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3 Important Growth Goals of Content marketing

Posted on March 17, 2020March 17, 2020 by admin

Let us ask you a question first: how is your content marketing strategy working out for your business?

If your answer is a “Not very effective” or a “Not sure about that” then you are not alone. In fact, around 57% of businesses don’t analyse their content marketing strategy or unaware of how to measure its effectiveness.

The main reason for this is they have established a content marketing strategy for their brand without defining goals or objectives for their brand. You need to determine the aim of your content marketing, are you producing content for like & shares? Do you wish for it to go viral? Or do you want to amp up your search engine rankings?

In case you have any of these goals in mind then that might be a reason why your content marketing strategy is failing.

In this article, we are going to discuss how to set up real growth-related goals that will give a granular result about your content marketing performance.

Setting up growth-oriented goals for your business

The content marketing goals for your business must be growth-related and designed specifically for your entrepreneurial ambitions.

However, if you are unable to achieve them, then your approach towards those goals might be at fault. Let’s have a look at some of the content marketing goals that your brand should have.

1. SEO Rankings

Google is a great barometer to determine the success of your content. If the content that you create gets enough likes & shares and climbs in Google’s search rankings then you’re creating the right type of content

The Google search engine has content standards that are difficult to please. This means that only the best pieces will be able to reach in the top 10, top 5, and top 3 rankings. It depends on who is providing the most contextual information regarding a specific topic/keyword that the user is searching for.

If your content meets the above criteria 100%, then you’ll earn top rankings. The result being, That you’ll get a lot more qualified traffic to your business website. In case your content’s not ranking then your business is missing out on those leads who are most likely to bring their business to your brand.

2. Conversations & Engagement

Now that you’ve managed to attract qualified leads, it’s time to convert them to your business objective. This is achieved by nurturing the leads with highly personalised and contextual content.

Achieving your content marketing goals starts with great content. If you’re just pushing out content just for the sake of it, you won’t grow.

Here are A few examples of how your business can engage with the leads

For people reaching out to your sales team through channels like chat, email, etc. you can start the conversation with helpful emails regarding your products or services and how the users can avail them quickly & efficiently.
For social media, you can interact with them by sending links to similar blogs or sending messages in their inbox.

Based on these communications you can determine the lead’s interest level and how close they are towards doing business with your brand. The important thing is how effectively you apply your content to nurture those leads from the awareness stage to the next stage of consideration

3. Sales & Revenue

Let’s get down to brass tax, the actual performance of your content marketing can be ascertained by the actual sales results from the above connections and conversations? It’s time to quantify your results.

You’ve attracted qualified leads with content, analytics with giving you the metrics on the traffic and audience engagement. Match that against your sales to get the crystal clear picture of your Digital marketing performance.

Discuss with your salespeople and If you see growth in this area then your content is giving huge benefits for your business.

Few tips on Generating Growth from Content

Generating awesome content is crucial and to add the cherry on top there few things you can do to make your content marketing strategy rock solid.

Consistency is the key!!

Now great content is going to boost your Google ranking, However, you need to keep delivering quality content to stay that way.

Producing great content builds trust with your audience so keep hitting that checkpoints and you’ll get them hooked. Plus your brand reputation will be through the roof!!

Link Your Content to Services

What’s the use of delivering top-notch content if it doesn’t tie back to your product & services? The whole point of any content marketing strategy is to nurture the leads along the buyer’s journey until it’s finally time to seal the deal.

That’s where CTA’s (calls-to-action) come into the picture. There should be at least one CTA in every piece of content that gets published. These are really helpful in directing the users to the next step and also gives you insights on their interest levels.

Engage with Conversational Content

Starting off conversations with interested readers based on your content is a great way to boost your ROI. These aren’t about getting all salesey but more about building relations with the audience by providing helpful information.

Chatbots play an important role in handling a large volume of conversations during the long hours of the day. But nothing can empathetic, friendly & personable human response – having empathy to turn interests into decisions leading to a sale.

And Lastly…

We hope you’ve found our take on content marketing useful and in case you need some help in setting up growth goals for your brand than just drop us a line and we’ll get in touch with you ASAP

5 Horrible On-Page SEO Mistakes & How to Resolve them?

Posted on September 12, 2019November 6, 2019 by admin

Nowadays, it is quite understood that it’s hard to rank a webpage on search engines. There are dozens of algorithms that are necessary to be followed or else, your page is neglected for being indexed. Some are hard to follow every time but most of them are mistakes that we unknowingly ignore. Here we have some on-page SEO mistakes which look ordinary but if solved, their impacts are extraordinary.

So, consider going through the below-mentioned on-page SEO mistakes with their solution to rank your web pages on search engines.

1) Content Not Matching With Searcher’s Goal

2) Depending On Repetitive Keywords For Ranking

3) Not Optimising Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

4) Excluding Relevant Topics

5) Adding Inapposite Tags That Block Indexing

1. Content Not Matching With Searcher’s Goal

Not every time you will be able to understand the intent of the searcher typed in the search bar. Most of the time it becomes quite difficult to know what searcher wants to know.

The keyword used by the searchers has no specific intent. For example, if a searcher types a query “Pasta” then it becomes confusing for a Search Engine whether he/she wants to make pasta, order pasta or learn about pasta?

To know and learn what your audiences are looking for on your pages, you will have to take a look at Search Engine Result Page(SERP).

Search engines extremely test the searchers to know their search intent and to provide them with the information to which they are looking for. To know what genuine searchers want for their query, SERP works as an indicator which indicates the searcher’s query.

This way you can easily acknowledge the queries of your audience and can provide them with the information which they require.

2. Depending On Repetitive Keywords For Ranking

Earlier it was quite easy to rank keywords on Google’s first page by one of the most common methods i.e., stuffing keyword multiple times in the content. However, now their algorithms are mature.

Google’s algorithms have improved but many webpages are yet not optimised and still repeating the keywords. Repeating keywords in some specific density in the body content was one of the best shortcuts to rank a webpage.

At present, if you are stuffing your target keyword multiple times then the search engine will indicate your page as less satisfying for the searcher. And will not rank it on its first page as your content is more about keyword repetition.

There are various tools to identify repetitive keyword stuffing in your previous content. It’s better to answer the query instead of repeating it in your content.

With all being said, keyword repetition technique should not be thrown away as it is quite helpful in some specific situations. But not always as Google and other search engines consequently promoting quality content pages.

It’s better to repeat the keyword in the body content that perfectly answers searcher’s question.

3. Not Optimising Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

Title tag and meta description are an integral component of on-page SEO. Both have their qualities that affect the search results. Title tag helps in ranking pages for some particular query. And meta description helps to increase the number of clicks on pages from search results.

Knowing the fact that these two are known to be the best on-page SEO activities from years. Still, digital marketing services providing agencies and individuals are avoiding it to increase the visibility of on-page SEO element like the content.

However, Google has some of the best optimization guidelines regarding the title tag and meta descriptions. Take a look at the following:

Every page should include the title tag as well as meta description.
Make sure not to use generic or repetitive text.
You can add descriptive words but remember to neglect keyword stuffing.
No need to add generic data. Your meta description should only include accurate information about your content.

If focused on these two elements with any fail, your page can get better ranking as well as organic traffic on the search engines.

4. Excluding Relevant Topics

At present, Google is promoting those pages whose contents are relevant to their topics.

