Small Business SEO: 6 Ways to Simplify Your Weekly Approach

 

I doubt many small business owners wake up in the morning and think to themselves, “I can’t wait to do some killer SEO today!”
If SEO crosses an small business owner’s mind in the morning, it’s typically accompanied by feelings of dread and confusion.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Contrary to what most people think, SEO is actually quite simple.

SEO Doesn’t Have to be Overwhelming

Want to increase your visibility on Google? You could make any of hundreds of changes to your website right now.
There are also hundreds of websites, blogs, and online courses designed to teach you about SEO.
There are dozens of tools that promise to help you do everything from automating content marketing to boost your search rankings.
Then there are books, podcasts, webinars, events, and conferences.
Becoming an expert in SEO requires months, even years, of a steady commitment to learning. And the cherry on top is the fact that Google can (and does) decide to change its algorithm at a moment’s notice.
When it does so, the clock resets, and you have to re-familiarize yourself with SEO practices and rules.
As intimidating as SEO is, many small business owners simply decide not to worry about it.
Either they spend way too much hiring it out to someone else, or they just don’t deal with it at all.
The first approach takes a big chunk out of an already limited budget.
The second approach suppresses digital marketing and exposure, which leads to fewer sales.
But here’s the truth:
SEO doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
So much of the information, advice, and strategies that you see circulated in the industry are nothing more than noise.
When you learn to block out these distractions, you’ll discover that SEO success ultimately comes down to doing a few things really well.
For the best outcome, develop a weekly approach to SEO and stick with it. Doing so allows you to organize your efforts behind tangible actions that produce demonstrable results.
Here are six things you should do weekly.

1. Develop Two Internal Blog Posts

Content is the catalyst for SEO results. You can optimize your website all you want, but unless you have content, you won’t ever consistently rank for the right search terms.
A lot of businesses think they need to publish one blog post every day. In theory, this sounds great. However, it quickly becomes overwhelming.
This leads to missed goals, low morale, and shallow blog posts that are riddled with errors.
You’re far better off focusing on developing two blog posts per week. It might not sound like much, but this equals more than 100 posts over the course of a year.
Before you know it, you’ll have an arsenal of content supporting your SEO efforts.

2. Publish One Guest Blog Post

In addition to publishing content on your website, you also need to dedicate some time and energy to off-site content in the form of guest blogging. The benefits of guest blogging include:

• Creating backlinks to your website.
• Strengthening brand awareness.
• Aligning your brand with industry leaders.
• Building your personal brand.
• Generating leads and traffic.
• Creating social signals.

You don’t have to go crazy with guest blogging, but it would be nice to aim for one guest blog post per week. This will give you more than 50 valuable backlinks per year.
It also puts your brand in front of a new audience multiple times per month.

3. Engage Seven Influencers

You must understand who the biggest influencers are in your industry (and for your audience). Set a goal of engaging at least one influencer per day.
Some of these interactions will be short and sweet, while others will require more of your time. It could be anything from commenting on an influencer’s blog post to setting up a lunch meeting.
As you engage influencers, you’ll find that your network gets bigger and that your relationships become more meaningful.
One of the many indirect benefits of this is that influencers start to mention you by name, link to your website, and offer opportunities to speak, write, or engage with their audiences.

4. Spend One Hour with Google Analytics

It’s wise to spend time inside the Google Analytics platform each week.
A 30-minute session at the beginning of the week and another half-hour session at the end of the week will give you time to explore important trends and get a pulse on what’s happening inside your website.

5. Spend One Hour Optimizing Your Website

Based on the takeaways you gather from your time studying your website analytics, you can make any necessary tweaks and optimizations. For example:

• If you notice that your page loading speed is slower than normal and that it’s affecting your conversion rates, you may take the time to speed things up.
• Perhaps you’re missing the mark on some keywords and you notice a few areas where you could improve. Taking the opportunity to plug in some new long-tail keywords and concepts could elevate your rankings.
• Is one product page converting at a significantly higher rate than another? Copying the same layout and using it on the lower converting page could lead to better sales numbers.

Just one hour per week is enough to continually refresh and optimize your website so that it functions at maximum efficiency.

6. Spend One Hour Reading About SEO Industry News

Finally, take 10 or 15 minutes a day and read a couple of reputable articles on SEO and what’s happening in the industry.
Go ahead and bookmark Search Engine Journal and make it a part of your lunchtime reading!

Putting It All Together

This is just one sample approach to SEO, but it shows how simple it can really be.
A few minutes each day can give small businesses the sort of results they need in order to remain competitive.
Give it a try and optimize it according to your own preferences.
In the end, a simple approach like this yields far better results than a complicated strategy with dozens of moving parts.

Reference Link: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/small-business-seo-weekly-approach/320595/

 

Google is Replacing Voice Search With Google Assistant on Android Devices

Google is reportedly in the process of replacing voice search on Android devices with Google Assistant.
According to a report from 9to5Google, the old voice search icon has been replaced with an Assistant icon in the Google app and search bar widget.
In addition, the search bar widget now invites users to “Ask your Assistant”, when previously it had the message “Say “Hey Google””
When triggered, voice queries are performed by Assistant and results open in a slide-up panel.
It appears this change hasn’t been rolled out to all Android users, though 9to5Google can confirm it has been rolled out to some.

What does this change mean?

Google shifting the focus from regular voice search to Assistant is an indication of where Google wants to guide the future of its services.

This change could potentially impact a small percentage of organic search traffic to publishers, given the Assistant’s penchant for providing direct answers.
When users are given the answers they need from Google Assistant, they don’t have to search and click through to publishers’ sites.
Although it’s important to keep in mind that Assistant can’t provide a direct answer for every query.
Again, this change only has the potential to impact whichever percentage of searches are conducted using voice search on Android.
However, it’s impossible to know exactly how large or small that percentage is because Google doesn’t provide voice search data.

