When trying to grow an audience, SEO blog writing is a must. However, trying to stuff in too many keywords can easily push your readers away. So content creators and website managers must strive for the best of both worlds.

Does writing blog posts help with SEO? Yes, absolutely. Stick with us to the end of the article because you won’t need SEO blog services after you read it!

What Is Important to Consider for SEO?

Regardless of whether you are running a blog or your blog is just a part of the website you are managing, content marketing drives people to come visit. Here’s a good structural view of what a page must have in order to be indexed and rank properly:

• To be a part of the XML sitemap. (Or, in the case of blog articles, the parent directory part of the sitemap).
• Quick loading speed. The faster your page loads, the better ranked by Google it will be.
• To target specific keywords.
• To resonate with what a person would look to read after typing in these keywords in a search bar.
• Free value upfront.
• No keyword stuffing.
• Proper Meta tags – Meta title and descriptions relevant to what would make the user inclined to click on your article through Google or Bing.
• Proper H1 and H2 tags, good article structure.

There are practically two things that you must achieve to have a good SEO ranking. First, you must make people click on your articles, and second, they must stay for a longer period on your website. We can sum these two things up with impressions CTR (click-through rate) and average session per user in Google Analytics.

Carefully monitor these metrics, and do tests on how to improve them, and in the long run, you will have tremendous success.

Identify the Right SEO Keywords to Target in 3 Simple Steps

Contrary to popular belief, the right keywords can be found with or without the usage of professional tools. When it comes to blog writing for SEO, identifying the keywords of your competitors is very easy. Let’s be smart here.

1. Step one: Find a good article from a competitor on a similar topic.

2. Step two: Copy the text of the article

3. Step three: Check this cool thing out. Paste the well-performing text from your competitors, and you will instantly see the most commonly used keywords in it, by frequency. For example, if you paste this article, you will get these results:

And if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the most used bigrams and trigrams, which are complex keywords:

If that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of help, then you are probably not ready to use more complex keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs because they provide you with a ton of features that might just be too overwhelming.

Aside from content SEO optimization, there are two other aspects we should pay a closer look to, as well.

On-page Optimization

As mentioned, load time and proper URL and website structure are essential to your website getting indexed and your pages ranking properly.

There are things that will slow down your website, and despite all the SEO blog writing you do or pay for, you might not rank as high as you want to. One of these things is the usage of gifs and super-heavy images or videos embedded on your website.

Hit “F12” on your browser while opening your website incognito, and pay close attention to the Network tab.

Then check the size of each element, and if there are any elements above 500kb, that’s bad news. Optimize all the images by converting them to .webp format and reuploading them. That will greatly increase the speed of your site, especially for mobile users using 4 or 5-g networks.

Off-page Optimization

Having a few hundred backlinks from high authority websites will undoubtedly help all of your pages rank higher, regardless of whether they are specifically linked or it’s just your domain.

It’s more important, however, to do guest posting on relevant platforms and websites that can allow you to expand your audience in a similar niche. Always prioritize backlinks not only by domain authority but by the core audience that they can provide you access to.

Building a Better Website Ecosystem

Step up your SEO game by following the tips in this article, and eventually, you will start ranking higher and higher. But in the meantime, make sure not to forget other core aspects of your website like Ad optimization, subscriptions, and Adblock recovery. Luckily, there are services like Publir that greatly automate the process for you. Give it a look!

The post The Top 2023 SEO Strategies That Will Drive More Traffic to Your Website first appeared on Publir.

CTR = (Click Throughs/Impressions)x100

For instance, if 100 people see an ad online, and 5 people click on ‘learn more’ to know more about the product, then that ad has a CTR of 5%. CTR is used to measure whether PPC (Pay Per Click) search results, CTAs on landing pages, and hyperlinks in blog posts and email campaigns are performing well, or not. Click-Through Rate is basically the number of clicks achieved off secured impressions. If you want to improve CTR, you have to overhaul your keywords and match the type, watch out for your ad copy language, and carefully target your audience. 

Why is CTR important?

CTR is an important metric because you can understand your customers, what works and what does not while trying to reach your target audience. Low CTR means you’re targeting the wrong audience, or not persuading them well enough so they click. 

What is a good CTR?

CTR may vary between industries. If you want to find out what a good CTR is for your business, start by researching the average CTR in your industry. Once you understand the industry average, you could take steps to improve your CTR and reach your business goals. 

How do you improve CTR?

