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5 quick SEO wins for new clients

There are many quick and easy tasks to perform for your SEO clients to get a quick SEO win. Businesses do not have SEO expertise so there can often be some mistakes that SEO's should clean up right away.

1. Consolidate your assets

Dan Mallette of InVue Digital takes note of all of the client’s digital assets and consolidates them:

“Some of the easiest wins for new SEO clients come from a consolidating the customer’s redundant assets. Too often, as you start diving in, I find brands with three or four websites for no good reason whatsoever. Whether they are lingering from the SEO Dark Ages when this was common practice or the customer just likes seeing themselves on the internet, redirecting these helps centralize the authority and fortify their main site’s backlink profile.

“Convincing a brand to let go of these has shown to pay immediate dividends for visibility and allows the brand to better control its own image. Even on the main website, consolidating www and non-www versions of the site and ensuring there is only one home page (instead of a /index.html for example) centralizes the authority, helping this page compete better in search.”

Mike Lalonde of Londes takes a similar approach to making sure the proper canonicals and redirects are in place:

“When looking at SERPs, it’s pages that rank, not websites. Of course Domain Authority is important, but building the strength to specific pages is just as (or more) important when it comes to trying to rank specific pieces of content. And when that value is divided multiple times by a lack of redirects and poor URL structure, that website is unnecessarily fighting an uphill battle.

“To reduce issues and make sure page value isn’t being split between variations (or worse, creates duplicate content issues), we recommend using canonical tags, as well as setting up high-level redirects to create one version of the page that is accessed (the same one you’ve chosen for your canonical URL). Redirects can add or get rid of trailing slashes, www’s in the domain name, or extensions like /index.php. The result should be the same version of the page loading each time (and update your links to point to this one page as well).”

2. Reclaim unlinked brand mentions

Blake Denman of RicketyRoo identifies easy link opportunities right away:

“One of the easiest and often most overlooked SEO wins is to find unlinked brand mentions for a client. Use search operators to discover these gems on authoritative sites, then reach out to the publication and ask for a link to your client’s brand name. More often than not they’ll update with a link to the site. It’s easy and really effective!”

3. Create longer-form content

Maher Abiad of 3Seven7 Studios leverages long-form content. I’ve found that longer form content definitely ranks better, so I agree with him here:

“One of the best tactics I can give that has been working like hot cakes is to create longer form content sales pages. For businesses that want to see an immediate effect on the ranking of their money keywords, you need to have a lot more text on page. Google is loving longer pages, as this is absolutely true for blog posts, and this is also completely true for your sales pages as well. Just by increasing copy on page to 1000+ words, you will see a resounding [e]ffect in the SERPs. The reason for this is that the search engines want the most authoritative piece on that subject to rank the highest. So think about it this way: the top ranking pieces of blog content are on average around 2200-2500 words long.

“So you work hard to ensure that the topic you are writing about is jam packed with pure value content in your blog posts. Well then, the exact same rules that apply to long-form blog content, [hold] true for your marketing sales pages as well, where you are able to really show your visitor why you are the market leader in your niche. And this works the best on your inner pages here, as you want to rank your home page for your brand terms and your inner pages for your money keywords. Spend more time crafting the perfect copy, add more media such as images and video to enhance engagement and you will notice a difference within a very short time on your changes made.”

4. Find your ‘low-hanging fruit’ keywords

Dustin Christensen of AZ Search looks for pages that are on the cusp of getting traffic but need a little boost:

“One of the easiest wins for new clients is to go through their current analytics and keyword data to see which keywords they’re ranking for but haven’t focused on. This is easiest when the client has Google Search Console data, which allows you to look page by page at which content is generating traffic and momentum for keywords that are related to the main topic but haven’t been optimized for.

“If a page is about types of apples, for example, and the page is ranking on the second page for ‘types of apples for applesauce,’ then updating the page for that phrase could generate quick gains if it makes sense for the user and the client. These low-hanging opportunities take little time but can make tremendous changes in traffic right off the bat.”