Reference:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-is-replacing-voice-search-with-google-assistant-on-android-devices/318443/

5 Ways Email Marketing Can Help Boost Ranking In a Hurry

What does email have to do with SEO? At first glance, you don’t see a relationship between these two platforms. But email actually helps boost SEO and website rankings in many different ways.
Organic search and email are the two main channels that drive the most traffic to websites. According to a research by Conductor, 51 percent of people discover websites through email marketing.

 

Image Credit: Conductor

 

Of course, unlike other platforms, such as social media and micro-blogging websites, email doesn’t have a direct connection with search engines to impact your website SEO or rankings. However, you can leverage email marketing as a tool to promote and encourage others to help improve your website rankings. Here’s how.
Related: 27 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

1. Build more social signals.

Even though Google never admitted it publicly, the social activity of a link strongly affects its ranking on Google. According to a study on 23 million shares, the top four ranking positions on Google are the ones with the most Facebook and Google+ activity. Needless to say, social signals are an important part of SEO that most marketers are unaware of.
Getting people to share your content through their social media channels is the hard part. If you have an email list, this task will be easier.

Whenever you publish a new blog post, you can send a newsletter asking your loyal subscribers to share the link. Or you can include social sharing buttons in your emails to make sharing more convenient for your followers.

2. Reduce bounce rates.

Website bounce rate is another important statistic that factors into Google ranking. Bounce rate determines whether or not a website offers relevant information to its visitors.
Whenever a visitor lands on a page on your website and immediately leaves without taking any action or visiting any additional pages, that session is counted as a bounce.
If your blog posts and landing pages generate a higher bounce rate, Google will rank them lower in search results no matter how you optimize the page for search engines. The best way to avoid this is to produce high-quality and relevant content and by driving more engaging users.
It’s important to have an email list filled with people who have already shown interest in your website so whenever you publish a new blog post, you can send a reminder to your subscribers thus generating high-quality traffic to your website and reducing your bounce rate.
You can check your website’s current bounce rate using Google Analytics.
Related: Digital Marketing Trends Are Evolving: Here Are 4 Ways You Can Stay Relevant

3. Create an online email archive.

Many bloggers and businesses craft unique email newsletters to keep their email subscribers entertained. But these great emails often get forgotten after you hit send. There’s a way you can repurpose these emails to improve SEO.
You can create an online archive of your email newsletters and let your website visitors browse your past newsletters. It’s an effective strategy that allows you to make the most of your efforts. HubSpot has a great newsletter archive that brilliantly promotes its services as well as blog post content.

You can also convert your email newsletters into PDF files and host them on your website in an archive. This will increase the chances of getting your newsletters indexed on Google.

4. Ask for product reviews.

If you operate a retail store or a business that targets local audiences, then improving your local search ranking is just as important as website SEO. According to Moz, the quality and the number of reviews a business has affects 13 percent of local search rankings.
The easiest way to get more reviews for your business and products is to ask your most loyal audience. Simply include a link to your Google My Business page and politely ask your subscribers to rate and review your business whenever you send an email newsletter.
You can use the same tactic to get reviews and testimonials for your product pages and landing pages on your website as well.

5. Create better content.

Having an email list is more than just about running promotional campaigns and generating sales. It’s also a platform that gives you more in-depth information about your target audience.

For example, you can use email list segments to create specific groups of people to understand the location, interests, job titles, education, gender and more information related to your subscribers. You can also conduct surveys and polls using your email list to learn the questions and problems the users are having.
Then you can use this information to create better blog posts and videos that not only attract the ideal customers to your website but also rank well on Google.
Email is a powerful marketing tool that can be used in many different ways to promote and grow a business. Use it to connect with other websites, blogs and influencers to build more awareness and grow your business.

Reference:https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308579

How to Rank in Google Dataset Search

Google’s AI Blog published an article discussing how Dataset Search works and what signals it uses to rank datasets. Google is already showing dataset rich results and may begin showing more as publishers add the Schema.org markup. Understanding what datasets are and how to rank them is important because it can become a new source of traffic.

Google is already adding Dataset information in rich results.

Google’s dataset developers page was updated in May 2018 to note that dataset rich data is coming to Google’s search results:

This feature is in pilot, and you may not see rich results for datasets yet. However, we recommend that you add dataset structured data to your site in preparation for new dataset features in Search results.

Every publisher should consider adding dataset markup in order to prepare for a wider rollout of this feature in Google’s search results.

Dataset Search

Dataset Search relies on Structured Data Metadata that uses the Schema.org/Dataset standard.
Google takes the structured data and links it to what it knows through the Knowledge Graph, as well as consider other ranking signals like links, then creates a dataset search index.

Duplicate Data Sets

Google indicates that it is partially relying on the Schema.org sameAS property. The sameAs property is meant to canonicalize the original publisher.
This is how the official Schema.org specifications for the sameAs property are defined: 

“URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item’s identity. E.g. the URL of the item’s Wikipedia page, Wikidata entry, or official website.”

In the context of dataset structured data, the sameAs property can be used to canonicalize the information to a specific URL which represents the original publisher of the data.
Additional signals that Google uses to identify duplicate datasets:

“Other signals include two datasets descriptions pointing to the same canonical page, having the same Digital Object Identifier (DOI), sharing links for downloading the dataset, or having a large overlap in other metadata fields.
None of these signals are perfect in isolation, therefore we combine them to get the strongest possible indication of when two datasets are the same.”