According to the studies, it has been found that marketers focus on single keyword throughout their whole webpage. However, it is the most common mistake as searcher will not be using that same single keyword.

The searcher does not know what to type on the search engine to find the answer to their query. Which is why it is necessary to focus on multiple keywords that are quite relevant to the focused one.

Always make sure to include words as well as phrases that are logically similar to your targeted keyword. Adding relating words connects the overall concept or else, Google will not accept your content as a relevant answer to the searcher’s query.

5. Adding Inappropriate Tags That Block Indexing

Your page content should be designed in a manner that sends search engines a positive signal!

Well, this is also counted as one of the most common on-page SEO mistakes i.e., adding useless tags on your webpage which prohibits your it being indexed on search engines.

Tags like noindex meta instruct Google to ignore the page out of its index. Consider going through your website for removing these similar tags if you want the search engines to crawl and index it in search results.

CONCLUSION

The above-mentioned are the most Horrible on-page SEO mistakes that many marketers follow and receive no exceptional results. However, every mistake has its solution and is mentioned with the same.

There you go, you got the answers to your queries. So, make sure to go through your website again and solve your on-page SEO mistakes. Or else, consider connecting to an SEO agency in Perth to resolve all your website issues.

10 Great Image SEO tips you Need to Know

Posted on September 4, 2019November 6, 2019 by admin

“A picture speaks a thousand words”

While some of us might consider this quote a cliche but it doesn’t make it any less the truth, especially in the case of the online world today.

As we know, the consumption of content is shifting towards the picturesque side of things consistently and continuously. Visual images are consumed 60,000 times faster than text. Which is why marketers cannot ignore the importance of images any longer.

Now that we know how important images are in the world wide web the question that comes to mind is how to make the best possible use of it? This is where image SEO comes into the game, it is a special niche in SEO dedicated to providing a seamless experience with the images associated with your online presence.

When search engines index your web content they might not be able to understand the images but they do understand the text around it. Image SEO is all about optimising the images so that web crawlers can easily understand the images and rank them higher in the search results.

This can be achieved in several ways such as image file size reduction, contextual ALT tags and more. In this article, we are going to discuss all the things you can do to optimise your images.

So let’s get Started With Image SEO tips, shall we!!

1) Use Original & Beautiful Images

Why would anyone engage with an unimpressive image they’ve seen a million times? You should never post images for the sake of it instead, they should complement and support your textual content.

Your images should tell a story and leave a long-lasting impact upon the users. This is why creating beautiful branded images form the foundation of any image SEO strategy.

Although Google doesn’t frown upon the copied images still you should get your image made by your graphic designer or you can also hire a web design company. A truly unique and contextual image would enhance your user experience.

You can also find beautifully curated images from resources such as Pixabay, Unsplash, Flickr etc.

2) Use Optimisable File Size

Having high-quality images is it great, however a lot of times these come with a large file size that negatively impacts your webpage load time.

You can reduce the file size while ensuring quality does not get affected by using online tools like Adobe Photoshop. Make sure all your images are within 500kb to ensure optimal loading speed.

Not only that, the file format (GIF, PNG, JPEG) is crucial while maintaining the file size and image quality balance. Since these file formats have a different compression rate and affect the quality differently, therefore, it’s file format should be per the image type.

Mostly JPEGs are the best for photographs, PNG’s for line drawings & texts and GIFs should be used for moving images.

3) Consider Accurate Image Name

As we mentioned before search engine crawlers scan the text associated with the image to understand what the image is about. This is why establishing a well-defined image nomenclature is an important image SEO activity.

To name your images effectively the name should contain the main keywords and should also be short as well as relevant. The easier it is for search engine crawlers to scan your image, the more are the chance of the image to rank higher in search results.

Ranking higher in the search engine’s results is the best way to ensure the images readily reach your target audience. You can use the insights from your website analytics to find out how your target audience is searching for your product or services to name your images.

4) Apply Vector Graphics

The use of vector graphics is ideally for images like icons, logos, text etc. all the simple geometric designs. Vector graphic implementation resulting in sharp results even in high resolution and varying screen sizes.

One of the most widely used vector graphics is the SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics) due to its high adaptability in varying devices. Don’t forget to minify the SVG file during optimisation and compress it with GZIP.

5) Use Effective Image Captions

Users first come in contact with your images from a webpage which is where image captions come in. image captions not only describe the image, but they also help the search engines understand the image as well.

To create an impressive website caption, you should use them as image headlines. Keep the caption descriptive but short, and it should always be in the present tense.

Yes, image captions are helpful but overusing them also make the webpage all cluttered up. If you think your image is self-explanatory then let it be without captions.

6) Implement Best Image SEO Practices For ALT Text

Alt text like image name and caption are used to describe the image and help the search engines understand the image better and index them. Not only that ALT tags help users interpret the image on devices that are unable to process the images.

A well-optimised image ALT text short but descriptive and must contain the image SEO determined key words. And do not even think about keyword stuffing.

7) Don’t Forget About Image Sitemaps

In case there are a lot of webpages the search engine crawlers sometimes fail to index all the webpages and images. To prevent this, sitemaps are implemented to help the search engines discover the images without a hitch.

There is no need to add individual sitemap specifically for images you can add the image information in the existing sitemap. In case you are implementing WordPress or Yoast SEO in your website then images are added automatically in your sitemaps

8) The contextual Image Data Structure

By adding structured data property in your images the search engines can display them as snippets. Giving your images a richer listing in the search results.

Just make sure the image and text are aligned with one another and the URL are crawlable.

9) Optimise According to The Traffic Received from Image Search

The best way to determine your image SEO strategies are working or not is to analyse the image search traffic. You can either use Google Analytics or Google Search Console to achieve your objective.

Based on your insights you can improve upon the images that failing to attract the right traffic and replicate the elements that are doing well.

10) Consider Lazy Loading

Lazy loading loads images when they need to be shown on the screen i.e. scrolling. It can speed up your web page speed quite a bit as the images are loaded in sequence and only if they are needed to be shown.

There are many different methods to apply this functionality, but almost all of them involve Javascript. In case you’re not familiar with the implementation, it may be worth consulting SEO services company to help with this.

CONCLUSION

The world can no longer ignore the importance of images in online content. It’s not about adding images just for the sake of adding. The more unique and richer images you use, the more are your chances of attracting the audience’s attention and elicit the desired action from them.

However, the application of Image SEO has a lot of elements involved and might be a bit complex. In case you have any questions or if you need any assistance with this, please feel free to contact us anytime and we’ll be happy to help.

Mobile SERP Survival Tips: Any Technical SEO Checklist Must Have

Posted on June 27, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

Although technical SEO is a topic that only a few of us make use of it is an integral part of life. Tell me this, which part of SEO is non-technical if we have a closer look?

Any SEO technical checklist must contain parameters such as issues, mistakes, tips and recommendations. And the good thing is we are going to cover it all, in the most efficient way possible, all of the above-mentioned elements are crucial in making any website user-friendly, organized, detectable in SERP and easily understandable. Therefore, collect all the data you might have on your site and start optimizing.

It sure has taken a while, but Google’s mobile-first indexing is here at last.

The Search Console messages have started appearing and sites are gradually switching over to the mobile-first indexing methodology.