Will Sharpe of Sharpe Digital uses a similar approach to finding and optimizing his client’s ‘low-hanging fruit’:

“One of the first things we do when we take a client on is to navigate to the ‘Top Organic Keywords’ section on the SEO tool SEMRush for the client’s domain. From here, we can sort the results by position and see all the traffic-generating keywords that the client’s website is currently ranking for. We then make a note of all commercial keywords between position #11 and position #20 (page 2 results) and the URL of the client’s website that is ranking.

“During the first few weeks, we’ll make very basic on-page optimisation improvements to these ranking pages for the keywords in question. More often than not, we achieve page #1 rankings for these keywords within a few weeks as a result. Nothing is more conducive to a long-term relationship with an SEO client than contacting them within the first few weeks and showing them you have got page #1 results already!”

5. Internationalize

Joonas Jukkara of SEOSEON thinks that internationalizing your site is a quick way to get an SEO boost. Personally, I’ve found internationalizing to be a boon for PPC in the short term and SEO in the long:

“Easiest SEO win for a website that is targeting only specific country but using a generic top-level domain such as .com or .org, is to set a specific geographic target from Google Search Console. International targeting helps Google to understand which specific country your website is targeting. You can change the options by logging into Search Console, choosing the right website property and going to Search Traffic -> International Targeting.

“Preconditions being that the content of the site already has some relevance to the search terms and questions of the user, international targeting helps you to rank better for location-related queries. Just be aware that you will lose exposure on search results in all the other countries, so before implementing make sure that the goal of your website is to really serve an audience within a certain country.”

Click here to view original web page at searchengineland.com

These 5 quick SEO fix's your SEO agency can perform that will help your new clients SEO. Check for these things right off the bat and give your client a quick win.

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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Top SEO Experts - Jupiter FL - Jupiter SEO Expert Services

via https://youtu.be/OUDZweBsP4c

#SEO #internet marketing

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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Top Local SEO Expert

Top Local SEO Expert Jupiter FL

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Visit http://services.theseoxpert.com/ for the top local seo services in Jupiter.

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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SEO Quickly — Then SEO Correctly

Optimization is key to SEO, and there are many areas to optimize just on-page alone. Optimization can be quite hard, so were do you start?

Optimizing correctly can take days, months, even years. This is why optimizing quickly is so important. It gives you a jump out the gate while you do the ongoing, time-consuming work.

Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. SEO quickly first, then SEO correctly going forward.

Here’s what you do in a nutshell: You find the biggest opportunities and/or the quickest fixes, and you tackle those first. Anything that’s going to take a while or not give you immediate gains gets put on the back burner. Not forever, but just until you get some wins.

There are a number of things you can do relatively quickly in SEO. Every site will be different, of course, but as a general rule, these are the first places I look.

Keyword Research

“Hold the phone!” you say. “Keyword research isn’t quick!” I sigh, walk over, and take the phone from you and say, “It can be if you don’t try to do it all at once.” (Sorry, that’s the aspiring novelist in me. 40,000 words written so far!)

Here’s the thing. Keyword research should be broken down into phases. For most sites there are just too many words and trying to dig them all out at once is more likely to bury you.

Navigation

The next big win is to take your core term/topic phrases and figure out which ones are worthy of your primary navigation. You should have a list of mostly unique phrases, each deserving of its own landing page. Now is the time to plan that page!

You might find unique terminology that represents the exact same idea. Don’t create separate navigation pages for those. Determine which terminology is the most common and build the page for that. You can either work in the other terminology or save that phrase for a blog post down the road.

By focusing on your navigation early, you are priming your site to have a solid set of landing pages perfectly designed to give searchers exactly what they are looking for.

Architecture

Most website architecture issues won’t be quick. But some are.

What you need to do is to run your tools and separate out the tasks that can be done quickly, saving the others for later. Broken links are almost always a quick win, but there are others as well. Every site is different. What’s easy for one may be difficult for another.

