Tips To Optimize Google My Business

Building a Google My Business listing is wonderful but that doesn’t mean you are done.

There are several steps a business has to account for when it comes to optimizing the listing and making sure it is ranking well on Google. Here are the most important tips to think about.

Maintain Up-To-Date Contact Information

This is a silly mistake and something businesses make because they aren’t paying attention. You have to focus on the account just as you would any other part of the business. It is an extension of your online presence and has to be handled with a sense of professionalism.

If not, you are going to be in trouble because the information won’t work out as intended. You have to focus on information that is easy to piece together and is up-to-date with what is on your website.

Use High-Resolution Images

What types of images are being used on your listing?

There is nothing worse than putting up a tremendous listing and then using mediocre images. Blurry images are going to detract from everything you are doing and that is the last thing anyone wants to deal with.

The goal should remain to find valuable images that are going to keep things as simple as you want them to be while offering visitors an opportunity to see what your business is all about. Try to offer as much value through the images as possible because that will increase your engagement level.

Encourage Reviews

Are people reviewing your business?

To showcase your business and have it stand out among the others, you have to take the time to encourage reviews. This doesn’t mean you start paying customers for a good review because that will become obvious quickly.

The goal is to ensure you are simply letting people know about the listing and taking the time to reply to them on the main listing.

This will work well and is going to boost your listing in a hurry. It is one of the best ways to gain traction on Google.

Focus on Finding the Right Category

There are specific categories for each listing and you have to make sure your business is in the right one. There is no reason to put up the listing if you aren’t taking the time to place it under the right category.

This is a real waste and is going to keep pushing you down as other “relevant” listings show up according to Google’s algorithm. You don’t want Google’s algorithm to focus on other listings because you missed this step.

Don’t Redirect URLs

This is a common issue that happens when businesses try to redirect URLs rather than using their newest one. This is a mistake because Google isn’t going to like a redirected URL. It doesn’t seem authentic and is going to take away from your business.

Plus, it is going to look like the listing isn’t updated and that is the last thing you want to present to the customer or to Google.

It is better to swap the URL and make sure only the new one is being used.

Redirects are okay in other scenarios but not this one.

Final Thoughts

These are the best tips to focus on when it comes to optimizing your business and making sure things are done the right way. The goal should be to set the right tone by offering an up-to-date listing that is filled with quality information. This is how you are going to gain traction on Google and generate reviews over the long-term.

If you do this the right way, your business is going to see a tremendous amount of traffic both on your website and in-person for retail stores.

If you need some additional step-by-step instructions then check out this great video on optimizing your Google My Business listing. This is probably one of the best that I’ve seen around.

A Beginner’s Guide On Local SEO

What is Local SEO?

Let’s begin by understanding the nuances of local SEO and what it encompasses.

Local SEO refers to targeting local keywords to rank on Google and/or other major search engines. In general, a good example of this would be targeting a keyword such as “best painting company in New York” instead of “Best painting company.” The idea is to add the city into the keyword as a way to localize the word.

This is important because the average homeowner residing in New York isn’t going to want to hire a painting contractor sitting in Paris, France. They will want someone that is close to home and that is why they are more than likely going to search for “best painting company in New York” when they hop onto Google.

Tips for Ranking Locally On Google

1) Set Up a Google My Business Listing

The first thing a business has to do is set up their listing on Google My Business. You are going to verify the listing as directed and then start filling everything out based on the most recent information at your disposal. This includes things such as your hours of operation, address, phone number, and more.

Everything has to be up-to-date because this will push your local SEO to another level. You will start to see your local keywords climb and your Google My Business listing is also going to rise in front of the others.

If you’re looking for a great guide on setting up your GMB, check out HubSpots’ >> The Ultimate Guide to Google My Business.

2) Optimize for Local Keywords

Are you taking the time to optimize for local keywords? This is a must when it comes to local SEO and it has to be done right away.

These keywords can include:

  • Best Painting Services in New York
  • New York Painting Services

Simply take the niche you are in and then start building local keywords such as the ones mentioned above. The goal is to go after as many of these keywords that are relevant to your specific niche. It is one of the easiest ways to cut away all of the competition and put your name in front of the local customer base.