Google Knowledge Graph Scholar and Ranking

Google’s Knowledge Graph plays a role in the ranking of dataset information. The Knowledge Graph helps Google understand the context of the datasets, including understanding what language it’s for and for understanding acronyms.
Google’s Knowledge Graph provides a data layer for matching various entities. So if the dataset incorporates a brand, a currency or language it can match that to the dataset.
Here’s what Google’s AI Blog Post says about it:

“Google’s Knowledge Graph is a powerful platform that describes and links information about many entities, including the ones that appear in dataset metadata… This type of reconciliation opens up lots of possibilities to improve the search experience for users.
For instance, Dataset Search can localize results by showing reconciled values of metadata in the same language as the rest of the page. Additionally, it can rely on synonyms, correct misspellings, expand acronyms, or use other relations in the Knowledge Graph for query expansion.”

Google Scholar May be a Ranking Signal

According to Google, Google Scholar may provide a signal that a dataset is authoritative and who the author of the dataset is.
This can help a dataset publisher rank better. But it can also assist in combating scrapers from using someone else’s data.
Google’s official blog post describes it like this:

“Knowing which datasets are referenced and cited in publications serves at least two purposes:
1. It provides a valuable signal about the importance and prominence of a dataset.
2. It gives dataset authors an easy place to see citations to their data and to get credit.”

How Google Ranks Datasets

Google doesn’t have a lot of data to use for learning how users search for data. As a consequence Google is using regular ranking algorithms to rank datasets for users of it’s dataset search.
However, once Google has enough data on how people search it will begin developing a separate algorithm that is specifically tuned to dataset search.
That said, Google is using additional signals to better rank datasets:

“…ranking datasets is different from ranking Web pages, and we add some additional signals that take into account the metadata quality, citations, and so on.”

Optimize Your Datasets

Chances are that your site already has datasets. Now is the moment for marking them up with the appropriate Schema.org structured data.
The value of Google Datasets may be in people using Dataset Search to find your data and linking to your site. But another value is appearing in Google’s rich results for specific kinds of data. Better you than your competition, right?

Reference:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dataset/273441/

Seven Mistakes Which Will Derail Your Content Marketing in 2018

Identify these 7 mistakes in your content marketing, dismantle them immediately and unleash the potent impact of content marketing from your arsenal.



Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 content marketing research says that 85% of B2B marketers ascribe Content creation as the No.1 reason for increased success in the last year.
No wonder, 91% of top marketers are going all in for content marketing.
But there are also some companies which are stumbling in their content marketing activities. Sometimes badly. Why is that?
While the intentions are pure and the teams are ready to do the hard works, some basic but dangerous mistakes creep in which takes you away from the promised land of success.

Identify these 7 mistakes in your content marketing, dismantle them immediately and unleash the potent impact of content marketing from your arsenal.
#1 Not Having a Content Marketing Strategy
Fire.Fire.Fire. Endless rounds into deep dark space and then wondering why there is no bull’s eye?
Content marketing needs Strategy. The strategy does not mean you write a 5000-page tome on what you will do. All you need is a clear picture of the Why, Who, What, How and When and Where. I can’t stress how this is important. I see a lot of startups chasing the new shiny thing or whining about algo changes in social media.Techniques later, strategy first.
Having a content marketing strategy helps in guiding your team’s efforts through the minefield of distractions of new technologies and tactics.
Strategy first means you map out the Why and How clearly so that every day you are taking action which is focused and on target. You have made your strategy but is it linked to your overall marketing strategy?
#2 Not Linking Content Marketing to the Overall Inbound or Total Marketing Strategy
Just having content marketing strategy is not enough. Content marketing is an integral part of inbound marketing but is only one part.
There are several key components e.g. developing a buyer persona, doing SEO Audit and making your audit SEO friendly, having a social media strategy; there are other moving parts in your overall marketing strategy.
When your content marketing strategy is not aligned with the overall marketing strategy, then you run the risk of your efforts falling part. Why is that?
If different parts of your marketing strategy are moving in different directions, then your customers may get a confused picture.

Worse, those customers who have started moving through your marketing funnel may drop out if the funnel is not conversion optimized to move through to BOFU.
When the content marketing strategy is developed, make sure you as a CMO get all the team together to get everyone aligned. Have the sales representatives also at the meeting. This is to make sure that the marketing qualified leads are passed on smoothly to the sales for them to close the sales.
Handover the written content marketing strategy to each one in the team.
You have a documented content marketing strategy, haven’t you?
#3 Not Having a Documented Content Marketing Strategy
The ROI difference between having a documented strategy and not having one is huge.
Documented does not mean you print it in fancy photo paper and have a diamond-studded cover.
It does mean that the strategy, the steps and who is responsible for what and when are clearly outlined. Having a checklist and roles clearly defined is a must.
This removes any errors which may happen due to miscommunication. Also, a documented content marketing strategy means that you will have a clear idea of what you are testing and how you will measure it. Remember what you will measure, will happen.
A written content marketing strategy also means that you and everyone in the team will have a content calendar to work out.
#4 Not Developing a Content Calendar
I cannot emphasize how important this point. We all have a desk calendar, haven’t we? It may be a pretty physical calendar or a desktop calendar with alerts.
What is the main function of this planner?

At one glance, you can see how the week and month is going to unfold. Also, it shows how the content calendar is aligned to your business calendar.
You may have a launch coming up or a major UX overhaul or new modules which you are offering. Seeing how the content amplifies these events or works around them helps in the team being very clear about the big picture. The content calendar also helps in planning and executing content which you love. Not really!
#6 Falling in Love with One’s Content
I get it. You put sweat and tears (hopefully no blood) into making your magnum opus ie your content. And then you fall in love with your content. You post the content and close your eyes waiting for the applause. Instead, you hear crickets, no one is engaging or watching your content. It happens.
The next step is critical. If you get angry (“they don’t know how to appreciate my content”) or sad (“it's pointless, I will never get my voice across”) then you are not a marketer but a failed writer.
What you need to do is compare with other content which you have generated:

• Check your buyer persona - does your content reflect their problems and their journey?
• Check whether you have thrown too many ideas – it is better to have one thruline than many unconnected ideas
• Check if it lacks emotional content – emotional content is engaging, data is boring if it does not tell a story
• Check the day, time of the day – sometimes other events may have absorbed all the attention or the time you are posting coincides with heavy workload and your prospect is not online at that time

While you may be right about the content, you should make sure you don’t obsess about technology.
#7 Focus on Technology Instead of How Valuable It is
You bought the latest high-end camera and just to be sure, even hired a videographer. You made sure the lighting is straight out of a Spielberg movie, and the sound is worthy of an Oscar.
You dressed like a diva and delivered your content like Churchill. You had the best scheduling software deliver the message right in front of your prospects noses. And the prospects turned up their noses. Why? Oh, Why? Because it was not relevant to them.