The best way to do this is to create a master list of issues, and set a level of priority for each item on the list. That priority will be based on how much a fix will help you achieve optimization results. Send that to your developer and have him start with the highest priority items that are quick and work his way down to the intermediate level stuff. Then repeat the process.

Title Tags

Regardless if you have a site of ten pages or a hundred, customizing your title tags across the board is a nice boost for the more detailed optimization to come later. Not only can they give you a boost in the search rankings, they can also increase your click-through rate because it is the first thing searchers will see in the results for your listing.

You can optimize your title tags in two ways. One is to customize each one individually. The other is to create a schema in which to customize them dynamically. Most service-related sites would need hand customization while e-commerce sites can utilize the schema option.

Meta Description Tags

The same process applies to the meta description tags as the title tags. Description tags won’t help improve search rankings directly. However, they can have a significant impact on click-through rates because it is generally the text that appears below the title tag in search results:

Heading Tags

The first job of a page heading — especially the one at the top of the page — is to let the visitor know what page they landed on. The top heading should confirm they are either on the correct — or incorrect — page. If the page is not going to meet their needs, no reason to keep them hanging around.

But if they are on the right page, they need to know it. And scanning the page, the rest of the headings should reinforce the main heading.

But that’s not the only role of a heading tag. The second role, which can be equally important, is to keep the reader engaged with the content. That means that it must compel (that word again!) them to keep reading.

Really, this is Marketing 101. Don’t “SEO” your headings. Make them something worthy of being read and that makes searchers stick around to stay engaged with your website.

Click here to view original web page at www.searchenginejournal.com

Every aspect of your website can be optimized for ranking on the SERP's. From titles and descriptions to site architecture and navigation. Optimization needs to start fast. Before you even begin creating a page, you should have optimization in mind.

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from The SEO Xpert http://www.theseoxpert.com/seo-quickly-then-seo-correctly/

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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Jupiter Florida Pay Per Call Leads

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Pay Per Call Services in Jupiter FL

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from The SEO Xpert http://www.theseoxpert.com/jupiter-florida-pay-per-call-leads/

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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Video SEO - Jupiter FL - by Jupiter SEO Expert Services

via https://youtu.be/EfPqQtb7jOc

#SEO #internet marketing

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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Video Marketing - Jupiter Florida - by Jupiter SEO Expert Services

via https://youtu.be/qNHsWSw06TY

#SEO #internet marketing

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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Google Updates Algorithm Every Day

Google is always making changes and updating the algorithm. But are there updates every day? Yes according to some at Google.

In response to what some webmaters believe was a major Google algorithm update yesterday, Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller took the opportunity to remind everyone “we make changes almost every day.”

As search evolves, dips and swings in rankings should be expected. Hoping things stay the way the are, or they way they always have been, is a sure recipe for disappointment. Yet Google has to reiterate time and again that changes occur on a near-daily basis.

Google’s Gary Illyes expressed similar sentiments in a tweet stating, “we have 3 updates a day in average. I think it’s pretty safe to assume there was one recently…”

Illyes also broached the subject with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor stating all updates will be named “Fred”, unless stated otherwise. Here’s hoping the SEO industry doesn’t take that too seriously by naming updates Fred V1.0, Fred V2.0, and so on.

So, yes, there was probably an update yesterday. Maybe even 3 updates. Those who have done their due diligence believe the changes from yesterday’s update(s) are likely the result of low quality inbound links.

If that’s the case, Google’s recommended course of action is to attempt to get the links removed naturally. If that fails, or if the number of low quality inbound links is too large to get each one removed individually, then next recommended step is to look into disavowing backlinks.

Click here to view original web page at www.searchenginejournal.com

In short, Google is always updating, which is a good and bad thing. Quality is becoming evermore important while the value of links continues to diminish.

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from The SEO Xpert http://www.theseoxpert.com/google-updates-algorithm/

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theseoxpert · 8 years ago

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Quality Content Now King?

It used to be all about links, links, links! Then came RankBrain, and now there seems to be more of an emphasis on quality content. But what exactly makes content quality?