The key with this tip is to not overdo it though. A lot of people will go overboard and end up over-optimizing their site which will cause it to look spammy to Google.

If Google detects over-optimization, it can cause your website to lose its rankings.

The best way to optimize your content for these kinds of local keywords is to mix in different variations of the keywords into your content. If you’re targeting “Best Painting Services in New York” you don’t want to repeat this phrase continually through your content, it’s going to look weird to the humans visiting your site and Google may flag it.

Aim to have this phrase in your content once, “Best Painting Services in New York.” Then somewhere else in your content have something like “New York’s #1 rated painter.” Then mix in “Top New York painting.”

By incorporating different variations of the same kind of phrase into your content, you’re able to avoid over-optimization, while making your content very specific to your target keyword.

3) Add Location Pages on the Website

You will have to start adding location pages on your website as soon as possible.

These location pages can be divided based on cities, towns, and/or any other way such as neighborhoods to generate traffic. You want to target as many ways a person will search for your business on Google.

This means whether they go by state, city, town, neighborhood, or even major streets, you are the name that is going to pop up.

4) Build Authoritative Local Backlinks

To become a local powerhouse, you are going to need authoritative backlinks. This means you want backlinks from businesses in the region (can include unrelated niches) while also focusing on generating high-quality backlinks from other relevant niches. The goal is to build a strong online asset that is going to become easy to rank for local keywords.

This is a real difference-maker when it comes to pushing in front of other local competitors that are not as honed in on what needs to be done for local SEO results.

Final Thoughts

These tips are going to go a long way in setting the foundation for your business and how well it does. Remember, it is important to target local keywords as that is going to trim the competition and allow you to hone in on potential customers that are nearby. There is no reason to go after international leads that aren’t going to convert for your small business.

If you’re doing it yourself, stick to the tips mentioned here, focus on building a good online asset, and watch as your local SEO campaign flourishes.

What are All of the Different Online Marketing Types?

These days, people use the internet to shop, learn, and for communication and entertainment. That is why more companies spend most of their marketing budget on online marketing. Online marketing encompasses all internet marketing strategies. Any online marketing strategy brings highly targeted traffic to a website.

However, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the different online marketing types. Have a small marketing budget? Then, do not spread yourself too thin by using several internet marketing strategies. Pick one or two online marketing strategies and master them.

What are all of the different online marketing types? Here are the best online marketing strategies.

1. Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the process of ranking web pages, websites, blogs, and even videos in the search engines. SEO is a low-cost internet marketing strategy. SEO brings free organic traffic. To be successful with SEO, target relevant and low competition keywords. It is easy to rank for long-tail keywords. And they bring highly targeted traffic.

Additionally, SEO brings long-lasting results. You will make money for several years from your SEO campaigns. Focus on creating new content and posting them to your website. However, it takes time to see meaningful results with SEO. If you are impatient, you might never see any results.

2. Social Media Marketing

It is the process of using social networking sites to generate website traffic, increase sales, and build a brand. Social media can help increase your website traffic and build relationships with your potential customers. You can get free traffic from social media. Or you can pay for social media ads.

Want immediate results? Pay for social media ads. You will get traffic immediately your ads are live. It takes time to generate free traffic from social media. Because it takes time to build relationships with social media users. Sharing relevant and useful social media posts will help you get more followers.

3. Search Engine Marketing

It is the process of advertising products and services in the search engines. You will pay to appear among the paid search results. You will pay for ad space based on the target keyword, viewer demographics, location, and many more. Search engines display their paid ads above the organic results. The paid ads look the same as organic results.

4. Pay Per Click

PPC is perfect for driving targeted traffic to any website quickly. However, it is easy to lose money with pay per click. You may spend a lot of money without seeing any return. To get a profitable ROI, create the best PPC campaigns. New to PPC? Hire a PPC expert to help you create PPC campaigns to avoid losing money.