You’ll find a lot of content being written about mobile-first indexing, however, most of them have only elaborated on the basic elements of mobile search engine optimization. In this article, we are going to analyze some of the more technical components of mobile search engine optimization (SEO) and show you what actions are required to make sure your website is all set and is going to survive the mobile-first indexing era.

Mobile-First Indexing:

What does Google intend to do with “mobile-first indexing? Regardless of most of the SEOs might be believing, Google has not developed a separate index for mobile search. Whether any site applies the mobile-first indexing approach or not, Google will still serve the search results from the common index of the Internet.

Now you might be asking then what the difference is. Well intrinsically, only there is one factor that has really changed: Instead of crawling websites with a desktop user-agent, Google will be crawling the websites with a mobile user-agent.

Previously, Google crawled the websites from a desktop perspective, with a user-agent string that indicates desktop devices:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

With mobile-first indexing, this has changed to a user-agent indicating a mobile device:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2272.96 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

This above mentioned user-agent string shows that it’s originating to be an Android device, so it requires your website’s content optimized for mobile viewing.

Delivering Mobile-Optimized Experiences:

With this mobile user-agent, what Google bot sees is greatly dependent on how your website is configured to handle mobile usage. Delivering mobile-optimized experiences tends to take place in one of three ways:

1. Responsive Design:

With this method, nothing really changes. Your website’s uniform resource locators (URLs) remain as they are, and the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) code implemented is identical as well. This type of website’s design will adapt to the size of the screen it is being viewed on, delivering a mobile experience catering to the device’s specific screen resolution. Google recommends responsive design as its preferred design pattern, as it requires the least effort from their end; there is no extra code to index and no additional URLs for crawling.

2. Dynamic Service:

A lot of times websites detect the user-agent when a page is being loaded and provide a different HTML code on the same URL with respect to the type of device that’s being used. This is called dynamic serving. It is the same URL, different HTML code, one for desktop users and another one for the mobile users.

3. Unique Mobile URL:

In this approach, a website will provide different code to mobile users as well and will also use different URLs for its mobile site. Often a website serves its mobile content from a separate subdomain, like m.website.com, or from a different subfolder like www.website.com/mobile/.

Each of these mobile design methodologies has its own strengths and weaknesses. But for SEO purposes, having a responsive design tend to present the least hassle, whereas in dynamic serving and separate mobile URLs can cause many problems for the technical SEO of your website.

But by just having a fully responsive site doesn’t mean your work is complete. Even if your responsive site gets a green mark on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, this doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to fear from mobile-first indexing.

There are still some elements of technical SEO and general optimization you need to know in order to fix your site. If your site uses the dynamic serving or separates mobile URLs, there might be quite a lot of work cut out for you in ensuring that your website continues to perform consistently.

Consistent On-Page SEO:

Firstly, you will need to make sure your on-page SEO is up to the mark on your mobile site. In a responsive design, this is not an issue, as mobile and desktop pages are basically the same.

However, if your site is using dynamic serving or separate mobile URLs, it’s crucial to double-check your on-page SEO, here are few must-have for on page:

• Whether you have optimized title tags and meta-descriptions?
• Does your page have a strong headline?
• Is your content the matching with your desktop version?

Once your website is switched to mobile-first indexing, Google will check the mobile site for indexing and ranking. If your mobile site is not on the same level in on-page SEO as your desktop site, you can expect your site ranking going down.

Importance of Structured Data:

Along with basic on-page SEO elements, you will also need to keep structured data in mind as well. Your website might have structured data embedded in your desktop pages that can result in rich snippets in Google’s search results. If this structured data isn’t there on your mobile site, you could be losing those rich snippets and the click-through rates.

You must ensure that any structured data markup that’s there on your desktop site is also present on your mobile site. Use Google’s structured data testing tool to verify the markup. And keep a special lookout for structured data report in Google Search Console for potential errors and warnings.

Must have Pagination:

A lot of times, for smooth mobile user experience, websites might not paginate content the same way for mobile users as it does for desktop. Instead of links to deeper pages, your mobile site may be using infinite scrolling or does not bother with pagination at all and just display limited content.

In this case, you must fix this before the website is to be switched to mobile-first indexing. Lacking pagination or the wrong implementation means that the Googlebot won’t index beyond the first page of paginated content. And what the Googlebot can’t see, it cannot crawl and this could eminently lead to your site dropping out of the Google’s index entirely.

So make sure your pagination is done properly on mobile site, with completely crawlable pagination URLs.

On top of that, your website might be using pagination Meta tags to indicate paginated content. With rel=prev and rel=next, you can signpost that, like lists of products or an article spread out over multiple pages.

When using dynamic serving or separate mobile URLs. You need to ensure your pagination Meta tags are present on mobile as well as on desktop.

Conclusion:

Mobile-first indexing is not a matter of if but a matter of when. And it will happen to your site sooner rather than later, so our advice is you should be prepared for it as much as possible.

In order to prepare for the mobile-first indexing, era means you need to double-check everything, and then check it again. Don’t be complacent; a positive Mobile-Friendly Test is only the beginning. You need to make sure that each and every element of your site’s SEO is present on mobile as well as a desktop, and your switch should be easy and without a hitch.

How to Build Backlinks for a Brand New Site and with No Money

Posted on April 3, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

Have you just launched a brand new website? Are you struggling to build backlinks due to restricted budgets? Well, then you have landed upon the right web page. This post is completely tailored to you. As you would know, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and backlinks are as good as twin sisters. In fact, generating backlinks from authoritative websites are one of the most and foremost activities of SEO. And, here you cannot have 100% control. Further, it plays an important role in rankings because it walks hand in hand with organic traffic.

When search engine website crawlers visit your websites to build a search engine index, they particularly look for backlinks. In case you have good rankings on SERPs but your site lacks backlinks, search engines may assume that your website content quality is low!

A backlink is a web link which on clicking returns to your website. Building a backlink is indeed tough. It requires skills, patience and efforts. But, in this post, we have tried our best to help you out. You will be able to build backlinks to your brand new site without investing your money.

Tips to Build Backlinks When You Have a Brand New Site and No Money

1. Content contribution on other’s sites

In traditional language, it used to be addressed as guest posting where a newbie website writes a blog post for another site and earn backlinks from either author bio or body content. However, things have changed drastically, especially post Panda and Penguin updates. Now it is not about what you write on guest sites. It is all about how your content will help the users of that particular guest site.

To summarise, yes, guest posting is still alive – but only if it is relevant to that website and their readers.

Also, nowadays, a variety of content is being produced since the users have various ways to consume the content. And among all, guests-graphic is the most popular content to contribute and earn authority contextual backlinks. The reason behind it is such content can be easily shared on social networks.

So, research on the most trending topic via tools like Right relevance, Buzzsumo and come up with an engaging title that suits the guest website most. Approach them with your suggested title and on getting approval, submit the best possible guests-graphic. Along with the submission of guests-graphic, offer a small blog-style write up explaining that infographic.

2. Testimonials – the secret sauce to build quality backlinks

When you just read the single term “testimonial”, the first thing that might appear in your mind would be some good words written by your customers for you. Yes, we are also talking about the same thing – testimonials – but the other way round. Try giving testimonials on others’ websites.

