All posts by SEO and Link Building Blog

healthcare seo

9 Actionable SEO Tips for Healthcare Companies

Medical companies want their name at the top of a search engine’s results page. 

Why is that? Because people use search engines to find information about local businesses, including healthcare providers!

Using healthcare SEO practices can help a company go from unpopular to the top provider in town. 

If you’re interested in learning how SEO can help you in your marketing strategies, keep reading to see how it could change the way you do business.

Healthcare SEO Tips

In the medical field, there is always a lot of competition. Using SEO, or search engine optimization, practices to help you rise above the rest will help you in your business. Check out these 9 tips to help improve your SEO rankings.

1. Choose the Right Keywords

One of the biggest things to remember when starting out in SEO is that the keywords really do matter. You don’t want to guess around with this because without good keywords, your whole process will fall through.

Make a list that is comprehensive and compiles all of the terms you think people would search for relating to your business. You can even test this online to see how many monthly searches certain terms have from users.

80% of internet users have searched for something related to health online at some point and this percentage is likely going to continue growing. You need to have keywords that make sense for people to find your business information and content.

Try to find keywords that get between 200 and 10,000 searches locally each month. After this, you can naturally use these terms throughout your content.

2. Create Content That is Unique and Original

Content that is unlike anyone else’s content is going to set you apart. A lot of healthcare organizations have the same information as their competitors do on their websites, but this may be boring and easy to overlook for the average consumer.

Educate your audience with good content and highlight all of your expertise. This helps you to gain rankings in the search engine and will help you attract a wider group of people.

Don’t shy away from publishing case studies, interviews, videos, photos, infographics, medical journals, or anything else that you think will add to the conversation about your type of business in healthcare.

Think about the types of questions you are typically asked and discover a way to turn it into content. You know this information is being sought after, so why not take the time to make it accessible?

3. Take Advantage of Local Search Marketing

Many local searches are done on smartphones because most people have smartphones! You want to take advantage of this as a marketing opportunity. 

Make sure that your healthcare website is SEO friendly for mobile users. Potential patients can find you online with their phones, but if they can’t easily use the website, they will go to a competitor’s website instead.

Another thing to remember is that your contact information should be easily accessible online. Double check that search engines have that information, such as phone number, address, and company name, as soon as possible.

4. Utilize Social Media Accounts

In today’s world, social media is a big deal. People use social media to stay in touch with friends, but also to stay in touch with businesses they like.

Social media helps you drive traffic to your website from an audience that you may not able to reach otherwise. For a healthcare company, there are a lot of things that you can talk about on social media that likely will be of interest to others.

Search engines consider a lot of different factors when they are reviewing your website. Social media is part of that consideration! Impactful social media helps show that you are credible, communicative, and collaborative.

When updating social media, make sure that the content is the focus. It is better to have twenty great posts than a hundred terrible posts.

5. Make a Site Map for Visitors

A site map may seem silly and not a lot of site visitors will likely use it, but it is still important. The reason for this is that search engines will appreciate it.

A search engine sees a site map as a literal map, which helps them figure out what your page is all about, how to navigate the page, and where to find the content.

It is a good idea to use those keywords that we talked about previously in your headings here (as well as everywhere else they naturally arise!) because they increase your rankings.

6. Understand Conversion Rate Optimization

A healthcare website can figure out how many times visitors do certain things on the website. This is called the conversion rate.

For instance, you can find out how many times your website visitors are refilling their prescriptions or filling out a specific form.

Conversion rate optimization helps you make this amount higher, which means more people are actually using your page. This helps you get more patients and that helps you get more money in the long run. 

7. Allow Guests to Post on Your Website

Other medical professionals can guest post on your website or blog. This means that they come onto the blog and write something, in their own words, that you can post for them.

Let them share a link to your website with their social media profiles or on their website for an extra SEO boost.

If you are able to get more interaction with other websites, your website is going to rise in the rankings faster. It is showing the search engine that other websites like your website, so that must mean it is pretty good.

8. Guest Blog on Someone Else’s Website

Another option is for you to post on another medical practitioner’s website! 

You can guest post to talk about your own practice, something interesting in the medical field, or anything else that is related to what you want to get across to the audience. It helps engage a connection.

Sharing on other professional pages helps you to build credibility and a better reputation in the online field.  

9. Optimize for Mobile Users

As stated previously, a lot of people use their smartphones to search for things online. This includes local businesses or even medical information in general.

Optimization for mobile phones is crucial. You need to make sure your website works on mobile phones, but also that your images, videos, and content are optimized.

This helps things load faster and look cleaner for the consumer.

Your mobile site may need to look a little different than your general website for this to work and that’s fine. As long as it works and gets across all of your wonderful content, that’s what matters most.