5. Content Marketing

It is the process of creating and distributing high-quality content online. Distributing content online brings highly targeted traffic, which increases sales and leads. You can create written content, video content, and even infographics. Content marketing works because it builds trust with your prospective customers.

To be successful with content marketing, create the right type of content for your audience. Knowing what your audience wants can help you create the relevant content. Good content solves the problems of the targeted audience. Do not just create content for the sake of creating content.

6. Email Marketing

It is the process of using emails to build trust and good relationships with your email subscribers. It is difficult to convert cold traffic. Collecting emails can help warm up your subscribers. How? Send informational emails to build trust. Once your subscribers trust you, you can send them promotional emails.

Do not underestimate the power of email marketing. Some internet marketers make thousands of dollars from sending one promotional email. If you can build a list of loyal customers, they will buy any product you recommend. And you can use email marketing to bring instant traffic to your website.

7. Affiliate Marketing

It is the process of paying for conversions. You will create a free affiliate program. Affiliate marketers will join your program to promote your products. You will only pay a commission of the sale. If they do not make a sale, you will not pay anything. Affiliate marketing is perfect for getting qualified leads and increasing sales.

Want to use affiliate marketing? Then, make sure your affiliates understand your terms and conditions. This is because there are unethical affiliates that will do anything to make a sale. They use marketing tactics and strategies that can negatively impact your brand.

8. Video Marketing

Last, but not least, video marketing is the process of using videos to promote your business. Videos are perfect for building a good relationship with your target audience. And they bring free traffic to your website. However, you must create high-quality videos.

These are the different types of online marketing strategies. All these online marketing types are perfect for increasing website, sales, and leads. However, it takes time to learn and master all of them. To save time and money, learn and master a few online marketing strategies you love.

Why Are People Afraid of SEO? Here’s the Truth!

Search Engine Optimization is the process of ranking websites, blogs, web pages, and even videos in the Search Engine. SEO not only improves search engine ranking. It also brings free organic traffic and helps build a brand and build trust with potential customers. However, most people are afraid of SEO.

The following are the reasons why people are afraid of SEO.

1. It Takes Time

SEO is a complicated process that takes time to bring meaningful results. It takes several months or even years to bring real traffic. Therefore, most people are afraid of waiting for several months to see meaningful results. And they are not sure if they will get free organic traffic. They prefer a strategy that brings instant traffic.

Additionally, hiring an SEO company costs money. Hire an SEO company if you do not have time to do everything yourself. However, this does not guarantee instant results. Delegating SEO to an expert can save you some time. This is because the best SEO experts are good at ranking websites. They rarely make mistakes. You can save some time with the right SEO company.

2. SEO is Complex

It takes time to learn and master all the different SEO techniques. SEO involves different strategies that work together. You will spend most of your time and money learning SEO strategies such as internal linking, keyword research, backlink building, content creation, on-page optimization, local SEO, technical SEO, and many more.

All these SEO techniques can easily overwhelm anyone. All of these SEO techniques are important. They help with search engine rankings. However, mastering all these SEO techniques does not guarantee rankings. You might fail after spending all your free time learning and mastering all these SEO techniques.

3. Punishment and Penalties

If you have been promoting your business online, you may have heard of Search Engine penalties. Most people have lost their business overnight because of a Search Engine update. If you make mistakes when ranking your websites, you may get penalized in the future. If you are doing SEO on your own, you may make mistakes.

Search Engines want to rank the best websites with quality and relevant content. Therefore, they are willing to penalize any site that does not follow their best practices. A Search Engine penalty ruins motivation. It is hard to continue working on your website when you just lost most of your traffic. So, most people avoid SEO because they are afraid of getting penalized.

4. No Sales

SEO brings more traffic to a website. However, the traffic may never convert. Some SEO marketers get thousands of free organic traffic every day, but they rarely convert the traffic. Therefore, you are not sure if you will convert the free organic traffic into paying customers. If you cannot convert your traffic, you do not have a business.

You do not control the keywords you rank for. You may never rank for your main keyword. You will rank for several keywords. People using these phrases may not be your target audience. Also, you may create the wrong content when ranking your website. The wrong content does not increase your conversion rates.

