anthonykrierion

[anthonykrierion]

A Simple Guide to SEO Reseller Packages

You work hard for your clients. You’ve established a solid relationship and they have confidence that you can help them achieve their goals.

But they have a need you just can’t fill.

SEO.

Every business should be investing in SEO these days, and most marketers and business leaders know it. If you don’t have the expertise or tools to provide top-rated SEO services, your clients may look elsewhere.

Luckily, you can provide those things without hiring expensive in-house expertise. You just need an SEO reseller package.

This article will tell you all about what to expect from an SEO reseller package and how to find a good one.

What is an SEO reseller package?

An SEO reseller package provides expert SEO services that you can resell to your clients.

With 49% of marketers agreeing that organic search is the most profitable channel, SEO is a need-to-have service, not a nice-to-have service.

That’s why 63.6% of businesses actively invest in SEO, and why the global SEO services market is expected to reach a value of nearly $86 billion by 2023.

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A lot of your existing and potential clients will expect a marketing agency to offer SEO work.

Luckily, you don’t have to be an SEO expert or employ one to provide this in-demand service. You can find an agency that specializes in SEO and has an SEO reseller program. You’ll then sell their services to your clients at a marked up rate.

When these services are packaged under your name, it’s called white label SEO.

Who should consider an SEO reseller package?

The businesses that join SEO reseller programs are usually marketing agencies or business consultants that have established relationships with their clients.

They already provide high quality services in other areas and want to add SEO to meet growing client demand.

What are the benefits of an SEO reseller package?

SEO resellers offer a mutually beneficial relationship. You’re bringing business to the SEO agency, and in return they cut you a good deal on their high quality SEO services.

Here are the big ways it benefits you.

You keep your clients (and keep them happy)

You have a strong relationship with your clients, but without SEO, not all of their needs are being met.

As much as they like working with you, they may eventually be lured away by an agency with more comprehensive offerings.

An SEO reseller package helps you keep your client list. Even better, your customers will be thrilled to get SEO services from a partner they already trust.

Cost-effective

SEO reseller package pricing varies depending on the expertise of the agency and the services offered.

But it’s almost always a better deal than your other options.

Some companies contract with an SEO agency or freelancer by the hour. A freelancer would be the cheaper choice, but an individual expert can’t offer the broad expertise and manpower that an agency can.

If you choose to pay an agency by the hour, it gets expensive fast. The average SEO agency charges $134.66 per hour. The ones with the most expertise and the best reputations will likely charge more.

What about an in-house SEO expert?

Bad news: the average salary of a senior SEO manager is $76,069 — and that employee won’t even have the full skillset for agency work.

Keep these figures in mind when you shop for an SEO reseller package. Chances are you can get a much better deal.

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Access to experts and tools

We’ve established that in-house experts are expensive. To get a good ROI from providing your clients with SEO, you’ll have to cut the cost.

You could always give SEO a go yourself. But no matter how much you learn about it, you can’t compete with a team of specialists who are completely focused on Search Engine Optimization.

Furthermore, SEO agencies use a variety of tools for optimization, link data, website analytics, and more. Many of the tools are proprietary and the others tend to be costly. Partnering with an SEO agency lets your clients reap the benefits of top tools with no extra subscription fees.

Scalable

Let’s say you hire a freelancer to write an article each week for your client. Pretty soon, the client wants 10 articles per week plus link building and a technical audit.

Your freelancer doesn’t have the time to write more articles, nor do they have the needed expertise in other important areas of SEO like link building.

What do you do — hire more hourly freelancers? Bring on an expensive in-house specialist?

You hire a new employee, and word gets out that you offer high quality SEO. Now you have several new clients knocking on your door, willing to pay for your SEO service.

But your in-house expert has a full plate. What now — hire another $76K employee or reduce the hours your current staff can spend on each client?

With an SEO reseller package, your SEO services scale easily.

When you have new clients or the needs of your existing clients grow, an entire team of experts has your back. They can scale down to providing a few articles or scale up to full services.

You might even get better pricing from the SEO company as you grow. Reseller programs are based on mutual growth for you and your reselling partner. In some cases, if you bring in more clients, the rate of your SEO reseller package decreases.

Productive hours

SEO is not your main thing and that’s OK. You have other core competencies that keep your clients coming back.

When you partner with an agency to take SEO off your plate, you have more time to focus on your own areas of expertise.

Your clients receive hours of extra effort with very little additional work from you.

Let the 2020 SEO Agency Of The Year Help Your Clients

Since 2009, we have helped many agencies and businesses white-label or resell our services under their brand. Let us do it for you!

Schedule a Consultation

What services are included in an SEO reseller package?

Google uses 200+ factors to determine how a page ranks.

In other words, SEO is complex.

It requires a broad range of skills ranging from improving website speed to optimizing local business directory listings.

A good SEO reseller package will include all the major branches of SEO that your clients are looking for. Talk to a potential SEO agency about whether they have expertise in the following areas:

Content development

On-page SEO

Off-page SEO

Technical SEO

Local SEO

Industry-specific SEO

Analytics and reporting

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Let’s look at a few of these.

Off-page SEO (link building)

If you want to rank in the top results on a Google search results page, you’re going to need external links.

In the early days of SEO, those links didn’t have to come from reputable sources. People paid link farms or used other black hat techniques to gain backlinks. But Google gets better at differentiating spammy links and links with authority every day.

SEO professionals know that quality is more important than quantity for link building. An SEO reseller package should include the ability to develop an authoritative backlink profile for your clients. Effective SEO agencies have tools to identify relevant link prospects.

SEO for your clients’ industry

If you specialize in working with clients in a specific industry, you should find an SEO company with experience in that field.

For example, ecommerce companies will do best with an SEO firm that knows about optimizing platforms like Magento, Bigcommerce, or Shopify.

If your clients come from a variety of niches, the SEO reseller company should be able to provide industry research to help them be competitive. SEO should always be tailored to a company’s unique needs.

SEO reports

SEO is a long-term project. Businesses that outsource SEO should still know what’s happening each step of the way.

An SEO reseller package should include regular reports from the SEO provider. This might include keyword ranking reports, link building reports, website analytics reports, or others.

Let the 2020 SEO Agency Of The Year Help Your Clients

Since 2009, we have helped many agencies and businesses white-label or resell our services under their brand. Let us do it for you!

Schedule a Consultation

How to choose an SEO reseller package

Not all SEO agencies are the same and not all reseller packages have equal value.

The SEO company you choose will ideally be a long-term partner and an integral part of your agency’s offerings from now on — so research carefully.

Here are some things to look for in an SEO reseller service:

Reputation

74% of business owners consider an SEO provider’s reputation to be “very” or “extremely” important. That’s because the companies that get results (and are easy to work with) leave a trail of happy clients.

You’ll want to work with an agency that has been in the SEO business for a long time. Look into their testimonials and whether they’ve received positive attention or awards from reputable industry organizations.

A truly esteemed company will have more than online reviews. You probably have a lot of contacts in the marketing world. Ask around and see if anyone you trust has an opinion — good or bad — on an SEO firm.

Don’t be afraid to ask the SEO agency itself for relevant case studies or references. You can contact these clients yourself to make sure they have a positive impression of the firm.

Pricing

Some SEO reseller programs make you pay a joining fee. The best ones are free and easy to join and can get you up and running almost immediately.

Talk to SEO companies about whether they offer volume pricing. Volume pricing means that the more clients you refer to the agency, the better price you get. This can be really important for cost-effective growth of your business.

Also look into how you get paid for bringing clients to the SEO agency. For many businesses like yours, receiving payments reliably and in a reasonable time frame is essential to operations. Find out if the SEO firm provides quick turnaround.

SEO skills and resources

Make sure you’re providing clients with real SEO experts who have access to useful tools.

There are SEOs out there who are stuck on ineffective or outdated techniques. If you aren’t familiar with the basics of SEO, either brush up on it before you talk to potential SEO resellers or bring someone along who is knowledgeable. Ask the company about the techniques they use and the tools they have at their disposal.

It’s a big red flag if supposed SEO experts can’t tell you the details of their work.

Shady agencies are quick to guarantee page one rankings or say they have a secret formula. Real SEO professionals know that Search Engine Optimization requires knowledge and hard work, but the techniques are no mystery. They will tell you exactly what they can do for your clients.

The best way to find out if an SEO company has what it takes is to look at their recent results. Again, ask for relevant case studies with real numbers.

As we mentioned above, SEO has a lot of moving parts. Talk to the agency about their specialties. They should know about all the types of SEO discussed above. If you specialize in a particular niche or industry, they should be knowledgeable about that.

Communication and support

Once you’re part of an SEO reseller program, how are you going to attract new clients with your SEO services?

A good SEO reseller package should include sales materials from the SEO agency that you can pass along to your clients.

Once your client has been connected to the SEO agency, communication should be clear and regular. Talk to the reseller service about how they’ll approach a new or potential client.

Ideally, they’ll review the client’s website and provide a proposal for how to proceed.

See if your potential SEO partner provides dedicated account managers. Do both you and your clients know who to reach out to at the agency?

In Conclusion

An SEO reseller package is a cost-effective way for you to sell your clients expert SEO services without breaking the bank.

This keeps your clients happy because SEO is essential to modern digital marketing. And it makes you happy because you can scale up your offerings without hiring more employees or putting in a lot of extra work.

For the best SEO reseller experience, choose a partner with proven results, beneficial pricing, and a plan for communication.

Let the 2020 SEO Agency Of The Year Help Your Clients

Since 2009, we have helped many agencies and businesses white-label or resell our services under their brand. Let us do it for you!

Schedule a Consultation

A Simple Guide to SEO Reseller Packages was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

How To Make Search Intent Optimized Blog Content

Search intent is one of the most important factors to consider when you’re trying to rank for any keyword on Google. Besides learning how to utilize search intent for keyword research, you should also know how to develop your articles around it. Take note that the more relevant your content is to a user’s search intent, the higher you can rank on the SERPs. To help you do just that, today I will be showing you how to make search intent optimized blog content.

Give Advice For Informational Queries

Users who search for keywords with an informational search intent are looking for answers to their questions. These answers can vary depending on their needs, but Google’s algorithm can detect the context of their search and bring up the most relevant pages. For example, the keyword “barley grass” brings up informational articles that talk about its health benefits rather than pages created to sell barley grass products.

To make informational search intent optimized blog content, give your readers good advice. Here are a few ways that you can do just that:

Share Tips Through Lifestyle Content

The best way to create content for a keyword with an informational search intent is by simply answering the user’s query. That’s it. Take a look at the knowledge graph our team created for the keyword “refrigerator cleanings tips”. It’s simple, relevant, and informational.

Suggest Relevant Products

If the user’s search query is looking for product options to address a need they have, your blog content should focus on suggesting relevant products to them. Make sure that instead of promoting your products, you focus more on promoting their benefits. Here’s a sample from a blog that we created for people looking for anti-aging supplements:

These types of blogs can also be utilized for keywords with transactional or commercial search intent. All you need to do is focus on the right parts that can address the user’s needs.

Provide Details For Transactional Queries

Keywords with a transactional search intent are there to help searchers looking to purchase an item. They already know what product they want to buy, the question is where they can get it. The right way to optimize your blog content for keywords with a transactional search intent is to prove how your product can benefit them. Here’s how you can do it:

Show How Your Product Works

One way you can showcase a product is by writing about how it works. For example, if someone searches “kitchen flooring philippines”, you can come across one of the landing pages that our team wrote. Since the keyword has a transactional intent, we wrote about the client’s product and how it can benefit possible customers.

This can show the customer why out of all of the options online, they should choose to invest in your product.

Show Alternatives For Commercial Investigation Queries

The last type of search intent that I’ll be teaching you how to write for is for commercial investigation queries. Commercial investigation search queries are for those who are thinking of purchasing a product in the near future. They want to know more about their options before they make their final decision.

One way you can create commercial investigation intent optimized blogs is by creating product comparisons.

Product Comparisons

If a product has left a searcher unconvinced, chances are they’re going to search for alternatives online. This is where you come in. Product comparisons can highlight the advantages of your product or service over your competitors. The goal is to win the customer over by showing them what they’re missing.

Here’s a short clip from an article we made:

Key Takeaway

The key to getting searchers to click on your blog is to ensure that you satisfy their search intent. If they have more of an informational query, it’s best to give them useful advice. If they have more of a transactional query, make sure you highlight the best and most helpful product details. If they have a commercial query, make sure that you provide them with product comparisons for their future purchase.

Now you know how to make search intent optimized blog content. Use these tips when writing to create relevant content that can dominate the SERPs.

How To Make Search Intent Optimized Blog Content was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

Google Updates The Search Console Index Coverage Report

Google recently updated the Index Coverage report in search console. They’re releasing 4 major changes in the Index Coverage report that will help webmasters have a more thorough and deeper understanding of how Google crawls or indexes their website. These updates have been due to the feedback that webmasters gave Google to further refine and improve the report. That said, let’s find out what the changes are and they can help SEO.

