3 Important SEO Tips for Your Website

Any business that wants to increase the leads and sales they get through their website and other online platforms, must invest time and effort into search engine optimization. SEO tactics, such as using keywords, building links, and creating new content, can help a company’s website move up in ranking on search engine results pages. But this isn’t always an easy task. So whether you’re just getting started on SEO or are looking to improve your search engine rankings, here are a few important SEO tips you should know.

Understand the importance of user experience

Consumers have a lot to do with how a website ends up ranking in search engine results pages. Google uses tools to analyze how users interact with a website. If they click on a link and immediately click off of it, Google is going to see this as a site that should go down in the rankings. This is why it’s important to focus on user experience.

When a consumer visits a site, it should load quickly, be easy to navigate, and provide the right information. Businesses should start by making sure their pages load quickly, because if consumers have to wait more than a few seconds for a page to load, they’re not likely to stay. Instead they’ll go to another site. Bounce rate can have a huge impact on rankings. Aside from page speed, businesses should focus on other ways to keep visitors on their site for more than a few minutes. Making the navigation bar simple, providing a lot of great content for visitors to read and look at, and having a great call-to-action will all help increase dwell time.

All in all, businesses should ensure their website is set up to provide the best user experience possible. When consumers click on a site’s link in the search engine results page and actually stay on that site for a while, that shows Google that the site deserves to stay at or increase its ranking. Without a good user experience, sites will lose rankings quickly.

Consider using video marketing

Businesses should create different types of content for their website. Many companies focus on publishing news articles, company updates, and evergreen content for their site visitors to read and gain valuable information from. But aside from written content, what other kind of content should businesses create?

Consider starting with video content. While many businesses focus on written content because it can include keywords, video content can also bring in a lot of online traffic. Companies can add videos to pages or even replace poor content with video content. Creating a few high-quality videos allows companies to create content that is actually engaging. Yes, written content can provide great information and be interesting to consumers, but seeing people within the company and hearing their voices shows consumers that the company actually cares about their audience. This type of content can be meaningful and impressive as well as fun to make.

Create content for your audience, not search engines

One of the biggest SEO mistakes companies can make is creating content for a search engine and not for actual people. Many businesses think that if they stuff enough keywords into their content and have a ton of links that this will help improve their rankings. But this can actually end up doing the opposite. Businesses should be creating content for humans. After all, consumers are the ones actually reading the content.

When businesses create content for humans, consumers are going to be more likely to contact the company and make a purchase. Keywords and links are certainly important to help the website show up in a consumer’s search engine results, but it won’t go any further if people aren’t actually reading the website’s content and engaging with the company.

SEO can be complex, and it may require some time to figure out what works and what doesn’t. This is why so many businesses choose to work with an SEO company, such as linkgraph.io, for professional help. SEO companies know what businesses should be focusing on right now, which tactics no longer work, and how to build an SEO plan with specific goals in mind. So if you want an SEO strategy that will meet your wants and needs, consider working with a reputable SEO company.

Share:

Read More

The Ultimate Guide to Do Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is one of the most effective ways to grow your business and reach new customers.

While it's critical you employ organic strategies to attract traffic over the long-term, sometimes, you can't properly compete on the SERPs without putting money behind it -- and that's where SEM comes into play.

SEORapidly clearly has an effective SEO strategy, since its "Summer shoes" page ranks first organically. However, their paid "Summer Shoes" ad, circled above, ranks as the first search result overall.

With 35% of product searches starting on Google, and the average Google search lasting only a minute, it's critical your business's product or service appear at the top of a SERP when a user is searching for it. This isn't always possible organically, particularly when other businesses are paying to ensure their products appear above yours. When this is the case, it's critical you invest in a SEM strategy.

Create a Google Ads campaign that makes money for your business using this essential guide.

What is SEM?
SEM, or search engine marketing, is using paid advertising to ensure that your business's products or services are visible in search engine results pages (SERPs). When a user types in a certain keyword, SEM enables your business to appear as a result for that search query.

To ensure you're able to use SEM to properly advertise your products or services on the SERPs, we've cultivated a list of the best SEM tools, as well as the components of a SEM Ad Auction.

Best SEM tools:
- SEMRush
- Google Trends
- Keywordtool.Io
- Google Ads Keyword Planner
- SpyFu

1. SEMRush
SEMRush allows you to conduct extensive keyword research, keyword rank tracking, site audits, traffic analysis, and more. SEMRush is a fantastic tool for finding opportunities to rank for long-tail keywords organically, but additionally, you can use the tool for various SEM efforts. For instance, you can use SEMRush to figure out where your competitors are concentrating their marketing efforts, and analyze their regional presence, to figure out how much money you want to put behind certain keywords.

Additionally, SEMRush enables you to discover your main paid search competitors, figure out which keywords they're bidding on, and study the composition of their ads. This is vital information when you're cultivating your own paid strategy and are unsure how to out-rank other businesses on the SERPs.

2. Google Trends
Google Trends allows you to track search volume for a particular keyword across a specific region, language, or time frame -- which can enable you to identify which search terms are trending, and which ones aren't. Since you don't want to put money behind a keyword that's decreasing in popularity, this is an incredibly useful tool for your SEM efforts.

Additionally, particularly if you work for an ecommerce business, the ability to gauge interest in your product or service in a certain geographical area is undoubtedly powerful for ensuring you tailor your paid efforts to specific locations, saving you money in the long-run.

3. Keywordtool.Io
One of the most helpful features of Keywordtool.Io is its ability to tap into Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, Instagram, Twitter, and the App Store, so that you're able to segment your keyword research through various channels and better target your efforts. Additionally, the tool takes your base keyword and provides you with variations of words and phrases, which allows you to cultivate a more extensive list of possible keywords you might want to include in a paid ad.

Using Google Autocomplete to provide relevant keywords for you, the free version of Keywordtool.Io lets you generate up to 750 long-tail keywords and keyword suggestions for every search term. Plus, you can use the tool to analyze search trends on Google, to ensure your desired keywords are increasing in popularity and will continue to serve you well over the long-term.