Update Your Marketing Strategy

Some of these healthcare SEO strategies may not seem like they would make a big difference, but they can make some major changes. When you put a lot of small steps together, they can create something much larger! 

If you’re looking for some more information on SEO practices, check out our blog post to see if there is something else that may be a benefit to your healthcare business. 

content audit template

A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing a Quick SEO Content Audit

It’s no secret that SEO is an essential tool for a business in 2019 to succeed. That said, SEO isn’t cheap. It’s growing into an $80 million market and this means the competition is tighter than ever before.

If you’re looking to ensure you get your money’s worth and all your SEO strategies work, it’s best to start with a good content audit template. That way, you can get rid of those that don’t add more value to your online presence.

Do you want to know how to do a content audit? Read on and learn from this guide today.

1. Make a Spreadsheet of Your Content Assets

The first step to complete the audit is to gather all your content. You can use a crawling tool to know all the URLs within your own website. Once you gather them up, you have the means of downloading it as a CSV file by exporting it.

Once you’re done with the export, use a Spreadsheet program. Leave a lot of columns since they’re for the data you’ll gather in the next step. Another good alternative is to use content inventory and audit template available online.

These spreadsheets aren’t the only way to organize your data. If you’re using WordPress, you can use the Content Audit plugin instead. This will enable you to make content inventories in the Edit screens while using the platform.

Always remember that you should go for the method you’re most comfortable with. Don’t try to use anything that sounds too complicated for your expertise. If you do, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

2. Gather Asset Data

This step will help you fill out the aforementioned blank columns. Depending on the goals you set for your audit, the data points you need to gather will vary. You also affect the necessary data by the level of complexity you want.

The set of data you need to collect might look troublesome due to their sheer number. But it’s important to take note that you aren’t required to compile all. The truth is that you have the means of achieving your goals without the need for a lot of data points.

As soon as you’re done picking the data points, you can label each column in your spreadsheet. This will enable you to start data collection. With a limited number of data pieces, you can complete your audit without neglecting your other tasks.

Don’t put too much worry when you’re trying to audit your content. You can always go back and add more to your own analysis once you get more time. Regardless, you can go through your list and assign a score for each page depending on what metrics you prioritize.

How to Set a Rating Scale

You can assign an A-F rating for each page you have on your website. The pages that get an A score are your best-performing pages. Those that earn an F score are the things you might need to remove in the near future.

Alternative: Use the Google Search Console

Add a note on your spreadsheet to show the date of this audit. This will help in making future audit plans easier to do. You can always use the Google Search Console to get more organized data for your audit.

Once you’re there, you can click on the Search Analytics. Select the Pages options and check the Clicks, Impressions, and CTR. This will give you a snapshot of how well your pages are performing.

Do you need to export this data? If so, you can click the “Download” button at the bottom part of the screen. It will download the information as a CSV file that you can add to your spreadsheets.

3. Analyze the Data

The size of your website will play a big part in determining the duration of the data-gathering process. It isn’t unusual for your audit to take more than a few days, weeks, or months. As soon as you complete the audit, you should start putting all the information to good use.

You need to make a set of recommended actions as soon as the audit finishes. That will help in ensuring that you get the most out of the process. To do that, you should look into the data you collected and draw some conclusions.

Add another column to your spreadsheet—Action. In this step, you decide what happens to each content asset you rated. You can do something like:

Keep

This is the type of content you want for your website. That means your rating should be something in between A and B. Update this rating on a regular basis to see if you can improve it in time.

Update

The assets under this action are decent content. But they need more improvements to ensure that their ratings go up in the future. In most cases, the content rating is between C and D.

Remove

These are the content you need to get rid of from your website. They’re at the bottom tier of your content since they’re often rated between E and F. If you don’t get rid of these soon, you might hurt your own SEO efforts.

Consolidate

These are the type of assets that are either too short or lacking. They aren’t bad, but it will get better if you combine it with another. Always ensure that you’re making a complete 301 Redirect for all the posts consolidated to ensure it doesn’t lose SEO impact.

Get Your Content Audit Template Today!

It’s always important to take note that is no hard and fast rules when doing your content marketing audit. That’s why it’s important to take a good look at the data you gathered so far. This helps in identifying trends that could help you get better in deciding what to do.

Avoid any mistakes and use a content audit template. It will help simplify the process and let you repeat the process as often as needed.

Do you need more help with your SEO efforts? If so, read our guide here on how backlinks work today.

outbound links

Outbound Links: How to Use Them and Why You Should

Search engine optimization is a process with a lot of moving parts. Different elements of an SEO campaign affect one another, while each one requires its own maintenance. 

Before you begin to set different pieces of your SEO campaign in motion, it’s essential that you understand what they are and why you’re using them. There are over 200 ranking factors used in search engine algorithms.