Google Search Console Index Coverage Report

The Index Coverage was introduced during the roll-out of the revamped Google Search Console along with other features. So, unlike other updated Google tools, the Index Coverage report is a relatively new feature that just had its upgrade. But along with Google’s constant updates, their tools, and other features need to get updated as well to better help us webmasters and SEOs bring the best possible results for the users. Here is the update:

Index Coverage Report Updates

According to Google’s recent blog post, they had 4 updates for the Index Coverage report. Based on the blog post the updates include:

Removal of the generic “crawl anomaly” issue type 

Pages that were submitted but blocked by robots.txt and got indexed are now reported as “indexed but blocked” (warning) instead of “submitted but blocked” (error)

Addition of a new issue: “indexed without content” (warning)

Soft 404 reporting is now more accurate

Let’s run through the important updates one by one.

Removal of the broad “Crawl Anomaly” Issue

This is one of the most important updates because ever since the Index Coverage Report was introduced, the crawl anomaly was one of the most difficult errors to fix. The reason behind this is because the error was not specified at all, so we had to change small but important factors that affected crawling that might have contributed to the crawl anomaly issue and wait if the small factor was in fact the reason behind the anomaly.

But now that the “crawl anomaly” issue has been removed, the specific error that caused the anomaly will now be specified to help webmasters and SEOs fix the anomaly faster. 

In the screenshot above, the “Crawl Anomaly” issue that we always saw has been replaced by different errors. Since we now know the specific errors instead of the broad “crawl anomaly”, we can get to fix this immediately.

Indexed but Blocked (Warning)

This is a pretty simple update where webmasters can have more clarity with regard to the status of the URLs they submit since there is a clear difference between a page that has been submitted and a page that was indexed after submission. 

But what’s important here is to note that there is an indexed page that Google can’t crawl anymore because it’s being blocked by your robots.txt file. So, fix this immediately. Either remove the page in your robots.txt file or have it deindexed by Google if you don’t want it getting crawled and showing up in the search results.

Indexed Without Content

This is a new type of error that Google has introduced. This error is basically Google telling you that they have crawled and indexed your page but they can’t see the contents of the page. There are three possibilities why this is happening:

You’ve published a blank page – Remove or update this page immediately since you’re just wasting your crawl budget having this be crawlable and indexable.

You’re Cloaking the page – Either intentional or not, do not do this. Cloaking your page from Google is a black hat tactic that could lead to penalties to your site.

Your Page’s Format is not supported by Google – Use the URL Inspection Tool to check how Google sees/views your page and find out why they’re not seeing the content of your page.

Here’s what the warning looks like:

When you scroll down on the report, you’ll be able to see which pages are tagged with this error and I suggest you fix it immediately.

Key Takeaway

It might not sound like a major update, and that’s because it isn’t. But it is a helpful one for webmasters and SEOs. Having the knowledge of which pages have specific errors can help us save time, energy, and even money. It allows us to know accurately which errors are plaguing our pages and react immediately. To summarize, the majority of the updates aim to improve data accuracy in the reports. What do you think of the update to the Index Coverage Report? Let me know in the comments below!

Google Updates The Search Console Index Coverage Report was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

The Ultimate Guide to Small Business Website Design in 2021

First impressions matter.

For many potential customers, the first impression they have of your business is your website. That website might also be where they go to interact with you or purchase your product.

Whether you’re creating your first website or looking to redesign an old one, it’s important to get it right.

Your website needs to look great, use technical best practices, represent your brand accurately, and rank well on Google.

That’s a big demand on a small business

You probably don’t have a team of web design experts on staff or the budget to waste on a web property that won’t help your bottom line. So how can you create a website that gives your small business a competitive edge?

This article will lead you through what you need to know to get started with your small business web design project.

Do you need a website for your small business?

This is a no-brainer: businesses of all sizes need a website.

Surprisingly, only 64% of small businesses have one. The other 36% are missing out on big benefits. That’s because today’s consumers expect to find every bit of information they need online.

When people are looking for a business like yours — or if they’ve already heard your name and want more information — they turn to the internet. A massive 93% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in the last year. Up to 34% did so every single day.

If you don’t have a website, you simply don’t exist for many of these people.

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This is true even if you’re a brick and mortar business targeting a purely local audience.

Once potential customers find you on the internet, you want to make a good impression on them. A professional website design lends credibility to your company and allows you to showcase your product or services the way you desire.

MOST Small Businesses STRUGGLE WITH Designing their Website ...WE FIX THAT!

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What if you already have an online presence?

You may already have an online listing on a third-party site. It’s a start, but you don’t have as much control and you can’t deliver the same user experience that you can with your own website.

Barefoot Luxury Villas was in a similar situation.

Before HigherVisibility designed them a new website, they were listed on a stock vacation rental booking platform. They had a homepage on their own domain, but customers couldn’t use that page to book rentals.

Their new custom website not only looked great, it provided a superior user experience due to its search and filtering system. With the updated site, it was easier and more intuitive for visitors to find their ideal vacation rental.

How do you create a small business website?

Now you know that you need a website. The next step is to decide how to make one.

Do you put it together yourself with a basic website builder or CMS, or do you hire a design company to help?

There are a lot of “free” or inexpensive website builders out there that will allow you to drag and drop your way to a basic website in no time. They’re tempting to small business owners due to ease and low costs.

But you get what you pay for — and what you pay might not be nothing.

You’re likely to discover hidden fees along the way, especially if you want features like a custom domain name or Google Analytics tracking. Additionally, if you ever want to migrate your site off the website builder platform, it might not be possible.

You could also pay for hosting and build your own site with a CMS like WordPress.

You’ll have a greater ability to customize and more control over functionality, but the learning curve is also steeper, even if you’re using one of the many available templates.

Creating the website will inevitably take time — a precious commodity for a small business.

It’s also important to note that neither a website builder site or a DIY WordPress site can provide you with the kind of SEO expertise that really boosts your website’s visibility.

So that brings us back to hiring a website design agency for a custom web design.

With a professional design team, your website will look beautiful and professional, striking an emotional chord with your intended audience.

A design agency has the expertise to draw your target audience to the site and give them an ideal user experience. Good agencies will have both a willingness to understand your vision and the skills to bring beautiful designs to life.

How much does a small business website design cost?

There’s no simple answer to this question.

If you choose to hire a designer or design agency, a website could cost anywhere from $1,000 to more than $100,000.

It all depends on what you need.

A site with a basic template design and limited functionality won’t cost as much as a huge website with a lot of custom bells and whistles.

Don’t be afraid to discuss your vision with a few different agencies. They all have different pricing structures and bring a different mix of skills and styles to the table.

You can expect these factors to impact the cost of a website design at any agency:

The size of the site. Self-explanatory — something with just a few pages will be less expensive than a massive ecommerce website with pages for each product.

The style. A pre-made template style will usually cost less than building a custom design from scratch.

Your ecommerce platform. Equipping your site for ecommerce could cost between $2,000 and $25,000. It would be cheaper to use a third-party system like Shopify, but these typically take a percentage of every sale you make.

Your content management system. Having a feature-rich CMS for your site is essential for your ongoing site maintenance, SEO, and content strategy. These platforms have a price range similar to ecommerce systems.

Mobile responsiveness or a dedicated mobile site. Designing for multiple device types is no longer optional. A responsive design adapts the website based on the user’s device. If you want a totally separate mobile site, that will be more expensive.

Copywriting. Writing optimized on-page copy is labor-intensive. If you outsource this to the website design agency, your site will cost more.

SEO. Nothing else matters if no one can find your site. SEO services can include optimizing technical factors, developing copy, and more. Ideally, you’ll have a plan to continue search engine optimization after your site is up and running.

(Image Source)

MOST Small Businesses STRUGGLE WITH Designing their Website ...WE FIX THAT!

Since 2009, we have helped many small businesses design & build effective websites. Let us do it for you!

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What makes a great small business website?

Website design goes beyond a cool look. There are a number of factors that take a website from functional to outstanding.

A good domain name

In most cases, you’ll use “your business name dot com” as your domain name to support your brand identity.

Sometimes, your domain name will contain keywords that are part of your SEO strategy.

Try to get the .com extension, even if you register other extensions as well.

In any case, it’s important to choose a domain name that you won’t want to change later. Switching to a new domain name without hurting your SEO is a challenge.

Brand-strengthening design

A good website design has an attractive layout and visually appealing images, colors, and font.

It also consistently conveys the mood and style of your brand.

Usability

Visitors come to your website with a purpose. It may be simply to find out where you’re located or it could be to buy a product or get support.

Providing potential customers with easy answers and a positive user experience is one of the most important elements of website design.

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Many of these users will be on a mobile device. A design that isn’t mobile friendly might very well scare them away. 45% of consumers say that they would abandon content that’s displaying poorly on their current device.

Another important aspect of usability is speed. No one has the patience for a slow-loading website these days. As page load time goes from one second to 10 seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases by a whopping 123%.

If your site has ecommerce features, make sure they’re intuitive and safe to use.

Robust security

Business owners often make the mistake of thinking that hackers only go after the big guys.

Actually, 58% of malware attack victims are small businesses. They’re just not publicized as much as a Fortune 500 company getting attacked.

A good website design will protect your site from these attacks.

Search Engine Optimization

Any website design should include a plan for SEO, both before and after launch.

SEO is the factor that’s going to give your new website a great ROI.

53% of website traffic comes from organic search. There are people out there right now searching for what your business offers, and SEO can deliver those searchers to your new website.

You don’t have to take our word for it — 49% of marketers believe organic search is the most profitable channel they use.

When you shop for website design services, don’t consider an agency without established SEO expertise.

This should include all aspects of SEO from optimizing site architecture to developing content.

Don’t underestimate the importance of SEO reach. Your organic visibility is what makes your website such a valuable asset.

A plan for site maintenance

Your work isn’t done once your beautiful new website is up and running.

You’ll need to keep your information up-to-date and continue developing content.

Make sure you discuss the content management system with the website designer. You’ll want a platform that allows you to add content and make changes with limited outside help.

SEO is an ongoing process that you can’t neglect. You might choose to continue Search Engine Optimization in-house, or bring on a team of experts for a fee.

Make sure that you or your agency are tracking KPIs and regularly evaluating the state of your SEO. Google’s algorithm changes all the time and there are always ways to tweak your optimization strategy.

How do you choose an agency to design your website?

Not all web design agencies will have the same skillset. You need one with broad expertise.

Some agencies and designers focus mainly on aesthetics. Looks are important to a customer’s first impression, but they don’t mean much if no one can find your website through an online search.

Other agencies are full of team members who are web developers first and designers second. Unfortunately, a technically advanced website will still turn customers off if it’s not attractive and user-friendly.

Look for a web design agency with skills and real-life experience in:

Competitor analysis

Design elements like color scheme, layout, font size, and organization

SEO content development

Optimizing website architecture for both speed and user experience

Driving conversions

A good agency will communicate with you to learn about your vision, goals, likes and dislikes. They’ll be able to provide examples of websites they made for small businesses like yours.

Growing organic traffic through website design

Fitness19 had a disorganized marketing strategy with individual franchise sites that ranked poorly.

HigherVisibility designed a brand new website to improve brand cohesion and search engine optimization. The new site had built-in SEO features and tracking functionality. HigherVisibility also worked on additional digital marketing services for Fitness19.

The custom website and SEO initiatives led to a 383% increase in organic traffic and a 329% increase in conversions.

Conclusion

If your small business is going to have a website (it definitely needs one) you should make sure it’s worth the investment.

That means hiring an agency with expertise in multiple areas, including:

The art of design

The technical side of website development

SEO

Ready to get started? Schedule a consultation with a website design expert at HigherVisibility today.

MOST Small Businesses STRUGGLE WITH Designing their Website ...WE FIX THAT!

Since 2009, we have helped many small businesses design & build effective websites. Let us do it for you!

Schedule a Consultation

The Ultimate Guide to Small Business Website Design in 2021 was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

Finding and Fixing Broken Links and How they Affect SEO

A well-optimized website will increase its number of webpages over time – it’s inevitable. Content, whether they are blog posts, product pages, etc., will continue to pile on. Oftentimes, content that was published a few years ago is forgotten and some of the links on these pages have either moved to a different page or are non-existent anymore. These are called broken links.

Cleaning up these broken links are part of an SEOs daily task. They might be small in size but in SEO, every bit of optimization matters, and yes, that includes going back to a blog post published 5 years ago just to replace a link. Seems like a pretty easy task but they can also be overwhelming at times because they could pile up really quickly. Read on to find out how these broken links affect SEO and how you should deal with them.

What are Broken Links?

Broken links are hyperlinks on a webpage to another webpage that is inaccessible anymore due to various reasons. The most common reason is the page that is linked to does not exist anymore (error 404). Other reasons include misspelling in the URL, the website owner restricted access to the page, or the website is having server problems. Broken links can also either be internal links or outbound links.

Do Broken Links Affect SEO?

Some SEOs and website owners tend to get worried when they find broken links on their website fearing that it would have negative effects on their rankings. Will a few broken links result in a ranking drop? Probably not. The fact is broken links may affect your SEO but not directly and not as bad as you think it would.

Google understands that broken links are natural occurrences on the web. Broken links affect SEO indirectly because it affects user experience which is a ranking factor. These links could be quite annoying causing a poor experience. So if you fix broken links, you shouldn’t be expecting a traffic uplift or ranking increase but more importantly, you are making sure that the users are having a smooth experience while they surf around your website.