Testimonials-For-Bulid-Quality-Backlinks

For instance, if you are using any social media marketing tool, SEO tool or email marketing software – write good reviews on their portals. On getting your feedback approved, you might earn quality backlinks. Providing you are a loyal customer of that product or service, chances are high that you can build backlinks in exchange for a testimonial. But, make a point that you write a review that actually helps others to make a decision regarding that service. Don’t just write to earn a backlink.

3. Quote industry influencers in your content

This one is a little tricky, especially if your brand awareness isn’t spread to a significant level. Write a long-form blog post and quote experiences, findings or sayings of industry experts therein. While promoting that blog or article, give a shout-out to the quoted influencer on social media. If your content is well written and they like the citation, they might place a link of your article on their website. This way you will earn quality backlinks as well as will get known in their huge and widespread network.

You can use data from the reliable sources in your niche from the sites like Statista, Pew Research and others. While writing such posts, take care of your keywords too. It should not be completely out of the place. This is because your website readers would be habituated of reading some sort of content from you. If all of a sudden, they will find something irrelevant to them, anytime they can unsubscribe.

4. Niche relevant blog commenting, forum commenting

This is a little similar to writing testimonials. It is a bitter truth that not all your testimonials will get approved in a single click; but, then what? You can’t sit and wait to build backlinks. You have to find other ways that also fall under complete white hat SEO. The similar technique is blog commenting and forum posting.

Most of the businesses run a blog and every blogger would love to read comments on their blogs. Identify the best blogs and blogging sites in your niche, and comment on your findings of that content. Do not post sales pitch or offensive content. But, post your overall positive opinion about that post. Also, you can ask to read a sequel or prequel of that post. Such comments have higher chances of getting approved rather than silly comments like “nice article”, “thanks for publishing”, etc.

Coming back to forum commenting i.e. forum participation – it is equally important as blog commenting. Here, you need to identify the active forums of your domain, preferably where industry influencers also visit. Few of the best places (as forums) are Quora, Inbound.org, LinkedIn Groups and Facebook Groups. Start with participating in the trending posts and the most active posts. Once your name and presence get established, you can start creating your own posts and ask for others’ opinion.

In both cases, you need to create a thorough authentic profile with a correct URL to your website.

5. Spread the word about your business

There’s a saying, “Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen.” Here, we are talking about spreading awareness about your business. Unless and until you do self-promotion, chances are rare that you will get noticed in the crowd. It does not mean that in each and every promotion sound too salesy. Rather, help your community by providing value. Build some long-lasting valuable relationships on social media with fellow industry people. Know about them and let them know about you. Once your online presence gets noticed in front of them, you can then make an “ask”.

One of the advised ways is to reach journalists and influencers from your niche through emails. If you don’t get their email ID, reach out to them on social networks. When you pitch them, ensure that your content copy is scrip and to the point. No one in this world has time to sit and read through long boring emails.

6. Become a contributor on the websites having high DA/PA

There are many portals which allow you to post your content and in exchange, you get a backlink to your website. But, post your content only on the sites having high DA (domain authority) and high PA (page authority). This is because your goal is not only to build backlinks but to build quality backlinks. Also, check spam scores of those portals. It should not be more than 2. You can use tools like Open Site Explorer to check these parameters.

Few of the recommended sites are Medium, List.ly, Growth hackers, etc. Try out these if it falls under your niche. Another major advantage you will get is building your brand value. On posting frequently, you will get subscribers to your post and that’s how people will get habituated to hear from you at regular intervals. This, in turn, will boost your personal brand as well as the corporate brand.

7. Difficult but fruitful method – HARO (Help a reporter out)

How many sites you daily come across which offers FREE trials? Too many, right? And there would be surely some portals which can be accessed for FREE forever but what all it requires is your registration.

Similarly, there is a site called HARO (https://www.helpareporter.com/).

Help_A_Reporter-HARO-for-Backlink-building

HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage.

Go and create your account thereby filling all required details, including your website URL. You will receive three emails a day with requests to reply to the information that reporters need. Scan through the emails you have received, identify the most relevant to you and post the reply to that particular query. You will not be able to build backlinks for all your replies. But you never know, for which relevant reply you may earn a good one.

Closing Thoughts:

The above-listed techniques are not the only ones, there are many. You can also help hacked sites, fix external broken links, and do social media promotions and business listing. Benefits will come from these areas too. If you are popular in your network but only your site is a newbie, try to get interviewed by an expert and in return earn backlinks.

Hope you loved reading it. Do drop in your thoughts on building backlinks in the comments box. We’d love to hear from you.

Google’s mobile-first Index – Future of Mobile Algorithm

Posted on March 13, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

This post is by guest author, Andrew Gazdecki. This article has been edited and published with the author’s permission.

We’re in the age of the mobile device. Many of us grab our cell phones the moment we wake up, and it’s likely the last thing we see before we fall asleep. Digital marketers seem fixated on trying to label the ‘Year of Mobile,’ but this is just not enough; it is the Mobile Age.

Not convinced? Well, consider that Google is changing website indexing in favour of a mobile version of web pages over the desktop. And, pretty much anything Google says or does is guaranteed to have an immediate or foreseeable impact on the digital marketing world. You can safely take their word as gospel.

This mobile-first index will have a considerable effect on digital marketing, especially regarding search engine optimization (SEO), web design, and mobile development. Thus, this discussion aims to demystify this colossal shift by Google and look at the immediate steps you can take to prepare for the mobile-first future.

What Does Mobile-First Index Mean?

Indexing is how search engines, like Google, can retrieve relevant web pages and documents in mere moments after a search query is made. The information gathered and placed in Google’s search index is how they formulate their rankings for the results page. Traditionally, Google used to index the desktop version of a company’s website first, while the mobile-friendly version was treated secondarily. Mobile-first indexing means the opposite is now going to occur.

For some businesses treating their mobile website as an afterthought, consider this your wake up call! That said, it is important to note that the mobile-first index does not mean mobile-only. Google will still index your desktop website, but even searchers on a desktop will ultimately land itself on your mobile page.

Why Is Google Doing This?

Google is a business and, like any business, they are significantly concerned with their customer experience. Considering that mobile search has now surpassed desktop (mobile search volume is nearly 60% in the US now), it makes sense for Google to adopt a mobile-first approach. They know that the majority of their users are searching on mobile devices, so it’s only logical to display mobile sites first because these are the pages built for smaller screens and mobile navigation and thereby promoting the most consistently positive customer experience.

In a way, the mobile-first index is Google’s way of enforcing the creation of business websites that are great and functional on mobile devices. After all, when a Google searcher clicks on a website link on their mobile device that isn’t friendly to the smaller screen, it reflects poorly on Google’s search engine and their overall customer experience too.

What’s The Impact of Mobile-First Index on My Business?

The impact of the mobile-first index will be felt by all businesses. We’re talking about a fundamental change in how the world’s largest search engine operates. Google has made past changes to how their crawl bots rank pages in the past, just ask any SEO expert. But, these are mere drops in the bucket compared to this transformative change. It is going to have exciting implications in the way businesses develop websites and optimize them for search.

Considering this impending change and the impact it will have, businesses need to start preparing to ensure that the effect their brands feel is a positive one. In other words, you want your business to thrive in the mobile-first indexed world, not suffer.

In terms of SEO rankings, Gary Illyes and Paul Haahr of Google have said that the goal is for the mobile-first change to have minimal impact on current page ranks. However, this is not a guarantee that this goal will be met or that rankings won’t change over time to favour mobile sites.