Relevance trumps technology. Make content which reflects the buyer’s journey and their problems and your proposed solutions. Technology is only a support. Developing content with the right technology is just the start, what is your promotion plan?
#5 Not Bothering About Promotion
Derek Halpern from Social Triggers says that content marketing is 80% promotion and 20% content
Promotion means you need to make sure that as many prospects get to see the content which you have created for them. Are you ticking off all these promotion possibilities?

• Send content on your owned media like your own twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest to name a minimum
• Create video and visual content on YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram
• Having a cycle of promotion for your content. Be aware of changed rules for Twitter where they don’t allow repeat content
• Sending your content to your email list is the minimum
• As part of your link building strategy, connecting with influencers and requesting them to share your content on their networks

The road to success is paved with mistakes. However, some mistakes are like deep pits. To come back from them while your competition is racing is difficult. Avoid the ones listed above and put your marketing machine into full throttle.

Reference:https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312775

What You Need to Do Before a PPC Campaign Launch

Let’s imagine a dream scenario: you have approved budget for a new, high profile campaign.

Everyone is excited.

You relish the opportunity to show how paid search is the perfect channel. It’s efficient and targeted.

But wait a minute.

There are a few questions you should ask yourself to make sure you’re positioned for success.

Whether you are an in-house marketer or work agency-side, raise these six points with your planning teams.

Unless you’ve prepared for each one, even campaigns with best bid strategies and creative execution can fail.

1. Consider if Your Business is Well-Suited for Paid Search

Paid search has evolved into a key component for most marketing efforts. Search remains a leading driver of traffic, accounting for 35 percent of referring site visits.

With paid search increasingly dominating SERP results, it tends to be one of the first digital media investment opportunities to be considered.

However, there are instances when paid search doesn’t lend itself that well to driving leads.

For many local businesses, it is more critical to optimize their site for organic visibility to feed into the map at the top of the SERP and to focus on managing presence on review sites.

Restaurants, dry cleaners, hair salons, convenience stores, and other similar location-centric businesses are often searched within map apps on phones or review sites.

On desktop results, engines already favor Knowledge panels and prominently display a local map within pinned relevant businesses.

In other instances, user intent or certain desired targeting criteria may not translate into search activity.

Social or display are still better channels to target users based on psychographic or demographic criteria.

2. Budget for Complementary Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Go beyond the typical Google, Bing, and Yahoo mix.

In many verticals, search-like vehicles are important to consider.

Consumers engage with them similarly to how they do with a search engine by starting their research journey there.

For an effective search marketing effort, you will need to include them in your strategy.

• Amazon: In retail, Amazon has emerged as the fourth pillar of pay-for-performance media. For a competitive presence, it is no longer enough to run just on the traditional engines. For a growing number of users, Amazon is the first go-to place for research, not a search engine.
• Metasearch: For travel companies, metasearch is an important consideration alongside traditional search engine advertising. While the ROI is typically lower than paid search ads on the search engine marketing ads, metasearch captures valuable users who are savvy travelers and could easily book with another party, such as an online travel agency, such as Expedia (i.e., OTA).
• Paid social: This is often overlooked as a complementary tactic to a traditional paid search investment. While targeting methods may seem less precise than a paid search campaign, social media channels offer important ways to target users who are considering your products. At the minimum, consider a paid social retargeting effort if a prospecting campaign seems costly.

3. Set Goals & Stick to Them

First, determine a KPI that will be used to measure success.

Ideally, you’ll want to use a single metric because it’s simpler to optimize a campaign toward one metric.

However, secondary metrics are worth considering if having a single KPI may be too narrow-minded or inadvertently cause undesirable incentives.

For example, having revenue as the only goal may result in focusing on higher revenue transactions, but unintentionally resulting in fewer total transactions.

Revenue would grow due to value per transaction rising, but fewer transactions would be captured.

With KPIs set, calculate goals for each one. Aside from defining the numeric threshold for success, be sure to also set a realistic yet somewhat challenging time frame within which to achieve this.

This will serve as a guideline for when to draw the line if any doubts emerge on if the campaign has run too long or if success is debatable.For new initiatives, it may seem that any growth from your investment is already better than what you had before. This is a flawed frame of mind as investing a substantial budget or running a campaign for a very long time is a high opportunity cost to pay.

The longer one runs or the more budget one invests without clear results, the quicker one should ask oneself if the efforts are best directed elsewhere or of the effort should done differently.

If setting a specific number is tough, strive for a range of what will be acceptable benchmarks for success.

4. Strive for a Simple Landing Page Experience

For best success, stress test the landing page you plan to use.

If you have any doubts about its usability, or it doesn’t seem practical to modify the proposed page or site, consider creating a custom landing page.

Paid search campaign perform best if landing pages have a simple layout.

Keep your call to action and the bulk of the content above the fold on desktop and within two scrolling actions on a mobile device.

Ideally, the user would complete the entire desired action on the landing page (e.g. filling out a form, viewing a video).

For more complex transactions (e.g., making a purchase), the user should be able to start that process on the landing page.