Another way broken links affect SEO is the wasted link juice that could be going elsewhere. Instead of the link juice flowing to different pages in your website, the link flow is cut off and is wasted. For outbound links, broken links may send negative signals to Google regarding your website’s authority. But then again, these won’t greatly impact your website rankings or traffic but it is still worth the time to optimize.

How to Find Broken Links?

Here are a few methods on how to find broken links on your website:

Google Search Console

In Google Search Console, you’ll be able to find broken links Google was able to discover while crawling your website through the Coverage Report. This report will only show you internal broken links but it should still be your first priority because internal links can be more important than outbound links.

Go to “Excluded” section of the Coverage Report for the following errors:

Blocked due to unauthorized requests

Not found (404)

Soft 404

Blocked due to access forbidden (403)

Blocked due to other 4xx issues

Clicking one of these errors will show you a list of URLs that Google discovered.

  And if you click one URL and click on “Inspect URL”, you will see more information about that specific URL. The important part here is the “Referring Page” as it will show you where the broken link is coming from.

Screaming Frog

In Screaming Frog, initiate a crawl of your website. Once Screaming Frog is done, scroll down the right side menu until you see the “Response Codes” section. Under the section, you should see “Client Error (4xx)” and “Server Error (5xx)”. These reports will show you broken links on your website for both internal and outbound links.

Simply click on them to show the list of broken links. Click on one URL and go to the bottom menu and click on “Inlinks”. This should show you all the pages that have the broken link.

SEMRush Site Audit

Using SEMRush’s Site Audit tool, crawl your website and wait for it to finish. Once the report is ready, go over to the “Issues” tab.

Under the “Issues” tab, you should be seeing different errors for broken links such as:

# internal links are broken

# of pages returned 4xx status code

# pages returned 5xx status code

# external links are broken

Click on them to view the list of broken links and click on “View Broken Links” beside a link you want to check to see the list of pages linking to that URL.

Best Practices for Fixing Broken Links

By now, you should have a list of all broken links on your website waiting to be fixed. The next step for you to take is to decide how you want to proceed with them. There are a number of factors to consider.

For misspelled URLs – fixing these should be easy. All you have to do is to simply input the right URL you intend to link to and you’re done!

For 4xx internal links – internal links may need some investigation before taking an action. If an internal link is returning a 4xx error, you may want to revisit why that URL is broken.

Did you move it to a different URL? If so, setting up a redirection for that URL should be done.

Is it a product or a service page that you do not offer anymore? Then replacing the link may not be necessary. Removing the link should work just fine.

For 5xx internal links – if this is the case, you may want to check on your server or hosting provider what causes these errors. They may be a part of a larger problem.

For 4xx and 5xx outbound links – usually, this happens when an old source you linked to does not exist anymore or the website might have shut down.

If the website is still up and running, they might have moved the page to a different page. You might want to update the link with the new one. If the source URL does simply not exist anymore, it is at your discretion if you want to link to a different source website or remove the link.

For websites you link to that are experiencing 5xx errors or expired domains, you may want to wait for a few days for them to resolve the issue. Personally, this is too time-consuming and I would prefer to remove the link instead to fix the problem or link to a different source.

Key Takeaway

Finding and fixing broken links on your website can be time-consuming as they could pile up over time. If you do find a bunch of broken links on your website, do remember that they will not have an immediate negative effect on your traffic and rankings. You should also not expect drastic increases in traffic and rankings if you fix them. But still, they are important to fix. In SEO, it doesn’t matter how small or big the opportunity or room for optimization is. Every little thing matters.

Finding and Fixing Broken Links and How they Affect SEO was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

Winning Google’s Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT) With SEO

Before you buy something, what do you do first? More often than not, your answer will be doing a quick search online. This is called Google’s Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).

Nowadays, before people go to the store or purchase an item online, they are most likely to go and search about it first. What are the different brands on offer? What are its differences in terms of price points? What can it offer me that competitors can’t? And the most important question — how can it improve my life?

To be able to win your website’s Zero Moments of Truth, you need to offer your consumers the information they need to finalize their purchase. In this article, I’ll be discussing how you can optimize your pages to win your ZMOT using SEO.

Understand Google’s Zero Moment of Truth

The first step is to understand exactly what Google’s Zero Moment of Truth is. Before ZMOT, the Traditional 3-Step Model involved a Stimulus, First Moment of Truth, and Second Moment of Truth. People would see a stimulus such as a television ad, go to the store to purchase it, and see the results for themselves at home.

With the advancement of technology, search engines are now more accessible and reliable in terms of giving consumers detailed product descriptions. Due to this, Google’s Zero Moment of Truth is now said to be a precursor to the First Moment of Truth. After people encounter a stimulus and before they go to the store, they will first go online to search about it. This new level is crucial as it has led to more informed consumers around the world.

What does this mean for your business? Two things. One, as more companies utilize ZMOT, your landing pages will need to stand out online. And two, you need to be able to let your customers know why your product or service is the best.

Let’s begin.

Find Your Zero Moments Through Search Intent

The first step to optimizing your landing pages is finding your Zero Moments. You have got to know what type of information people are looking for on search engines. Here are some key questions that you can ask yourself:

How are people finding your landing pages?

What keywords are they searching with?

What “need” are they looking to solve?

To get the answers to all three questions, the most important piece of data that you need to interpret is “search intent”. Are your landing pages fulfilling the search intent of your customers?

For example, users that search for “cough medicine” are not looking for Buy 1, Take 1 deals. They’re looking for information about cough medicine and how it can help them.

This is part of the Zero Moment of Truth. Before people choose to buy cough medicine, they want to know about their choices. And now that you’ve discovered your search intent, you can move on to the next step — optimizing your landing page.

Generate Relevant Landing Pages

To win your ZMOT, the information you include in your landing pages should be relevant to the searcher. Think about their context and what information is crucial during their Zero Moment of Truth.

From the previous example, one look at Google’s top ranking results will show you that people are looking for HOW types of medicines can treat different types of coughs.

Let’s say one of your products is dry cough medicine. Is it a suppressant, expectorant, topical remedy, or a lozenge? What does that entail? Is it a temporary or long term solution? Can you get it over-the-counter or does it have to be prescribed? What makes it the best amongst its competitors?

Once you have these factors listed down, plan out your page’s design to make it more accessible and digestible.

Make Easily Digestible Page Designs

Mobile-friendly pages are crucial to Zero Moments. Why? Well, you may not know where people are accessing your site from.

For people at physical stores who want to learn about a product, they will probably use their smartphone. Those who heard about the product from a friend online could use their desktop to look it up. Some may even use other electronic devices such as tablets.

A factor that you should consider is the way that you present your information. It has to be laid out in a way that can be easily read and understood. Avoid long chunks of text as much as possible.

Here’s a sample from a landing page that our team created for a client’s cough medicine.

Not only that, but also take into account your site speed. Those who are in physical stores looking an item up on their mobile phones may find a slow website irritable. This could cause them to leave your site and increase your bounce rate.

Key Takeaway

To win Google’s Zero Moment of Truth with SEO, you will need to generate landing pages with relevant information that can be easily accessed by your customers.

Make sure that your content matches the search intent of your consumers. Do your research to find out what type of information they’re looking for when they go to search engines.

Then generate relevant landing pages with those factors in mind. Don’t forget to highlight the points that make your product or service stand out from its competition.

Lastly, ensure that your page has an easily digestible and mobile-friendly design. This is so that customers in the Zero Moment of Truth can easily and quickly make an informed decision.

These are just a few pieces of advice I have when it comes to winning your website’s Zero Moments. Now that you know about this decision-making change, review your other pages to see if they have what it takes to win.

Winning Google’s Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT) With SEO was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

A Guide to Google Rich Snippets for SEO

For SEO veterans, rich snippets, or now known as rich results, is a well-known subject for optimization. But for SEO beginners, rich results is a complicated factor that needs extensive research and planning. Although optimizing for rich results isn’t a requirement to rank well, it does help in improving rankings, even by a little bit. But what exactly are rich results? Let’s find out:

What Are Google Rich Snippets?

 In the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP), there are normal snippets, the one where the Title is colored blue and there’s a meta description at the bottom. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s straightforward and provides all the key information. However, a rich result is a type of snippet that has additional information, images, etc. that makes it easier for Google AND users to understand what the page is all about. Rich Results is a type of snippet that can be categorized by:

Article

Book

Recipes

Reviews

Products

And many more, for a full list, refer to this Google guide

Since we’ve had multiple experiences of potential clients asking us questions about our services or SEO in general, one of the most used rich snippet types for SEO Hacker is the FAQ rich snippet. Here’s an example:

So, instead of the run-of-the-mill title tag and meta description, some of the user’s questions can be answered through the SERPs immediately. Thereby making the user’s lives easier and making our website/page look even better for them which could possibly improve CTR (clickthrough rate). 

Additionally, recipes and reviews are also commonly used for rich results since a great number of people search for recipes online and other people would always want to see a review or rating of a specific product or service. Here’s what they look like:

In this particular screenshot, the recipes rich results are already combined with the reviews rich results to communicate to the users that the recipe posted by the webmaster has already been reviewed or rated by users that tried it out.

Why Rich Results are Important for SEO

There’s no direct benefit of having rich results for SEO. This is why a good number of results are still normal snippets. However, the primary benefit of utilizing rich results for your webpage/website is to give the users an easier time finding the information they want to see. The additional information shown in the SERPs not only helps you assist your audience, it also makes your snippet more eye-catching than those of your search competitors. Your snippet is more appealing and eye-catching, which could improve CTR in the long run. 

Additionally, increased CTR is an engagement metric that’s important to Google. If there is an increasing number of users that click on your page in the SERPs, Google understands it as your page being the most useful, authoritative, or trustworthy for the users. This is why I mentioned the rich results do not pose direct benefits to your rankings since it’s the increased CTR that affects your rankings.

How to Use Rich Snippets for SEO

Getting rich snippets for your pages is relatively easy enough. It’s all a matter of using structured data to provide more information about your page, the images that you want to use, even the questions and answers can be included in the structured data. Here’s an example of structured data that we used to have the FAQ/question and answers rich snippet:

Structured data is a piece of code that search engines like Google can understand and make use of to produce rich snippets in the search results. So, it just makes sense that we use this process to help Google understand our pages better and deeper. Of course, there will be times wherein Google won’t process the structured data as a rich result, but that’s fine as well. As long as you make sure that your structured data is crawled, you’re already delivering the information you want to Google.

So, does your site have rich results? I strongly recommend getting them since it doesn’t cost anything and there’s no penalty or downside to it. What do you think about Rich snippets? Let me know in the comments below!

  A Guide to Google Rich Snippets for SEO was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

Local SEO Guide for 2021

Search is an integral part of the buyer’s journey. When a person searches for a product or a service, they would initially search for a business that provides it near them. In fact, 46% of Google searches are looking for local information and 97% of search engine users search for local businesses (Go-Gulf). These are huge numbers that represent how powerful and important local SEO is for businesses.

Most already know how powerful SEO can be for their businesses and so they dive straight right in. But many don’t know the difference between SEO and local SEO. Small to medium businesses are the ones who benefit the most from local SEO. A lot fail in local SEO not because they lack the resources but because they lack the focus. They tend to compete for highly competitive keywords against huge corporations with a national or international presence. And even if they get traffic from these keywords, they don’t convert to sales because they are far from their business’ coverage.

Local SEO is all about focusing on the area/s your business has presence, increasing your online visibility, and attracting more relevant customers who are near you. If you want to learn more, continue reading this guide!

What you Need to Know: Local SEO Basics

What is Local SEO?

Local Search Engine Optimization or Local SEO is the process of optimizing a website to rank for keywords in a specific geographical location. Businesses that have a physical location or serve a specific area will benefit greatly from local SEO.

Why is Local SEO Important?

As I mentioned earlier, search is a part of the buyer’s journey. Even in the age of e-commerce, majority of consumers are still in-store shoppers. Consumers nowadays use Google to find information online first before going to the actual store. Hubspot reports that 70% of shoppers prefer stores where they could purchase in-store.

But how about competing with companies like Amazon? 72% of searchers say that they prefer looking for local merchants first which means you don’t have to be afraid that you will not get customers from doing local SEO.

Still not convinced? Here are some more statistics about local SEO:

“Where to buy” + “near me” mobile inquiries have grown by 200% in the past two years

“Near me” or “close by” searches grew by more than 900% the past two years

86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps

72% of consumers that did a local search visited a store within five miles

97% of people learn more about a local company via the internet

Local searches results in purchases 28% of the time

92% of searchers will pick businesses on the first page of local search results

Google My Business Listing

Google My Business is a free tool created by Google that allows searches to see a business’ information right from the search results. It allows searchers to easily find your business information and it also allows you to interact with them. 

Having a Google My Business listing is an absolute must for Local SEO. It is one of the first steps you should take. The process is not complicated and as long as your business has a physical address. If not (you own a fully digital business), you may have to use your personal address or any address that can represent your business (e.g. virtual office). 

Google’s Map Pack

If you search for a product or service in a specific area, Google will often recommend three local businesses near your according to Google Maps. This is called the Map Pack.

When a user selects a business on the Map Pack they are immediately shown the location on of the business on Google Maps where they can easily navigate to it. 