4. Google Ads Keyword Planner
Since Google is likely where you want your ads to appear, it makes sense to consider using Google Ads Keyword Planner to research relevant keywords for your business, and keep track of how searches for certain keywords change over time. The Keyword Planner will help you narrow down a list of possible keywords to ensure you're choosing the most effective ones for your business.

Additionally, Keyword Planner will give you suggested bid estimates for each keyword, so you can determine which keywords work with your advertising budget. Best of all, once you've found your ideal keywords and are ready to launch an ad campaign, you can do it all from within the tool.

5. SpyFu
Ever wish you could see which keywords your competitors are buying on Google, or check out which ad tests they've run? With SpyFu, you're able to do just that -- simply search a domain, and you'll see every keyword that business has bought on Adwords, every organic keyword for which they've ranked, and every ad variation they've had in the last 12 years. Plus, you can monitor your own paid and SEO rankings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

How an Ad Auction Works
Once you're ready to invest in SEM, you'll need to enter into an ad auction -- for our purposes, we'll focus on the ad auction in Google Adwords.

In simple terms, every Google ad you see goes through an ad auction before appearing in the SERPs. To enter into an ad auction, you'll first need to identify the keywords you want to bid on, and clarify how much you're willing to spend per click on each of those keywords.

Once Google determines the keywords you bid on are contained within a user's search query, you're entered into the ad auction.

Not every ad will appear on every search related to that keyword. Some keywords don't have enough commercial intent to justify incorporating ads into the page -- for instance, when I type "What is Marketing?" into Google, I don't see any ads appear.

Additionally, even if your keyword is a good fit for an ad, it doesn't mean you'll "win" the bidding. The ad auction considers two main factors when determining which ads to place on the SERP -- your maximum bid, and your ads Quality Score.

A Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. You can find your Quality Score, which is reported on a 1-10 scale, in your keywords' "Status" column in your Google Adwords account. The more relevant your ad is to a user, as well as how likely a user is to click through and have an enjoyable landing page experience, all factor into your overall Quality Score.

Share:

Read More

Best SEO Techniques to Rank Your Site

In today’s rapidly shifting world, SEO techniques can change on a dime—and the worst part is, that you might not even know it. Hacks that could have won you a front-page result as recently as 2018 are not only obsolete now, but they may even hurt your website’s rankings. Especially if those so-called “hacks” land your site a Google penalty that’s tough to shift.

That’s why you need to stay on top of the ball in SEO. If not, you’ll fall behind and see your competitors zoom past you in the SERPs.

We spoke with Jacob Warwick, Director of Communications at Skedulo, and Jesse Teske, SEO Manager at YLighting, to get their expert thoughts on the most current SEO tactics, as well as writer and content marketer Puranjay Singh, founder of GrowthSimple.

In this post, we’ve broken down the top SEO techniques to help you skyrocket your rankings and boost your number of monthly visitors from organic search.

But before we dive into the details on improving your web page ranking, let’s take some time to test your current page ranking on search engine results. Head over to Keyword Rank Checker – a tool that you can use to determine your page ranking based on keyword search:

It goes without saying that your goal, as an SEO expert, is make your website reach the  top of this list. Higher rankings equals more organic traffic – people you can convert at a later stage, and boost the overall ROI of your SEO strategy.

Sounds like the dream, right? But if you’re feeling disheartened with the keyword ranking check you just ran, don’t panic.

9 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Organic Traffic

1) Improve User Experience Across Your Entire Website

Let’s kick things off with a brief explanation of what Google is here to do. Just like any search engine, they want to show the best results for a user’s query, and if they’re greeting users with a list of irrelevant, low-quality results, they won’t use them again. By the way, Google does this very well, which is why they’re the largest search engine in the world – by far.

You’ll need to think about that constant desire to show the best results when you’re optimizing your website for SEO. Why? The answer is simple: If your site isn’t high-quality enough, you’ll have a tough job ranking for your target keywords.

Nobody wants to land on a spammy website that takes years to load, right? That’s bound to lead to a high bounce rate. And although Google hasn’t officially declared it, there is evidence to suggest that the search engine giant does reward sites that have low bounce rates with higher page ranking.

Google’s reasoning is that if a user spends more time on a page, it’s probably because she found the page useful. And since Google only wants to deliver the best possible results to its users, it will push sites with strong engagement up in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

So how can you improve the experience that visitors are having with your website? Unfortunately, reducing your overall bounce rate isn’t as simple as removing a few annoying pop-up ads.

A) Make Your Posts Easy to Read

Ever heard the phrase “formatting content for the web”? To stand any chance at increasing your organic rankings, we need to take that a step further and optimize your content for readability.

Remember: More people reading your content = lower bounce rate = higher organic rankings.

But how do you format your posts for readability? The following formatting tips can help increase the readability of your content:

Shorter paragraphs: Generally speaking, limit each paragraph to 3-4 sentences. It’s even okay to use one-sentence paragraphs if necessary, but use them sparingly or your post will look like a bullet-pointed blog without the bullets. A paragraph is a group of related sentences that support one main idea, so if you split up one paragraph into individual lines, your idea tends to be fragmented and makes it hard to grasp the overall point. 

Mixed sentence lengths: Longer sentences are hard to follow on a computer or phone screen, but they can work well when used sparingly, particularly when mixed with medium and short sentences. Here’s a fantastic example of how sentence structures can be varied for readability:

Sentence and paragraph formatting

Sub-headers: Did you know that the average person spends just 37 seconds reading a piece of online content? You can boost that time significantly by including subheadings to make scanning the article easier. Use plenty of clear and informative sub-headers to guide readers down a page, along with call-out points that are emphasized in bold. Readers should be able to scan your blog post and get the gist of what you’re talking about.

Bullet points: When you have a lot of data—stats, facts, ideas, examples—packed into one paragraph, it makes it easier to read when you list them with bullet points (like this!).

White space and images: When you visit a web page and are greeted with a huge wall of text, it can feel overwhelming. Prevent your site visitors from overwhelm by breaking up large chunks of text with relevant, supporting media, including photos, videos and graphs (in addition to bullet points and sub-headers).

