to be working for them, do the same thing, but do it better!

Measure Success with Analytics - You cannot determine the success of your social media marketing strategies without tracking data. Google Analytics can be used as a great social media marketing tool that will help you measure your triumphant social media marketing techniques, as well as determine which strategies are better off abandoned.  Attach tracking tags to your social media marketing campaigns so that you can properly monitor them.

How to Use Social Media for Marketing?

Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

Social media often feeds into the discovery of new content such as news stories, and “discovery” is a search activity. Social media can also help build links that in turn support into SEO efforts. Many people also perform searches at social media sites to find social media content. Social connections may also impact the relevancy of some search results, either within a social media network or at a “mainstream” search engine.

Facebook 
Facebook’s casual, friendly environment requires an active social media marketing strategy that begins with creating a Facebook Business Fan Page.  You will want to pay careful attention to layout, as the visual component is a key aspect of the Facebook experience. Social media marketing for business pages revolves around furthering your conversation with audiences by posting industry-related articles, images, videos, etc.

Google+
Google+ is the new Facebook competitor, and it promotes the same fun, casual atmosphere. On Google+ you can upload and share photos, videos, links, and view all your +1s. Also take advantage of Google+ circles, which allow you to segment your followers into smaller groups, enabling you to share information with some followers while barring others. For example, you might try creating a “super-fan” circle, and share special discounts and exclusive offers only with that group.

Pinterest
Pinterest is the latest in social media marketing trends. Pinterest’s image-centered platform is ideal for retail, but anyone can benefit from using Pinterest for social media purposes. Pinterest allows small businesses to showcase their own product offerings while also developing their own brand’s personality with some unique pinboards.

Twitter
Twitter is the social media marketing tool that lets you broadcast your updates across the web. Follow tweeters in your industry or related fields, and you should gain a steady stream of followers in return. Mix up your official-related tweets about specials, discounts, and news updates with some fun and quirky tweets interspersed. Be sure to retweet when a customer has something nice to say about you, and don’t forget answer people’s questions when possible.  Using Twitter as a social media marketing tool revolves around dialog and communication, so be sure to interact as much as possible

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the more professional social media marketing sites. LinkedIn Groups is a great venue for entering into a professional dialog with people in similar industries and provides a place to share content with like-minded individuals. Encourage customers or clients to give your business a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations makes your business appear more credible and reliable for new customers. Also browse the Questions section of LinkedIn; providing answers helps you get established and earns trust.

YouTube
YouTube is the number one place for creating video content, with can be an incredibly powerful social media marketing tool. Many businesses try to create video content with the aim of having their video “go viral,” but in reality those chances are pretty slim. Instead, focus on creating useful, instructive “how-to” videos. These how-to videos also have the added benefit of ranking on the video search results of Google, so don't under-estimate the power of video content!

Reddit
Reddit, or similar social media platforms such as Stumble Upon or Digg, are ideal for sharing compelling content. With over 2 billion page views a month, Reddit has incredible social media marketing potential, but marketers should be warned that only truly unique, interesting content will be welcomed. Posting on Reddit is playing with fire - submit spammy or overtly sales-focused content and your business could get berated by this extremely tech-savvy community.

Using social media in marketing does more than improve site traffic and help businesses reach more customers; it provides a valuable venue for better understanding and learning from your target audiences. Hopefully this article has helped you better understand how using social media for marketing  can improve your business.



SEO Professionally
Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com
Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

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SEO – Search Engine Optimization




SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic from the “organic”, “free”, “editorial” or “natural” search results on various search engines. SEO is the simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what the site is offering. In many respects it's simply quality control for websites. A successful search engine optimization campaign will have, as part of the improvements, carefully select, relevant, keywords which the on-page optimization will be designed to make prominent for search engine algorithms.


Search engine optimization is broken down into two basic areas: on-page, and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to website elements which comprise a web page, such as HTML code, textual content, and images. Off-page optimization refers, predominantly, to backlinks (links pointing to the site which is being optimized, from other relevant websites). There are two major types of search engine optimization, white hat search engine optimization (the best kind), and black hat (the not so good kind). There are of course differing opinions about the nature of each type of SEO. Get the information you need to be able to tell them apart and make an informed decision.


There are some major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo which have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. There are a number of SEO services which can help contribute to the improvement of the organic search engine rankings of a website. These services include, but are not limited to, on-page (or on-site) optimization, link building, search engine friendly website design and development, and search engine friendly content writing services.

If you are more into the link building side of things (working to improve the rankings on your site by earning links), go straight to the Beginner's Guide to Link Building. Links are important but don't confuse quality with quantity and don't think about links in isolation from your content. It's vital to understand that having great content massively increases your chances of securing natural links from quality relevant pages. These links will help you the most.