You would need to have a Google My Business profile and your business should be visible in Google Maps. The Map Pack also has a different ranking algorithm. Other SEO efforts may affect your rankings here but it really boils down to two things: the location of the user and reviews. Google will tend to rank businesses nearest to the user higher but you may have a chance to outrank them if you have better reviews. Because of this, you may not be able to do a lot to affect your rankings here but it is important that you track where you appear in the Map Pack for searches in your area.

Local SEO Optimization Tips

Optimize Google My Business

Your Google My Business profile appears when a user searches specifically for your business but there are also times when Google may show a user your GMB profile even if they are using a keyword. Whichever the case is, you need to have a good and optimized GMB profile because this is where you make your first impression on the user. Your GMB profile will also affect how you rank in the Map Pack. You wouldn’t want to miss these crucial opportunities so here are some tips to optimize your Google My Business profile.

Update your address – this is already an obvious one but there are some businesses who forget to update their business addresses when they move. Google will always use the address you used when you verified your business unless you change it. Users will also most likely use Google Maps to navigate to your businesses and if they don’t see your store or office there when they arrive, you could be losing a lot of money.

Place accurate business hours and contact number – since users are most likely to visit your store/office after checking your profile, make sure that you have your updated business hours. A contact number is also important for setting appointments and other inquiries.

Upload images – images of your business greatly helps in attracting customers. It helps in proving the authenticity of your business and in building trust.

Respond to questions – some users would need more information about your business and that is what the Ask a Question feature is for. Keep in mind that questions and answers are available to the public and can be seen by other users.

Utilize Google My Business Updates – people tend to forget about this feature but you can actually post updates on your GMB profile for users to see. Posting sales and promotions can help bring in more customers and drive more sales.

Get Good Reviews

Reviews are a huge factor for both rankings in Google and for customers. Google may consider your business reviews on Google My Business and your business listings on other websites to evaluate your business’ trustworthiness which is an important factor for E-A-T.

On the consumer end, 82% of users will not buy from businesses that have an average rating of 3 stars and below. This alone proves how important reviews are in the decision of a buyer.

Some may think that they cannot control what a customer says but in reality, your product/service is the one that dictates how you get reviews. This is probably one factor where you do not need to do anything online. Make sure to provide customers the best experience and think of creative ways to ask for reviews. Not only will you look better in the web but these customers have more chances of becoming loyal customers.

Geotag your Target Keywords

Geotagging your keywords is one of the most important strategies in local SEO. The process is simple, you add a location to your keywords. For example:

Non-geotagged keyword – used cars for sale

Geotagged keyword – used cars for sale in paranaque city

The difference between the search results of the two is huge. For non-geotagged keywords, Google may still factor a user’s location but the search results will still be dominated by bigger websites. That is why users tend to add locations to their keywords when they search because they want more refined results.

By simply geotagging your keywords, you help Google understand where your business operates. Geotagged keywords are also less difficult than non-geotagged keywords so it will take you fewer headaches to rank for them. But still, do not underestimate their difficulty because chances are, your competitors are trying to rank for them as well.

For a full guide on keyword geotagging, I highly recommend that you check out the guide I wrote on the importance of geotagging keywords for SEO.

Build Links from Local Websites and Directories

Link building is still an important strategy for local SEO. You can aim to acquire backlinks from authoritative websites but more importantly, you would want to get links from local websites.

Your first priority is to get listed in all local business directories. Getting links from high authority websites are good but more importantly, you would want to get links from local websites. You could reach out to local bloggers, online newspapers, interact on online forums with people that live in the same area, etc. Getting links from these websites will not only strengthen your backlink profile but also help Google understand where your area of operation is. Relevancy is the key. If your business is operating in New York, you wouldn’t want to be listed in a business directory in a different state so do keep that in mind.

Apply LocalBusiness Schema

Structured data may not be a direct ranking factor but it does help Google better understand your website and pull the necessary information for the knowledge graph. There are a lot of structured data types to choose from and it will vary depending on the type of page you will place them on but there is one structured data type that is specifically recommended for local SEO: LocalBusiness schema.

By marking up your website with LocalBusiness schema, you can tell Google details about your business such as your location, business hours, price range, contact number, and more. One more important factor that can increase your click-through rate is adding the AggregateRating schema on your LocalBusiness schema.

The AggregateRating is the average rating your business have from real customers. This requires real reviews and fabricating reviews may get you penalized as it is against Google’s guidelines. When you have AggregateRating on your schema, there is a possibility that Google may show star ratings when your website appears in the search results. This makes you more appealing to users that could lead to more clicks. If you want a full guide on how to apply AggregateRating properly, check out this guide.

Optimize for Mobile

Having a mobile-friendly website is crucial for local SEO. The number of mobile searches is increasing every year and even Google considers mobile-friendliness as one of the top-ranking factors in SEO and you can be sure that it is the same for local SEO. Check out these stats:

30% of Google mobile searches are related to location

60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly from the search results using the click to call option.

78% of local mobile search result in in-store purchases

These are just a few numbers to show how important having a mobile-friendly site is. So when you create a website, do not put all of your focus on the design but think of what would provide users the best and fastest experience. You can also utilize AMP or accelerated mobile pages to easily transform your existing website content to mobile-friendly pages.

Key Takeaway

Many business owners are still hesitant to invest in local SEO. Some may have failed but as long as you focus on the right things, you are sure to be successful. Always remember that in local SEO, your priority is to rank for areas where your business reach. Do not waste time and effort trying to rank for broad keywords that may take you months or years just to reach the bottom of the first page. Of course, this does not mean that local SEO is easier, but it is much more attainable and practical. If done right, local SEO will allow you to tap more customers in your area and generate more sales for your business.

Local SEO Guide for 2021 was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

How to Find an Affordable SEO Company Without Compromising Quality

Anyone else here tired of the cost of good SEO going up and up?

These days, it feels like life gets more and more expensive.

College tuition. Groceries. And don’t even get me started on the topic of home mortgages.

But what do you do when an essential tool for your business (i.e., your search engine optimization) becomes so expensive that it eats away at your profit?

The balance of quality and affordability is getting trickier for everyone.

As Google algorithms evolve, the job of formulating and implementing a good SEO campaign becomes more challenging, requiring more time, more expertise, and (you guessed it)…more money.

So if we’re all stuck in the same leaky SEO boat, what are people doing about it?

In this article, we’ll look at some strategies for finding an affordable SEO service that delivers quality as well. (Yes, this is possible).

How Much Does Quality SEO Cost?

Some companies have opted to do their own SEO, since, as with most things, the DIY route can save money.

But, just like your haircut or your living room renovation project, the result of a DIY effort may be fine, but unless you’re already an expert, it won’t be up to the standards of a professional.

Another solution is the time-honored “cheap SEO” route. But it’s not a route we’d recommend.

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What’s The Problem With Cheap SEO?

Cheap SEO firms are not hard to find. They’re everywhere.

Simply typing the words “cheap SEO service” into Google yields a wealth of results. These all make similar claims: for a minimal one-time payment, they promise that your website will land on the first page of the Google organic search results.

If you’re serious about saving money, you can even take a look at a site like Fiverr to find a freelancer to do your SEO for you. Some offer their services for as little as $5.

But what do you get when you contract with one of these low-cost SEO firms?

You may be better off not knowing.

What many have found is that cheap often translates to poor quality. In the long run, this can cost you more money than it saves.

Most freelancers have a limited skill set. That’s because it’s rare for one person to have the money or the time to acquire the full range of skills involved in good local SEO.

And the frequent changes to Google’s algorithms exacerbate this problem.

According to Moz, Google changed its search algorithms over 3000 times in 2018 alone.

And they’re still going strong, as you can see from this chart from SEMRush, one of the top traffic analysis tools, showing SERP volatility changes for just a few days in March.

Because of these changes, there is no guarantee that a site can stay on the first page of the results once it lands there. Not without keeping it up-to-date.

This is why good local SEO is an ongoing investment of time and money, rather than a one-time project.

It’s kind of like grocery shopping or cleaning the house that way.

Another problem with cheap SEO is that since they’re lacking the right skill set, many cheap SEO services resort to black-hat tactics like keyword stuffing, cloaking, and poor-quality or duplicate content.

These sneaky, time-saving techniques can come back to bite you.

The Google Webmaster Guidelines explicitly state that the search engine penalizes websites for things like automatically generated content, unoriginal content, and cloaking: all the hallmarks of cheap SEO.

To sum up? The cheaper it seems, the more it can cost you.

What Does a Reasonable (Yet Still Affordable) SEO Company Cost?

Quality SEO shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg. But in general, paying a bit more for a quality but affordable SEO package delivers the biggest bang for your buck.

A 2019 survey by Backlinko found that those respondents who spent more than $500 per month on an SEO campaign were 53.3% more likely to report themselves “extremely satisfied” than those who spent less than that.

If we take a closer look at what goes into a quality but affordable SEO package, these numbers make total sense.

According to the US Department of Labor, the median pay for skilled copywriters in 2019 was $63,200 per year or $30.39 per hour. Web developers typically earn $73,760 per year and an hourly wage of $35.46.

What this means is that if you want to hire someone who has the true skill set to do the work, you have to compensate them at a rate that is comparable to what they could earn elsewhere.

If you find a professional SEO service or freelancer whose rates are less than this, it is a red flag that they may not have the skills or practices that you need for quality SEO techniques over the long term.

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  Schedule a Consultation

What Does Quality SEO Look Like?

For an example of quality and affordable SEO techniques in action, take a look at this case study.

An unnamed company had worked with some mediocre SEO services which failed to deliver long-term results. This left them with a hefty investment in pay-per-click to increase their traffic.

In the hands of HigherVisibility, the quality of content dramatically improved.

SEO specialists performed strategic keyword research, removed duplicate content and broken links and replaced them with relevant backlinks and quality content.

As a result, they experienced a 1321% increase in organic traffic.

How To Find an Affordable SEO Company

So as a business owner, how can you too experience this kind of dramatic, long-term improvement in your SEO without breaking the bank?

First, be clear about your goals.

Yes, we know it sounds like generic advice from the business class you took in college but good goals get good results.

Here are a few ideas:

Multiply organic traffic by x%. This is truly a win-win, because not only does it bring more potential customers, but it also signals your value to Google.

Increase eCommerce sales. Did you know that online sales account for almost 10% of all retail sales in the US? Focusing on your eCommerce sales is a great way to make sure you get a piece of that pie.

Improve your link profile. Regarding backlinks, it’s all about value. You want to link to credible, authoritative sites.

Increase your featured snippets. What kind of snippets are likely to earn high rankings? Effective use of snippets is a good way to grab more organic traffic if you do it the right way.

Align SEO goals with your company goals, and make sure they reflect what you need from your website.

Most companies use their website primarily as a digital marketing tool. So it’s a good idea to align your goals with your marketing efforts.

And realistically, this is the area where you’re likely to see the biggest results. According to Hubspot, you’re 13 times more likely to improve your ROI by prioritizing marketing efforts.

Take a look at this visual from Equinet Academy outlining the formation of SEO and marketing strategies.

(Image Source)

If you are a construction company, for example, you might want to set a goal of more qualified traffic, those who are more likely to contract for your services.

If you’re a realtor, you may consider optimizing your site for real estate searches.

Once you’re clear on goals, you can communicate them more clearly to an SEO service, resulting in a more satisfactory outcome.

Safari Digital found that 82% of those who implemented an SEO strategy were successful: a testament to the power of clear planning and goal-setting.

It also helps you match those goals more precisely with the right SEO service… one that has proven results in meeting your end goals.

Once you have an affordable SEO service that is on board with your goals, it leads to more trust and transparency.

After numerous bad experiences with low-quality SEO, Allied Van Lines was able to build such a relationship of trust and transparency with HigherVisibility. A technical and competitor audit along with weekly status calls kept them on the same page as we dove into more strategic deliverables.

The result was a 30% increase in organic visibility and an 11.97% increase in organic leads.

So when you look for an affordable SEO agency, it’s worth asking whether they’ll maintain ongoing communication and alignment (or realignment) with your company’s SEO goals.

What Do Affordable SEO Packages Include?

With such an array of services on offer, it can be tricky to hone in what you need in an SEO package.

To some degree, this will vary depending on your industry and your company/digital marketing goals.

But no matter what, there are three essential elements that you should look for.

1. Quality Content Creation

No matter the industry, content creation is the surest path to increased engagement and conversions. Content creation is 3 times more effective in generating leads than outbound marketing.

Good content is substantive, authoritative, and relevant. It establishes you as an expert and aligns neatly with the needs of your audience.

Of course, as with everything else in digital marketing, the definition of quality is kind of a moving target.

It changes to adapt to the changing needs of a digital audience, as reflected by evolving search algorithms.

An expert will be able to deliver content that is consistently high quality and to tweak it as necessary to meet algorithm changes and evolving reader demands.

2. Technical SEO Strategies

Do users enjoy visiting your website? Does your keyword strategy guarantee that people can find you easily through voice search? Does your site load quickly via mobile? Do you have click optimized Title Tags?

All of these technical elements are critical for your site to rank.

In February 2019, Google announced that even a one-second delay in loading your page can reduce conversions by 20%.

Here’s a graphic that shows the casualties of page loading time in more detail.

(Image Source)

In today’s digital world, voice search and mobile experience are key technical elements of any good website. So it’s important to find an affordable SEO agency who can deliver these.