Use Long-Tail Keywords

Use long-tail keywords, especially in headings and title tags, because they are highly descriptive and match your content to search intent. On seeing descriptive long-tailed keywords related to what they’re searching for, users are motivated to click on your URL as they think your post might have the information they are looking for. So, to find long-tail keywords that meet user intent, use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest. Plug your seed keyword in the search bar and click on ‘search’. Next, click on ‘keyword ideas’ in the left sidebar, and then select the relevant keywords, before including them in your content. 

Effective Meta Descriptions

Effective meta descriptions are a great way to organically improve your CTR. Snippets of text that appear below your title tag in SERPs, a good meta description can tell users what your page is about, compelling them to click on your post. Use keywords to show your users that your article can solve a problem and has the answers they are looking for. Optimize your meta description by answering questions, making it specific and relevant, and using powerful language like emotionally charged words to elicit responses. Meta descriptions should convince the user that your content is THE solution. Try including a CTA to aid them.

Implementing Structured Data

A great way to ‘speak’ to search engine algorithms, structured data can be implemented using Schema.org to change content into code that search engines can process easily. This can help them display rich, informative, and interactive search results. Commonly called rich snippets, this type of search results attract more clicks as they appear on top of SERPs, are more attractive than plain URLs, and give more information about content at a glance. People love interactive content, and implementing structured data will boost CTR rates. 

Posts With Images

Using images in posts is fairly common, and a great way to organically improve CTR. Images in content boost engagement because they are an important part of your content, appearing in featured snippets and other infoboxes on SERPs. Images also improve the scope of your URL being clicked on, when users look for search results in ‘images’. You can implement certain SEO best practices like alt text addition, and proper image nomenclature for this to work.

Descriptive URLs 

One of the most vital pieces of information shown on SERPs, your page URL needs to be optimized so your organic CTR improves. Make it as descriptive as possible, including keywords in the URL. This shall reinforce what your core topic is all about, showing users that your content is relevant. Keep your URLs short, making them attractive and easy on the eye to get more clicks. Change your URL in permalink settings, if you are a WordPress user. 

Simplify Title Format

Your title tag is a part of the information displayed on SERPs, and you must format it properly. Keep it simple. People usually sift through search results seeking the most relevant one. If your title is simple, catchy, and explains what your post is about you will get more clicks. Leverage your corporate or personal branding to optimize your CTR. If you are already a leader in your niche, users will get the confidence to click on your URL. Don’t frontload your brand, as that can cause your rankings to drop. Ensure your title is clear, and use tools like Avid Demand to preview the way your content will look on SERPs.

Localize Content

When it comes to traffic sources, mobile beats desktop, hands down. Most cellphones have location and map functions turned on, so Google can read locations and provide local solutions. Localized content is great for SMEs that operate in certain areas, and for in-person service businesses. Localized content allows you to target your audience effectively, receiving high-intent customers who are looking for something that you are selling or offering. Add your location in the content, meta-description, and title tag, so you localize your content. Also, list your business on Google My Business ( GMB), so you are on the map when local searches are made. To drive clicks, you must offer relevant information, and your location needs to be in your metadata for that to happen. 

Listicles

Requiring little cognitive effort to process, listicles are loved by all. Including them in your content strategy can help you get more organic clicks. Include numbers in your headline and title tag, making it clear to users that there’s a listicle beyond the click. Listicles also improve your chances of getting featured in snippets. 

A/B Headline Testing On Social Media

Your headline is one of the first reasons users click on your article. Ensure that it resonates with your target audience. Test your headline on social media. Use tools to optimize your headline, and test your headline by sharing the article on different social media platforms. After a couple of days, change your headline title and re-publish the post. Share the new article on social media, waiting for the same number of days before checking engagement rates. The headline which drives the most engagement wins. 

Yoast Review for WordPress Users

A great SEO tool to improve organic CTR, YOAST can help you preview your snippet as it appears on SERPs. Make changes based on recommendations given. You can also see if any keywords get cut off, or your snippet makes sense overall. 

Google Ads for Preview

Like YOAST, the Google AdWords Preview Tool is a great way to preview ads, so you can optimize them for organic CTR for mobile and desktop. See how different ideas work while generating new ones. 

Identifying Winners and Losers

Calculate winners and losers of your current pages, to see which page titles and content types work well or not. Use Google Analytics for this information. Learning what clicks, impressions, CTR, and average SERP position for your pages, as well as bounce rates, sessions, conversions, etc, can tell you what works and what doesn’t. 

Optimize Site Speed

Google is prioritizing page experience as a ranking factor. People won’t stay on your page if your site is slow, and that will affect your CTR. A leap from 1 to 3 seconds in site speed, can increase bounce rates by around 32 percent. 

Final Thoughts

Thus, the above methods should help you improve your CTR. In addition to these methods, using rich snippets, activating breadcrumb navigation, leveraging Google Analytics reports, building high-converting landing pages, and using heat maps to improve site clicks are some other ways you can improve your CTR. Read our blog on ROAS to find out how to maximize your revenue from your ad spending.

The post Top 13 Ways to Improve your Organic Click-Through Rate (CTR) first appeared on Publir.

How to fix the Largest Contentful Paint issue?

Sometimes, when you go to a website, instead of seeing a well-designed homepage, you may get nothing but a blank screen. This can occur as a result of problems with the largest contentful paint element. Simply put, this indicates that if the website’s largest element isn’t entirely loaded, visitors will see nothing but a blank page. This not only degrades the user experience on your website but can also cause visitors to leave right away.

Slower server response times, render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, slower resource load times, and client-side rendering can all contribute to poor largest contentful paint. If your site’s JavaScript and CSS are render-blocking resources, it might result in a poor largest contentful paint.

There are certain steps to fix the largest contentful paint element issues:

• Server response times should be reduced

The most common cause of resources not loading quickly on websites is your hosting plan. A shared hosting package will not provide lightning-fast server response times for most online shops. A sluggish host server makes it impossible to have a fast, responsive website. Aside from hosting, improving your server to handle traffic spikes is a smart approach to minimize LCP element problems. The usage of third-party plugins and technologies might potentially slow down the server response time. It increases the number of resources your site needs to fully load web pages by adding to your code. One of the greatest strategies to keep your LCP scores low is to enable page caching on your website.

• Optimize your images to load quickly

To load any image rapidly without generating any LCP difficulties, make sure it is optimized. Images can be compressed to load faster for all sorts of visitors and internet connections. Individual demands and business objectives must be considered while determining the appropriate compressional ratio. Furthermore, when it comes to images, most website owners make the error of employing a single large image for all screen sizes. Large photos must be optimized so that no additional resources are consumed. After giving several image sizes of the same picture, let the browser determine which image size to use.

• CSS and Javascript components should be optimized

All critical CSS and JavaScript files must be rendered before your browser can load your webpage. If CSS and JavaScript files are not optimized inside your code, this will slow down page load times and result in a low LCP score. Minifying and compressing code is one of the greatest techniques to eliminate superfluous “junk” code from your website in order to minimize file size and enhance page loading rates. Another excellent technique to improve response times and page speed is to remove all non-essential CSS and only use important CSS resources. Once you’ve identified the key CSS resources above the fold, you may experiment with eliminating or decreasing any irrelevant CSS from the code.

• High-priority materials should be preloaded

One thing that can help you speed up page load times and decrease your website’s LCP score is pre-loading important resources. You may preload above-the-fold photos, videos, important CSS, and fonts on your website so that they can be utilized whenever they’re needed without causing a delay later. Reducing the file size of text files like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will enhance your website’s LCP score. As text files are transmitted between the servers and the browser, it also improves loading times.

Why is LCP important for SEO?

Site speed is generally recognized as a ranking factor in the SEO market, but there are a number of reasons for this, and hence a variety of reasons why LCP will have an impact on SEO. We’ll explore five reasons why a decent LCP is vital for SEO and increasing the visibility of your websites to your target audience.

1. It is a measure created by Google

There are other search engines than Google, but because it is one of the most widely used, it is generally the one that businesses aim for first. Furthermore, when it comes to new features and algorithms for SEO, many other search engines like to follow Google’s lead, so it’s always a good idea to listen to the experts.

2. Rankings are influenced by site speed

The speed of a website is an essential aspect of its overall performance, and it is one of the signals that a search engine’s algorithm considers when ranking sites. Bounce rates are greater for sites that take longer to load. Many users will exit a website after three seconds if it has not loaded. Higher bounce rates might lead to lower conversion rates, which can have a detrimental influence on your SERP visibility.

3. Crawling is hampered by slow loading

You may gain a better knowledge of the load time of your web pages by using LCP reporting. This might reveal any areas that need to be improved in order to lower your LCP. This is important since poor page speeds restrict the number of pages a search engine can crawl at once, affecting your indexation. This will have a direct impact on how highly your site ranks in SERPs.

4. User experience is a key SEO ranking element

Page speed is crucial to visitors since it affects their experience on your site. Google has algorithms in place that seek to rank your web pages based on how enjoyable they are. It is an essential part of their algorithm to look at how delightful it is for people to browse your website. After all, they don’t want slow-loading, difficult-to-navigate web pages to appear at the top of their search results.

5. Visitors value content.

The LCP measure accomplishes something that no other metric does: it prioritizes content experience over all other aspects of user experience. Presenting relevant material that is valuable to the visitor has always been a big aspect of SEO and ranking high. This increases your domain authority and convinces the search engine that you’re a useful and reliable source that deserves to rank higher in the SERPs.

What is a good LCP score?

LCP evaluates rendering time, therefore the lower your score, the better, because your users will view the important material sooner. The 75th percentile of page loads, divided across mobile and desktop devices, is an excellent benchmark to measure to verify you’re reaching this objective for the majority of your consumers.

For a good score, LCP should be less than or equal to 2.5 seconds. In this situation, the page will obtain a green score and will pass the test. If your LCP is between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds, you’ll receive an orange grade since your score “needs improvement.” Assume the LCP is longer than 4 seconds. The score is then marked as “bad,” and you must rectify it as soon as possible.

Image source

Final thoughts

Largest contentful paint is a metric that shows how well your website is performing overall. It is the most significant measure for determining your website’s page speed and response time. You may strive for a lower LCP score by going through the many methods we outlined to solve the most contentious paint element issues. 

However, if you fail to monitor LCP and solve issues, it is going to be a major blunder that will harm not only the usability of your site but also your ability to attract consumers in the first place. Moreover, if you will implement the techniques discussed in this post, it will surely increase your LCP scores, enhance user experience, and assist you in meeting your conversion targets.

The post Largest Contentful Paint: A Helpful Metric for Your Website first appeared on Publir.

What Is Black Hat SEO 

Used to boost a page’s ranking in SERPs, Black Hat SEO can result in a site being banned from a particular search engine and its affiliate websites. A good place to check for a list of strategies that are banned by search engines is Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines. A good way to see whether an SEO technique is legit or not is to question whether the work done is adding some value to the user, and answering their search queries or not. If no such thing is happening and despite that, page rankings are increasing, those SEO practices are probably ‘black hat’. This applies to both free and paid search practices. Intentionally or unintentionally, it is best that you avoid black-hat SEO strategies. Here’s a list of some of them so you can quickly identify them during your campaign. 

Purchasing Links 

Backlinks and other relevant links can help Google judge whether your webpage is a legit source of information, helping you appear on top of search results. Don’t buy links, because it doesn’t work anyways and incurs a penalty, both automatic and manual, that could affect either the offending page or your entire website. You can’t possibly fool Google, which easily tracks bought links, since it’s so good at identifying unnatural patterns. 

Free Products in Exchange for Links 

Exchanging, giving, or taking free products or providing discounts/material gratification for links is not allowed. Always make your link a no-follow link, with a rel=” no follow” tag, so it does not impact Google’s ranking algorithm and isn’t considered a link scheme.

Footer Links 

Ubiquitous at the bottom of every webpage, footer space is quite coveted. This is why Google is quick to catch footer links with commercial anchor texts, that twist results. 

Concealed and Irrelevant Links 

Do not try to hide a link or include irrelevant links in a website’s text, or make it blend into the site background, as Google will understand this con and make you pay. It won’t direct traffic to your target audience, cutting down your relevance. Refrain from hiding text behind images, CSS-based off-screen text, 0 font size for texts, etc. 

Spamming Comments Sections 

Don’t share your website link in the comment sections of other websites unless there’s some relationship between the two. Doing so will mark you as a spammer because using the comments section for link building is ineffective and disallowed. 

Using Excessive Anchor Text  

Don’t match your page title every time you share a link. The title and the page have the same goal, and despite implying relevancy it also, unfortunately, appears spammy. Keep anchor text brief, interesting and unique, relate it to the linked-to page, and refrain from keyword stuffing. Do this for both internal and external links. 

Malicious Backlinks 

Do not work Google’s penalty system to your advantage by deliberately linking with websites to drag down your page ranks, because Google has a form to help disavow links. This means that if you have any manual action against your website for unnatural links, and are unable to remove them, you can disavow them using this tool. If you go through your backlinks, remember to remove yourself from bad domains. 

PBN 

Prevalent earlier, but still found quite easily, Private Blog Networks are websites that place a lot of links on other websites. These often low-quality links can affect SERPs. This is essentially called a ‘webring’, and Google absolutely hates these, because they manipulate the latter’s algorithms. 

Keyword Stuffing 

If good keywords were all you needed to rank on top, then you could just fill up your site with a block of keywords instead of sensible content. Google aims to deliver high-quality results, so its priority is semantically-linked keywords in the content. That way, the algorithm finds real good quality content instead of content loaded with keywords, trying to pass off as good content.

Hidden Content 

Not unlike hidden links, this is content that is of the same color as the background and is a strategy that aims to overfill a page with keyword phrases, long-tail keywords, and semantically-linked keywords. Google’s smart algorithm easily catches these hidden keywords in the background because it can easily distinguish them from the keywords in the paragraph. There are many ways in which hidden content can find its way to your website. It could be through guest blogs that are from someone who uses hidden content. Your comment filtering system could mess up, failing to find hidden content. Your site could face hacking, and hackers could do parasite-hosting, i.e flood it with hidden content. Some users could put up hidden content by copying and pasting text with CSS styling from varied sources. Some content is visible to desktop visitors but not to mobile visitors. Such content is not counted as hidden content. 

Spun Articles 

This is just one step above plagiarising content. Spinning includes re-writing and re-hashing content by just changing certain aspects of grammar. Technology or manual labor can do this, and Google quickly catches and immediately penalizes those who spin articles.

Duplicate Plagiarized Content  

This is the ultimate sin. Copying someone else’s content, and passing it off as your own can have heavy legal ramifications. Violating copyright and trademark laws is never a good idea because Google only wants to share quality domains. 

Overloading Snippets With Information 

Don’t load snippets with information just to drive traffic, because there’s a Google support page that detects schema that generates snippets that could be manipulated. 

Cloaking 

Using a flash or animated page that hides information from users, but shows it to Google’s crawlers, is called ‘cloaking’. Heavy penalties can be incurred for practicing this. Another example of cloaking is doorway pages. Designed to rank for certain keywords, they redirect visitors to other pages. They’re also called bridge, entry, gateway, jump, or portal pages. 

Misusing Alt Tags 

Do not try to overpopulate alt tags with keywords, because this can hurt site rankings, dealing your site and its visitors a bad hand. Visually impaired visitors depend on alt tags, as do people whose browsers don’t load the image. They are also useful to search engines trying to decode images. 

Hacked Sites 

An unsecured website leads to a drop in rankings. Google can easily detect malicious code, blocking your site from people using the search engine. Any organic visitors will quickly be dissuaded from visiting your site again. 

Final Thoughts

There’s only one shortcut to success. Hard work. Black hat SEO techniques are harmful to site owners, because they drop rankings, and for site visitors, because it provides them with poor content. This way, the quality of content on the internet falls overall. Stay away from black hat SEO techniques, and if you get caught and penalized, find ways to get back into Google’s good books. Read our blog on SEO insights that are important for a good online presence to find out how to judge your site metrics to work on them so you can rank higher.

The post An Introduction to Black Hat SEO first appeared on Publir.

How to carry out SEO Auditing?

Here are two basic truths about SEO  

• It isn’t as complicated as it is made out to be. 

• Your competitors can really be your allies, in a certain way. 

Stealing is wrong. Taking your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and using them to boost your own performance is a smart business. All companies should keep an eye on their competition, find out what their main rivals are doing. This is especially true in terms of SEO. Trying to upstage your competitors is a healthy business, fostering an innovative environment, preventing complacency, and improving overall productivity. Competitive SEO auditing can help you achieve higher SERP rankings. Instead of diving into a pool of keywords, links and hashing out meaningless content, study your competition, see what works and carry out some efficient SEO. 

Why should you do SEO Auditing?

Suppose you own a candy store. There’s another candy store a couple of blocks away, and people can’t seem to get enough of the new place! Naturally, you’ll be curious as to what makes it click? Is the product better? Decor? Are there better in-store offerings? 

Competitive SEO auditing differs from firm to firm. Your niche, target audience, and business goals, all impact this process. There are some steps which you can take that could help get you an advantage over your rivals. Here they are –

Identify Your Competition

First, find out who you’re up against. Identifying your SEO rivals is important before you try to poach customers. Try to find firms working in and outside your niche. Any site or page that ranks for a keyword that you are interested in, counts as a direct competitor. For instance, if you are manufacturing cycling apparel. Your page might have keywords like “road bike jersey”, “cycling news” or something similar. That means your competition includes other cycling apparel companies, and cycling authority websites like Global Cycling Network, and more. You have to know the keywords you wish to target, before identifying SEO competitors. That requires keyword research. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, by building a client persona to work out what your customer really wants. Use this to get a list of headers, long-tail keywords, and bodies for those topics. Use a tool like the Google Keyword Planner to check keyword viability and data like search volume, and competitiveness. Decide which keywords are giving you the best ROI, those are the ones you should target. On identifying those target keywords, find pages that rank best according to SERP, i.e those in the top 3 positions or even the hallowed ‘zero position’. 

Competition Keyword Analysis

Once you have zeroed in on your competitors, you can proceed to this step to boost your SEO strategy. Analyze the keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t. Find out useful keywords you and your competitor might have overlooked. These could be easier to rank for and might give you good organic traffic, great from an ROI perspective. Focus on your rival’s pages wrt to page or domain authority, traffic, and other metrics. Use any SEO competitor analysis tool like Site Explorer which gives you all the data you need about a competitor’s website by simply plugging their URL in. You can refine your list of keywords, omitting the extra-competitive ones. If you want to improve the SERP ranking for any keyword, beat out sites that are already ranking for it by carrying out a Keyword Gap Analysis. 

Backlink Analysis

SEO is not just about keywords. Competitive SEO auditing needs you to explore your rival’s actions in different areas. To achieve good SERP rankings, curate a good backlink profile, by using the Link Explorer tool. This tool gives you a lot of domain-related data and backlink profiles, based on the URL of a root domain, page, or sub-domain. Compare different profiles, find out what your rivals are doing, and tweak your own backlinks strategy. Who knows, you might find domains that link to your rivals but not you. You can reach out to these people and remedy this. Also, your inbound links might be from different types of websites. If you have a lot of links from blogs that in turn get theirs from eCommerce sites and similar sources, you might notice such websites ranking higher than yours. That calls for tweaking your backlinks profile.

Content Analysis 

Glance through your competitor’s web pages, check their content quality. See whether it is relevant to your industry. See whether the content answers basic user questions because search engines always show the best answers to users. The more comprehensive your content, the more your pages will show up whenever users type something into a search bar. 

Dive into your industry, provide expert opinions. Your content needs to be comprehensive but beware of it turning boring. This stage of competitive SEO auditing needs a fair bit of work, you can’t use an SEO analysis tool here. You have to read your competitor’s content and compare the quality with your own, to get an idea of what can be improved. 

User Experience Analysis

For search engines like Google, user experience is a vital ranking factor, and the search engine favors sites that provide a pleasant user experience across devices. When you’re carrying out a competitive SEO audit, consider user experience, checking how mobile-friendly your rival’s sites are. Remember. User experience doesn’t mean a complex website. If highly ranked competitors with relatively simple websites are consistently outperforming you, then it’s cause for concern. In that case, you’ll need to find out what your site lacks in terms of user experience. 

Don’t Forget Social Media

How is social media related to SEO? Well, not directly, but indirectly, the way a company’s pages perform can give you an indication of why their sites are ranked higher by Google. It’s simple. If a company has a large number of followers on Instagram/Facebook, these same users would automatically add on to the number of people searching for the company’s pages on Google. Keep an eye on your rival’s activities on social media platforms to draw a correlation between their performance on those platforms and that on Google’s rankings. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, you have to find your SEO competitors, the keywords they target, the topics covered, and the backlinks used. Such data can help you draw up a plan to beat the said competition. Keyword Gap Analysis, Top Content Analysis, Google SERP, and Link Gap Analysis can help you find data to bolster your SEO efforts and find an edge over competitors. Always analyze and audit your competitor’s SEO because as the old saying goes, ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. 

Read our blog on the best SEO monitoring tools to find a list of nifty ways to conduct fruitful SEO analysis. Also don’t miss our blog on link building, and how it can boost your site ranking. 

The post Competitive SEO Auditing – Here’s What You Should Know first appeared on Publir.

Different Areas Of Seo

On-Page SEO

This is about building content to push your rankings. You need to incorporate keywords into your content and web pages. Your content metatags and titles should be on point, as should your keywords. You shouldn’t stuff your content, and it should be concise and well-written.

Off-Page SEO 

This refers to the optimization processes that happen off the website. For this you need to build and foster online relationships with people, creating content that they love. It lays the groundwork for eventual SEO success. 

What’s The Deal With SEO

SEO is actually quite simple. It needs small changes, based on the bigger ones that the search engines announce. Such changes make a difference to overall site rankings and SEO strategies. Such changes may not come frequently, but when they do it makes sense to be prepared for them. In a broader perspective, SEO insights or best practices, or whatever you’d like to call them, are there to serve as a guideline to tackle problems that occur on the fly. 

SEO Strategies to Follow

Page Title, Meta Description, URL, and Tags – Should Be Thoroughly Formatted

Under 70 characters, and with a maximum of 3 long-tail keywords, the most important keyword should be the first. You should use pipes (|) to separate the keywords. The page’s meta description shouldn’t exceed 150 characters and must include 2 of the keywords that the page title uses. A good meta description gives the reader a reason to visit your website. Stuffing keywords is not good, rather, add them so the content seems conversational. The first keyword should also appear in the webpage’s URL. If you’re using more keywords, separate them by dashes (-). Don’t forget to include at least one or two H1 heading tags, using the first two keywords of the web page title. 

Again, stuffing isn’t recommended. Rather, weave them into the content carefully. H2 heading tags should also be there, to be placed under each H1 tag. 

Know Where Your Traffic Comes From – Social Media, Search, or Direct Visits

Which sources are you getting the most traffic from? Via this metric, you can get website visitors based on metrics like social media, search, and direct visits, individual, tagged marketing campaigns, etc. Search traffic can also be broken down further. A lot of analytics solutions track what part of your SEO-related visits come from Google, Bing, or Yahoo. The data you get can help you make adjustments catering to different requirements and variables, according to the search engine. You have to monitor traffic sources to analyze where your audience is coming from, what they’re interested in, and what kind of content they are clicking on. 

Which Keywords Attract The Most Audience? Find Them And Put Them To Use

The keywords that your audience uses to visit your site are important. You need to track what part of search traffic originates from which of the keywords that you are aiming for. These results can help you formulate your keyword strategy. If a keyword is being repeatedly used to direct traffic to your website, pay attention to it, and build your strategy around it. You can tag and track campaigns using other software tools like SpyFu, so you can get a better idea of where your traffic is originating from if you are looking for organic search traffic sources. 

Are You Using Images Properly

If you are incorporating images into your website, match their file name with one of the page title’s keywords. The alt text in the image should tally with the image’s file name and the page title keyword. Dashes (-) are to be used when separating words in the picture filename, but not between words in the alt text. If you find changing an image file name tough, use a keyword from the page title to change the image’s alt text. 

Mobile Or Desktop? What Are Your Traffic Sources

Today, more people use mobile devices to browse content. There are more mobile searches than desktop searches. If you can track the devices that your visitors use, you can adjust and optimize their experience and make sure they enjoy it. As we look toward the future, mobile devices are going to play a big role in SEO. Tracking traffic by devices can help you create more relevant, user-friendly content.

Always Keep Up With Metrics That Measure Engagement 

If visitors come to your site, that’s just half the battle won. If you want to convert visitors into leads and customers, you need to calculate a few metrics. It is important to measure the engagement of visitors if they land on your page. The first metric, bounce rate, will tell you what percentage of visitors have left your site without navigating to any other page. Another metric, time on page, will tell you the approximate time an average site visitor spends on your page. A third metric, pages per visit, calculates how many individual pages your average visitors end up viewing. 

Internal and Cross Links 

When it comes to internal links, one or two on the page, linking to relevant pages should be used. The keywords to use in the anchor text for each link should be from the list of target keywords. For cross-linking pages, at least 3 internal links should be used, with the anchor text again containing keywords from the page that you are linking to. 

Track Micro and Macro Conversions 

You need conversions, otherwise, engagement makes no difference. You need to know whether search engine traffic is taking the action you want when they visit your website. Web analytics systems can distinguish between micro and macro conversions. The former measures steps on the way to your end goal, like visits to your pricing page, lead conversion, or staying on your site for a fixed period of time. Macro conversions oversee actual wins, like client conversions or sales. Both have to be closely monitored, as they can help you realize what efforts work and what don’t.

Finally, Fix Broken Links and Errors 

A website contains broken links, both internal and external. There may be errors experienced by users if they enter the redirect loop. There might be some 404 errors for users who encounter missing pages, and even Google may run into ‘crawl errors’ while trawling through your site. These small things can directly impact SEO, negatively. Track them constantly, so you can fix them on the fly. 

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, the above SEO strategies and insights can help you, but they aren’t all there is to SEO. There are several tools that can help you monitor your website, and analyze data to craft a successful SEO strategy. Read our blog about it here. SEO needs dedication, and it isn’t a ‘set it and forget it, kind of topic. Keep reading up regularly on new updates to stay abreast of trends, and implement them immediately to ensure your website viewers have a seamless experience.

The post SEO Insights That Are Invaluable If You Want A Good Online Presence first appeared on Publir.

In the early days of the internet, marketers had a field day. They generated hundreds of relevant keywords and “stuffed” them into their content and whether the content made sense grammatically or not. As a result, the page would rank well on Google. 

Well, that is not the case anymore. Now your content not only has to be relevant it also has to be grammatically correct and make sense. And it has to be in context to the keywords used and what the consumer is searching. This is where semantic search comes in. Semantic search connects the context of your content with search intent to seek out the most meaningful content for users.

What is Semantic Search?

This term refers to the process search engines employ to figure out the intent and contextual meaning of search queries in order to provide results closest to what you expected. 

All companies use SEO to climb up the search ranks at Google. Marketers have always populated the company’s blogs and website with predicted keywords to make those pages rank high on Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs. Semantic search has leveled the playing field, enabling smaller firms that lack big advertising budgets can rank higher in search.

This has also ensured that the quality of the content is high and relevant, thus revolutionizing how SEO is performed. With search engines contextualizing meanings and probing the intent behind search terms, the process has become more complex and algorithms nowadays are more complex. For instance, if you typed “WordPress vs GoDaddy” a few years ago then you’d get the two sites as search results. Now you’ll get that plus posts discussing differences and user opinions about each. All that matters is that the user should get the best results for their search terms.

How Does Semantic Search Affect SEO? 

It Requires Content to be More Thematic

Semantic search always looks at the bigger picture. This means taking a step back from literal keywords and looking at themes or topics to try and be relevant to the user. So if you are a marketer for a hypothetical communication app, called ‘TeamChat’ you know that customers are also going to search for keywords like ‘TeamChat vs Flock’ or ‘TeamChat vs Slackware. You can also include content about how communications apps have risen in prominence over the recent past or what the best features of a good communication app are. You could talk about the importance of smooth team communication and even discuss rival applications as well. The idea is to ensure your content is centered around a theme rather than a single product or topic.

Identifies and Discards Low-Quality Content 

Keyword stuffing in your blogs or on your website won’t cut it anymore. Semantic search is going to sift through your content and omit anything even remotely unnecessary.  You need to ensure that your content is not only of the highest quality but also isn’t misleading, overtly sales-y, and creates some value for the reader. For example, if you run an online sneaker store you could curate content about how to take care of white sneakers that get muddy. If in a blog post about the same you start deviating and concentrate on the leather quality of the sneakers, search engines won’t rank that particular page. 

Gives Marketers a Better Understanding of Search Intent 

Why are users surfing content related to your brand? Not all of them are product buyers. Some might be curious to learn more about your company and its principles. Others may simply be carrying out market research. This helps content curators craft their content accordingly so the consumer doesn’t get lost in a flood of unnecessary information.

The Introduction of Semantic HTML

Semantic HTML has become very popular for optimizing your site. Semantic markups refer to using markup language like HTML to provide information about each element in any document by selecting a number of markup elements and separating the markup from the visual presentation of elements present in the document. The way code is written is being revamped, so to speak.

Familiar old HTML elements like <span> and <div> do not indicate contents. Semantic tags like <article>, <footer> or <header> can give you a better idea of what these elements contain.

Increased Competition for the FEATURED SNIPPET Position

One of the most desired SERP features is position zero, or the featured snippet, and getting this position is based on semantic search. To bag this position you need to show Google that your web page provides the most direct and relevant answer to a search query. If you want to be on the top organically then you need to be on the featured snippet. To maximize your chances of landing this top spot you have to dig out the most frequently asked questions in your industry space and find out which of them is best related to the featured snippet slot. 

Search your desired keywords, then explore the article that is currently occupying the snippet spot. Comb for visuals, lists, headings, etc., and try to format your content similarly. Finally, write the text that answers direct questions and structure your sentences to read easily and naturally.

The Importance of Being a Knowledge Graph Entity

Everyone uses distinct search terms. Semantic search depends on a web of people, places, ideas, concepts, etc., and tries to establish connections between them. Because of this, becoming a Knowledge Graph Entity can be very useful. If you can convert your brand page into a Knowledge Graph Entity you may gain a place in SERP features like knowledge cards or knowledge panels. At the cost of some minimal organic traffic, you can give searchers whatever they want to know about your business from the SERP page which gives you a place of visibility and authority. 

Structured Data is the Need of the Hour

SEO-optimized content should be easy to read and have a natural flow. Clear web pages increase confidence for search engines. Structured markups help search engines grab better content. Structured data markups add annotations to information already present on web pages.

Conclusion

In conclusion, search engines are constantly adding semantic features so they can understand user intent better. Digital marketers and content creators will have to keep pace with constantly changing algorithms so any content can provide relevant answers to user questions.

Now it is all about topics and not about high-volume keywords. Long-tail and related keywords and quality content are very important. That is how user browsing experience will improve and ultimately people will visit your web page and blog not only to buy something but also to learn and expand their knowledge about a particular industry.

The post What is Semantic Search and How Does it Affect SEO? first appeared on Publir.