Quality content is hard to produce and often expensive, so its benefits need to be justified, especially if the content in question has nothing to do with the conversion path. I want to see measured results. The arguments for quality content are convincing, to be sure — but the pragmatist in me still needs to see hard evidence that quality content matters and directly impacts rankings.

I had two choices on how to obtain this evidence:

I could set up a large number of very expensive experiments to weight different aspects of content and see what we come up with.

Or I could do some extensive research and benefit from the expensive experiments others have done. Hmmmmm.

As I like to keep myself abreast of what others are publishing, and after seeing a number of documents around the web recently covering exactly this subject, I decided to save the money and work with the data available — which, I should add, is from a broader spectrum of different angles than I could produce on my own. So let’s look at what quality content does to rankings.

What is quality content?

The first thing we need to define is quality content itself. This is a difficult task, as quality content can range from 5,000-word white papers on highly technical areas to evergreen content that is easy but time-consuming to produce, to the perfect 30-second video put on the right product at the right time. Some quality content takes months to produce, some minutes to produce.

Quality content cannot be defined by a set criteria. Rather, it is putting the content your visitors want or need in front of them at the right time. Quality is defined by the simple principle of exceeding your visitors’ expectations on what they will find when they get to your web resource. That’s it.

Larry Kim on machine learning and its impact on ranking content

Anyone in the PPC industry knows Larry Kim, the founder and CTO of WordStream, but the guy knows his stuff when it comes to organic as well. And we share a passion: we both are greatly intrigued by machine learning and its impact on rankings.

We can all understand that machine learning systems like RankBrain would naturally be geared toward providing better and better user experiences (or what would they be for?). But what does this actually mean?

Kim wrote a great and informative piece for “Search Engine Journal” providing some insight into exactly what this means. In his article, he takes a look at WordStream’s own traffic (which is substantial), and here’s what he found:

Kim looked at the site’s top 32 organic traffic-driving pages prior to machine learning being introduced into Google’s algorithm; of these pages, the time on site was above average for about two-thirds of them and below average for the remaining third.

After the introduction of machine learning, only two of the top 32 pages had below-average time on site.

The conclusion Kim draws from this — and which I agree with — is that Google is becoming better at weeding out pages that do not match the user intent. In this case, they are demoting pages that do not have high user engagement and rewarding those that do.

The question is, does it impact rankings? Clearly the demotion of poor-engagement pages on the sites of others would reward sites with higher engagement, so the answer is yes.

Kim also goes on to discuss click-through rate (CTR) and its impact on rankings. Assuming your pages have high engagement, does having a higher click-through rate impact your rankings? Here’s what he found:

What we can see in this chart is that over time, the pages with higher organic click-through rates are rewarded with higher rankings.

What do CTRs have to do with quality content, you might ask? To me, the titles and descriptions are the most important content on any web page. Write quality content in your titles and descriptions, and you’ll improve your click-through rate. And provided that quality carries over to the page itself, you’ll improve your rankings simply based on the user signals generated.

Eric Enge on machine learning’s impact on ranking quality content

Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting outlined a very telling test, and the results appeared right here on Search Engine Land in January. Here’s what I love about Enge: He loves data. Like me, he’s not one to follow a principle simply because it’s trendy and sounds great — he runs a test, measures and makes conclusions to deploy on a broader scale.

What Stone Temple Consulting did for this test was replace the text on category pages — which had been written as “SEO copy” and was not particularly user-friendly — with new text that “was handcrafted and tuned with an explicit goal of adding value to the tested pages.” It was not SEO content by the classic definition; it was user content. And here’s what they found:

The traffic to the pages they updated with high-quality content on saw an increase of 68 percent in traffic, whereas the control pages took a hit of 11 percent. Assuming that all the pages would have taken the 11 percent drop, the pages with the gains actually improved by 80 percent. This was accomplished simply by adding content for the users instead of relying on content that search engines wanted back in 2014.