It would be impossible to account for each one, which is why most SEOs focus on what they know to be the most important factors. Keywords and content creation are two that typically stand out.

Another essential piece of SEO is the presence of outbound links. We’re going to cover these links, explaining what they are, why they’re important, and how you can optimize for them.

Understanding Outbound Links

In order to understand outbound links and why they’re valuable, it’s important that you know some foundational SEO. We’ll do a brief overview of where links fit into your search rankings.

Indexing, Links, And Rankings

When search engines begin to catalog the sites on the web, they do so by following links from one page to another. 

Things called “crawlers” move about the web, cataloging relevant information about each site. This is the process that gathers all of the data used to rank sites against relevant keywords. When one site is cataloged, the crawler moves to another site through a link. 

The description above is oversimplified. There aren’t conscious beings moving through the web, sucking up information and sending it back to the mother-search engine. That said, you can use that image as a pretty accurate analogy. 

The important thing to keep in mind is that links are an essential piece through which crawlers gather information. 

The Value Of Links

Think about the intention of search engines for a second. These are sites that aim to provide the most relevant and useful information to their users. If one search engine’s results begin to get less relevant to keyword searches, users will begin migrating to other search engines.

In order to find what users think is valuable, they take metrics that clearly align user activity. Google business reviews, for example, are a really important factor in search rankings. Additionally, Google’s AI has the ability to look through comments for context clues as they relate to peoples’ feelings toward businesses. 

Links are another huge piece of this. Links form a sort of web of niches. Sites within one niche are likely to link to one another in and form a nexus of information. 

Sites that get linked to more heavily are ones, we can assume, that are more objectively valuable to users and sites in that niche. You can think of links as votes in the democracy of search rankings.

The Linking Democracy

One link to a particular site can be thought of as a vote in favor of that site’s search ranking. As most democracies are, this one is imperfect. Links from sites that are more popular and powerful will give you more value than ones from smaller sites. 

Ford, for example, sends out more valuable links than your local auto dealer. There are two kinds of links to think about: inbound and outbound links.

Inbound Links

Inbound links are ones that are directed from other sites to your site. They are a nod of respect from that site to yours, and they are very valuable. 

There are a number of means used to acquire inbound links. Something called “guest posting” is common. This is the process of offering to write a blog post or article for another site in exchange for the opportunity to include a link back to your own site. 

You can also reach out to websites that you feel could use your links. If you have an article describing the inside of a carburetor, for example, you might want to reach out to an auto site that might be lacking that information. 

Sites begin to gain more natural inbound links as they get more popular. In other words, you won’t need to try to acquire these links when you have more natural traffic, because others will simply find you online and link to you here and there. 

Outbound Links

Outbound links are links from your site to other sites. While they aren’t a direct measure of how others feel about your site, they help to situate you in the context of a niche. 

Outbound links, just as inbound links, are considered when the search engine is ranking your site. You should try to include outbound links in your content whenever relevant. Even if no linking opportunities come to mind as you’re creating content, comb through the writing after it’s finished and look for opportunities to link.

Additionally, you should be sure to link naturally. Don’t go out of your way to link in ways that aren’t natural to the writing. Artificial intelligence is surprisingly clever and feels out writing that’s natural versus writing that isn’t. 

Sites You Should Link To

The process of outbound linking is a difficult one as well. While it may seem like something you can do mindlessly, this isn’t the case. 

First and foremost, you want to make sure that you aren’t linking to sites that are competing for the same keywords as you. More specifically, don’t link to pages that are optimized for the same keywords that your site optimizes for. 

Further, you should try to get situated in a network of powerful and relevant sites in your niche. So, while your friend might have a great interior design site that could use inbound links, it might not be the best idea to link to that site. 

Instead, link to sites that provide the most value to your content. These are typical links to sites that are well-established and high-ranking.

Want To Learn More About Linking?

Cultivating a good network of inbound and outbound links is an integral piece of good SEO. It’s important that you know what you’re doing. 

Visit our site to get more information about linking in general, as well as tips on using links to rank highly. 

 

social media marketing

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Your Business

The digital age has pushed businesses into moving a lot of their marketing efforts to online platforms. Most of this takes place on social media. More than 90% of businesses say that they are using social media to market their companies and generate revenue. 

These high number of digital marketing users aren’t on purpose. Businesses have found out the power of targeting their audience for low-cost by using campaigns on social media.

Keep reading if you’re looking to grow and improve your business but haven’t considered building an online presence. Here are 10 benefits of using social media marketing for your business.

1. Promote Brand Awareness

One important half of business is actually building it- putting systems into place, getting your branding together, etc. The other important part is getting people to know and pay attention to you. If you haven’t done the second part then the first part becomes obsolete. 