But, keep in mind that while voice search and mobile experience are crucial right now, this again could change, and a new set of technical strategies may be necessary for the future.

Take a look at this graphic illustrating the changes in good SEO consulting from the early 2000s until today.

Just in the last ten years, we’ve seen an evolution as content became more important, and black hat strategies like keyword stuffing gradually lost their effectiveness.

So of course, there is no telling what technical strategies may be important a few years from now.

A quality but affordable SEO consultant will be nimble in adjusting to these evolving technology needs.

3. Quality Backlinking

High-quality backlinks to authoritative sites are a clear signal of your trustworthiness.

Quality backlinks are such a clear signal of value that they are one of Google’s top three ranking factors.

You absolutely can’t afford to ignore them, and neither can your SEO consultant.

The Importance of Customized SEO Packages

Varco Pruden Buildings (VP) experienced firsthand the importance of choosing the right SEO package.

After performing a full analysis of their website, Higher Visibility created and implemented a digital marketing strategy just for them.

Far from the one-size-fits-all approach employed by less reputable SEO consulting services, they tailored their approach to VP’s needs.

Ultimately, the package that worked for them included internal linking, content development, and quality link building.

The result was dramatic.

VP increased their organic traffic by 700% and rose to page 1 of the search rankings.

As you can see from this example, the money spent on quality SEO consulting can directly impact the amount of money you make.

Conversely, any amount you pay to a cheap, low-quality SEO consulting service can end up counting as a loss, because it won’t bring in results, and may even harm your bottom line.

Remember the time that you paid a cheap, freelance surgeon to perform your knee surgery?

Neither do we. Not only would it be painful, but ultimately, very costly.

In Conclusion

So is the price of professional SEO services still going up?

The short answer is yes.

But in the long run, professional SEO services are still more affordable than cheap SEO.

Why?

Because only an SEO expert can deliver high-quality content, technical expertise, and trustworthy backlinks. And these are the elements that have consistently proven to drive organic traffic and, ultimately, conversions.

Just like a good surgeon, a qualified SEO expert will spend time talking to you about what you need and helping you set realistic goals.

Because in the long term, there is nothing more affordable than a good investment.

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How to Find an Affordable SEO Company Without Compromising Quality was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

What We Know About Google’s Passage Indexing

Google’s Passage Indexing was announced in the event Search On 2020 last October. With the announcement came a rush of inquiries and clarifications from SEO specialists and other digital marketing professionals.

Will Google really be indexing particular passages? What is the difference between passage indexing and featured snippets? And most importantly, when will it be rolled out?

In the succeeding months, employees from Google were met with these questions across various forums, websites, and social media apps. To help you get a better grasp of Passage Indexing before it gets rolled out, here are the essential pieces of information that you need to know.

It Can Give More Accurate Results To Specific Queries

Passage Indexing was announced at the Search On 2020 event by Cathy Edwards, the Vice President of Engineering at Google. Besides indexing web pages, images, videos, places, and more, she announced that Google has had another breakthrough — the ability to index passages.

In the video, she mentions that this change is meant to aid in the improvement of specific searches. What does this mean? It means that instead of looking at a page as a whole to determine what it’s about, the search engine can now better understand the meanings behind individual passages.

Once rolled out, this will provide searchers with more accurate results for specific queries. So if the answer to a certain query is found on a web page about a broader topic, Passage Indexing can still spot it.

It Does Not Index Individual Passages

One of the misconceptions that came with the announcement of Passage Indexing is that it can index individual passages, which was what was announced in the Search On 2020 event. This was disproven by Danny Sullivan, Google’s public Search Liaison in a series of posts and replies on Twitter.

It seems that instead of indexing passages, Google has improved its algorithm’s ability to understand specific passages from already indexed pages. This is an interesting change as the search engine was previously known to crawl through an entire page to learn about it.

It Is A Ranking Change

Instead of a change in indexing, a search developer advocate for Google named Martin Splitt called Passage Indexing a “ranking change.” In his video discussion with the Search Engine Journal, Martin also referred to this update as “Passage Ranking”.

In the video, he discusses how Passage Indexing can change the way that Google ranks your content based on what it finds on your page. Instead of having to make multiple articles about different topics, a subtopic found in a longer and broader web page can now be used as a factor to help improve its rankings for a particular query. To further elaborate, a number of employees from Google describe the change as “helping find a needle in a haystack.”

It Is Different From Featured Snippets

So what is the difference between Passage Indexing and featured snippets? According to Martin Splitt, featured snippets are self-contained pieces of information on a page that can be pulled out and showcased in the search result. In terms of Passage Indexing, the goal is not to simply answer a question. Instead, it focuses more on ranking broader pages that you may be interested in. This can refer to pages with more elaborate passages or pages that may contain results that are not as concise as those usually found in featured snippets.

To help you further understand, let’s talk about a hypothetical situation. Let’s say that you have a page about camping gear. Within that page, you have a subtopic that talks about how to safely store portable gas cans. Prior to Passage Indexing, your article may not rank for the query “How to safely store portable gas cans when camping”. Google may put its focus on your page being about essential camping gear. With Passage Indexing, it’s possible that Google will be able to rank your page for that specific query since it is relevant to what is being asked.

How To Prepare For The Launch of Passage Indexing

In October 2020, Google announced that Passage Indexing would be unveiled by the end of the year and that it will affect 7% of queries across all languages. However, at the time of writing, it has yet to go live. So, you may be thinking that you still have some time to prepare for its launch.

How can you prepare for Passage Indexing? According to both Danny Sullivan and Martin Splitt, you do not have to change a thing. According to Splitt, Passage Indexing is more aimed at those who are not that knowledgeable about SEO. As for Sullivan, his piece of advice is to keep making pages with relevant content, which is ultimately what the search engines are looking for.

The same thoughts were shared by the Google Search Liaison Twitter page, who encouraged people to focus on making good content based on their advice on Google Search documentation.

Since the change has yet to go live, meaning that we cannot start experimenting with it, it seems that the best course of action is to review your pages to ensure that your content is relevant to its targeted search intent.

Key Takeaway

These are just some of the pieces of information that we know about Google’s Passage Indexing so far. Once it is rolled out, it will be a breakthrough that can provide more accurate results for 7% of queries across all languages. It will do so by understanding specific passages from previously indexed pages better, providing searchers with more relevant pages in the search results.

Take note that there have been no announcements regarding how SEO Specialists and other digital marketing professionals can prepare their websites for Passage Indexing. Instead, focus on making your content as relevant as possible.

What We Know About Google’s Passage Indexing was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

B2B SEO Strategy Guide 2021: 7 Lessons from Companies that Drive 2M+ Visits/Month

You’ve read through all of the ultimate guides and the 200+ best practices for B2B SEO, and still the question lingers: what does a winning B2B SEO strategy look like in practice?

Without a north star to guide you, it’s easy to lose your way as you navigate the complex world of B2B SEO and content marketing.

We’re going to examine seven ready-to-use B2B SEO tactics that can drive millions of website visitors and thousands of paying customers. Then, we’ll unpack what makes them successful and how you can apply those lessons to improve the SEO strategy for your B2B company.

But first, let’s answer another question that’s probably on your mind….

What is B2B SEO and why does it matter in 2021?

B2B SEO is the art of meeting a potential customer when they’re looking for your product, service, or simply researching your company or others like it. When done well, it forms the backbone of your content marketing strategy.

The process of B2B SEO begins with keyword research and identifying your

customer’s pain points.

Let’s briefly examine the three moving parts of B2B SEO:

On-page SEO refers to optimizing your page with helpful content that sufficiently answers queries. It also includes adding relevant title tags, headings, URLs, and alt text for images.

Off-page search engine optimization is the practice of boosting your website’s authority with quality link building.

Technical SEO is sprucing up your website’s architecture to make it easy to find, crawl, and index.

Why invest in SEO in 2021?

Because it’s the only B2B marketing channel for which traffic compounds over time.

Consider this: the average age of a page ranking among the top 10 Google search results is 2+ years. Those pages that rank first in the SERP are almost three years old.

Which other distribution channel brings traffic for years to come?

Unsurprisingly, organic search contributes to 53.3% of website traffic across various industries. What’s more, B2B companies generate twice as much revenue from organic traffic than channels like social media and email.

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7 evergreen lessons to create a winning B2B SEO strategy in 2021

Take a look at how the pros approach B2B SEO strategy:

1. Think bottom-of-the-funnel keywords first

Zapier’s website gets 7 million visitors per month, over half of which is search engine traffic.

To find early customers, CEO Wade Foster looked to product support forums to find users looking for integrations.

He shares, “People would post things like ‘I love Evernote, it would be great if it worked nicely with Dropbox…’”

Once they figured out how people were searching for their product, they harvested that demand by creating three types of landing pages:

One main landing page for each app in their ecosystem

One for app to app integrations

One page explaining all possible workflows with a specific app.

(Image source)

Zapier has over 25K such landing pages. They’re a classic example of using bottom of funnel keywords to fuel a content strategy.

Bottom of funnel content covers highly specific, long tail keywords with low search volume, but high chances of conversion.

Apply this to your B2B SEO strategy:

Zapier’s landing pages are one type of bottom of the funnel content, but it exists in other forms too:

The Executive Guide to SaaS and Subscription Statistics (ebooks, whitepapers, and reports)

Reforge Reviews (branded search queries)

Ways to use Asana (use cases)

The best way to find ideas for bottom of the funnel content is to speak to your customers and identify their pain points.

Specifically, pay attention to the terms they use when describing their problem. This is what they’ll search for when they’re ready to buy your product or service.

Other ways to gauge the pain points of your target audience include jumping on sales calls and hanging out in communities, such as Quora and Reddit.

2. Create long form content for middle and top-of-funnel keywords

While bottom of funnel content helps capture prospects ready to buy, Zapier drives demand for its product with a blog.

Its long form articles contribute to one-third of it’s search traffic.

Primarily, the Zapier blog targets top of funnel and middle of funnel keywords. Along the way, it introduces the product.

Take a look at some of the topics covered:

(Image source) 

Zapier’s blog isn’t just a vehicle to drive awareness, it drops readers right into relevant workflows they can set up with the app.

For example, this piece with Trello tips has several CTAs on using Zapier to automate tasks with Trello:

(Image source)

Apply this to your B2B SEO strategy:

Identify middle and top of funnel keywords for your blog using keyword research, customer feedback, and by looking at the People Also Ask boxes in the search results.

Once you have a list of potential topics, think about how relevant each keyword is to your business. This will help you tie content back to your product.

Finally, look at topics you’re in a unique position to cover through a unique perspective, data, or experience.

This approach will help you craft top of funnel content that’s unique, relevant to your brand, and brings qualified traffic.

3. Use standalone topic clusters for competitive keywords

Most top of funnel keywords are highly competitive. How do you rank for such broad terms?

Enter topic clusters, a group of interlinked pages, with one main pillar or resource page that links to all others.

The purpose of a cluster is to show Google that you’re an authority on a given topic.

The meditation app, Headspace, gets more than 2M visitors to it’s website, as of July 2020. 30% of that traffic comes from organic search.

But what is their biggest draw of traffic?

It’s a 99-page topic cluster for the keyword, “meditation.”

This single topic cluster drives 88,781 visits per month for Headspace.

Standalone topic clusters are more powerful than clustering articles on a blog. Why? They help you curate a focused path for readers, who may get distracted by links. Standalone clusters also allow for better placement of CTAs and interlinking.

Lastly, they help boost your organic search rankings, since your root domain enjoys more authority than your blog.

See how Buffer experienced a bump in search engine rankings when they used standalone clusters on their website:

  (Image source)

Apply this to your B2B SEO strategy:

Think of the most obvious ways to describe your B2B business. These are your most valuable keywords.

The more competitive a keyword, the better it is for creating a topic cluster.

Another factor to consider is how broad a topic is, so there’s enough meat for a cluster.

Finally, the key to succeeding with a topic cluster is smart navigation and interlinking. Take a look at how Headspace does this:

(Image source)

You’ll also want to place strategic CTAs for your app throughout the piece, like this:

(Image source)

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4. Tap into the business potential of each keyword

We’ve covered a fair bit of ground on keyword research, but let’s address a problem most marketers face with B2B SEO: their content doesn’t convert into paying subscribers.

This example from the SEO tool Ahrefs shows how to drive real business with your content.

CMO Tim Suolo explains their strategy, “We don’t care about TOFU/MOFU/BOFU. All we care about is business potential.”

What signals high business potential? Topics where their product is almost an irreplaceable solution to a problem.

Sample some of their posts:

(Image source)

The blog has a good mix of top, middle, and bottom of funnel posts.

But each of them has something in common: While answering the reader’s query, they also cleverly introduce Ahrefs to the reader, and demonstrate how to solve their problem using the tool.

(Image source)

It’s not pushy or salesy, but strategic and subtle.

Apply this to your B2B SEO strategy:

When evaluating potential keywords, look for topics where you can talk about your product without appearing pushy.

Don’t be afraid to discuss your features and benefits, albeit in a non-salesy way.

If your product is a direct solution to the reader’s problem, be sure to explain how and add relevant calls to action for them to try or subscribe to your product.