5. Develop an Insightful Tracking Framework

All paid search conversions must be tracked.

Besides getting familiar with how the engine’s paid search account set up works, you will also need to decide how to track the campaign’s conversions.

While each engine has its own tagging approach, it is more strategic to use the same provider as the rest of your company or client’s business units. This will allow tracking results with the added benefits of seamlessly integrating with all other existing processes.

Furthermore, consider how your tracking framework aligns with the rest of the sales cycle beyond its digital phase. Research ways to integrate your activity with the wider CRM systems in place.

For example, I have seen Google Analytics UTM parameters set up to feed into Salesforce so that it is possible to attribute leads to specific ads, geotargeting, and other paid search attributes.

6. To Measure Results, Track Synergies with Other Marketing Channels

When evaluating impact, never look at paid search in isolation.

Consider synergies between paid search and channels that target your target audience earlier in the user journey throughout the marketing funnel.

Of the many users who will see your new paid search ads, only a small percentage will click on them. Then, of those who reach the site, only a small percentage still will transact in the desired way.

All those users who have not transacted but still engaged with you – from seeing your SEM ad and/or navigating to the site even if without transacting – will often still consider your products and services. These remaining users will just likely need more time to decide if you are the right fit for them.

Users who did not click on your paid search ads but were exposed to your other media will often convert through other channels. However, paid search played an important role in the process.

Similarly, other channels also educate users prior to them searching on and transacting through paid search.

It is important to capture these multi-touch synergies when measuring impact, as with any marketing effort, ideally using a multi-channel attribution model. This multi-touch behavior is highest in the B2B space. There, considerations involve high value, enterprise level decisions.

In the Google/Millward Brown Digital, B2B Path to Purchase Study, it was found that that B2B paid search users search a dozen times, before transacting.

It may be a bummer to have these hoops still to jump before launching. They are well worth to ensure success and gather broader business learnings even if they delay your launch.

Reference:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/6-strategic-areas-to-consider-before-launching-an-sem-campaign/270941/?ver=270941X3

How 3 Changes in Mobile Page Speed Impact Search

Google rolled out the Mobile Speed Update in July. This update officially ushered in page speed as a ranking signal for mobile searches.
It also marks a shift in Google’s approach to measuring page speed, and it’s the latest in a long list of updates to stress the importance of mobile user experiences.
In this article, we’ll examine:

• How mobile speed changed after the launch of the Page Speed Update.
• The real-world impacts we’ve measured since the update.
• What you can do to improve page speed.

1. Page Speed Is a Distinct SEO Category

The first big change we’ve noticed since early 2018 is that Google now measures page speed as a distinct category, separate from technical SEO.
You can easily see this change in action by assessing a website via Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
A few months back, plugging a URL into PageSpeed Insights would have spit out grade based on clear technical criteria:

• Redirects.
• Compression.
• Minification.
• Etc.

PageSpeed Insights then provided basic page stats and a checklist of suggested optimizations you could follow to improve your score.
Now, PageSpeed Insights scores two separate categories.

• “Optimization” is a new name applied to the old familiar 100-point score.
• “Speed,” however, is something new, and it can be confusing – especially if your site receives a “good” optimization score at the same time as a “slow” speed score.

Your Speed score will either be “fast,” “average,” or “slow.”
While sites with low optimization scores usually suffer from low speed scores, they don’t always correlate so neatly.
This is a big deal because, while it is still relatively easy to optimize your “optimization score” by running through the checklist and focusing on your technical SEO, it is very difficult to directly influence your “speed score.”
In fact, if your website is graded “slow” it might be for a variety of reasons that are out of your control.

2. Google Measures Page Speed Using Field Data, Not Lab Data

If you preferentially use tools like Pingdom or WebPageTest, then you may not have seen that PageSpeed Insights now measures page speed based on the median value of your First Contentful Paint (FCP) and DOM Content Loaded (DCL).
What these metrics measure in a nutshell is when users first see a visual response from your page and the time it takes for your HTML to be loaded and parsed.
In other words, Google now uses Real User Measurements (RUMs) to score page speed. These metrics are taken directly from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), aggregated from millions of real-world users using the Chrome browser to visit your website.
As a result, you might notice discrepancies between the results of your in-house speed tests and Google’s page speed measurements.
For example, even if your tests show a site speed within acceptable parameters (Google recommends <200ms), someone visiting your website using an older-generation Android phone or in another country on slow 3G won’t have a fully optimized experience.
If that user experiences 400ms RTT and 400 kpbs transfer speed on your website, Google will obviously calculate much slower loading speed than the one you had in your local test.

This leads to some interesting conundrums.
For example, lab test metrics may report a site to be relatively fast, while Google will consider it to be “slow.”
This might remain a mystery until we dig into the CrUX database and discover that most of the site’s visitors could be based anywhere in the world and they’re typically using slower connections.
Information like this leads to a dilemma: how do we optimize site speed when everything is based on RUMs?
Obviously, you can’t go around ensuring that all of your visitors use LTE networks and the latest smartphones.
What you can do is use CrUX to understand where in the world your visitors are coming from and the average user experiences on your website.
If you notice a trend (e.g., most of your visitors are from Kentucky, or most of your visitors use the iPhone 5) then you can try to optimize specifically for that audience.
To access CrUX:

• Log into Google Cloud.
• Create a new CrUX project.
• Go to the BigQuery console and click ‘Compose Query’.
• Run queries to solve specific challenges.