Write quality content: All these other points are meaningless if your writing is just bad. Good writing is not necessarily about paragraph or sentence length, bullet points, headers and images; good writing is about great ideas and compelling delivery.

B) Use Bucket Brigades to Pique Interest

Originally, a “bucket brigade” was a chain of people who pass buckets of water from person to person to extinguish a fire. Now it's a copywriting technique designed to capture a reader’s interest and then keep them reading the rest of your page (reducing bounce rate), much like the flow of the bucket being passed down the line. 

It essentially involves breaking an idea into multiple sentences, using a trigger word or phrase, and then ending the sentence with a colon to pique interest. Look at this example from Copyhackers:

C) Write in the Inverted Pyramid Style

This method means giving away the most valuable information at the top of the article, and following it up with less important information. If readers tend to scan and rarely make it to the bottom of an article, it makes sense to give them what they want as soon as they land on the page.

D) Analyze (and Improve) Current Page Designs

More often than not, high bounce rates result from poor usability and an awkward user experience (UX). However, it’s tough to figure out where pesky UX problems are an issue because they can vary dramatically from site to site.

E) Site Speed

Back in 2010, Google announced that it would be using site speed as a ranking factor. Fast forward almost a decade and now Google has consistently emphasized the importance of site speed.

Site speed plays a huge role in SEO because people don’t want to wait years to access information they’re searching for.

You should improve your site’s speed not only to work your way up Google’s rankings, but also to increase conversions. One survey found that nearly 79% of web shoppers who have trouble with website performance won’t return to the site to buy again – which could see you losing out on a ton of conversion-rich search traffic who are ready to hand over their hard-earned cash for your product or service.

2) Optimize for Voice Search

Did you know that 50% of all searches will be conducted by voice by next year?

That’s right: Half of all the people heading to Google aren’t typing their queries – they’re using a voice-assisted device to do the job for them.

If you think that's not something you’ll need to factor into your SEO strategy, you're wrong. Voice searchers have different habits than text searchers, and the devices they’re using (whether that’s an Amazon Alexa, Siri or Google Home) take data from SERPs to replay information from the featured snippet box back as their answer.

That’s why our second SEO technique is to optimize your website to answer questions – if you want to target the one in six Americans who own a smart speaker. But how do you do that without overhauling your entire website. Here’s the answer:

A) Write Content Around Long-Tail Keywords

Moz found that voice searchers use long-tail keywords when they’re searching for information through Google, and these terms are 3+ words in length.

B) Use Structured Data

Remember how we said that Google takes information from the featured snippet box and replays that back to voice searchers? Using structured data is a fantastic way to boost the chances of your information being read aloud to your target audience.

There are several types of structured data (also known as Schema markup) that SEOs can use, both of which give Google a quick rundown of what your page is about. That, in turn, helps it to rank better.

Get started by heading over to Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to find out whether you’ve already got Schema implemented.

3) Focus on Topic Clusters Instead of Keywords

Source

Google is evolving – and so is its algorithm. Its objective now is to understand the intention of its users: what they expect, what they’re looking for and, more specifically, what search results would best help answer their query.

But don’t expect your website to end up on the first page of Google simply by creating keyword-focused content. It’s not enough to look at keywords alone. We need to look at the context around them.

Also referred to as “user intent,” you must consider what your users are looking for, rather than coming up with different ways that users can phrase a search query.

Here are two things in particular you should consider:

A) Know Your Target Audience

The type of content you’ll create will depend entirely on your audience. The better you know them — their location, age, interests, etc. — the better the content you’ll create (and the better your SEO).

B) Organize Content into Clusters

Instead of focusing on standalone keywords, organize all your content into different themes. The topic cluster model, created by HubSpot, works by  breaking down your content calendar into topic and clusters.

Using that content strategy satisfies user intent since they’re getting information they’re searching for, while also creating a library of internally linked content that Google’s spiders will crawl, understand and use to rank each page.

C) Research Keywords and Use Them Sparingly

Confused why we’re listing keyword research as an SEO technique when we’ve told you to focus on topic clusters, rather than keywords? Because keywords still matter.

Organizing content thematically is very important, but it’s a mistake to ignore keywords entirely, given that they serve as signposts to Google’s spiders, signaling topics and giving hints as to the nature of the content on the website.

Marketers now face a struggle to find accurate search volume data with Google Ads hiding those results (unless you run a PPC campaign). However, there are a number of tricks and tools that can help marketers find topics and volume data.

4) Longer Content Equals Higher Ranking Usually

A recent study by Backlinko concluded that the longer the content, the higher the likelihood of its ranking at the top of the SERPs.

However, writing 2,000+ words for every blog post is not for everyone. It’s an intensive and time-consuming process – but most of all, sometimes it’s not necessary. Remember what we said about satisfying user intent?

Some search queries are by people who aren’t looking to digest a lengthy blog post. Their answer could be a matter of words or a few paragraphs, so the other 1,500+ words you’re pressuring yourself to create might be a total waste of time and energy.

Let’s take the “link building tips” keyword, for example. People searching for that phrase are likely looking for a comprehensive guide to link-building strategies they can use to conquer Google.

People searching for “link building do’s and don’ts”, on the other hand, might not need that lengthy type of content. A simple bullet-pointed list is probably all they’re looking for.

Unfortunately, there’s no hack to determine how long your content should be other than good old-fashioned common sense. Ask yourself what information someone would be looking for if they’re using a keyword you’re targeting, and start from there.

Struggling to find the motivation to write a long-form blog post? Instead of starting from nothing, take an existing page from 1,200 words to 2,000, rather than going from 0 words to 2,000 words.

Existing content already has authority and an established readership. So rather than writing something entirely from scratch, it’s much simpler to find a post of yours that is already doing well on Google, refresh it with updated information and extra content, and rely on existing signals to make it rank for terms.

5) Conquer Video with YouTube SEO

YouTube videos rank in the top 10 of Google search far more often than any other type of video. And, according to Forbes, YouTube is also the second most popular search engine with more than 3 billion searches per month – surpassing Bing, Yahoo, and AOL combined.