Quality of traffic is that you can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they are coming to your site because Google tells them you are a resource for Apple computers when really you are a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer. Quantity of traffic is that you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.

A site is not really a site until you have content. But SEO for content has enough specific variables that we have given it its own section. Start here if you are curious about keyword research, how to write SEO-friendly copy, and the kind of markup that helps search engines understand just what your content is really about. Great Content encourages people to link to your pages and shows Google™ your pages are interesting and authoritative. This leads to search engine success because Google™ wants to show interesting and authoritative pages in its search results.

Google™ promotes authority pages to the top of its rankings so it's your job to create pages that become authority pages. This involves writing content people find useful because useful content is shared in blogs, twitter feeds etc., and over time Google™ picks up on these authority signals. This virtuous circle creates strong and sustainable Google™ rankings.

On the surface, search engine optimization is a good way of marketing a website; after all, who does not like free traffic. Unfortunately, that kind of approach to SEO is exactly how many individuals and companies invest thousands of dollars into SEO campaigns without useful results. There is a lot of misinformation about what an SEO campaign (company) can accomplish when it comes to organic search engine rankings. Here we try to dispel the myths, and give you realistic expectations of what a search engine campaign can accomplish in the short, mid and long term.

To learn more about search engine optimization and help you get started on optimizing your website, check out our services or feel free to contact us if you want to rank your websites.


SEO Professionally
Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com
Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

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SEO Analysis

One of the very first things we do when we start working with a client on a search engine optimization project is perform a head to toe site analysis. In fact, more often than not, we will not actually even quote a price for SEO unless we have already done an analysis. A search engine optimization (SEO) analysis is a report that details how a website owner can improve his or her ranking on popular search engines. Below are some important factors of SEO Analysis:

Statistical Data - The biggest part of an SEO analysis is the research.  Research results in statistical data. This is not just information you have in your web stats program, but other information you may not have access to, such as how many people do a search every day on your particular keyword, or what your competition is doing, and how they are doing it.  There can be endless reports and data that an SEO could provide, so be aware you can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers provided. An SEO might consider creating the analysis as an overview, with the statistical data in addenda or reports to back up the information.


Explanations of Terminology - You may end up with a huge analysis with lots of data, findings, and reports, but if you can’t make heads or tails of it, then it may not do you much good. Some SEO firms put the analysis on paper for you, and then offer a free consultation with it to go over anything you may not understand.  This is a good idea if the SEO firm doesn’t explain the results in the analysis directly.

Specific Keyword Research - Unless you are a site with thousands of backlinks because of branding or other link popularity reasons, you are just not going to rank highly for broad keywords. A good SEO analysis will gear its keyword research to keywords and key phrases that are appropriate for your site and its pages, and make recommendations for keywords or key phrases to consider optimizing for.

Detailed Findings - It is not enough just to show you what your meta tags say. You can find that information out yourself, so why would you need someone else to do that for you? You need specific research customized to your site that digs pretty deep. You will want to look for a search engine simulation (what a search engine would see if it were to crawl your site), a list of broken links, site structure, navigation crawlability, which pages and how many of them are being indexed, when the last search engine crawl was, and so on.


Current Search Engine Rankings - Here we do not just mean the top ten or even top 40 results, because chances are you can do all of this yourself. Look for a company or individual who can access 500 to 1000 or more results in more than just one search engine.

Site Recommendations - If you pay for an analysis, you should be able to take that analysis and change some of your site elements yourself with that SEO’s recommendation. Now obviously an SEO wants your business, and wants to do the work for you, so they aren’t going to reveal all of the little secrets they have about your site, but there should still be a good portion of step by step instructions for you to work with. If there is a consultation included, it’s even better.

Possible Futuristic Events or Predictions - There is absolutely no one that can predict what a search engine may or may not do, and as a result there is not an SEO firm in the world that can make predictions about how your site will do in a search engine. This is a sticky subject because it gets into the area of guaranteed results. I’ve seen countless firms out there that offer Top Ten results guarantees, or number one results. I shake my head every single time. 

It’s difficult to imagine trying to do all of the above mentioned things manually, especially if you are a do-it-yourself type of person. In fact, it would be ridiculous to try to do some of them that way, like current search engine rankings.  The very first step in great SEO work is the analysis; it is also useful continuously throughout the optimization process, and you cannot do well without it. If you want to perform the analysis yourself, then go for it. Self analysis is sometimes the best thing you can do for your own website, because no one knows your website like you do. 