For example, if you wanted to assess site speed RUMs from August 2018, you’d execute the following query:
SELECT
form_factor.name AS device,
fcp.start,
ROUND(SUM(fcp.density), 4) AS density
FROM
`chrome-ux-report.all.201808`,
UNNEST(first_contentful_paint.histogram.bin) AS fcp
WHERE
origin = ‘http://example.com’
GROUP BY
device,
start
ORDER BY
device,
start
You can then plug the resulting data into visualization programs such as Tableau, Google Data Studio, and Excel to create visual representations of your website’s performance.
What you do with CrUX is up to you but I recommend adding it to your SEO arsenal and using it to discover key real-user metrics such as which devices and connection types your users rely on and how your site’s performance stacks up against your competition.

3. Optimization Score Is Even More Important

Before the Page Speed Update rolled out, my team was curious to see what effect (if any) the update would have on page ranking across popular search terms. To test this, we analyzed 1 million URLs we got across the top 30 positions for 33,500 queries.
If you’re interested, you can read Part 1 of our experiment (before the Page Speed Update) and Part 2 of our experiment (after the Page Speed Update). Search Engine Journal also covered it here.
The TL;DR version of our findings is simply that both before and after the update, there was little-to-no correlation between ranking position and FCP/DCL metrics.
However, there was a strong correlation (0.97) between the average pages’ Optimization Score and their positions in SERPs.
Not only was that correlation consistent across the three months it took to conduct this study, but there was actually a marked increase in the overall quality of the websites occupying positions 1 through 30 in search.
The average Optimization Score of positions 1 to 30 in mobile search increased by 0.83 points, which suggests that technical optimization is more important than ever.

Your Big Takeaway from All of This

if you know you have problems with both your Speed Score and your Optimization Score, then you should focus on getting your site speed under 200ms and fixing technical issues first.
These fixes are easily within your control and they’re the elements that are directly influencing your rankings (according to our experiment).
How to optimize your website is a topic unto itself, so in the interest of brevity I’ll leave you with these resources:

• The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Optimization Score (created by my team at SEO PowerSuite).
• 7 Steps to a Perfect 100/100 Google PageSpeed Insights Score (still very relevant for improving your Optimization Score).
• Google’s PageSpeed Insight Rules.

If you’ve optimized site speed to <200ms but you still have an ‘average’ or ‘slow’ Speed Score, then you can dig into CrUX data to see which of your users are having issues and why they’re experiencing slower site speeds.

Conclusion

The Mobile Speed Update is just the latest in a long line of mobile-focused initiatives Google’s taken over the past few years.
From the advent of AMP to mobile-first indexing to the release of new tools like the Impact Calculator and the Mobile Speed Scorecard, Google has had mobile users in their crosshairs and they don’t show any signs of slowing down.
Adjust your SEO strategy to account for actual user experiences.
Make their on-site experiences – especially on your mobile website – as fast and as seamless as possible.
Doing this will improve UX overall and ensure that you stay one step ahead the next time Google introduces a change that’s designed to improve the quality of search for mobile users.

Reference: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mobile-page-speed-changes/272221/?ver=272221X2

Study Shows Web Security Directly Affects SEO

Nobody forgets to focus on SEO. Until they get hacked and the rankings go away.
Shouldn’t improving web security be a part of your SEO effort?
Even if your site is not hacked, the constant attacks from site hackers can prevent GoogleBot from adequately accessing your site by causing your web server to slow down (throttle) your web traffic and even stop showing web pages to Google.
Ever see strange 404 errors in the Google Search Console for pages that aren’t missing? Google tried crawling existing pages but your server said they were missing. That kind of error can be caused by attacks from website scrapers and hackers.
This is an example of how web security directly affects SEO. A focus on security could mitigate those attacks and help your SEO by allowing Google to adequately crawl your web pages.

Hacks are Related to SEO

According to a study by GoDaddy, 73.9% of hacked sites are hacked for SEO purposes. Hackers add links to a website, add new web pages and can even start showing a different site altogether just to Google.

The reason behind a majority of hacking events have SEO as a reason.

The impact to a publisher’s SEO can be devastating because rankings can slip and the site can become blacklisted. According to GoDaddy’s study:

“Search engine optimization (SEO) spam chases away customers and increases the risk of blacklisting. As the chart shows, it’s a favorite among hackers because they use it to redirect website visitors to malicious sites.”

Web Security Monitoring

The consequences of ignoring this problem are severe. Yet only 50% of publishers monitor for potential hacking events.

GoDaddy’s analysis of over 65,000 websites revealed that only 6,500 were banned by search engines. First, relying on Google to notify you if you’re banned is a bad way to do business. Secondly, GoDaddy’s research shows that only 10% of infected sites were banned.
That means the other 90% were hanging out there in an infected state, possibly without notification from Google. Yet the impact to rankings could still affect a website. The addition of spam pages and spam links to a website can only have a negative outcome.

Being a Leader is about Being Proactive

About 13 years ago when I lived in San Francisco, I had lunch with a Yahoo executive and a top programmer at Yahoo’s headquarters in California.
At the time it was possible to do a search on virtually anything and every once in awhile click on a search result that resulted in a virus download. It didn’t happen often, but it happened more often than it does today.
So during lunch I suggested it might be a good idea to scan for that and not show virus infected webpages to users. The Yahoo programmer said that it was not Yahoo’s responsibility to be the antivirus software for the Internet.
He insisted that it was their job to be a search engine and that it was the user’s burden to purchase an antivirus software. It was a reasonable argument against scanning search results for viruses.
About four or five months later, Google started blocking virus laden websites. Yahoo soon followed Google’s lead.
The point of that anecdote is that we sometimes become locked into a perception of what SEO is and can overlook what SEO can be.
Web security is the component that is the missing from SEO as a strategy. When was the last time web security was discussed in the context of a site audit or SEO planning?