5. Capitalize on competitor SEO

Competitor SEO is a great place to kickstart your B2B SEO efforts.

As Kevin Indig explains, competitor SEO helps you get in front of customers of your competitors as well as those who are actively evaluating your product and those of others.

Helpdesk software Help Scout uses two types of pages to take advantage of the highly competitive customer service software space:

Alternative pages:

Help Scout has several pages comparing it to competitors like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Desk.com. Instead of a direct comparison, they rely on customer testimonials and features to make their case.

(Image source)

Help content and FAQs: 

They use their help docs to answer questions like, “How to transfer from Zendesk to Help Scout”

(Image source)

Apply this to your B2B SEO strategy:

There are three types of queries you’ll want to target when doing competitor SEO:

Alternative queries (Zendesk alternatives)

Versus queries (Helpscout vs. Zendesk)

Competitor documentation

While the first two are obvious, let’s discuss the last one.

Competitor documentation presents a great opportunity to bank on existing SEO demand.

Take a look at your competitor’s product documentation, product landing pages, use case landing pages, and product videos.

Do they sufficiently answer customer questions, or are they lacking information? If it’s the latter, you’ve found your sweet spot.

Take the example of Filmora, a video editing software that went up against the industry giant, Adobe Premiere.

They noticed gaps in Adobe’s documentation and created how-to content for Premiere Pro. Along the way, they also introduced their product and explained how readers could use it to solve their problem.

6. Include video in your B2B SEO strategy

If you think B2B SEO is limited to blogging, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

Ideally, your strategy should be like that of Ahrefs: to be there for people when they’re searching for anything SEO-related.

To that end, they don’t just create blog posts, but also YouTube videos for each topic.

(Image source)

If you’re serious about SEO, ignore video at your own peril.

As Wistia discovered in an unplanned experiment, video on a webpage does affect search rankings and traffic. Specifically, having their videos indexed contributed to a 10.6% increase in organic traffic.

Video is not just good for SEO, but also conversions. As one study found, 80% marketers said video helped them directly increase sales.

Apply this to your B2B SEO strategy:

Take a look at existing search results for popular queries in your niche. Do they include videos? If so, it might be a good place to start creating videos.

You’ll also want to explore any content gaps in your niche. Maybe there aren’t enough how-to videos on your topic, or perhaps none of your competitors are investing in animated explainer videos.

For videos you already have on your website like demos, explainer videos, and customer success stories, be sure to optimize them for search.

While it’s difficult to rank in universal searches with a video, Wistia recommends some best practices for ranking in the video tab of a Google search. This includes choosing a good platform to host your videos, adding a video transcript, using the right titles and tags, and including a thumbnail image.

7. Refresh content often

A common question companies tend to ask when thinking about B2B SEO is, “how many posts do you need to succeed?”

Let’s look to Ahrefs again for the answer.

The SEO tool has been around since 2010. During this time, they’ve only published around 250 posts. That’s about 25 posts per year, or one post per two weeks.

So, where do they invest the rest of their content efforts?

They spend a lot of time refreshing old posts. CMO Tim says, “Once we notice that a post is losing traffic, it’s a sign that we need to refresh it. Or even if the post is doing super well, but we feel it has some outdated info, we go and fix it.”

This helps their blog stay relevant, even as the world of SEO changes regularly.

Over time, all content loses traffic. This happens due to algorithm changes and the fact that search engines are constantly looking for the most thorough and up-to-date pieces of content for any given query.

Refreshing content is the best way to keep your best posts from losing traffic and avoid content decay.

Apply this to your B2B SEO strategy:

Don’t think you need to churn out new content each week to have a successful blog. Instead, spend time refreshing old pieces that may be losing traffic.

It’s not only cost effective, but also helps your blog stay current.

A content audit every month should help you identify pieces that need an update. This guide from BuzzSumo provides a helpful checklist to create a content audit and refresh older content.

Your B2B SEO strategy exists for a reason

Building a B2B website with over 2M visitors is no simple feat. But traffic alone isn’t the goal of B2B SEO, as the examples discussed above show.

You want to attract relevant traffic to your website with a high chance of converting into paid customers.

Bottom of funnel keywords, competitor SEO, and evaluating business potential of keywords are great ways to make sure your content strategy is aligned with business goals.

Use top and middle of funnel keywords and videos to boost your SEO performance and traffic. Where possible, be sure to insert relevant calls to action for your product too.

Finally, to get the most bang for your buck, spend some time refreshing content. Your readers and search engines will thank you for it.

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B2B SEO Strategy Guide 2021: 7 Lessons from Companies that Drive 2M+ Visits/Month was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

How to Determine Your Target Audience for SEO

Keywords are often an integral part of any SEO strategy but it’s normal for SEOs to solely focus on the keywords they’re targeting while not considering if the searchers are the right audience for them. We’ve all done this – from beginners to seasoned experts, this can happen to anyone since we only consider the relevance and potential benefits that keywords can bring without considering if the users that search for them are the right audience for your website or business. If properly targeting the audience that you want is difficult, how can you determine the right target audience for your business or website? Here’s how:

Definition of Target Audience

A target audience is a group or collective that you want to enter your website. This includes potential customers or clients and people that would need, appreciate, and consume things inside your website. Additionally, a target audience includes people that are searching for websites like yours – people whose interests align with what your website is offering.

Knowing and determining your target audience is important since it’s one of the most integral but often overlooked aspects of keyword research. Knowing who your target audience should be, being visible for the right audience, and providing them with what they need are the basics of SEO success.

How to Determine Your Target Audience

Your Current Visitors and Customers

The first step in determining your target audience is to analyze your current visitors and customers. Understanding the people that are already visiting your site is one of the integral processes for determining your target audience. Why? Because your current audience’s interests and affinities would help you understand the demographic or kinds of people you need to attract/target. 

The first step is looking at the data which is easy enough. Google Analytics should be your go-to tool when you want to analyze and understand your current visitors and customers. Checking to see what their interests and affinity categories are is easy enough.

Just go to the Audience drop-down button on the left side of Google Analytics, then choose Interests → Overview. This will display all the interests and affinity categories for your website visitors.

 Once you have the list of your visitor’s interests and affinity categories, you can now research keywords that are related to their interests and create appropriate pages that can rank highly to improve your visibility to the right target audience.

Additionally, it’s also important for you to align with your sales or business development team since they’re the ones that know which audience to target and they have a better grasp of the best audience to target. Combine the sales team insights and analysis of your site visitors then you’ll have an easier time finding the right keywords to target.

Your Competitors

Aside from your own visitors, a great place to determine your target audience is through your competitors. Not your real-world competitors but your SEO competitors. 

The best way to start this is to determine your money keywords – keywords that bring you the most visits/conversions/inquiries. Once you’ve made a list of your money keywords, use those keywords in the search engines and check out the websites that rank for them. More often than not, there would be websites that would show up for multiple keyword SERPs. These would be your SEO competitors. 

So, just check out which keywords they’re ranking for that you’re not targeting at the moment to make use of the added insight and opportunity to target a wider range of audiences.

Looking for Subtopics

After you’ve determined the right target audience you want through the keywords you’re targeting, the last part is to ensure that you’re not missing out on a good number of your target audience. That’s why you have to put effort into subtopics.

Subtopics would include keywords, usually long-tail, that are directly related to the keywords you want to target. These keywords would often be in a question format and would often have more focused intent on converting or purchasing which is great news for your site. 

Additionally, subtopics are areas of research that can further refine your understanding of your target audience since these would involve deeper details on topics or industries that your website is in.

Key Takeaway

Knowing and understanding your target audience can lead to massive success or devastating failure in the SEO industry. Determining the proper target audience for your website will not only help you reach a bigger audience, but it will also level-up your SEO since you’re attracting the right kind of people to your website that increases your chances of making a sale or profit. 

I have to point out that it’s much more difficult to determine your target audience in SEO compared to SEM or Social Media Marketing since reaching the right audience in SEO isn’t pre-determined through an ads manager. SEO involves hard work and adapting to ever-changing situations/algorithms that make it difficult for us. Additionally, if you make a mistake at the beginning of your processes, you have to start again from the beginning to avoid failure in making your website rank. So, it makes sense that the primary determining factor for us to know our target audience is through the keywords we target since that’s it’s the only way for us to reach our audience. 

What about you? Do you make sure to target the right kind of audience for your SEO? Let me know in the comments below!

  How to Determine Your Target Audience for SEO was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

How long does SEO take to work? (And 5 tips to rank faster)

An organic website presence is a must if you want to drive leads and sales online. After all, the first-page Google results get up to 89.8% of clicks.

By ranking organically, not only do you not have to pay through the nose per click, the traffic potential is actually higher in the long term.

But it does take time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long-term strategy. If you create a Google Ad, you can start driving traffic and results instantly.

But how long does SEO take to deliver results when done right?

That’s what we’ll break down in this article. We’ll cover official Google guidelines, the newest research, and data from internal case studies.

We’ll even throw in a few tips to help you drive results faster.

How long does SEO take to deliver results in 2021?

After optimizing the SEO of a site, it will typically take around three to four months (and up to a full year) before you notice significant results.

This may seem like a long time, but it’s in line with Google’s official guidelines on the topic.

(Image Source)

According to Google’s Maile Ohye, it will take between four months and a year to see results after hiring an SEO agency or expert.

In some cases, with a strong domain and a lot of low-hanging fruit keywords that were previously untargeted, you may see results sooner.

But expectations are a lot less forgiving.

In our latest study on SMBs and digital marketing, we discovered a market discrepancy: 68.8% of SMB owners expect results in under three months.

But unfortunately, SEO is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. The real benefits add up over the long term.

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Why does it take “so long” to see results from SEO?

The reason any SEO effort takes months to show results is that even with a lot of hard work, the process involves a lot of waiting.

A few contributing factors to that wait include:

Google needs to re-index and reconsider your page rankings for any pages you optimize.

Creating high-quality content that matches search intent of the SERPs is time consuming.

Google prefers “proven” content with signals (like backlinks) or social media attention that show it’s worthwhile.

White-hat backlink and authority building takes time.

Google-approved link building (where you earn links by creating high-quality content) takes a lot of time.

Building authority and a brand also takes time.

Bottom line: you can’t rush the process.

Any SEO service that offers short-term link building is probably offering black-hat, low-quality links from a private blog network. Even if you see short-term benefits, the risk of getting penalized and completely shut out from the rankings can be severe.

But what if your website or page is brand new? How long would it take to reach the top 10 results then?

How long does it take for a new website to rank on Google?

Ranking a new website in the top 10 results on Google can take a very long time, up to multiple years if you don’t do everything right.

Over 94% of first page results are older than a year. The average page in the first position is more than two years old.

(Image Source)

But don’t give up all hope.

Of the 5.7% of pages that do rank within one year, the vast majority hit the first page within two to six months.

(Image Source)

While the trend varies a bit based on your DR (Domain Rating), even low DR domains show the same tendency for ranking in two to six months.

Note: A high domain rating essentially means your domain has a lot of backlinks from relevant sites in its category. It’s a clear indicator of authority and trust on the internet.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example of how we helped a client reach SEO success within such a time-frame.

Real example of how quickly HigherVisibility can deliver SEO results

We recently worked with a company in the shipping industry that had a very underwhelming organic presence.

When we started working with them in July 2017, they averaged 1,900 visitors per month, including paid sources.

That quickly changed after we got to work.

First, we fixed all on-site issues, like duplicate content, broken links, and more. Then, we applied more advanced white hat SEO strategies, like like analyzing competitor link profiles, creating high-quality content focused on attracting real backlinks.

Within three months, the organic traffic started to shoot up. By December that year, organic traffic had already more than tripled.

But the progress didn’t stop there.

One year later, in July 2018, the site received over 27,000 visitors. That’s a 1,321% increase in traffic in under a year.

But this is a time frame that you can only expect when working with an experienced SEO firm.

If you try to do things yourself, the first step on the journey becomes learning SEO best practices and ranking factors.

And we’ve got bad news for you.

The process of learning the ins and outs of SEO is even more time-consuming than waiting for results when working with experts.

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How long does it take to learn SEO?

If you’re starting from scratch, it could take you as long as four weeks to three months to grasp even the basics of on-page SEO.

Just like learning any professional skill from scratch, it takes time. But there are a couple of reasons why even the basics take months:

There’s a lot of conflicting information online. Finding trusted sources can be difficult. Here is a list of SEO courses we aggregated that could help get you started.

The feedback loop for SEO is very delayed. If you experiment on your site, it will take months before you know if it worked or not.

SEO trends and tactics are always changing and developing, so it can be hard to stay up-to-date.

There is a wide variety of complex tools that you need to learn to use effectively. For example, can you make sense of these results from Ahrefs, an SEO research tool?

Unfortunately, the basics will only cut it in non-competitive industries or for local SEO.

If you’re in a competitive industry and not just trying to rank for local terms, basic SEO strategy will only take you so far.

If you really want to drive results, you need to master every advanced SEO tactic and become an expert.

How long does it take to be an SEO expert (and deliver results)?

Mastering advanced SEO techniques like an SEO specialist will take you at least a year. And that’s if you’re working in the business directly under someone who knows their stuff.

Creating the perfect SEO campaign for your site will probably take even longer.