With your mobile site about to become the version of your website, it stands to reason that there will also be a significant impact on how much traffic your mobile site gets. To accommodate this change, you need to ensure that your mobile site is optimized and has fast load times. This is a crucial consideration when preparing for the mobile-first index because slow sites, especially on mobile really deter users. A new technology called, Progressive Web Apps, is starting to gain popularity because of its mobile-centric features, like fast loading times.

A Quick Note For Websites With No Mobile Version Available

If you have no mobile version of your website, Google will continue to index your desktop site as the primary version. So, don’t feel that you need to rush to make a mobile site immediately to protect your SEO rankings. That said, it’s not a good idea to delay too much or avoid developing a mobile site altogether. Not only are you hurting your customer experience by not offering a site that is friendly to mobile devices, but the mobile-first index could, eventually, affect your SEO rankings by favouring competitors that have a responsive mobile site.

How Do I Start Preparing My Business For Mobile-First Index?

The answer depends on what your business has done thus far in response to an increasingly mobile-centric future. If you have a great mobile website that functions well on small screen devices and have fluid easy navigation and functionalities, then you’ve already done 90% of the preparation. There may just be a few small changes you’ll want to ensure, but nothing major. We’re already seeing a shift among white label app makers moving to a mobile-first approach using web technology.

On the other hand, if your business has neglected its mobile website, you’ve got a lot more work on your plate to prepare for the mobile-first index. Before you start hitting the panic button, there’s some good news that should alleviate any stress or worry you might be having about the change to a mobile-first index.

First, you still have time. Google is taking the rollout of the mobile-first index slowly. When they first made the announcement back in Q4 2016, they estimated that the process would be completed by the end of 2018. More recently, they said they don’t have an exact timeline for when the process will be completed, but they are most concerned with giving webmasters plenty of time to get ready.

Second, it’s Google. They are unmatched when it comes to equipping their users with all of the tools and know-how that they need to use Google products and adapt to changes like the mobile-first index. If you’ve used Google Analytics, Google Search Console or taken a look at any video series of blog content they’ve published, you know what we’re talking about. There are tons of tools and resources available to make this transition as painless as possible.

To start, take a look at Google’s latest on mobile-first indexing and scroll to the bullet point section. These are all tips straight from Google’s mouth on how to prepare for the impending transition.

Raising Your Mobile Site To The Next Level

Even if you’ve made the necessary preparations to get your mobile site ready for this new Google indexing strategy, your work isn’t quite over. A lot of webmasters are going to adopt the Google-recommended, responsive approach to their website development, which ensures that all of the links, content, images, etc. are present on both your mobile and desktop sites. But, that doesn’t guarantee that your mobile site and subsequent mobile experience is user-friendly.

The user experience is a big reason why webmasters have traditionally made lighter mobile versions of their websites. It wasn’t out of laziness or disbelief that mobile is all that it is chalked up to be, but rather a strategic move. Mobile pages need to be easy to navigate and put the most critical information right at the forefront, so mobile users can quickly and efficiently find the information they need on their smaller screen.

Shifting to a mobile-first index

means these light mobile sites will need to be more fully fleshed out with all of the keyword-rich content and other features that make your desktop website so comprehensive and valuable. This is the real challenge facing webmasters thanks to the mobile-first index: creating a mobile site that is robust, full of all of your most valuable content, but still friendly to how mobile users browse pages and consume web content on their devices.

Google is aware of this challenge, and there will be some changes to SEO to account for this. For example, an SEO best practice for desktop websites is to show all of the content and not hide anything with ‘Click to Expand’ tabs or ‘Read More’ links. The reasoning behind this was that Google devalued hidden content and often didn’t index it all. So, any keywords incorporated in that hidden text didn’t contribute to your SEO efforts.

This won’t be the case with the mobile-first future of Google’s search principles. They understand that mobile sites often use hidden content to improve mobile navigation. Otherwise, the user has to scroll down through giant blocks of text to find what they are searching for. As long as you’re hiding content to improve the user experience, Google will index the page as if all content were visible. This is just one of the ways that SEO and web development is going to change as a result of this big shift.

Conclusions

Considering the impact that mobile has had on digital marketing, Google’s mobile-first approach to indexing was just a matter of time. It’s going to greatly affect the way that we design websites and optimize them for search in the mobile space. Unfortunately, it isn’t certain how extensive the effects will be. We likely won’t know more until Google gets closer to finishing their rollout of the mobile-first index. The best thing you can do, as a business owner and webmaster, is to pay close attuned to Google and any news or blogs they publish with regards to a mobile-first index and take advantage of any and all tools they offer to make the transition easier.

Advanced SEO: Black Hat-SEO, Local SEO and Competitor Analysis

Posted on January 30, 2018November 6, 2019 by admin

This post is by guest author, Sameer Panjwani. This article has been edited and published with the author’s permission.

Getting your website ranked high on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other popular search engines so you can attract the most traffic is not something that happens by accident. It requires a comprehensive strategy that addresses all the major components of Search Engine Optimization.

In the online world, a lot of websites have addressed basic SEO techniques and ways to optimize your website structure in order to make your web pages more appealing to search engines. Now, in this article, we are going to address some advanced techniques that describe additional things you should – and shouldn’t – be doing.

Black Hat SEO Strategies

The term “black hat” refers to sneaky, underhanded SEO strategies that attempt to fool or short-circuit the search engine algorithms into ranking your pages higher. While these types of strategies may have worked in the past. Today’s algorithms are smarter and more sophisticated – and designed to identify and penalize websites that use black hat SEO.

The best approach is to avoid black hat SEO strategies altogether. These include such things as keyword stuffing, using hidden text and cloaking, copying and pasting other people’s content onto your pages, and using link schemes that artificially increase the number of links you have leading to your web pages.

In order to stay away from these black hat SEO techniques, you should know what they are:

Keyword stuffing is when you include an excessive amount of keywords within your content in order to artificially boost your keyword saturation. Not only are algorithms designed to identify this now, but it also will make your content effectively unreadable, turning away-page visitors.
Using too many H1 headings used to help get pages ranked higher, but now search engines will penalize pages with more than one H1 heading.
Copying and pasting content from another page is not only unethical. But it also could be a violation of copyright laws. If you aren’t able to create original content for your web pages on your own. Consider hiring a professional freelancer to do it for you.
Link schemes are programs that artificially build backlinks in order to make it seem as if your content is more influential than it actually is. Search engines now actually put more value in the number of social approval signals you have. Such as Facebook Likes and how often your link has been re-posted on Twitter – than the number of backlinks your content gets.

When it comes to black hat SEO strategies, the best approach is to avoid them altogether and instead focus on innovative approaches to improve your SEO.

Local Search Engine Optimization

The Internet is global, but your customer base is often very, very local. To rank higher on Google and other search engines, include keywords that include geo-specific information about your website. For example, the keywords “auto body repair” will likely bring in millions of links on Google. But “Akron auto body repair” will bring in a much more specific SERP listing that will be more valuable to users looking for that specific type of service in that specific geographic location.

You also can localize your SEO by including local information on each page of your websites, such as your street address, phone number, and business name.

The Google Search Console also allows you to specify the country or region you want to target. If you are already a Google webmaster for our site, the steps are simple:

Click on Tools
Set your Geographic Target
Input the geographic location for your website
Select the country or region you want Google to target

It’s important to note that Google restricts this feature to sites with a given country code top-level domain.