Most SEOers forget about YouTube when they think of search engines. But if you’re smart, have a knack for creating engaging videos, and have the time to invest into optimizing each video for YouTube SEO, there’s no reason you can't build a huge audience on that platform. One YouTuber doubled their traffic with the same content after implementing YouTube SEO.

A) Make Your Video SEO-Friendly

Just like Google’s spiders, YouTube’s algorithm works by understanding information about your video. The filename, the title, the description of your uploaded content — all these elements affect your rankings in YouTube search.

Video Title – Crafting a compelling video title is a balancing act — you have to make the title SEO friendly and make it clickable to improve your click-through rate. Ideally, you should follow the same convention in your video titles as you would in your blog posts; to get clicks and shares, include keywords as well as power words. Here’s a great example of a killer title.

B) Make Longer Videos

Like content, longer videos tend to do better in YouTube search. Try it yourself. Type in a popular keyword or topic and see what shows up at the top of the page. 

Notice how all these videos are 5+ minutes long? As with written content, longer videos tend to get the most traction – but remember to think about user intent first.

C) Create Custom Thumbnails

The majority of search engines use click-through rate as a ranking factor. If people are clicking through to your result when they’re searching for a specific term, you must be offering something of value, right?

Optimizing your video with a great thumbnail can help that.

A strong thumbnail should tell viewers exactly what the video is about. Ditch one of YouTube’s screenshots of your video and create a custom thumbnail that uses a compelling image along with a title card. 

6) Build a Variety of Backlinks

It won’t come as a surprise to learn that backlinks are important in the SEO world.

According to Google, links are still the #1 factor when it comes to determining search rank because without them “ranking without links is really, really hard.”

However, don’t fall into the trap of thinking “any link is a good link.” Low-quality links that are easily spammed — blog comments, paid links, etc. — don’t seem to work anymore and can actively harm your site.

Links that are earned — through high-quality content, outreach and influencer marketing — on the other hand, are safe and extremely effective.

7) Get a Grip on Technical Optimization

SEO and content tips aside, it’s absolutely essential to have a solid website, without worrying about any technical issues that may arise. Why would Google rank your site in position #1 if users are greeted with a ton of glitches?

You’ll need to get a grip on your technical SEO in order to rank well in 2019 and beyond using these tips:

A) Switch to HTTPS

It happens when sites don’t have HTTPS – the most commonly used, securest version of the old HTTP web protocol.

Google has started to warn users when they’re visiting non-HTTPS websites, and if you’re yet to make the switch to secure, encrypted connections, you might be turning away a huge chunk of people willing to visit your site.

HTTPS is a best practice that will help your website boost its SEO presence, stay secure, and make it harder for malicious parties to break in and take advantage of your website.

B) Enable AMP for Mobile

AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, began as a Google-backed open initiative to allow publishers to easily create responsive, mobile-optimized content.

It takes information from website pages and displays them in an easy-to-view format for mobile devices.

Envisioned as a way to quickly render content on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, AMP combines three components:

HTML tags: which help common web patterns render quickly

AMP JS: a library that manages the resource loading and best practices necessary for fast rendering

AMP cache: a content delivery network that both loads content and ensures speed

Since AMP was only incorporated into the search giant’s results in February 2016, the format itself is still fairly new. For those of you who use WordPress, AMP should be much easier to implement than a home-grown CMS from scratch.

C) Budget Money for Crawlers

To make sure Google is crawling your preferred pages (and not pages that don’t appear in its index), you might need an extra pair of hands in the form of crawl software. We want to give search engines the best view of our website, right?

These SEO crawler programs are similar to Google’s own crawlers, and will give you an overview of how your page will perform when determining rankings for your target keywords:

Deep Crawl: Possibly the most comprehensive tool of its kind available today, Deep Crawl is the equivalent of a physical exam for your website, checking its SEO health and viability in an increasingly crowded market. Deep Crawl will provide you with a laundry list of necessary improvements and errors, such as: duplicate content, broken pages, flawed titles, descriptions and metadata.

Botify: A cloud-based crawler that has already signed up big names like Expedia and eBay, Botify is one of the strongest crawlers available today, short of Google’s own secret algorithms. Not only can Botify check whether Google has crawled your page, but it can also offer suggestions on how to restructure web content and site maps to optimize your web page for Google’s crawlers.

Botify Analytics

D) Correct Your Semantic Markups

To help Google understand your data, or to show your website smartcards and voice searches, you need to ensure that your semantic markups are correct.

Semantic markups are essentially HTML tags which can help emphasize key information on your website. It tells Google’s spiders what the page is about without needing to digest every word on the page.

Just take heading tags, for instance. Text wrapped in a <h1> tag is the page’s main title, and should give a brief explanation of the entire shared content on that page. Text wrapped in a <h2> tag are subheadings, and so on.

Here’s an example heading structure:

<h1> The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting

<h2> What is guest posting?

<h3> Benefits of guest blogging

<h3> 5 types of links you can build

<h2> How to write an awesome guest post

<h3> 1. Pick the perfect website

<h3> 2. Send an email pitch

<h3> 3. Write your content

E) Fix “Page Not Found” 404 Errors by Redirecting URLs

Nothing will sink your website faster in search rankings than a 404 error.

Following a link that leads to a 404 page with the text “Error: Not Found” is essentially a dead end. And nobody likes being stuck in a dead end – especially your audience. So it’s in your interest to fix these broken or missing pages and re-engage your users as soon as you can.

First of all, download your backlink profile using a tool like Monitor Backlinks. Backlinks that are pointing to a pesky 404 error page will be highlighted, so sieve them out and head to your Google Analytics dashboard to find out how many page views the 404 error page gets.

You never know – you might find that you’re turning away 300 visitors each month because they’re arriving on your site with a dead end!

Keep those users around by using an SEO plugin like Redirection to redirect URLs of broken links to fully functioning pages. You’ll want to redirect the broken page to the next, most relevant page to make sure they’re not frustrated with landing on a totally different page than they expected.

8) Target Local Searchers with Landing Pages and Listings

Almost half (46%) of all searches on Google are from people looking for local information. That could include:

Local shops

Opening hours

Telephone numbers

Addresses

So, if you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can’t neglect local SEO and listings if you want to stay profitable.