Hopefully, by now, you understand that becoming an SEO expert and dominating the results in a few months is a pipe dream. (Unless you absorb new disciplines like a young Leonardo Da Vinci.)

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few quick wins you can implement to see faster results from your SEO efforts.

5 tips to start seeing SEO results faster

Here are five of our best tips to help you start seeing results from your SEO initiatives faster.

1. Use keyword research to find low-hanging fruit

If you target the wrong keywords, you may not have a chance of ranking in the top results even if you invest multiple years.

For example, if you’re a local John Deere tractor dealer, you shouldn’t be focusing on the keyword “tractor” at all.

You’d need an estimated 270 unique backlinks to break into the top results for that keyword.

Instead, focus your keyword research on finding lower volume, less competitive keywords. That could be terms in your local area, like “tractor dealer + city,” or specific tips on tractor maintenance, etc.

Keywords that you could consider “low-hanging fruit” have these three characteristics:

An acceptable monthly volume (at least a few hundred searches)

Some level of commercial intent (like a product category, name, location, etc.)

Limited competition

There are no worthwhile keywords that have zero competition. That’s the reality of doing SEO work in 2021 and beyond.

But you can do your best to find keywords that match that sweet spot of limited competition, decent volume, and good search intent.

2. Invest in a quality host with fast loading times and a professional design

If Google users who click through to your site have a horrible experience, it doesn’t matter how good your keyword selection is.

Page speed became an official ranking factor in 2018. Plus, your loading times affect whether people stay on your page or not, which influences dwell time (another signal).

HTTPS has been an official ranking signal since 2014, and Google Chrome and other browsers will single out your site as unsafe if it’s still on HTTP.

Invest in a quality host that offers HTTPS, caching, and fast loading speeds.

Professional website design is another aspect that plays a crucial role in the user experience of your website. Design and usability is also factored into Google’s algorithm’s brand new page experience ranking factor.

So, to sum up, a great-looking, easily navigated site that loads fast will boost the results from every other SEO tactic you implement.

3. Eliminate basic on-page errors like duplicate content and broken links

The first step towards optimizing your SEO usually involves fixing your existing mistakes. Even if you think you’re doing everything right, there’s probably something you’ve missed.

A study of 175 million pages revealed over 300 million SEO mistakes. That’s an average of more than 1.71 issues per page.

Some of the most common mistakes include meta titles that are too long, duplicate titles, and missing or too long descriptions.

(Image Source)

Other common mistakes include:

Duplicate content

Hidden (unreadable) content

Broken links

Missing H1 tags

Poorly nested subheaders

To identify other basic mistakes, you can follow along with our local SEO checklist.

4. Start building backlinks by improving content quality and building relationships in your industry

It’s not a secret that backlinks are the key to organic search engine results. On the surface, it’s a factor that hasn’t changed much over the past decade.

When more unique domains link to your page, it means higher rankings and more search traffic.

(Image Source)

But Google now also considers the quality and relevance of your links.

One of the best white-hat tactics for building relevant, high-quality links is to network and build relationships with people in your industry.

You can do this by identifying top bloggers and influencers by exploring competitors for your targeted keywords. Then there’s also the art of building a rapport over social media. Twitter is a good starting point.

Of course, they’re not going to share low-quality, uninteresting, keyword-stuffed content just because they know you.

You have to work hard to level up your content as well.

Do this by:

Staying on topic.

Developing your voice.

Using visuals and graphs to show, not tell.

Sharing unique research or case studies when possible.

Reading and learning from the best blogs in your industry, but never copying or plagiarizing.

Together, these things will help your organic social media presence, and lead to natural inbound links.

If you then try a tactic like reaching out to blogs that link to an outdated resource, they’re also much more likely to reward you with a link.

5. For faster, better results, leave it to the experts

If you’re completely new to SEO, your head is probably already spinning from the first four tips.

Keep in mind that this is just scratching the surface of the discipline that is SEO.

As a business owner, one of the keys to success is knowing when to delegate and outsource. If you want fast, powerful results from SEO, you’re probably better off leaving it to the experts.

Hiring a professional SEO agency could be the way to go, trusting in their experience and knowledge in order to catapult your page to the top of Google’s search results.

Conclusion

If you try to figure out the world of SEO on your own, you can forget the lower end of the time frame of just a few months to get results.

With a DIY approach, you also have to learn cutting-edge techniques and best practices before you can even start waiting for results.

Best case, you’ll start seeing some improvements in six months to a year. In the worst-case scenario, you could fail to make any real improvements no matter how much time you invest.

If you don’t have time for failure or waiting an extra year before seeing results, you should invest in professional SEO services.

SEO Takes Time... Let the SEO Agency of the Year Speed it up for You!

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How long does SEO take to work? (And 5 tips to rank faster) was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

12-Point SEO Checklist for 2021

Doing SEO is never as easy as publishing an article, taking a nap, then wait for it to rank. SEO needs to be holistic and it takes efforts in all areas of it to be truly successful. It has been this way and it will surely be this way in 2021 and the next years to come.

However, one can only do so much and there are so many stuff to think about and focus on. It is really easy to get lost in SEO and forget about other factors when you are trying to optimize one factor after another. That is why I created this checklist to help you organize your thoughts and don’t miss a beat. If you want to be successful in SEO in 2021, follow this checklist to help you plan your SEO strategy.

1. Check Meta Tags

Checking and optimizing meta tags are two of the basic steps in doing on-page SEO. It has been and will always be an important part of any SEO checklist because it includes one of the most important ranking factors: the title tag. 

When optimizing title tags, make sure that the target keyword is present while also creating a good copy to attract user clicks. Optimizing meta tags also means optimizing meta descriptions and although it is not a ranking factor, it is important for your click-through rate.

One of the things most people forget when checking meta tags is the meta robots tag attribute which can lead to critical errors. A simple ‘noindex’ tag can completely ruin a page’s rankings because it will literally tell Google to not show this page in the search results. You can use a robots exclusion checker extension so you can quickly check the meta robots attribute of a page without having to go to the source code.

2. Look for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can cause two main problems: first is that there is a possibility that Google may flag it as spam and second are it may dilute keywords around your website. It is also good to note that duplicate content is not just any piece of content in the body of an article. Duplicate meta tags and subheadings can also negatively affect your rankings.

In instances where duplicate content cannot be avoided (ex. Two product pages with the same item and description but different measurements etc.), use the canonical tag to avoid ranking drops.

3. Check for Pages with Wrong Intent

As I mentioned in the article I wrote about SEO ranking factors in 2021, search intent is going to be big. That is why you should optimize not only new pages on your website but also existing ones.

Check the list of the keywords you are targeting and look for those that are not yet on the first page despite your efforts. Search the keyword you are targeting in Google and take a quick look at the ones Google is rewarding because for now, this is the best way to identify what is the intent of the keyword you are targeting.

Once you have assessed the right intent for the keyword, look back at the page you are trying to rank then adjust your content accordingly. Do the results show products? Then most likely, you need to show products on your page as well. Search intent will always focus on giving the users the answer that they are expecting so you should adjust your content according to that. Yes, keywords on your article and the word count are still important, but if your content does not satisfy what a user is searching for in a specific keyword, you will always be outranked by those that do.

4. Optimize for Core Web Vitals and Page Experience

The Core Web Vitals and Page Experience are confirmed SEO factors that will be integrated into Google’s algorithm in 2021 and there is no doubt that these two should be on your checklist.

There are three metrics that make the Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift. Page Experience, on the other hand, consists of existing SEO factors that are now grouped together to help Google better assess user experience on a website. This includes HTTPS, mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, and no interstitials. The Core Web Vitals are actually included in the Page Experience but it is a big topic that is frequently discussed entirely on its own.

To help you assess how your website fairs on these new SEO factors, you can use a variety of field and lab tools from Google. PageSpeed Insights, Google Lighthouse, and the Core Web Vitals Chrome extension to name a few. I published a series of guides regarding the Core Web Vitals and Page Experience and I highly recommend that you check that out to have an in-depth idea on how to optimize them.

5. Augment Old Blog Posts

Augmenting articles that were published more than a year ago is a great SEO strategy that can boost your traffic. The strategy here is to look for blog posts that were performing before but then dropped off. Most likely, they lost their rankings for containing outdated information and new articles from other websites started to outrank them.

This is an opportunity that most website owners tend to forget because most are focused on publishing new articles when they already have existing assets that can save them time. Check out this sample article I repurposed back in 2019. It was getting a few pageviews per week back in 2018 when it was first published. I then updated it and further optimized it and started getting more pageviews than ever, even carrying the momentum to 2020.

Augmenting old blog posts may vary, there will be blog posts that may need an overhaul but there are also those that only needs a few tweaks. Whatever it may be, it is a good strategy that can definitely get you more traffic. I wrote a full guide on Augmenting Blog Posts that you can read here to give you full insights on how to do it properly.

6. Apply Schema Markups

No, structured data is still not a ranking factor but you should never underestimate the value that it can bring to your website. Properly applying schema markups on your pages make them eligible for Google’s Rich Results which can boost your click-through rate from Google search results.

Many overlook structured data because not only is it not a ranking factor but also it can take a lot of time and effort to manually apply schema markups. But thankfully, there are a lot of tools that could help automate the process. You could easily install plugins if you’re using WordPress or use schema generators that are available to use online for free. This makes creating schema markups a lot easier and not web development knowledge is required.

7. Utilize AMP

Using AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages on your website automatically strips your page down to the bare minimum, leaving only the header, content, and images. This provides mobile users with the best experience because it makes websites load at a very fast rate.

A lot of people are still confused about AMP’s contribution to a website’s rankings. It is already confirmed by Google that AMP is not a ranking factor – meaning enabling AMP on your website does not give you a ranking boost. However, Google also said that speed is a ranking factor and AMP does make your website load faster.

Installing AMP on your website is not difficult and will not require web development knowledge if you’re using WordPress. You can simply install the official AMP plugin then select which parts of your websites will the plugin create AMP versions of.

Do take note that AMP is not for everyone. Since AMP will strip down a webpage’s design down to the bare minimum, visuals that you use to convert customers may not appear. I also don’t recommend using AMP on product pages and product category pages for ecommerce websites. If this is the case for you, it is better to focus on making sure that your website is mobile-friendly without the use of AMP.

8. Check Internal Links

Internal linking is really important for site structure and it also helps in rankings. Important pages of your website should have a lot of internal links to it. Internal linking also helps users navigate around your website and can help convert them. You can also help Google understand the context of pages through the anchor text that you use for the internal link similar to how anchor text in backlinks work.

Another purpose of checking your internal links is you could be wasting link juice by linking to old pages of your website that are not existing anymore or linking to URLs with redirects. Linking to 404 URLs stops the flow of link juice and is a wasted opportunity. Redirects, on the other hand, reduces the authority passed on by the links so you are better of linking directly to where the link redirects.

9. Verify Website on Google Search Console

If you haven’t done this yet, you have to do this ASAP. Verifying your website on Google Search Console is the first step you should take if you want it to appear in Google. There is not really much to say about this step. Simply go to Google Search Console and use your Google account to login. Follow the steps to verify your website and that’s it! Google should start crawling your website then index it.

10. Submit Sitemaps

Once you’ve set up Google Search Console for your website, you will now be able to submit your XML sitemaps to help Google better crawl your website. Google will prioritize crawling of URLs that are included in the sitemap you submit and will also crawl them more frequently. For URLs that are not included in the sitemap, Google will still crawl them but with less priority.

For large websites, you can create multiple sitemaps to better organize URLs. You can also create an image sitemap for image SEO.

11. Check for Crawling and Indexing Errors

The Coverage Report in Google Search Console is one of the benefits of verifying your website. In this report, you’ll see crawl errors that may also prevent pages from being indexed. You’ll also the list of URLs that are being indexed, URLs with warnings, and URLs that are completely excluded from the search results.

For a full guide on how to fix coverage errors in Google Search Console, I highly recommend that you check out this guide that I wrote for it – How to Fix Index Coverage Errors in Google Search Console.

12. Upgrade to Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 or GA4 is an improved version of Google Analytics with advanced AI technology that can provide you more and smarter marketing insights. It also allows you to have better integration with Google Ads and helps you understand user life cycles better. 

Moving forward, new Google Analytics accounts will automatically be in GA4 and you’re currently using Universal Analytics, the previous version, you can easily upgrade to Google Analytics 4 in your property settings. 

I highly suggest that you move all your old universal analytics accounts to GA4 so you can start enjoying the benefits of the new platform. I’m sure it will take some time to adjust to the new platform but there is no better time to adapt and improve. 

Key Takeaway

2021 is going to be a year where us SEOs will get our hands full even more with so many optimization points to think about. Just the Core Web Vitals alone can eat up weeks of work! That is why it is crucial that you are able to organize and plan ahead so you won’t leave any stone unturned. I hope this checklist help you in planning out your SEO strategy and help you rank better this year.

12-Point SEO Checklist for 2021 was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

Merry Christmas To All Our SEO Hackers!

In 2020, a number of businesses were given the difficult task of changing up their processes to fit a world in the middle of a pandemic. While it may not have been easy to pull off, it certainly caused an increase in adaptability and new insights. This year, SEO Hacker would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas by sharing some helpful gifts — articles that can improve your SEO in 2021.