WordPress Plugins & Web Security

There are businesses whose SEO model is to purchase WordPress plugins from the plugin author. The purpose is to update the code to make the plugin add hidden links to websites under the control of  the new owner.
Review each plugin and script that you use. Google the name of the plugin to check if it has a history of being hacked.
Go to Google with a list of your plugins and search for:

• Name of plugin + hacked
• Name of plugin + bugs

Don’t Make Google Your Antivirus

According to GoDaddy’s research, only 50 percent of surveyed businesses indicated they used a monitoring system for security protection.
If you run a WordPress site, two of the most popular security plugins are WordFence and Sucuri Security.
These plugins monitor and scan for potential hacking events and also have firewall features that block hackers temporarily or permanently. They can also block the IP addresses of visitors that are behaving suspiciously.
A third useful WordPress plugin is the Two Factor Authentication plugin by the authors of the UpDraftPlus WordPress backup plugin. The plugin works with both Authy and Google Authenticator, and other popular two factor authentication systems.
Lastly, there are services that monitor your content for SEO purposes but can also provide an extra layer of protection. Thus, if a plugin goes rogue and starts doing something it’s not supposed to, you will be notified. If an attacker is adding links to your website, the monitoring software can alert you to that.
One such service is called ContentKing, a real-time SEO auditing and content tracking solution. It is so comprehensive, that users of its service would have known something went horribly wrong in early 2018 when an SEO plugin that started adding thousands of rogue webpages after it routinely updated.
ContentKing’s website explains how their service would have alerted WordPress users of the SEO Plugin Bug because once the SEO plugin started adding rogue web pages, ContentKing customers would have been alerted to a sudden increase in website size.
According to Steven Van Vessum of ContentKing:

“We do keep track of all newly added pages. You’d see soon enough if a ton of pages with strange URLs were added by someone else than yourself. Checking newly added pages only takes you 10 seconds so it’s easy to make that part of your morning routine.”

As for rogue links added to existing web pages:

“If the links were added to the HTML, so no fancy JS links etc., then we’d definitely pick up on the links and you’d be able to find them in ContentKing.”

Whose Responsibility is Web Security?

Web security affects everyone. So everyone should have a say about what’s going to be done about it, whether it’s someone in IT or the head of your SEO doesn’t matter.
What matters is that someone is making sure that a proactive anti-hacking strategy is in place and that the strategy be reviewed and kept updated.

Reference:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/web-security-impact-on-seo/272069/

A Step by Step Guide to Boosting Your Brand New Site Up Google’s Rankings

If you’ve just started a new blog or website, you must already be aware of the importance of getting it ranked quickly and effectively on Google. While there are other traffic sources, Google is still the number one search engine with, huge 77% market share. For many businesses, it’s their only source of traffic.

So, if you’ve got a new blog and you want to achieve a high rank for it, you’re in the right place. We’re going to give you a step by step walkthrough of exactly how to rank your site effectively on Google.

   Source: http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/

Why is Google still so important?

While there are other sources of traffic that are extremely relevant, Google is still the best.

When I first started trying to market my new blog, I didn’t realize how important Google was going to be for me. I thought that I could get traffic from loads of different sources without placing any extra emphasis upon Google. I was wrong. The reality was that when I managed to get a rank on the first page of Google, my visitor numbers went up dramatically.

If you just miss out on the first page on Google, you might as well be nowhere! Research shows that 11th place on Google (top of the second page) only gets around 1% of the hits for that search.

Source: https://gravitateonline.com/2011/04/12/2nd-place-1st-place-loser-seriously/

What that means is – if you’re trying to rank for a term with around 10,000 monthly searches, failing to get on the first page could at best get you around 100 clicks. If you’ve got a conversion rate of around 2%, this translates into two sales a month. Is that enough to make your business viable?

Before we get deeper into how to rank your site – let’s have a look at why keyword selection is so important.

Carry out some detailed keyword research

If you want to make your ranking efforts a success, you need to target the right keywords. So, before you start optimizing your content or looking for backlinks (we’ll get to that), you need to know which keywords to target.

There are a number of tools available that’ll help you do this, including Google’s very own keyword research page. The idea is to find a keyword that can generate high search volumes and thus ensure heavy traffic for your bolg or site. At the same time, the keyword should only face moderate competition, so that it is able to rank high on a search page.

Obviously, it is harder to get first page rankings for the highly competitive terms . If you’re new to the ranking business, try and go for more niche terms that are less competitive. Don’t just pick one keyword, choose a few so you can mix them up when you need to.

If you’re looking to make your keyword selection more niche by adding “long-tails” to the end of broader terms – make sure you target active long-tails rather than the passive ones. One great example of such addition is “discount”. It effectively targets and engages people who want to save on their shopping. If you can help them with their saving targets – you could make a sale.

Other great additions are things like the current year. With tons of outdated information available on the internet, people like to add this to ensure that they’re getting the most relevant and up-to-date information.

Try and avoid additions like “free” as these largely encourage people who are looking for a free ride.

Create quality content

People think there’s a shortcut to this and that they can play the system without creating good content. There isn’t. This might have worked in the past, but it doesn’t anymore. You’ve got to create relevant, high-quality content. Not only will this be more shareable (giving you more SEO juice as other people post links to it), but Google can also recognize quality these days.

You shouldn’t overlook the power of getting other people to share your content. Content sharing acts as an effective marketing tool and thus, helps in getting quality backlinks. – . But, all this can only be achieved with great content.

So when you create your content – make sure it’s good. Also, keep the keywords you already researched in mind and mention them enough in your posts. Not too much, but just enough – and use them in headings occasionally if you can.

Get your sitemaps sorted

One thing that Google looks for when trying to rank a page is its sitemaps file. Make sure you’ve got one and that it’s kept up to date (there are plugins that’ll do this for you). Your sitemap will notify Google of any changes so that it knows when to rank new posts or pages.