You also can use Schema Markup to aid Google in identifying places listed on your web pages. For example, if you include reviews or other business information, structured markup can help connect your pages with these places online.

Helpful Hint:

If yours is a physical business with multiple locations, you probably would want to create unique pages for each location. Making sure to include different content on each page, including local contact information.

Schema Markup is the common criteria all the major search engines have agreed to support rich snippets. Microdata is based on HTML tags that assign brief, descriptive names to items and properties within your pages. To learn more, check out this helpful article or visit Schema.org. Our you can use the Rich Snippets Testing Tool provided by Google to check the structured data markup on your web pages.

Competitive Analysis

The key to running a successful business is attracting more visitors to your web page than your competitors’ sites. Competitive analysis is the process of keeping tabs on what your competitors are doing right – and doing wrong – and stealing their best ideas while learning from their mistakes.

One way to do this is by running a backlink analysis of your competitors’ site. And then comparing the report with yours. The biggest indicator of this is page ranking. If they are ranked higher than you on Google or other popular search engines. You need to change that by following the SEO strategies outlined in this series of articles!

Another way to “keep score” is to find out how many visitors your competitors’ sites get compared to yours. This can be done using data provided by Compete and Alexa, two popular online website measurement tools.

Finally, it’s important to track what your competitors are doing off-page. Set a Google Alert to create competitive brand name monitoring so you can get notified every time your direct competitors get mentioned online.

Subscribe to their Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts so you can analyze their social media strategies such as the best time to post on social media platforms, the type of content to post etc. and compare them against your own. Remember, Google now gives additional weight – and ranking – to websites with a higher number of social approval signals. Such as Facebook Likes, now often their links are re-posted on Twitter and others.

Your competitors are always improving. So it’s going to be up to you to continually seek new and effective ways to improve not only your SEO but the way you promote your business online, through social media and other platforms.

5 SEO mistakes to avoid for e-commerce sites

Posted on November 7, 2017November 6, 2019 by admin

The growing usage of smartphones has transformed businesses and lives drastically. Be it hiring a cab, buying clothes, ordering food or availing services online; everything is just a click away at really cheap rates. And, the e-commerce market is expected to grow at a fast pace in the coming years. According to AT Kearney 2016 report, the e-commerce market in GCC countries is expected to grow to US$20 billion by 2020 from $5.3 billion in 2015.

e-commerce sites come across various SEO challenges that obstruct their efficiency. There is a need for business owners, marketing managers, and SEO experts to know these problems; and plan accordingly for their solution. I have jotted down 5 on-site SEO problems which hold back E-commerce sites from delivering to their optimum.

5 SEO problems that hold back e-commerce sites

1. Product description not clear:

Usually, e-commerce sites have a considerable number of products. The quality of a product description can either make or break a sale. It is common for product descriptions to be really short, manufacturer based and automated. With short and automated descriptions, the search engine has limited information.

It is seen that sites with a detailed description of products perform better in search results on all popular search engines. e-commerce website owners should try to include a piece of detailed information; that a shopper needs, to make a decision of purchase. Also, it should be kept in mind to follow the best description format for the products, such as bullet points.

QL Tip: It is advised in general that 350 and 400 words would be enough to describe the main features and benefits of a particular product.

Apart from adding the product description in detail, you can also add blogs to the e-commerce website. Blogs could include keywords that are needed to improve the overall ranking of the website. Backlinko analysis of 1 million search results showed that the average Google first page result is 1,890 words long.

2. Reviews not included on the site:

The user reviews about the product or service affect the search results.92% of consumers now read online reviews.

CLICK TO TWEET

The impact of adding user reviews is clear and unambiguous. By adding reviews, we can’t say that SEO ranking will improve solely because of getting more reviews. For example, an analysis of over 30,000 businesses was conducted by Yotpo. These businesses added user reviews to their site and measured how this impacted organic search traffic. Within nine months after the implementation of reviews, they found that Google page views per month grew by 30%.

If you also fear of not including user reviews due to negative feedback, then please include it, the results are almost sure to be positive. Also, it will uplift sales. Reviews produce an average of 18% uplift in sales.

3. Improper migration strategy of e-commerce platforms:

Most of the e-commerce sites are built using third-party platforms. This is because they want to focus more on their core business rather than web development.

Sometimes websites outgrow one platform and switch to another as their market shares increases. Also, they switch platforms to gain access to previously unavailable features.

Well, switching platforms can hamper rankings. Many companies wait till they finish the migration of e-commerce platforms and then go for SEO. Don’t do this mistake. Whenever you make any changes in your e-commerce platform, make sure that an SEO professional is always involved in it from the beginning.

4. Not able to develop informational content and focusing more on transactional keywords:

It is very important to add informational keywords that would be able to target the customers who are a bit further up in the funnel. Sometimes, focusing too much on certain keywords usually falls under the failed strategy. For example, it is very difficult to rank for keyword “money”, but this doesn’t mean that you can entirely neglect it.

Apart from adding informational keywords, you should perform a site: search in order to find out which page on-site already ranks best for any given keyword.

Ranking for less competitive phrases adds to the traffic along with improving overall reputation with the search engines. This might be because it influences behavioural metrics. You can take help of SEMrush to find keyword difficulty. When you analyze your existing rankings to see which keywords are already performing well, you can make changes to optimize for those keywords.

QL Tip: Look for keyword rankings in Google Search Console or SEMrush to identify keywords ranking on the second page or so. If these keywords are ranking without being optimized, take them as a golden opportunity and capitalize on them.

5. Site redesigns which are poor:

You might find sites, that, after redesigning gained traffic and also those which lost all the traffic because of it. The latter one is more painful, a redesign was done to beautify the site, incorporating new features. If you redesign your site, without considering SEO, then this is bound to happen. Those pages that were ranking well can get vanished, the content might get changed; thereby, turning a win-win situation to a lost one.

Whenever you change URLs, make use of 301 redirects. This will retain the link popularity that is attributed to the site and help the transfers to the new URL. The 301 redirect shows that indexed URL has moved. The search engine then de-index the old URL and index the new one.

It is advised to create a benchmark metrics including rankings of the site, home page rank, domain authority, and the no. of pages that are indexed in Google with the site: domain.com search. This will be beneficial for comparisons post-launch.

Concluding Lines:

Start looking at your site and take out problems, if any, related to the information that you have provided on your website. By analyzing the problems and fixing those on time, you will able to rank high in the search results of search engine.

Your valuable views are most welcome in the comments below.

Innovative Approaches to Improve Your SEO

Posted on August 8, 2017November 6, 2019 by admin

According to HubSpot, 80% of a website’s traffic begins with a search query. That is why search engine optimization (SEO) is immensely important. Also, it is must for you to learn how to improve your SEO.

You definitely need to improve your SEO with the below mentioned innovative approaches since it is a vital element for any business or any individual enterprise. The practise of SEO is not only restricted to traffic and visibility, but it is also equally important for creating a BRAND. An excellent implementation of SEO can efficiently and productively convert a startup into a BRAND.

It can even help in maintaining the quality and reputation of a brand in the digital environment for the long-term. However, how to improve your SEO? What are the innovative approaches to improve your SEO?

Here, we present the most known yet innovative approaches to structure and improve your SEO and advance the way you are working for website optimization of search engines.