5. Search Engine Updates

Big Search Engines like Google update their algorithms regularly. They make these changes to show better results to their users. Therefore, it is hard to keep up with all these updates and changes. By the way, it is difficult to find an SEO expert who can say they fully understand SEO. That is why most SEO experts do not guarantee rankings.

Business owners have a lot of things to worry about. They do not want to worry about all the new updates and changes. It is hard to rely on organic traffic. Diversification is important. If you are hit with a new algorithm update, you will only lose a small percentage of your traffic. This is because you do not rely on SEO.

These are the top reasons why most people are afraid of SEO. They are afraid that they will never make money from their websites. SEO takes a lot of time to bring meaningful results. It requires consistent maintenance. And you can easily lose your traffic because of an update. If you do not have a huge marketing budget, focus on SEO. Diversify your traffic sources when you are making money consistently from your SEO campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization Advice And Information

What is SEO?

For the purpose of this website, and for SEO, it means making your website easily searchable for the right keywords, or information. It is also used to describe how you can take your website to the next level.

At this point, you may be wondering how you can best position your website to stand out from the competition.

Is it about spending tons of money on SEO?

While investing money into your search engine optimization does play a part in the process, the truth is that there are many important factors to consider. Some of these can’t be easily purchased.

Ultimately, most websites require a lot of manual work to rank higher in Google. Without having the knowledge yourself or hiring an experienced SEO expert you may do more harm than good for your website.

How does SEO work?

Simply put, SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. A site that has good quality content on it is more likely to rank well for search engine listings.

Google now takes the ‘factual accuracy’ of websites into consideration when assessing your web content for ranking value. So, if you publish incorrect information, you could face negative SEO effects.

It’s important to create content that will add value to your website visitor’s lives and that is unique to grab the attention of the search engine crawlers.

What are the top search engine ranking factors?

As part of your online marketing efforts, you want to look at the primary ranking factors for search engines, especially Google.

By focusing on the factors that make the biggest impact you can invest most of your time and efforts into the few changes your website needs that will make the best positive impact.

Focus on good keywords

Make sure your content is optimized with keywords that drive traffic to your website. Just like with the SEO world, SEO is all about keeping your site attractive and relevant to your business. If you don’t optimize for these factors, you could end up losing out on customers, as many look at your site primarily through search engines.

Implement Good On-Page SEO

To get good results, it’s important to have a website with well-designed content, for example, making sure the fonts and images are of good quality and the HTML and CSS is clean, easy to follow, and organized.

Despite being an over-used phrase, the most important factor in SEO is a website with good content that is curated in a structured way.

Optimize Your Website Meta Title

If you’re unsure what a meta title is, it’s the information assigned to each page on a website that identifies that page with a particular title.

Your main objective with the title should be to identify your most important keywords. Once this is done, you can make these keywords your title tag for future searches.

Optimize Your Meta Description

Meta descriptions help search engines index your content better and are a necessary step to give search engines more relevant search results.

The meta description is a brief summary of what the page is about to provide more information about the page.

This snapshot should include your important keywords and spell out in simple brief terms what the particular page is about.

Optimize Your H Tags

H tags are the header tags on the page. They are designed to break up the content on your page into logical groups of text.

You should include the important keywords into your header tags without stuffing your keywords into them.

Make sure all of your content is natural-looking and easily readable.

In Summary

Below are some notes on some of the most important things to know about SEO.

The first and most important step is to add proper keywords to your website. This is the only way you can accurately rank for those keywords you want to rank for.

Think about your current site. As soon as you get the concept and layout nailed down, add the proper keywords throughout the site in all of the areas specified above.

Doing this will help your SEO strategies tremendously.

Tips For Recovering Website From Google SEO Penalty

When it comes to online traffic, Google is where everything is at. After all, if your website is not ranking on Google for search terms related to your business, you’re unlikely to get much organic traffic. If you have optimized your website and achieved good rankings for various search terms but suddenly, your website seems to have lost all its rankings and your traffic is down big time, it’s possible that your website has suffered a Google SEO penalty.