Make sure all your on-page SEO is fixed

Before we start looking at off-page SEO (backlinks), you need to make sure your on-page optimization is completely sorted. Hopefully, you’re already using your keywords in the posts you create, but you also need to make sure everything like META tags and descriptions is filled out and all your on-page content is fully optimized. Don’t worry – the highly popular Yoast SEO plugin will guide you through this in WordPress so that all your posts are optimized for the right keywords with the right metrics and densities.

Why backlinks are so important for SEO

If you really want to get your site noticed – you need backlinks. Backlinks allow Google to assess the relevance and importance of the web pages on their subject matters. While earlier, it was possible to spam backlinks from various sources to boost your site up the Google rankings, you can’t d that anymore. Now, You need to abide by quality.

Get good quality backlinks

Try partnering with relevant authorities in your domain in exchange for backlinks. Not only do these give you great link juice, they’re also great for relevant residual traffic.

You can also offer testimonials to other relevant authorities in return for a backlink. Post your content to social bookmarks and other social media sites. Make sure, you use the keywords you had picked as anchor text – but vary it a little instead of using the same one again and again.

One great way to get good quality backlinks is to look for the mentions of your site or brand that don’t include a link. Try to “recapture” thereby reaching out to their authors and requesting them to add an anchor link to their mention.

Don’t fall for those gigs on Fiverr that offer 10,000 links instantly. These seem too good to be true because they are!. Using these methods can actually get your site penalized or even blacklisted from Google.

Look for good quality backlinks from relevant, reputable sources and you should be set…

Hopefully, these tips are enough to get you started on your way to ranking success.

Reference:https://www.resultfirst.com/knowledgecenter/the-newbie-guide-a-step-by-step-guide-to-boosting-your-brand-new-site-up-googles-rankings/

How to Create a User-Intent SEO Strategy

Behind every Google search, there is an intention. People are looking for something in particular when they’re searching the web -- the answers to their problems, information about the services available to them or sources for the product they want. If you want your business to be discovered by users on the web, your content needs to be optimized for user intent.
Since Google can recognize user intent, it displays pages in search results that are most relevant to what the user is looking for. Because of this, understanding user intent and creating content with the user's intent in mind is essential to improving the relevance of your website pages and improving SEO.
If you want to drive more relevant traffic to your site and increase conversions, here's how to create a user-intent SEO strategy.
Related: Why Digitally Savvy Companies Focus on Being 'in' their Users' lives -- Not Seeing Them Simply as 'Customers'

Understand the different types of user intent.

In order to create a user-intent SEO strategy for your content, you first need to understand the different types of user intent. Start by heading over to Google. Enter the search terms your audience would be looking for; and, based on what turns up, you'll easily be able to identify what type of content users want at each different stage of user intent. In the example below, I used Google search results to demonstrate the three stages of user intent.

1. Informational search queries

In the informational search queries stage, the user is trying to gather more information about a particular topic or product, but he or she is not ready to buy. For example, the user might search for “how to edit photos.”

Notice how all the results for that Google search are informational, like how-to blog posts and tutorials. There are no ads on the page because users are only searching for information and not a particular product they want to buy.

2. Navigational search queries

In the navigational search queries stage, the user is looking for a specific type of content to help him or her consider their options, but is still not quite ready to buy. The user will search, for example, for “What is the best photo editing software?”

In this stage of user intent, the results are lists for the top 10 photo editing software and similar comparison blog posts that help users make a decision. The options may contain links to buy, but the sites aren't pushing the purchase too hard.
Related: The 5 Best Digital Marketing Tools for Understanding Your Customers

3. Transactional search queries

In this stage of user intent -- transactional search queries -- the user is ready to buy. He or she has got a credit card in hand ready to make a purchase. The user might then search "Where can I buy photo editing software?”

Most of the search results that show up with this query are from online stores that are selling the product the consumer wants to buy. The sites aren't presenting informative blog posts, but product pages.
Now that you understand the different stages of user intent, you can see what types of content you need to provide for users and what types of key phrases you should be optimizing your content for in order to enhance the relevance of your posts and improve your rankings.

Determine if your existing content supports user intent.

Next, you need to determine if your existing content matches the needs of your audience. To do this simply, go to Google Analytics, and check out your top-performing keywords. If you find that your top-performing keyword phase, “buy hand-knit sweaters,” which is transactional, leads to a page with a blog post that provides tips for people who want to learn how to knit, you’re not giving users what they want.
In this instance, you should switch up your strategy so that users who search for “buy hand-knit sweaters” are led to a product page instead of an informative blog post. That way your users get what they’re looking for -- and you get more conversions. Take a look at your other blog posts. If they aren’t being seen by users, incorporate more informational keywords. If your product pages aren’t showing up in transactional search results, sprinkle in some transactional keywords in order to improve your rankings for that type of user intent.
Related: 3 Ways in Which AI Could Enhance Your Company's UX

Create content for user intent.

Keywords are not the only thing you need to consider when you create a user-intent SEO strategy. You have to craft your content with user intent in mind. Since Google is capable of understanding intent, if your content doesn’t match your keyword, you won’t rank for it.
For example, if you’re targeting the long-tail keyword phrase “how to bake an apple pie,” but the blog post you write for it veers off in another direction and ends up being more about how to grow your own apple tree, you won’t show up in the search results related to baking. Instead, you’ll show up in search results related to gardening. You’ve got to make sure your content is crafted with user intent in mind. Otherwise, you’ll end up getting a bunch of traffic from users who aren’t interested in your business.
Additionally, you'll want to make sure you plan content for each type of user intent. This will help guide users through each stage of the buyer’s journey. That way, when users in the informational stage discover you, then move on to the next stage, they’ll find helpful content from you again -- and you can lead them all the way to buying your product.
Knowing the intent of users will skyrocket the success of your SEO strategy. If you follow these easy tips, the useful content you provide will be found by loads of people, who will return to your site time after time because they know that your business cares about its customers. In no time, they’ll become customers too.  

Reference:https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/320539