Here are three huge SEO techniques to capture local people who could become your customers. After all, 72% of people who search for local businesses online end up visiting stores within a five mile radius!

A) Double-Check Your Directory Listings

As powerful as search engines like Google or Bing are, they still can’t be everywhere at once, and have to rely on additional information from local, on-the-ground sources.

These sources can include directory listings, which gather, aggregate, and submit relevant data for area businesses – information from physical directories (like Yellow Pages) or scanning business registrations.

In a nutshell: Bigger search engines (like Google) will rely on these data aggregators to fill in the gaps of the existing information that's already in their databases, and will also cross-check to make sure that the facts are up-to-date.

Problems arise, however, when aggregators collect out-of-date data, leading a search engine like Google or Bing to list the wrong information – such as an old address for your business or a disconnected phone number.

9) Know How to Measure SEO Performance

Reporting and analytics are two critical elements of SEO – both of which are indispensable to improving your overall marketing strategies.

Effective reporting means you can understand key questions such as:

What content really appealed to your customer?

What part of the website had the most UX issues?

Which page was the least (or most) visited, and why?

Which on-page SEO changes resulted in the highest rankings?

Which style of keyword should you focus on, in future?

It’s tricky to understand those intricacies (and use them to your advantage to skyrocket your SEO even further) without regularly monitoring and reporting your results.

Here are three tools you can use to conquer exactly that:

A) Data Studio

Interested in gaining the ability to tie online data back to offline data in order to get a full 360 view of how your content and marketing is performing?

Google’s Data Studio helps you to do that by aggregating data (such as rankings, traffic, conversion data) from multiple sources into a single interface. It’s a fantastic SEO tool for internal teams to use, but also a superb way for SEO agencies to share fancy reports with their clients.

But, most importantly, the SEO metrics you’re able to track with Datastudio can help you determine the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, and assess whether you need to pivot or change tactics to improve on your results.

B) Wayback Machine

Always be on the lookout to see what your competitors are doing and how well it’s working for them. What techniques are they using? How have they changed their approach? What mistakes have they learned from?

One great tool to see how your competition has changed is Wayback Machine, which allows marketers to access petabytes of archived web pages. By sifting through Wayback Machine’s extensive database, you can track the evolution of your competitor’s brand and web presence – taking note of factors such as:

Changes in UX design

Differences in copy from one web version to the next

Movements of key page elements, such as page navigation or calls to action

Still, you shouldn’t implement something just because your competitor is doing it – whether that’s designing a website a certain way or using specific copy or images. You’ve got to use your common sense, combined with industry knowledge, before giving your SEO team the go-ahead to copy their changes.

C) SEMrush

If you’ve followed this guide to a T, you might notice an influx of organic traffic arriving at your website from Google. That’s great news, but how can you find out which keywords are driving the most results?

SEO is rapidly changing from one year to the next, with new algorithms constantly emerging and Google frequently editing their webmaster guidelines. Business owners and marketers have to adapt quickly, but it’s still possible to give your business website the edge on your competition.

Remember to focus on solid content creation and copywriting fundamentals, engage your viewers deeply, and stay abreast of technical trends like backlinks, SEO health, site speed, and schema. And don’t be afraid of using a handful of the AI-based tools we’ve recommended to welcome the emerging AI revolution that’s set to take over the marketing world.

Share:

Read More

How Can Guest Posting Help Grow Your Online Audience?

Guest posting is the single most important strategy for growing your blog readership and platform.

What is guest posting?

First things first: let’s define our terms. “Guest posting” means writing and publishing an article on someone else’s website or blog.

We offer this on our own site (occasionally) and do it quite a bit on other blogs with audiences that we want to speak to. It’s a great way to connect with new readers and get your name out.

But for the longest time, we overlooked this essential discipline for growing a popular blog. We wish we hadn’t. And we hope you won’t.

There are three reasons why guest posting is such a key strategy for every blogger to build their online influence:

Guest posting builds relationships

Bloggers need good content. By being a good guest blogger and adding value to someone else’s blog, you’re going to build relationships with other bloggers.

Bloggers make up a large percentage of conversations happening on the Internet, especially on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. They can be tremendously influential. Which makes them good friends to have.

By making friends with other bloggers through guest posting, you’re going to grow your influence in the realm of social media, which will ultimately lead to more blog subscribers.

Guest posting is great for search engines

The one non-negotiable you should have for guest-posting is this:

The host blogger must include a link to your blog in the post somewhere (usually at the beginning or end).

Over time, these backlinks will raise the value of your blog to search engines, making your content easier to find via Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others.

Guest posting introduces you to new people

Perhaps, the best part of guest posting is that it allows you to enter an already-established community, and share your message. It allows you to connect with new people, which can ultimately benefit you, if you do it right.

If you’re adding value to the discussion, you’re going to see that convert over time to more readers, fans, and followers. Conversely, if all you’re ever doing is asking or selling, you may end up famous, but with a reputation you don’t want.

Add value. Help people. Be patient. And over time, you’ll win.

What about people guest-posting on your site?

We are also a fan of allowing other people to guest post on my own site from time to time. You should consider offering guest posting on your blog, too (if you don’t already).

If you’re asking for opportunities to guest post on others’ blogs, this just makes sense. It allows the relationship you’ve developed with the host blogger to be mutual.

Some bloggers will even blog about their guest post and link to it from their own blog (giving you some great link juice).

Rules of being a good guest

- Link to the post from my blog
- Promote it on Twitter (several times)
- Share it on Facebook
- Thank the person
- Stick around and respond to comments on the post

While not everyone does this, it’s not a bad idea. However, this is important: If you have to choose between getting people to guest post on your site or guest posting elsewhere, do the latter. It’s always better to get your name out into new communities.

Guest posting matters

According to my friend, Mike the Search Engine Guru, when it comes to SEO, guest posting on other sites is five times as valuable as creating new content on your own site. (So long as you get the backlink.)

Whether that’s precisely true or not, we don’t care. (Although, Mike is not an imprecise kind of guy, so it probably is.) The point is that this is an excellent strategy for extending your reach and boosting your reputation online.