SEO Professionally
Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com
Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

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Guest Posting

Guest blogging is a method used by bloggers to increase blog traffic where bloggers write posts to be published on other bloggers' blogs. Guest posts and guest posting is where a writer who owns his or her own blog creates a unique and original post on another blog or site with a mention of the author and usually their blog at the bottom of the article. Guest posting can help build brand awareness with a different audience and help drive new traffic to your site. 


Beware that many websites use guest blogging as a way to build links to their website. If the primary reason for having a guest post published is to insert links back to another website, this is frowned upon by search engines. In fact, Google often penalizes sites that use guest posting for SEO link building purposes and asks that sites nofollow links going back to the guest author's site.

Guest blogging is also a great way to establish yourself as an authority figure within your market and build relationships with other bloggers and experts within your field. It's an opportunity to take your expertise and share it with others, as well as an opportunity to increase traffic to both parties’ blogs. Since guest blogging should be a two-way street, when hopping on the bandwagon, you should also consider featuring posts developed by guest bloggers. Featuring guest posts will also expose your audience to a new perspective and fresh new content. 

With the right kind of content on the top blogs, you can do all three of these things. If you are trying to accomplish either Number 1 or Number 2, then you will want to find blogs that have a good sized and engaged audience. If you are just trying to accomplish Number 3, then you need to pinpoint blogs with strong root domain authority. You can check this for free using the SEOmoz toolbar. Knowing your goals in advance will help you in determining which blogs will be the best for you to submit guest posts to.

Before you get started, make sure you are clear about what you are looking to get out of the guest blogging experience. This will help you find businesses that you may be interested in blogging for and also give you an idea of some guest bloggers you would like invite to post on your business’s blog.

Research is essential to guest blogging; with that in mind, focus on finding writers within your niche and your market. Also, be sure that your writers are coming from a respected business or background. You should also agree with what they are saying and have it align with your personas interests. Guest blogging is great but it can easily turn into a domino effect when the content doesn't align with your business, personas or your tone of voice.

Blogging as a guest is a great way to increase your site rank in Google searches because of the links that exist back to your site from the blog you are appearing on. The way Google sees it; if other people are interested in your site it must be interesting. So when individuals comment, share, like or link to your blog it moves up in Google’s PageRank, which means it’s more likely to pop up when someone Google searches a relevant topic.

Here we offer a service of publishing your articles in site DA+50 with dofollow links. Please check the list of guest post links below:



Guest Post - General Niche Sites




SEO Professionally
Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com
Phone number: +1 646-948-9882
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Link Building

Link building refers to the process of getting external pages to link to a page on your website. Link building is one major aspect of search engine optimization (SEO). Actually, it’s a culmination of several different skills: you need to master content creation, sales, programming, psychology, and good old-fashioned marketing if you want other people to consistently link to your site.


In this article, you will learn what link building is, and how it is beneficial for your website. Most webmasters feel that writing quality articles will help them in getting links, but that’s not 100% true. Unless you specifically try to get links, it will be hard for you to do so. Back in the day, link building was an easy process. You could easily automate tools to submit to article directories and Web2.0 sites to generate backlinks. The quality of the article or inbound links didn’t matter so much.

Building links is a difficult, time-consuming process as not all links are created equal. A link from an authoratative website like the Wall Street Journal will make a greater impact on a SERP than a link from a newly built website, but high quality links are hard to come by. This guide will teach you how to build quality links.

Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website, and they will crawl the links between entire websites. There are many techniques for building links, and while they vary in difficulty, SEOers tend to agree that link building is one of the hardest parts of their jobs. Many SEOers spend the majority of their time trying to do it well. For that reason, if you can master the art of building high-quality links, it can truly put you ahead of both other SEOers and your competition.

Whether you are brand new to link building or have been doing it for a while, we are sure you will find something useful in this guide. The landscape of SEO and link building is always changing, and today, the importance of building high-quality links has never been higher. The need to understand and implement high-quality campaigns is essential if you're going to compete and thrive online, and that isn't going to change any time soon. This guide is designed to get you going quickly and in the right direction. There is a lot to take in, but we've broken everything up into easy-to-digest chapters and have included lots of examples along the way.

However, links are not everything in SEO, but search professionals attribute a large portion of the engines' algorithms to link-related factors. Through links, engines can not only analyze the popularity websites and pages based on the number and popularity of pages linking to them, but also metrics like trust, spam, and authority. Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources. Authority models, like those postulated in the Hilltop Algorithm, suggest that links are a very good way of identifying expert documents on a given subject.

We are offering Link Building and Guest Posting Services. Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information.



SEO Professionally
Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com
Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

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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/

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