As another year comes to an end, it’s important to look back on your previous efforts and accomplishments. What’s also important is that you start thinking of the journey ahead and how you’re going to maneuver through it. To help you out, we’ve rounded up a few articles we wrote in 2020 that talk about the changes you should expect in the year to come.

  SEO in 2021: 7 Factors you Should Prepare For

This year, Google introduced a number of factors to further improve user experience. This included Passage Indexing, Core Web Vitals, Page Experience, and more. They also started to utilize previously introduced factors such as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). To learn more about how to optimize your site to have better and more relevant content, take a look at this article.

  What You Need to Know About the December 2020 Core Update

As you may already know, Google releases core updates every couple of months. The latest of which happened on December 3, 2020. As with any Google Core Update, one important factor to take note of is how it affected your rankings. While some companies were able to bounce back, others weren’t as lucky. Stay on top of your competitors by learning more about the December 2020 Core Update here.

  Complete Core Web Vitals Guide

In May 2020, Google announced that Page Experience will become a key ranking factor in 2021. In order to ensure that your website is optimized for a user, one of the things that you must take a look at is your Core Web Vitals. How’s your site speed? How fast does it take for your website to react to a certain interaction? This article can give you tips on how to make your website more user-friendly, which can lead to more conversions.

  Introducing Google Analytics 4: New Features and How to Set Up

In addition to making changes to improve the user experience, this year Google also released updates relevant to marketers. Specifically, with the introduction of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This updated tool comes with better Google ads integration, which can give you more insights into who your customers are and how they explore your website. Read this article we wrote all about GA4 and its new features.

  Google Search Console’s New and Improved Crawl Stats Report: Everything you Need to Know

Another Google tool that was given an upgrade in 2020 was the Google Search Console Crawl Stats Report. Now you can take a look at when Google crawled your site as well as its status. Was it successful? If not, what was the error code provided? With this information, you can better manage your Crawl Budget to ensure that your most important pages are being crawled by Google.

  Key Takeaway

If you want to learn more about how you can make your website more relevant, searchable, and user-friendly, read up on the articles that we’ve mentioned above. This can arm you with the information you need to prepare your SEO Strategy for next year.

Lastly, once again, SEO Hacker would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. We hope our gifts in the form of the articles above help in your success in 2021.

Merry Christmas To All Our SEO Hackers! was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

SEO Hacker Roundup: Best SEO Articles of 2020

2020 wasn’t the best year for most of us. A lot of businesses went under which led to a lot of clients from all industries churning. However, a great thing came about because of a crisis like the pandemic – business owners and entrepreneurs realized the importance of going digital, being accessible to all their audiences, and being able to cater to their clients without the need of having physical interaction. 

Through the help of you, our readers, SEO Hacker has been able to endure the difficult times brought by the pandemic. Additionally, this year has been full of experiments and updates that will affect the SEO industry in the years to come. Now that 2020 is coming to a close, let’s look back at the articles that you, our readers, have enjoyed reading the most:

How to Use Keyword Mapping for SEO

Keywords are still one of the most common inclusions in any SEO strategy, which makes keyword mapping all the more important. Through keyword mapping, SEOs can streamline and improve the efficiency of their strategies by organizing, assigning, and optimizing the best possible pages for a specific keyword/topic.

This is not a new strategy, but it is an underrated one where once properly done, SEOs can save more time and energy to invest in other ventures. 

Google Announces January 2020 Broad Core Update and the New Look Search Results Page

January started with a core update and a new (minor) design for the SERPs (search engine results pages). This meant a lot of volatility and movements in search rankings for most SEOs. 2020 started with a blast and a lot of SEOs had their work cut out for them and already set the tone for 2020 where a lot of changes and experiments were done to the search engine, primarily to Google.

Introducing Google Analytics 4: New Features and How to Set Up

Through Google Analytics 4 or GA4, Google aims to evolve the tool along with shifts in consumer behavior, the need for better use of analytics, and new data privacy regulations. Using the app+web property as a foundation, Google came out with GA4 where users can enjoy the following:

Smarter Marketing Insights using Machine Learning

Deeper Integration with Google Ads

Customer-Centric Measurements and Better Understanding of Customer Life Cycle

New Data Controls

How to Handle Pagination for SEO

Pagination is one of the trickiest problems that SEOs experience since improper optimization of paginations could lead to multiple pages being flagged as duplicates. A lot of SEOs assume that pagination is bad for SEO, which isn’t really the case. It’s more complicated than that since proper optimization of paginations could lead to some benefits. 

How to Optimize for Google News

Google news is a news aggregator feature by Google that was introduced back in 2002. Google News collates news articles from its list of verified websites and serves it to users based on their interests and location. It is available in more than 60 regions and 35 languages. Through Google News, users are able to access fresh local and worldwide news. This means that publishers and websites that primarily serve up-to-date news and current events need to know how to optimize for Google News to further reach new audiences.

How Digital Marketing Companies are Affected by COVID-19

As mentioned earlier, the pandemic has affected a lot of businesses and industries and Digital Marketing is one of them. Which is why we asked digital marketers around the world how the pandemic affected their businesses and what they’re doing to stay afloat in these difficult times.

How to Get in Google News

The earlier mentioned article where we teach you how to optimize for Google News involves your website already being eligible for the news aggregator. In this article, we discussed how publishing and news websites are able to gain the eligibility to enter Google News and have their articles enjoyed by a wider audience-base.

Key Takeaway

Now that we’re entering 2021 and things are looking brighter than ever – I have no doubt in my mind that a lot more businesses will look into venturing into the digital industry. Which is why I still commit myself to producing high-quality, informative, helpful articles for all our readers. Hopefully, SEO Hacker is your go-to blog for all your SEO questions and resources. We thank you for a slightly rocky year that was filled with innovations and new learnings!

SEO Hacker Roundup: Best SEO Articles of 2020 was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[anthonykrierion]

SEO in 2021: 7 Factors you Should Prepare For

2020 was a year full of anxiety and uncertainty. There was so much going on around the world that it also affected the way how people search. With the year 2020 now ending, it is now time for us to look forward and prepare for what’s to come in 2021.

It is no secret that SEO is an ever-changing game. From the words of Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s Head of Search:  “Search is never a solved problem”. That is why Google continues to innovate and we SEOs should do the same.

2021 is going to be an exciting year for SEO and the best time to optimize is now. Here are the things that you should prepare for SEO in 2021.

Optimizing for Core Web Vitals and Page Experience

Google’s announcement of the two new ranking factors, Core Web Vitals and Page Experience, last May was one of the biggest announcements they had in recent years. They then announced in November that these two new ranking factors will be integrated into the algorithm by May 2021.

Most of the things that make up Page Experience are already part of the current algorithm. What Google did is take all of these ranking factors such as speed, mobile-friendliness, security, etc., and group them together to have a holistic view of what provides users with the best user experience.

The other ranking factor, Core Web Vitals, is made up of three metrics namely: Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift. These three metrics deal with the overall performance of a webpage such as how long does it take before a user can interact with the page or how long does it take for the largest image to load. According to Google, the Core Web Vitals will continue to evolve throughout the years but for now, these three metrics are where SEOs should focus on.

For a full guide on each metric of the Core Web Vitals and Page Experience, check out these guides that we have published:

Core Web Vitals Guide

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

First Input Delay (FID)

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Page Experience

Search Intent is More Important than Ever

Search intent is not a new concept to SEO but 2021 is really the time where you should go all-in on it. One of the reasons why Google continues to dominate the search market is its consistent drive to accomplish its goal of providing users the most relevant search results and it has always been that way.

For Google, content is king and I believe it will always be king. But writing content for the sake of ranking for a target keyword is meaningless anymore. The focus of Search Intent is to provide content that is actually relevant to users. This gives meaning and purpose to creating content because many are tired of hearing the generic advice to create “high-quality” content all the time. So what is search intent and what type of content should you produce?

It is quite a simple concept to understand but can be difficult to execute. Search intent is the reason behind a user’s search. A better way of explaining it is with a question: “what does the user expect to see when they search this keyword”.

Search intent also has 4 types: informational, transactional, commercial, and navigational. 

The question now is how do you know what is the right intent of a specific keyword. Well, ask Google. Search for the keyword you are targeting and check what Google is rewarding. The next step is to produce a better article than what your competitors have.

Going into 2021, search intent should be the focal point of any content strategy. Gone are the days where articles that only have keyword density in mind dominate the search results. Users should always benefit from content that they get from Google and so we SEOs should always keep in mind what’s good for users.

Video Content

Last October 2020, Google launched a video on its official YouTube channel highlighting the improvements that they made in search throughout the year. One of the highlights is how Google is now able to automatically tag and identify key moments on videos using AI without creators having to manually tag them.

This helps users save time when searching. When they click on a video from the search results, instead of having to scroll through the whole video, Google automatically directs them to what they are looking for. 

According to Google, this will affect 10% of the search results by the end of 2020 and we can expect that they will continue to work on this in the coming year.

You can upload videos on your website and other platforms but YouTube is still the way to go if you want to utilize video content in the search results. According to a study, 83% of videos in the search results are from YouTube. It is not surprising considering YouTube is owned by Google.

Still, video content on YouTube is not yet explored by many digital marketers and it should be something that you should look into in 2021. It is clear that searchers prefer visual results more and more and with Google’s AI making it more convenient for them, traffic from video results is becoming more valuable and a better way of engaging with your target audience.

BERT Affects all Searches

When Google introduced the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, better known as BERT, back in 2019, SEOs were quick to try and find out how to optimize for it despite BERT only affecting 10% of search results that time. I also published an article regarding how BERT affects SEO and I highly suggest that you check that out as well.

In 2020, Google announced that BERT now affects 100% of English search results. However, take note that BERT is not a ranking factor or algorithm. BERT is a technique used by Google to better understand what a user is searching for in a specific query. 

Experts and Google say that there is nothing really to optimize for because it does not affect how Google index and rank pages. But one thing to take note of is that BERT can be related to search intent. Since Google is able to understand user queries better, that means content that best answers the user’s query will be rewarded more. My advice, do not overthink how BERT will affect your website because it won’t. Instead, focus on creating content that has the right search intent with BERT in mind.

Game Changer: Passage Indexing

Passage Indexing was also one of the biggest announcements by Google in their Search on 2020 video that took the attention of the SEO industry. Basically, Google is now able to index passages/snippets of an article in the search results if it is related to a user’s query despite not being the main topic of the article. 

This is another innovation by Google using its advanced AI. Many were confused on how it will affect Google’s crawling and indexing but Google made it clear that they will still index the whole page it’s just that their AI is now able to focus on different parts of the content, not just the main subject.

This is big news because it means there are more opportunities to rank for when writing an article, especially long-form content. I mentioned in the article summarizing Google’s Search in 2020 that optimizing for passage indexing is similar to how you would optimize for Featured Snippets. The idea is to properly segment your content to make it easier for Google to understand and index. 

Although passage indexing will only affect about 7% of search results by next year, I predict that it will be big in the years to come.

Subtopics

Google is looking to further diversify search results for broad terms using their advanced AI to understand subtopics. It was also announced in the Search in 2020 YouTube video and was briefly explained.

When a user searches for a broad term for example “computer”, Google is now able to understand relevant subtopics related to computers such as gaming computers, office computers, computer peripherals, etc. then serve it to the user.

This gives more importance to the use of the topic cluster model. I highly recommend that you read the guide we published for the Topic Cluster Model to help plan your content strategy for next year.

Optimizing for Rich Results

It’s 2021 and no, structured data is still not a ranking factor but properly marking up your pages with schema is important as ever. Google is pushing more and more rich results in the search results and they are easily stealing the spotlight from the regular blue links we are accustomed to.

Rich Results are visually improved and more interactive search results in Google. Generally, Google uses structured data markups on pages to pull up data for rich results. Marking up your pages with schema markup will not guarantee that you’ll appear in rich results and technically, structured data is not required for you to appear in rich results, but marking up your pages boosts your chances.

The benefits of appearing in Rich Results are the same with Featured Snippets – higher click-through rate. And similar to Featured Snippets, you don’t necessarily have to be the top 1 in the search results to appear in rich results. 

As of writing, these are the structured data types that are eligible for rich results in Google:

Article

Book

Breadcrumb

Carousel

Course

COVID-19 Announcements

Critic review

Dataset

Employer Aggregate Rating

Estimated Salary

Event

Fact Check

FAQ

Home Activities

How-to

Image License

Job Posting

Job Training

Local Business

Logo

Movie

Product

Q&A

Recipe

Review Snippet

Sitelinks search box

Software app

Speakable

Subscription and paywalled content

Video

Google will continue to update this list as they are also working with Schema.org to improve structured data on the web. You should frequently check Google’s documentation on structured data to keep updated.

Key Takeaways

If you notice, half of what I talked about are things that were mentioned are related to Google’s AI technology and features. However, at the end of the day, users are the most important and everything that you do should be beneficial to them if you truly want to be successful for SEO in 2021.

I believe that 2021 will be an exciting year for SEO and also a busy year with all the new innovations we’ll have to think about and optimizations we’ll be doing. While there are factors that are highlighted such as those that I talked about in this article, keep in mind that SEO should always be holistic. You can focus and prioritize these new things that are to come in 2021 but do not leave other SEO factors behind.

SEO in 2021: 7 Factors you Should Prepare For was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing