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Showing posts from February, 2019

Are You Making These Link Building Mistakes?

The backbone of a successful SEO marketing campaign comes down to great content and quality backlinks and link structure.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways for you to earn quality backlinks.  Being creative and looking for rarely exploited opportunities are what drives the most ambitious to seek out new ways to earn backlinks and rise in the search rankings. Yet, no matter how altruistic your intentions are, you may be making massive mistakes in seeking links that could damage your site reputation and cause you to fall in the search rankings. 7 Link Building Mistakes Bad Reputation  – Sites with a bad reputation are anything that falls under the range of illegal sites, porn sites, gambling sites, duplicant content sites, auto-blogging and spam sites.  Search engines dislike these sites and if you link to them, they are likely to dislike you as well. No-Follow Links  – A no-follow link is a value added to HTML that instructs the search ...

Do You Really Have The Time?

Sure, these articles on our blog are great. Topics relevant to promoting your business online and packed with information for you to start your search engine optimization and marketing journey.  All you need to do is digest them, follow and practice – that’s always a good thing. BUT… Do you have the time to do everything these articles preach? These articles only explore the tip of the iceberg.  It is almost a full-time job to understand, fine tune and implement everything it takes to get your business to the top of Google’s first page.  Beating out your competition and having consumers see your product and/or service as top dog is definitely rewarding and a massive boon for your sales but can you dedicated the time to properly do it? The fact of the matter is that it can take  months  to create an organic and rock solid digital marketing campaign that gets results and stays there.  If you are not consistent, no gaps or missing days, your eff...

What Is RankBrain?

What is RankBrain? RankBrain is a search engine algorithm used by Google that is constantly learning to be able to process more relevant search results.  RankBrain is the third most important ranking signal that Google uses which means your website and content should be optimized for the algorithm.  RankBrain is constantly tweaking the algorithm based on backlinks, content quality, domain authority and dozens more ranking factors. RankBrain has two main jobs to do: understand search queries and measure how users interact with those results.  This makes optimizing for the algorithm crucial for your site and content rankings. How To Optimize Better For RankBrain Keywords:   Unlike algorithms of old, RankBrain doesn’t just match a user query keyword to keywords on your content pages.  It tries to turn basic search terms into concepts and then scans content pages that might explore those concepts. For instance, “popular running shoe made by fam...

What Types Of SEO Content Are There?

What Types Of SEO Content Are There? The most important factor of search engine optimization is quality content.  Your content has to be informative, provide answers to user questions and engage with them.  By having a solid base of content, only then can you begin to use that in your marketing strategies.  There are many variations of content for SEO – the list is nearly endless – but here are the main areas in which you can explore and create. Product Pages  – The actual pages you are featuring your products or service can be great for both search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising.  Flesh out the content and be sure to target your niche keywords and create an engaging page that users will want to explore or use as a doorway to investigate the rest of your site. Blog Posts  – One of the best and most flexible ways to create SEO content.  These are better than product pages because blog posts attract backlinks and help buil...

5 Things You Should Never Do In SEO

5 Things You Should Never Do In SEO There are many practices that are considered “black-hat” and that you should never practice in search engine optimization.  Over the years, the search engines have evolved and fine-tuned their algorithms to weed out spam and search for the best kinds of content.  While the list of no-nos is long, for the sake of time and trimming the hedge of SEO, here are 5 definite things you should never do. Purchase Links  – Search engines are continuously changing their algorithms to detect spammy techniques of acquiring backlinks.   Whether through detecting bad linking patterns or by accepting a spam report that launches a manual review, your site can be flagged and/or demoted in search rankings.  Buying backlinks doesn’t allow for great content to be seen but just sites who have the deeper pockets.  The point of earning backlinks instead of buying them is to keep the process of ranking fair to those who provide...

Want To Be First On Google?

Do You Want Your Company To Be First On Google? With a harmonious mix of search engine optimization and digital marketing techniques, your company can be at the top of the search results for Google.  Being on page one is  CRUCIAL  to make sales and attract new customers.  If you are not on page one, you might as well not exist at all because the chances of a user leaving the first page of search results is slim to none. Do You Want To Be The First One People See When They Search For Your Product Or Service? Of course you do.  So do your competitors.  That’s why you need to tighten your marketing campaign and put the focus on target locations and specific keywords to hone in on your desired consumer base.  People tend to click on the first result they see when they type questions into a search engine like Google.  Maybe it’s time that your company takes that spot and hangs on to it. Why Are You Not On Top Or Able To Hold It? Maybe yo...

All About the User Experience…

What is User Experience? User experience is exactly what is says.  It is how a user interacts with your site and their behaviors in doing so.  If the user is a repeat visitor to your site, spends a significant amount of time on it and navigates the site with ease, this alerts search engines that your site provides great UX (user experience) and should be boosted in the rankings.  UX and SEO fit together perfectly because they share a symbiotic relationship – providing sought help.  SEO will lead a person to the content that they seek and UX will answer their questions once a user is on the site. How To Get UX Right In Relation To SEO Since they are nothing without the other, tactics for both definitely influence its partner.  Headings, Quality Content, Mobile Responsiveness and Page Speed are a few of the main factors that can bolster each other when done correctly.  Both SEO and UX need to focus on their part in order to complete the who...

How To Write SEO Friendly Articles

What Is An SEO Friendly Article? Quite simply, an SEO friendly article is amazing content written to answer questions first and then leave a few crumbs for search spiders to nibble on. How To Write SEO Friendly Articles Keep in mind that your priority should be putting out solid, informative content.  With that as your guideline, here are a few quick tips to help you craft better content to appease users and search engines both. List The Searcher Intent  – Before you even begin to write your content, you should know what question you are trying to answer.  What is the searcher putting into the Google, Bing or Yahoo box?  You want to make sure you are solving their problem.  Search engines actually do  NOT  have the answers to questions.  They simply use an algorithm to recommend sites they  THINK  has the best answer for the user’s question.  In some cases, the sites they recommend may not actually have the most up to...

Page Speed SEO – What You Need To Know

What is Page Speed? Page speed is the time it takes for content to fully be displayed for a particular web page.  It can also mean how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of info from the actual web server.  In any case, how fast your page loads is now one of the many key ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. If it takes Google too long for its spiders to crawl your pages, it can negatively affect how your site is indexed.  This also applies to the general user experience.  A user doesn’t want to sit and wait for your site to load so they will leave your page which not only affects your conversions but your overall indexing as well.  Remember, Google is constantly watching how users interact with sites so if they see people consistently leaving your page after short amounts of time, they will deem you less valuable and decrease your ranking potential. How To Increase My Page Speed Optimize Images  – Make sure your images ar...

Look Behind You – How To Earn Backlinks 2019

What Are Backlinks? Backlinks, or Back Links, are links on other people’s sites that leads back to your website.  Search engines value this because if high-quality, high-ranking sites are linking to YOUR site, they assume you must be of similar quality.  The search engines boost your site up the search rankings because they figure you must be providing highly valuable content that will benefit its users. This is why backlinks are  THE  most important factor of SEO today.  Your site can  NOT  rank without backlinks.  Search engines like Google need other valuable sites to confirm yours is just as special and should be seen. How To Get Quality Backlinks First and foremost, your content must be  EXTREMELY  well done and of high value.  No spammy, half-cooked articles full of keyword stuffing or too generic to provide any real answers.  In fact, you want your content to answer questions that a user may have on your speci...

What Is Structured Data?

What Is Structured Data? Structured Data is quite simply the code, or language, in which your website communicates with search engines.  It is the standard format for providing information and classifying that information on a web page.  Search engines scan the structured data of your site to understand how they should interpret your content and distribute it to the world. The better your structured data is formatted, the more likely it is to be featured on search results. Structured Data Example Within the structured data itself, you are able to add enhancements in the code to make it easy for search engines to use in regards to featuring your content as special search results.  As provided by the Google Developer site itself, here is an example of the structured data for a recipe. You can see the clear labels indicating elements within the recipe such as ingredients, cook time, etc.  This format enabled Google to showcase the recipe as a ...

Image Search – Improve It Or Lose It

What is Image Search? Essentially, Image Search is a service provided by Google that allows users to search not by words but by images.  Google improved their image search parameters so now the search results appear as a photo gallery.  There is also a reverse image search, which simply allows you to find where a picture originated. Is Image Search Important for SEO? While it may be almost impossible to assert when a trend will TRULY take root or will fizzle out, users are indeed searching for more images in their results.  After the upgrade by Google, websites actually saw a decline in their web traffic because users no longer had to leave the Google browser to see the images.  The best way to draw a consumer to your site off of image search is to optimize your images and post stronger content than your competitors. How Do I Optimize My Images? First of all, make sure your site provides a good mix of content – video, image and text.  The more val...