Eric points out in his article that Hummingbird‘s role in helping Google to understand natural language, combined with the speed in adjustments facilitated by machine learning, allows Google to reward sites that provide a good user experience — even when it’s not rich in keywords or traditional SEO signals.

Brian Dean on core ranking metrics

Back in September, Brian Dean of Backlinko wrote an interesting piece breaking down the core common elements of the top-ranking sites over a million search results. This is a big study, and it covers links, content and some technical consideration, but we’re going to be focusing only on the content areas here.

So with this significant amount of data, what did they find the top-ranking sites had in common with regard to content?

Content that was topically relevant significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in depth.

Longer content tended to outrank shorter content, with the average first-page result containing 1,890 words.

A lower bounce rate was associated with higher rankings.

Topically relevant content appears to be more about what is on the page and how it serves users than whether it contains all the keywords. To use their example, for the query “indonesian satay sauce,” we find the following page in the results:

This page is beating out stronger sites, and it doesn’t actually use the exact term “indonesian satay sauce” anywhere on the page. It does, however, include a recipe, information on what a satay is, variations on it and so on. Basically, they beat stronger sites by having better content. Not keyword-stuffed or even “keyword-rich,” just better and more thorough content.

Quality content, it seems, has taken another victory in the data.

So what we see is …

I could go on with other examples and studies, but I’d simply be making you suffer through more reading to reinforce what I believe these three do well: illustrate that there is a technical argument for quality content.

More important perhaps is the reinforcement that “quality content” follows no strict definition, apart from providing what your user wants (although that may periodically be biased by what Google believes your user wants prior to attaining any information about them directly). Your click-through rates, time on page, bounce rate, the thoroughness of your pages, and pretty much anything to do with your visitors and their engagement, all factor in.

The goal, then, is to serve your users to the best of your ability. Produce high-quality content that addresses all their needs and questions and sends them either further down your conversion funnel or on to other tasks — anything but back to Google to click on the next result.

If you need one more reinforcement, however, I have one but it has no supporting authoritative data aside from its source. Periodically, Google either releases or has leaked their Quality Rater’s Guidelines. You can download the most recent (2016) in this post. While I did a fuller evaluation of these guidelines here, the key takeaway is as follows:

The quality of the Main Content (MC) is one of the most important considerations in Page Quality rating. For all types of webpages, creating high quality MC takes a significant amount of at least one of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill.

So we don’t get metrics here, but what we do get is a confirmation that Google is sending human raters to help them better understand what types of content require time, effort, expertise and talent/skill. Combine this information with machine learning and Hummingbird, and you have a system designed to look for these things and reward it.

Now what?

Producing quality content is hard. I’ve tried to do so here and hope I’ve succeeded (I suppose Google and social shares will let me know soon enough). But if you’re looking at your site trying to think of where to start, what should you be looking at?

This, of course, depends on your site and how it’s built. My recommendation is to start with the content I already have, as Eric Enge did in his test. Rather than trying to build out completely new pages, simply come up with a way to serve your users better with the content you already have. Rewriting your current pages — especially ones that rank reasonably well but not quite where you want them to be — yields results that are easily monitored, and you’ll not only be able see ranking changes but also get information on how your users are reacting.

If you don’t have any pages you can test with (as unlikely as that may be), then you need to brainstorm new content ideas. Start with content that would genuinely serve your current visitors. Think to yourself, “When a user is on my site and leaves, what question were they trying to answer when they did so?” Then create content to address that, and put it where that user will find it rather than leave.

If users are leaving your site to find the information they need, then you can bet the same thing is happening to your competitors. When these users are looking for the answer to their question, wouldn’t it be great if they found you? It’s a win-win: You get quality content that addresses a human need, and you might even intercept someone who was just at a competitor’s website.

Click here to view original web page at searchengineland.com

If you have a page that ranks well but not great consider rewriting it. Add more content to engage the user and increase time on site. RankBrain is making it more and more about satisfying the user, and if the user is bouncing off your site for a particular search query, your site will be demoted.

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