Now, Google SEO penalties can happen for a variety of reasons such as the use of duplicate content, having spam on your site, having malware on your site, a hacked site, keyword stuffing, broken URLs, use of bought links and other reasons.

Simply put, your website can be penalized for several reasons and the first thing you need to do in order to even think about lifting Google’s penalty from a website is to know the exact reason for which your website has been penalized.

Another important thing you need to understand is that sometimes, Google penalizes websites even when site owners are engaged in activities they think are legit but Google thinks differently.

Sometimes, a website gets hacked and there is malware on the website which leads to a Google penalty. In other words, it is not always the fault of the site owner if their website gets penalized.

Here is a quick guide on what you need to do if you are facing a Google SEO penalty.

Checking for Google Penalty

The very first thing you need to do is find out whether your website has been penalized by Google. While you can find several online tools that can give an idea of whether your website has been penalized or not, the best way to check the penalty status is to log into Goog’es Webmaster Tools and find out whether Google has taken any action against your website.

You will find a link inside the search console for manual actions report. In this report, you will find everything related to your website and why your website has been penalized (if it has been).

There are also some links in the sidebar you can open to check whether your website has been determined by Google to be spam and actions you can take in order to lift the penalty.

In case you haven’t set up your Webmaster Tools account, it is the first thing you need to do. Sign up for it and verify your website. Once you have done that, log into your Webmaster Tools account and check the messages section. If any messages require attention, go through those messages to discover the exact cause of the penalty.

Once you open the manual actions report, you will find several links that will tell you why your website has been penalized. It can be for a hacked site, cloaking, unnatural links, blocked images, keyword stuffing, user-generated spam or a variety of other reasons.

Once you find the root cause of the penalty, you need to take manual corrective action to fix the problem. If you are well versed in the technical side of things, you should try to do it on your own. In case you don’t have the required technical skills or SEO skills, it is recommended to hire the services of a company specializing in recovery from Google SEO penalty to help you get back on track.

As far as hiring a company specializing in lifting a Google penalty is concerned, you should do your homework before partnering with someone. While you can easily find a multitude of companies claiming to be the experts in lifting Google penalties, you’ll find that most are just looking to make a quick buck. Therefore, you need to be smart and check their credentials thoroughly including the work they have done for other clients before allowing them to work on your site.

In case you decide to do all the work on your own, and you have taken the required corrective action, you should resubmit the site map again in Webmaster Tools. If you have signed up for Webmaster Tools, you will get an email from Google where they will ask you to make certain changes in order to fix the penalty. In this message, you will also find a link wherein you can tell them about the fixes you have made. You can also wait for Google to re-crawl the page when they want to but if you message them, things will move quickly.

Simply put, this is what you need to do in order to lift the Google SEO penalty. However, the tough part is taking the corrective actions as required by Google. In case you don’t have the skills, always partner with an expert to lift the penalty and get back that organic traffic.

Important Things You Should Ask Before Choosing An SEO Company

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an umbrella term for the process of helping people find and discover content on the web.

Search engines use algorithms to determine what is relevant, useful and interesting to their users, and how to present it to them. These algorithms are often used to create and display the best possible search results and serve up information people want to see.

Google and the other search engines, as well as other online marketing tools, are built to work together to help people discover, learn and find information, and to deliver the best possible search results to them.

Hiring A Company To Handle Your SEO

The digital marketing landscape has expanded a lot over the years but the fact is that search engines still remain the driving force behind online success.

While social media and email marketing have the potential to bring a lot of traffic, no business can survive by ignoring their presence on the search engine. A strong first-page presence on the search engine result pages is essential to get highly targeted traffic actively looking for the products or services you are selling.

Limited space on the first page of search results means extremely high competition and you need to hire the services of a professional and experienced SEO company to get your website ranked only on the first page of search results for terms related to your business.

However, not all the SEO companies are the same and here is a list of some of the important questions you need to ask before hiring them to get the best value for your money.