Plus, if you’re a writer wanting to land more “traditional” publishing opportunities, this is a great first step to eventually getting your writing featured in news sites, magazines, and other publications.

If you aren’t satisfied with your blog traffic but aren’t posting on other people’s blogs, you don’t have much to complain about. Start guest posting today, and see your influence grow.

Now what?
Right about now, you’re probably saying “OK, Jeff. I believe you, but now how do I do it?”

Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. We’ve recorded two videos and put together a downloadable eBook to show you how to land guest posts and grow your blog.

Share:

Read More

Why Do You Need SEO Services?

As a business owner, you may be wondering “what is SEO, exactly?” Or “why do you need SEO services?” You may even be asking “how can SEO help my website?” or “how much should I pay for SEO services?”

At SEORapidly, we’re here to help you with these important questions. On this page, you can learn what SEO is, why it’s so important for websites, and what a SEO company like ours typically offers with their SEO services. Consider this a short course in SEO and everything it can do for your website! If you'd prefer to speak with one of our SEO experts directly, you can reach us at 855-601-5359.

SEORapidly can help create an SEO campaign that will bring you increased website traffic and revenue.

What exactly is SEO?

SEO is short for “search engine optimization.” To put it simply, SEO is any action taken that is meant to better optimize or improve your website’s performance in organic search results. The end goal of SEO is usually to get a website to rank in the #1 spot on search engines like Google, or at least on the first page.

More and more businesses are selling online every day, and competition is getting harder for everyone. SEO has emerged as a way to tell search engines which websites and online stores deserve the valuable attention of shoppers and searchers. Without SEO, Google might rank stores that no one shops at in the very top spot of search results!

SEO is made up of the following elements

SEO is made up of a lot of smaller components, including keyword and keyphrase optimization, link building, content marketing, and more. It also involves some extensive research to determine what actions need taken on websites, and where specifically to take them. We’ll be exploring a few of these specific SEO services a little further down this page.

Why would I need SEO services?

In our digital era, almost every website out there needs optimization for better ranking. But if you’re reading this page, it’s clear that you want to know why you need SEO services. So we’ll tell you!

Think about the process that you take when you are looking for a new vendor or business to work with. Before you simply pick one out of the phone book, you probably do a little bit of research. You might call up a few friends or business owners and ask who they use for the specific service you are seeking. Based on their recommendations, you might then narrow down your list to a few companies. You might then do research online, visit the businesses in person, or look for reviews. Based on all of this criteria, you will then feel confident picking the top company to work with.

Believe it or not, this process is very similar to how search engines decide which websites get the top spots for specific search terms. They take multiple factors into consideration, including website quality, popularity, and user satisfaction. Without the factors listed above, you would have trouble picking a business to work with – and without SEO, Google would have trouble picking a website to rank #1.

SEO sends signals to search engines and push your website to the top of search results

So, the short answer is that you need SEO services because they will help send the right signals to search engines, and push your website up the list of results into the top spot.

What Can a SEO Services Company Do?

A company that offers website optimization can do a variety of things. They can help you get ranked on search engines, improve your rankings, optimize your website to perform better, assist you with creating content, and much more. Every SEO expert and company is a little different in what they offer, how much they charge, and what results they guarantee for their clients.

Here’s some information on the services that a SEO company like SEORapidly can offer you. Although these aren’t all of the services we can offer, these are some of the most important actions we take when working with a business as their internet marketing partner.

KEYPHRASE RESEARCH AND IDENTIFICATION

Before taking any action on improving your website’s ranking, SEORapidly researches and identifies the right keywords or keyphrases for your business. We do this through meetings with you to learn about the words and phrases that you associate with your products or services. We also conduct research online to see who is already ranking for these keyphrases, and what the competition looks like.

We'll research the best keywords for you and your competition

Once we’ve finished our research, we’ll have a good idea of the strategy that we need to take to improve your ranking on these selected keyphrases. We may find that the competition is very low on some, and that you’ll be able to naturally rank with just some simple optimization and content creation. But other keywords may have a lot of competition, and we’ll recommend that they are targeted more aggressively with link building and other actions.

We believe that it’s best to get a good look at your preferred keywords, and your ranking goals, before we take any action on your website. Strategy is a crucial part of SEO, and one that we take very seriously.

INITIAL WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION

If you have a new website, or have never had SEO services performed on your website before, some initial optimization will be performed. This will involve getting those keywords and phrases we identified in our research populated on our website in a few specific places, and in ways that search engines will pick up on.

Initial website optimization usually involves populating your website’s meta description and keywords, which is what users see associated with your website when viewing it in a list of search results. It also involves updating your website’s title and individual page titles to include your business name and important keywords.

There’s also some content that should appear on the first page of your website, as well as other pages. The presence of a few short sentences or paragraphs about your business and products gives us an opportunity to insert the keywords and phrases you want to rank for. While it can be challenging to write natural text that contains these keywords, we’ll find a way to do it. We recognize that there needs to be a balance between a well optimized website and one that users enjoy reading and using.

SUBMISSION TO SEARCH ENGINES

One important step for brand new websites is the submission to search engines. Although search engines will eventually naturally crawl your website through links made to it (from other websites, or from posts on social media, for example), you can speed up the process by submitting it for their review and inclusion in their index.

You can submit your website to search engines so that it gets indexed more quickly

Once we’re satisfied with the quality of your website, and the way that we’ve populated keywords on it, we’ll submit your site to all the major search engines. Once the website is crawled, it will start to appear in search results.

After submission, we’ll work on improving your rankings through a few other methods like link building and content creation. Keep reading to learn about these SEO tactics.

IMPROVING THE USER EXPERIENCE

The experience that your users have when they visit your website, also called UX, is very important to your rankings. If someone visits your store and thinks it’s unattractive or difficult to browse, they’re likely to leave right away. And if they do, this data will make it back to the search engine that sent them to your site in the first place. Although a few bounces like this aren’t a problem, a lot of them may signify that you shouldn’t be ranking as highly for that referring keyword or phrase – even if your website is really relevant!