Top 6 Innovative approaches to improving your SEO

Organic SEO (natural SEO) is a free and usual way to bring traffic to the website from the search engine. An organic SEO is a time-consuming process and results may take considerable time to affect the bottom line, whereas an inorganic SEO provides results in substantial short times.

The implementation of these advanced and innovative approaches will improve your SEO and double your organic website traffic.

1. Acquisition of link building

According to Jayson DeMers, “Don’t buy links. Earn them, because the quantity and quality of inbound links have a significant impact on a website’s rankings”.

Earlier link building was often done through black hat SEO techniques. However, fortunately after the Google Penguin, an algorithm update that was created to penalize sites that were creating unnatural Backlinks, the scenario is improving and moving towards white hat link building.

SEMRush has given a perfect formula for backlinks:
Quality Backlinks = Relevancy + Trust + Authoritative Website

In order to obtain quality inbound links, follow these innovative yet effective techniques to improve your SEO and boost your rankings:

Understand the link-building strategy and innovative approaches of your competitors
Build ethical business relationships: promote your articles/blogs on other websites and do blog commenting and posting on various sites having high DA/ PA.
Build a professional network on social media platforms and let your followers know about your website and your business
Get rid of broken links
Implement Schema mark-up to your website. Schema.org provides a particular set shared vocabulary that you can use to mark up your pages so that the major search engines can understand them.
Do guest blog posting on quality and relevant sites.

Remember, Google penalizes for paid guest blogging.

2. Strategic approach towards keywords

An unbeatable keyword strategy, as a part of innovative approaches, involves choosing high-performing keywords that drive relevant traffic to the intended website. Selecting the right keywords can make a remarkable difference in SEO campaigns and ultimately improve your SEO results. The right selection of the right keywords will help your website rank well on Google and other search engines. The ideal keyword strategies comprise highly relevant keywords that relate closely to a particular business or are associated with a particular industry.

Always have long-tail keywords to compete with already established SEO. It means instead of short-tail keywords of 1-3 words like “make money online”, “lose weight”, and “communication skills” use long-tail keywords like “how to make money online with affiliate marketing”, “how to lose 20 kg weight in 3 months without dieting”, and “how to improve online communication skills”.

To determine the success of keywords that improve your SEO, you need to consider the following parameters:

Extraction of a general list of keywords and keyword phrases from competitors’ website & target market
The relevance of keywords concerning your website content
Research of keywords on a regular basis
The resemblance of keywords with the vocabulary of the target audience
Usage of keywords that are unique to the content for each web page

Remember, Google penalizes for keyword stuffing.

3. Focus on quality of content vs. quantity of content

Google Panda considers the quality of a site’s content when ranking sites in the search results. For websites that have lower quality content or copied content, they would possibly get adversely impacted by Panda.

By now we all know that ‘content is king’ and it is. In fact, it is a “kingdom” and can effectively improve your SEO. Your quality content brings engagement and ultimately boosts brand awareness. Has content optimized thoroughly on your each and every web page? The key here is to come up with engaging and quality content is writing for your users, search engines will then automatically take care of your rankings.

Of course, long-form content performs well; however, short-form content hasn’t yet lost its charm. So, maintain the right amount of proportion of long-form vs. short-form blogs and other content. In a nutshell, have all sort of content (textual and visual i.e. images, infographics, GIFs, and videos), to delight your readers with a variety of quality and original content. According to one school of thought, good quality content matters more than the domain age in the long run; which resultantly improve your SEO.

And hence, original content is critical. The spinning of content will never get you good rankings. Your blog or website can even get penalized by Google for such low-quality content. For whatever content you publish on your website, you need to ensure that the content is user-friendly. Visitors prefer content that reads in straightforward and easy-to-understand language. Google boosts all those websites that can engage the readers to keep them hooked on the site longer.

4. Optimization of on-page factors

You can earn quality backlinks through strategic techniques and innovative approaches to off-page SEO. However, your on-page factors also need to be optimized for better rankings.

Here are a few handy things which you can take care of to improve your SEO:

Your SEO efforts can go waste if you use either too long or too short titles and descriptions
Always have your Focus Keyword in Meta titles, Meta descriptions, and headings
Check the presence, relevance, and optimization of Title tags and Meta descriptions on each of your website page

As compared to Title tags, Meta descriptions have lost power in the ranking algorithm; however, it still helps in increasing clicks from search results. So keep them most relevant and attractive.

Also pay due attention to conversion optimization aspects such as site speed, image optimization, video optimization, code optimization, the aesthetic look of the site, and more.

5. Implementation of a timely website audit

An innovative SEO is just not possible if your website audit does not take place on a timely basis. A website SEO audit should not miss on any of the following parameters:

Elimination of Site and URL errors
Evaluation of XML sitemap
Assessment of content
Assessment of site speed and canonicalization
Verification of Robots.txt files
Authentication of site architecture
Ensure your website is responsive

An audit report of your website will reveal insights on your site’s ranking criteria, bounce rates, user engagement time on any specific page, search percentages, and website traffic. Furthermore, it also aids you to address broken links, response time, download time, and other HTML errors, if any. Get performed your website audit on a timely basis by an SEO expert to get the exact review needed for search engine optimization.

We recommend the following tools/tips for a great website SEO audit:

Google’s SEO Guidelines
Google Analytics
Moz Title Tag Preview Tool
Google and Bing Webmaster Tools

6. Measuring SEO success based on analytics

Improvement cannot be made possible if you are not aware of flaws. Similarly, SEO cannot be improved if you do not measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts through analytics.

In Google Analytics, track your SEO campaigns. Apart from monitoring your ranking, keep an eye on your non-branded traffic, improvements in engagements, and other parameters. Figure out which online campaigns bring the most traffic and conversions and why they are performing better. Check the location of your best visitors. With the help of ‘site search’ function, the site determines what people are searching on the web and what they are looking for on your site. To check your goal conversions, checkout at what point of site people abandon the shopping cart.

Conclusion

SEO is more like fishing rather than hunting. Search Engine Optimization is a cornerstone of any good web marketing strategy. Good SEO skills are excellent web management skills as well since they result in standard-based website implementation, well-organized information architecture, and well-written on-topic content.

Are you ready to improve your SEO? If yes, right away implement these innovative approaches and experience the exquisite results. If you have anything else to add, do drop in your words in the comments section!

Most Impressive SEO Trends That Actually Came True

Posted on June 27, 2017November 6, 2019 by admin

The last year 2016 was quite a roller coaster for search marketers due to substantial and unforeseen changes took place in paid search marketing, for both Google and Bing platforms. Taking into consideration these changes and their impacts, at the start of the year 2017, lot many people have published numerous posts regarding most prominent and top SEO trends to watch out for. Various predictions were made on SEO, search engine, and ranking algorithms. Now, we are halfway through the year 2017. The exciting part is most of the anticipated trends proved to be of significance for SEO.

Here we present the most talked SEO trends and how it proved their prominence in this year:

1. Video content is booming

People love audio-visual content over textual content. As predicted at the start of the year 2017, many established as well as newbie brands are banking their advertising campaigns on video content. With so many active social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat where people love to share their stories, how come brands stay behind this trend?

Crowdcart is quite prominent in the race of video advertising. Crowdcart helps to connect and engage with your audience through LIVE video. It enables to teach, share, and connect over webinars, Q&As, live courses, and summits.