Techniques They Use

The first question you should ask them should be about the techniques they use to achieve rankings for their clients. As a business owner, it is important for you to understand that search engine optimization is a double-edged sword. It can do a lot of good for your business by achieving high rankings for your website but partnering with the wrong company can do a lot more harm.

There are all kinds of SEO techniques. Some companies use outdated techniques that provide a ranking boost in the short-term but does a lot more harm in the long term. If search engines discover these techniques being used on your website, your website will be punished in the rankings.

There have been cases where websites have been completely removed from the index by search engines. Therefore, you need to make sure that they only use legitimate techniques that are approved by the search engines.

The industry term for approved & legitimate strategies is white hat SEO. It simply means they won’t indulge in any practices that are likely to get your website penalized. It is also important to realize that white hat SEO takes time to deliver results.

In-house Work or Outsourced

Some SEO companies outsource various aspects of their business due to lack of staff or other reasons. This is typical of web design companies that also offer search engine optimization services to their clients. Since they do not have any optimization experts in their staff, they tend to outsource everything.

You need to know whether the staff working on your website is someone who is aware of the latest techniques. Simply put, you want to know whether the person working on your website knows what they’re doing and whether they follow the best SEO practices.

Result Tracking

Professional agencies understand the importance of keeping their clients aware of the changes they have made and the results they have obtained through their efforts. They constantly communicate with the clients to keep them aware of the things they are doing to achieve higher rankings. In other words, they closely track their efforts and the results achieved through those efforts.

You should ask the prospective SEO partner about how they track results and what kind of reports they are going to share with you regularly to allow you to keep track of their work.

If a company does not want to share reports or shies away from communicating with you, stay away from such companies and start looking for another one.

Existing Clients

Ask them about some of the other clients they have. It will tell you a lot about their experience, especially when it comes to your industry.

SEO also varies by industry and industry knowledge is extremely important as things work differently in each industry. Successful SEO companies typically work with businesses across various industries which gives them the necessary experience to achieve success for clients in a completely different industry.

Simply put, you should ask them to share the results they have obtained for other clients, especially in your industry to make sure that they can deliver on their promises.

Conclusion

Overall, search engine optimization is dynamic. Things keep changing every other day. Therefore, you need to do your homework and spend some time researching various SEO companies before choosing to partner with the right one. Make use of the above-mentioned tips in order to choose the right SEO company.

The Importance Of Backlinks For SEO And Tips To Get Backlinks Naturally

When it comes to search engine rankings, a variety of factors are used by search engines such as Google and Bing to rank webpages. However, not all the factors are given equal weight. Some factors such as backlinks have a much higher weight in the ranking algorithms.

Simply put, a backlink is nothing but a hyperlink from one web page to another. If you click on that link, your browser will take you to the destination web page. These links are regarded by search engines as a trust vote for the destination website. In the initial years, the number of backlinks played a much more important role but these days, the quality of backlinks is much more important as compared to just the number.

This is the reason, earlier site owners were able to rank their websites by building thousands of spam links but these days, such links do much more harm than good. Therefore, the best way to increase the rankings of your website in the search engine result pages is to get as many high-quality links from other authority domains as possible.

Here are a few tips on how you can get high-quality links naturally:

1. High-Quality Content

People like to link to content that is high quality and useful. Therefore, the best way to get links naturally is to publish high-quality content on your website. Make sure the content is relevant, useful and factual. It is also important to regularly publish different forms of content.

For instance, you should publish long-form content (articles that are a few thousand words long) along with articles in FAQ format and various other formats.

Listicles or articles with lists are really popular and attract a lot of natural links.

You should also publish video content on your website as many people these days prefer watching a video over reading a long article.

2. Make It Easy to Share

Your job isn’t done after publishing high-quality content. You also need to put it in front of people and the best way to do it is to use various social media platforms. If you are using a popular CMS such as WordPress, there are several plug-ins that allow you to add social media buttons on each post. If you are using some other CMS, you should be able to find equivalent plug-ins to add social media buttons.