To avoid high bounce rates that impact your ranking, we’ll work with you to improve the user experience on your website. This may be a step that we take at the very start of the SEO process, if your website is brand new, or it may be something that is done on an ongoing basis. We’ll evaluate your traffic, bounce rates, and cart abandon rates, and make suggestions or implement methods to improve your user experience.

QUALITY LINK BUILDING

In the example we gave at the start of this lesson, we talked about Google learning to rank websites based on the opinions of others, much like your trust in a business or partner being established through the opinions of others. One way that websites can tell search engines that they are trusted and should be ranked higher is through links.

Link building has become increasingly important in the world of SEO. Generally speaking, the more competitive a keyword or area of business is, the more links a website needs to have to rank for it. Although you may find that you receive a lot of links naturally, sometimes a new business needs help to build up those valuable links.

The more competitive the keyword, the more links you need to rank for it

Building links involves a lot of specific tactics and methods, and can include everything from simply placing your website link on your social media profiles to submitting guest posts to other blogs to creating great content that gets shared by other websites. An effective and ongoing link building strategy is crucial to establishing and improving your presence online.

SEORapidly will work with you to build natural, valuable, and timely links to your website. Our customized link building programs can help you no matter how many links you need to build, or how many keywords you need to target with them.

CONTENT CREATION

Website content serves several purposes. For your visitors and customers, it gives them something to read, and allows them to learn more about your products, services, history, location, and so on. Great content is also likely to be shared, which can help with link building. But for purely SEO purposes, content is what search engines need to determine how relevant your website is to a specific keyword or keyphrase.

Your website content, especially the copy on the homepage or crucial landing pages, needs to contain the right words and phrases to help improve your ranking. It can be hard to write content that serves both customers and search engines, but it is definitely possible. We’ll carefully craft keyword-rich content and populate it on your website in the places where it matters most.

Our SEO services include not only the creation of unique content and our proven copywriting services, but also ongoing optimization and content creation. This will help your website stay fresh, and give users a reason to keep coming back to see what you’re publishing now. We can even write blog posts for you if you need help updating a company blog or article database.

ONGOING OPTIMIZATION AND UPDATES

Since things change online at a very rapid pace, hitting the #1 spot on Google can sometimes involve firing at a moving target. One day you’re on top, and the next day you’re impacted by an algorithm change and have fallen a few spots. But don’t panic: a long-lasting relationship with a SEO company like SEORapidly can help you stay current.

Our SEO packages include ongoing optimization and updates to help you keep your content fresh, and to ensure that you’re ranking as high as you can no matter what happens. Our internet marketing team is constantly reading and researching the newest search engine algorithm updates. If we think one of these updates will impact your website, we’ll make the necessary changes quickly. This ensures that you stay current – and that your rankings stay intact.

How can I see your SEO services pricing?

SEORapidly is completely transparent with our pricing.

Unlike most internet marketing companies, we make our SEO service prices easily accessible. To learn more about our SEO packages, and what services are included with each tier, please visit our SEO Pricing page by clicking the button above.

We don’t think it makes sense to hide our pricing. We want our customers to know what they’re going to get from us right up front. Instead of forcing you to jump through hoops to get a quote, we make our SEO package pricing readily available, and spell out in clear text what every tier offers you. We believe that this will help you make a better informed decision about your SEO plan.

Why choose SEORapidly?

When you partner with SEORapidly for your SEO services, you get more than keyword optimization and link building. Our expert internet marketing team has over 100 years of combined experience, and we know what it takes to get your website ranked – and to sustain that top spot.

SEORapidly has even been ranked the #1 SEO agency. This means that we’ve been recognized as one of the best companies out there that can help you with SEO and improving your website performance. So when you choose us, you’re choosing a company that has been nationally recognized as a great SEO services provider.

Take the Next Step

You probably came to this page asking “why do you need SEO services?” We hope that we helped educate you on what SEO is, what SEO services usually include, and why you need them for your website. Thanks for reading!

Are you ready to move your website to the next stage? Contact an expert today for help with your SEO and internet marketing.

Share:

Read More

The Top 11 Benefits of Guest Posting

Guest posting is one of the best online marketing strategies you can invest in.

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

Not convinced you should work hard writing content for someone else’s site?

You should know that guest blogging offers many major benefits – both for your company and you, personally.

Here are the top 11 benefits of guest blogging.

1. Instant Exposure to Targeted Traffic

Regardless if you whether you get a link to your site, contributing to other blogs should pique your audience’s interest. If you manage to write a top-quality post, expect traffic to start flowing to your site once it goes live.

Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business or blog. Something as simple as a guest post can potentially translate into sales if you do it the right way.

Optimize your website’s landing pages, CTAs, and other elements to boost your chances at conversion.

2. Expand Your Personal Network

There was a time when connecting with influencers was extremely difficult. But with guest blogging, the process is now simple.

For example, some websites that accept guest posts foster a community of contributors engaged in related niches. In some cases, you’ll get the chance to take part in an email thread where contributors brainstorm potential topics. You can also collaborate with others for co-authored posts.

Regardless of what the community’s structure in a particular site is, you can always leverage your authorship. Seek partnership opportunities with influencers – from content cross-promotion to expert interviews.

All you need to do is be active in the community. Leave comments, share other posts, or cold-email your prospects. If possible, you can even invite influencers as contributors to your own blog.

3. Stimulate Social Media Shares

Generating social media shares is one way to exponentially extend your online reach. The more shares your branded content gets, the more shareworthy it’ll be in the eyes of your audience.

If you’re submitting a guest post to a blog with plenty of social media activity, then shares should come naturally once your content gets published.

To get the ball rolling faster, consider embedding highly shareable content in your guest post. Infographics, for example, can help you get 3x more engagement in social media than any other type of content.

4. Grow Your Social Media Following

Guest blogging not only increases the amount of social media shares to your content, it can also boost your follower count and accelerate your lead generation efforts.

By contributing to an authoritative blog, you are essentially getting them to vouch for your brand. This makes you look good in the eyes of their followers.

In most guest blogging arrangements, you also get to customize your contributor profile. Here you can include links to your social media accounts.

All these benefits will make it easier to win your target audience’s trust and turn them into active social media followers. Remember to reward them by posting regular updates and sharing useful information that aligns with their interests.