Coming back to video advertisements, popular brand Coca Cola’s advertisement #LiftTheFeeling has gone viral on digital media. The video garnered over 20 million views (around 12+ million views on official YouTube page and around 9 million views on the Facebook page of Coca Cola) in just two days of the advertisement.

The ad titled ‘Elevator’ has been made under the ‘taste the feeling’ campaign keeping the Indian audience in mind. It is about a tale of togetherness between two strangers, a celebrity and a diehard fan. The video content focus on those two strangers who meet up in an elevator and coca-cola helps them to break the ice and make the connection between them. Since it was an elevator, they promoted it as ‘lift the feeling’. The amazing dance and music quality make video content more interesting.

Before the digital launch of the ad, teasers of the campaign sent the consumers in a dither guessing what is next. Creating curiosity amongst viewers, the launch on digital media had consumers liking, sharing, and commenting persistently, which resulted in greater engagement between consumers and the brand.

Later on, the ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign was featured by more than 200 countries across TV, outdoor, print, retail signage and more.

Here is the curated list of the most popular video ads (visual marketing) on YouTube in the year 2017:

Samsung: This is a phone (March/April 2017)

A Better Super Bowl | NFL Hyundai Super Bowl LI (February 2017)

2017 Kia Niro | “Hero’s Journey” (February 2017)

2. User-generated content is shared and perceived most

If you serve what your audience is seeking, you are surely going to rock with all your campaigns. But, how to know what they are looking for? There is a marketing gimmick called user-generated content. User-generated content (i.e. UGC) comprise any form of content that is created by users and consumers about a brand or product. Ask users indirectly what they want and accordingly tailor your content marketing and SEO content.

Especially on Instagram, UGC is highly prevalent, shared, and perceived. UGC generates more engagement on social media and from there attract more organic traffic towards the website.

According to HubSpot, 76% of individuals surveyed said they trusted content shared by “average” people more than by brands, and nearly 100% of consumers trust recommendations from others.

Let us take a glance over how SEO can be benefited with the help of user-generated content.

Wayfair, an online furniture store, is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home decor. Wayfair is running a fun UGC campaign since 2016 to boost its online sales. Basically, this campaign intends to let customers display their online shopping experiences using hashtag #WayfairAtHome. Many buyers who did online shopping posted millions of content using this hashtags. This hashtag is highly popular on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. And, in June 2017 also, people are highly using this hashtag to convey their experiences. Lots of UGC is available for this brand and it is cashing on it through varied advertisements.

Here, are some of the recent examples posted on social media:

Whatever hashtags are posted on social media by users, they all are reposted by the brand with relevant hyperlinks that can drive organic traffic and boost conversions. The user-generated content serves two-way benefits – it acts as testimonials plus it provides an exact idea of what they want and how they feel about the specific product/service.

3. Intense content paves a smooth road for SEO

“Don’t optimize your keywords, optimize your content”. This was emphasized as one of the top SEO trends for the year 2017. Unlike past years, the focus has shifted on comprehensive and long-form content for SEO to provide value to the readers. On the other hand, search marketers can also have a higher number of Backlinks and internal links in the intense and long-form content, which eventually boost their SEO. Airstream is a popular and iconic American brand, dealing in Travel Trailers and Touring Coach. Their policy is “Let’s not make any changes, let’s make only improvements!” They well applied their philosophy for their content to boost their conversions. They were not much worried about the number of visitors, but their real challenge was their conversions.

According to Hileman, the team needed content that would appeal to people who were higher up in the funnel. They did take help of lifecycle content (by developing gated and lifestyle-centred eBooks, revamped newsletters) to boost their conversions. The new content they created included guides — such as “Road Trips Across the U.S.” and “Farms & Wineries” — as well as ebooks like “Why Airstream?”

Their textual content was beautified by adding image content. Earlier they discovered that inclusion of an image of the cover of the eBook resulted in much higher conversion rates than just a text-heavy page. Later on, they also realized that video headers on a landing page distracted people from performing an action on their CTA buttons. Minor updates resulted in huge conversions, their brochure download conversion rates surprised and satisfied them with good traffic.

4. Personal branding – verified as an undisclosed SEO strategy

Branding makes a huge difference in your overall online impression and foothold. Personal branding is an unexplored yet very powerful tool for your SEO. The biggest benefit it provides is the trustworthiness of the brand. In the digital marketing field, there are some giants who have established their personal branding very well. People just trust their offerings by their names.

Examples include:

Neil Patel: there is hardly anyone who hasn’t heard about him for SEO and digital marketing. He has consistently grown his personal brand through blogging and guest posting on sites like Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inc., etc. Owner of neilpatel.com, quicksprout.com, and crazzyegg.com. Also, a co-founder of hellobar.com and KISSmetrics.com

Rand Fishkin: He is the CEO and Co-Founder of SEOMoz, a leader in the field of SEO tools, resources & community. Furthermore, he is the host of Whiteboard Friday, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, co-founder of Inbound.org, and serves on the board of the presentation software firm, Haiku Deck.

Gary Vaynerchuk: He runs VaynerMedia. He is regarded as one of the well-known entrepreneur personal brands. He’s active on Snapchat and YouTube and his podcasts are everywhere on the internet.

Jeff Bullas: His blog receives over 5 million visitors a year. He helps businesses and personal brands with digital marketing services that include blogs, social media marketing, and search engine optimization.

Larry Kim: He is the founder and Chief Technology Officer at Mobile Monkey. In addition, he is regarded as the most influential PPC expert.
No doubt, building a personal brand takes a lot of efforts and consistency matters. But, one should try it out persistently. A strong and recognizable personal brand can attract tons of organic traffic.

5. AMP does make a significant difference in your SEO

As we already know that Google favours the websites which have switched over to AMPs.

According to Google, more than 50% of search queries, globally, are now take place from mobile devices.

Here’s how 2Dogs Media churn out huge results from improvised SEO due to AMP in place.In November 2016, there were no AMP pages indexed on the website. On 2^nd December 2016, they implemented accelerated mobile pages on their WordPress website. They also submitted a new sitemap into Google Search Console so that Google can easily notice the site. On the first day of AMP installation, they experienced website traffic on all 14 AMP indexed web pages.

Not only this, other massive benefits include:

Within 6 months of AMP implementation, observed much higher CTR on AMP pages as compared to traditional pages
Improved website speed (earlier non-AMP page load time was 11 seconds which went down to 2.2 seconds for AMP pages, with reduced page size and reduced requests)
40% of the traffic on AMP pages was organic (Excluding referral, social and direct traffic sources)

The gist of the entire story is if a greater portion of your traffic comes from mobile, implement AMP NOW! However, even if your traffic sources include both desktop and mobile devices, then also we suggest you go for AMP. This is because we cannot deny the fact that mobile optimization is already extremely important in SEO strategies in 2017.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The above-mentioned SEO trends are just a portion of the chunk of anticipations. There is a high reliance on other trends as well, which are: voice search, user intent, the influential role of structured data and schema implementation, the influence of artificial intelligence on working of algorithms, local search, cross-channel marketing, and optimization for user-intent. As a general tip, continue to optimize your online presence to boost your SEO.

In case you feel something else can change the scenario of SEO in the rest of the year 2017, do drop in your words in the comments section, we would love to hear from you!