3. Resource Pages

This is a really popular way to get high-quality links from websites of established institutions. These links carry a lot of weight as the institution websites have higher authority in the eyes of search engines. Such websites usually have a resource page to help their visitors discover other high-quality content online.

Use a search engine to locate such websites with the help of custom queries. You should then get in touch with the Webmaster of such websites and ask them to include your website on their resources page.

4. Help Others

This is another popular way to get authoritative links from high-quality domains. There are many huge websites on the Internet and many of these websites have a number of broken links. They might have linked to a certain web page a few years ago and now that web page no longer exists. This results in a broken link.

Broken links are not good for the Internet and for SEO of that website. You can use various online tools to find such broken links on authority domains and make them aware of such broken links. When you get in touch with them, ask them to consider linking to your own website as a high-quality resource in place of the broken link.

5. Help a Reporter Out

This is a service wherein real journalists can ask experts in different niches for help. You can sign up for this service through their website and whenever a query is posted by a journalist regarding a topic that relates to your website, you can provide them the relevant information along with a link to your website.

6. Never Buy Links

If you search online, you will find several shady websites and forums wherein they sell backlink packages. Keep in mind that Google is against buying links. If you buy links in order to increase the ranking of your website, rest assured that those links will get discovered sooner or later. Your website might get penalized and in some cases, Google has also completely de-indexed some domains. So, you should never buy links and instead, focus on the above-mentioned tips in order to earn high-quality natural links.

Conclusion

Overall, backlinks remain the backbone of search engine optimization. However, the quality of links plays a much more important role as compared to the sheer quantity. You should make use of the above-mentioned tips in order to naturally earn authoritative links to your website.

The Best Online Tools For Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is without a shadow of a doubt more crucial today than ever before. New trends in the industry like the AI revolution and the rise of voice search mean that you if you want to stay competitive, then you need to top up your game. If you want to get started with search engine optimization or just want to get better results, you may want to try out the following popular SEO tools.

Google Keyword Planner

There is no denying that SEO analysis has become more important for the App Store, YouTube, and Amazon. However, most online business owners are more interested in how their content appears on the search giant Google.

To access all Google Keyword Planner’s capabilities, you’ll need a Google AdWords account, but the tool is actually free to anyone with a Google Account. This tool has two primary capabilities, discovering keywords as well as looking at keyword metrics.

For the former, you enter phrases that are connected to your niche and then it gives you a list of suggested keywords. This includes an estimate of monthly search results, cost per click estimations as well as competition.

In the latter, you can utilize the tool to compare the analytics of the keyword. It reveals the number of clicks and impressions a monthly ad targeting a specific keyphrase. It ideally shows how much it would all cost.

SEMrush

This is another popular keyword research tool that among many other things makes it easy to find out what keywords any page on the internet is ranking for. It gives you detailed information regarding those phrases including their position in the search engine results pages, the URLs to which they drive traffic and trends in the last 12 months.

With this feature-rich SEO tool, it’s easy to find out what phrases your competitors are ranking for and create great content around those keywords. It ideally offers more features and while it does not come cheap, the company offers a 14-day free trial if you want to test it out.

Woorank

This is a handy site analysis tool that gives useful insights that help you improve your websites search engine optimization. It generates a search engine optimization score for your website as well as a Marketing Checklist which outlines the steps you should take to fix any issues with your website’s SEO.

Another appealing feature of Woorank is the social shareability pane. This is a section that provides social media data like the number of comments, likes, shares, bookmarks, and backlinks.

Ideally, it has an excellent mobile section where you will find information on how your web pages render on mobile devices as well as how fast they load.

Keyword.Io

This is a tool used to conducting keyword research on an array of platforms including YouTube, Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, etc. If you are on the search for keywords beyond Google, this is an ideal starting point.

Once you type in a keyword and pick your region, the tool will create a list of numerous long-tail keywords that are related to your entry. For example, you can look specifically at Amazon keywords and filter them or search through those of any of the platforms they support.

BROWSEO

This is a tool that allows you to see how your site looks to search engines. Simply put, it strips your webpage and reveals the underlying structure. This is a handy feature as it helps you know whether search engine bots are having a hard time accessing important information on your website. The SERP feature is perhaps the neatest feature of this free tool. It shows a preview of how your website appears in the search results.