5. Improve Your Online Authority

Modern online marketing is all about authority. Even with the best content in the world, it’ll be difficult to convert your audience into loyal subscribers or paying customers if they don’t trust your brand.

By contributing to other authoritative blogs, you get the chance to prove your credibility as an information source. It will make your target audience realize that you’re someone who’s recognized by trustworthy brands. And as a result, they’ll be more receptive to any value proposition you may present in your own site.

6. Fortify Your Backlink Profile

Most blogs that accept guest posts allow their contributors to leave at least one link to their own site. After all, most of them don’t offer any monetary compensation for your hard work. A brief brand mention or keyword-optimized link is the least they could do to reward your efforts.

See Anyone's Analytics Account, in Real Time.

You can literally see real-time sales and conversion data for any website, and which campaigns drove that traffic. Start your free trial today.

Still, even a single backlink from an authoritative blog will greatly benefit your SEO. They make your content more discoverable and indexable to search engines like Google. As much as possible, try to target websites in your own niche to build relevancy.

7. Grow Brand Awareness

Guest blogging is a great way to establish your authority in your niche.

As much as possible, try to share practical tips that aren’t already found elsewhere.

Leverage the opportunity to let them know what your company does and how it would solve problems.

Also, be sure to instill your brand’s voice into every single post you submit. This will make your personal brand more recognizable regardless of where you submit guest posts.

Some popular bloggers, such as Larry Kim, use a conversational and humorous approach to engage readers. They also avoid writing fluff while keeping sentences short and easy to read.

8. Generate Qualified Leads

One of the fundamental steps to a successful guest blogging strategy is picking the right websites.

In addition to niche relevancy, you also need to look for sites that already have a steady stream of traffic. This will help you connect with people who are already interested in what you offer as a business.

Always emphasize an actionable step when developing the page that you’re bringing traffic to. It should be related to the guest post you’ve submitted to the other blog. Otherwise, your link is nothing more than a disruption in your audience’s journey — a waste of time for them and a lost lead for you.

9. Shorten the Sales Cycle

The sales funnel has always been a challenge for content marketers. By distributing content through popular blogs, you are immediately building your target audience’s familiarity with your brand. Thus, you are shortening the sales cycle for your products and services.

Think of it this way: rather than waiting for potential leads to come to your site, you can introduce your brand’s value propositions in your guest posts.

You just need to be smart when picking or pitching topic ideas for your guest posts.

10. Get Useful Feedback from the Community

As a guest blogger, another advantage of being active in the community is that you get to receive insightful feedback from other contributors.

When you talk about strategies, for example, other experts may tune in to share their own ideas through the comments section. As a result, you can further develop or refine your strategy with their suggestions in mind.

To invite contributors to comment, try adding a call-to-action in the conclusion paragraph. You can refer to the end of this post to see how it works.

11. Sharpen Your Content Marketing Skills

Guest blogging requires every area of content marketing to be successful. It requires you to do content research, adopt the right writing voice for a particular audience, perform influencer outreach, and so on.

Remember, the best way to learn content marketing tactics is to deploy them yourself. You can’t just read about them, follow everything to the letter, and hope for the best.

By launching your own guest blogging campaign, you’re positioning yourself for growth in every facet of content marketing.

Conclusion

Guest blogging is, without a doubt, a crucial step for online marketing success. Once you grasp its benefits, give it a shot and see if you can make it work for your brand.

Share:

Read More

Boost your SEO Rankings Immediately!

Following just a few steps can help to improve the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website which will help to push the ranking of the website at the top.

Increase the loading speed of your page

If you have a very slow loading speed, then there are chances that you might lose your customers and you might even notice a drop in your search engine rankings. Not many people are aware about it, but poor loading speed can be a big disaster for your SEO ranking. To increase the loading speed of your page there are a variety of ways and one of them is by keeping your code streamlined and clean. You also need to minimize the number of pages directs, choose smaller image sizes and cache the plugins.

Optimize the images on your page

When you are uploading the images on your website you need to check the size of the image twice. The images must be optimized for SEO and for that you need to choose the right description, file name, alt text, caption and title.

Do not forget to include the outbound links

Outbound links are just and addition to the content. In case if your readers want to know anything in specific then the outbound links would help to take you to another page that will provide you added information. Outbound links help to make the content of your website more valuable and informative for your readers.

Check for the broken links if any and try to repair them

There are various free SEO tools that are available online and by checking the number of broken links that are on your website.

Use the multimedia to make your content more attractive

It is basic human nature to get attracted more and more towards pictures. Nowadays, you get various options to make the content all the way more alive and attractive. You can add audio, video, JIF etc. which will help to add more value to your readers.

You need to make required adjustments to your layout

If you wish to give a good experience to your readers, then you must make your content easy to read and scan. You need to include the headings highlighted in bold so that they easily stand out and when any reader comes to visit your page then the reader does not find it difficult to look out for the main points. Some other things that you can do to make readers get attracted and stay onto your page for a longer time are; get a little playful with the font sizes and do not make the content of the page too lengthy. Always use numbers and bullet points to mark the points and use the sub-heading to give your content a clean look.

Your page must always have a descriptive page have a detailed contact page and always try to keep it updated and well-maintained

A very well-maintained contact page will make your website look more reputable. Imagine someone coming to your website and searching the contact page and coming to your website and spending a very long period to just find the contact page. Anyone would get irritated and would want to leave the page upon not being able to find the contact page which would lead to leaving a negative impression on the website viewer or reader.

Make sure that your content is easily readable and not complicated to understand

Make your content easy to digest for your readers. If you want your website to attract more readers and make them come back again and again to read your content, then you need to make sure that you do not put lengthy and complicated content.

Produce high-quality content

Many people prepare a website and then never take the pain to update anything. One such thing that needs to be continuously checked and updated is the content. If you wish to drive more and more content to your website and increase its popularity, then it will give the visitors a reason to keep coming back again and again. You must make sure that your content is of high quality and must only have the recent and updated information. Another important factor that might impact your SEO is the dwell time which means that for how long are people sitting on any given website. People will gain trust over your website and due to which they will come back and back again to read reliable information.

Share:

Read More