Ubersuggest

This is another handy SEO tool that scrapes data from Keyword Planner for phrase ideas based on the term you type in. Ubersuggest ideally returns helpful data for every keyword including the level of competition, CPC, and search volume.

An appealing feature of this SEO tool is the ability to filter out keywords that you are not interested in from search results. With the recently updated version, it is now possible to enter URLs and get metrics on domains.

These are some of the most popular and handy tools that you should consider for your SEO efforts.

What Is On-Page SEO?

Each search engine optimization strategy is centered on ranking a website in the highest possible positions in the search results. To do so, most of us attempt to create and produce a web site that Google’s ranking algorithm will like. That is essentially what SEO (search engine optimization) is really about.

Google’s algorithm factors can be split into two classes. Based on the factors in those classes will end up determining the rank of your site.

These 2 classes are on-page and off-page SEO.

Here, I will explore the variations between both, describe the value of search-engine SEO and discuss the primary on-page search engine optimization factors.

Off-Page and On-Page SEO

On-page variables are related to components that make up your website.

On-page factors include how it is set up, the actual make-up of the code, visual and textual content, and whether your website is user-friendly or not.

The other class is made up of factors off-page, or not directly on your website, such as links to your website coming from other websites and your social media engagement, along with other advertising activities out of your own site.

The better quality links you receive has a direct correlation to ranking better in Google.

On-Page SEO Relevance

On-page SEO is made up of all of the components of search engine optimization that you have the most control over.

If you have a web site, you can directly address the technical problems and make sure your website’s content is of high quality. The first place to start in your SEO campaign will be addressing and fixing all on-page optimization issues as these are the easiest and quickest to resolve.

If you make a wonderful site, it will eventually begin ranking.

Putting your focus onto your on-page SEO can also raise the probability your off-page search engine optimization strategy will succeed. Since off-page SEO is primarily made up of backlinks, you’re not very likely to get good quality backlinks if you have a bad website. People are just less motivated to share or reference your website if it has low-quality content, doesn’t add any unique value or has a bad UX.

Critical On-Page Search Engine Optimization Factors

In our opinion, there are 3 primary on-page search engine optimization factors.

Quality Code

Your website should be designed and developed using quality code and you shouldn’t be cutting any corners.

Check if you are not unintentionally preventing crawlers (search engine bots that search your website looking over your content) from indexing/visiting your site (this still happens a lot!).

Many people use WordPress to build their websites. It is a pretty friendly platform when it comes to SEO as there are some good SEO plugins available to easily install. Yoast SEO and All In One SEO are both great plugins to install. They will easily address some of the underlying code issues that many people might not know how to fix otherwise.

Amazing content

You find a website through a search engine because it has information on it related to what you were searching for. Thus you should write really good content. Search engines such as Google read the text on your website. A large portion of a website’s rankings has to due with the content that is on that website.

You want the content to be straight forward, unique and highly relevant to what your website is about. You want it to add value when a visitor comes to your website and reads it. Since Google monitors website activity it can analyze how engaging your content is based on a visitor interacts with your site.

If a searcher goes to your website from a search engine and then immediately presses the back button. Well, that gives the search engine good data regarding the website that was visited. Since they were only there a couple of seconds, maybe the website is broken, has a virus, has horrible content, a bad UX or is not relevant to what was being searched for.

Regardless of why none of these are good things, and a quick abandon rate like that can be pretty bad for your SEO.

So make sure that your content rocks and that it is focused on your target market.

Easy to follow UX

The final item in your on-page SEO is to make sure that your website is easy to use and navigate. Users will need to readily understand your site. They ought to have the ability to obtain what they need as quickly as they arrive. They should be able to easily tell where they need to click and how to browse through your website. Plus it ought to be fast!

I great looking design for your website is well and good, but your highest priority should be to make your website as a user-friendly as possible!

If you would like to find out more about blending SEO into your UX and transformation we would suggest that you read the other posts on our website to learn more!