Social media marketing will help you out with the second part. You can promote your brand to large numbers of people at one time and attract supporters. The more you make your audience aware of your brand, the more popular and familiar it becomes.

2. Engage With Audience

The internet has thinned the veil between big corporations and consumers. Nowadays, people are used to seeing and hearing their favorite brands interact with customers. This creates general trust and admiration from buyers.

You can use social media marketing as a means to engage with your audience to build genuine connections. This can be done through simple tasks, such as answering comments on your social media pages, asking poll questions or re-sharing people’s content that is relevant to your brand.

3. Gather Consumer Data

While you are engaging and connecting with your audience, there is a good chance you’ll begin to see various trends and behavioral patterns from buyers. This is because social media marketing is a great, affordable advertising tool for gathering information on your target audience without seeming too intrusive.

People will typically tell you what they like or don’t like through tweets and hashtags. They’ll share content that is, either, loveable or controversial. Either way, you’ll figure out how to get their attention.

Some social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, even provide business accounts with inside analytics on how their audience is acting and responding. These user insights can help you to improve your marketing strategy for the future.

4. Spread Shareable Content

The online world is a content-driven environment. Businesses who produce quality content that is evergreen and shareable are usually the ones in the lead. This content is used as a vehicle to go out and bring people back to your company’s pages.

The whole point is to make shareable content that is relevant and valuable to your audience. The content will reach the eyes of more people the more times it is shared. 

Make sure you leave some sort of watermark or link on your published content so that people are able to find you as the original source. This is important because the internet moves so fast that it’s easy for creators to get lost in the sharing process.

5. Drive Traffic To Website

So you’ve probably built a website and now you’ll just wait for the visitors to start rolling in. Build it and they’ll come, right?

Well, not quite. 

You can speed up the process by using social media marketing to send people to your website or landing page. When you make a post, for instance, add a call-to-action (CTA) and a link for your followers. Give them clear and concise instructions.

All of your content should have a purpose. And when it comes to posts that are intended to drive traffic, everything should be a seamless process for leads. It would be beneficial to get in the habit of including links often and keeping them visible and easy to reach.

6. Provide Customer Service

Most customer complaints should be handled in private via email or phone. However, there will be times where an angry customer comes along to bash your business in the public eye. This is the perfect time for you to turn foes into fans.

Take these opportunities to provide exceptional customer service, even if it’s right in the comment section. This will build trust around your company’s reputation when it comes to treating your audience with respect.

7. Make Announcements

One of the great advantages of social media is that most people check it often. If you’ve built a solid following of your target audience, this is another great place to keep them updated.

It’s convenient to use social media marketing for certain announcements, such as if your business is having a sale or making changes to some policies. You can also answer any questions quickly.

8. Find Collaborations

Collaborating with other brands is a great way to increase your company’s reach and grow your audience. Social media is the perfect place to find other businesses that are willing to collaborate for the same purposes.

Once you’ve found a brand to collaborate with, consider running giveaways and contests. The customer participation from these events will help to get your name out quickly.

9. Research Competition

Besides being friendly with other brands, social media marketing can help you to keep an eye on what they’re up to as well. You’ll be able to research and study competition marketing efforts and dissect their influence.

This will to give you a competitive edge and keep you in the running to gaining a larger customer base.

10. Keep Marketing Budget Low

This last benefit may be one of the most important to businesses with smaller advertising budgets. Most of the social media marketing is free. 

You can build a loyal audience, spread brand awareness, drive traffic and generate sales without spending a penny. This is valuable if you are just starting out and want to build authority around your brand in an affordable way.

Ready To Use Social Media Marketing Successfully For Your Business?

There are many ways social media marketing can help promote and scale your business. If you strategy effectively, you can achieve this in a shortened amount of time.

One key that is important is eventually getting people back to your offers. If you’re looking for more assistance with turning your social media audience into leads, consider checking out this link for help.

blog and make money

How to Blog and Make Some Money

According to Tech Client, websites that feature a blog have a 434 percent better chance of ranking on search engines.

That’s right — 434 percent.  

Blogging doesn’t just help boost your search engine rankings, though. As more people find your website through posts, you can also make money while blogging. 

Here are nine tips to help you successfully blog and make money! With these strategies, you can increase the traffic to your website — and the money in your pocket!

Pre-Gaming Strategy

Before you can make that extra blogging money, there are a few steps you need to take first. Don’t forget to:

  • Set up your blog
  • Discover your niche topic
  • Consider your target audience, including their needs and wants
  • Promote your content and attract visitors to your blog using social media

Alright, now you’re ready to blog and make money!

9 Ways To Make Money While Blogging

Now that your blog is set up, you’re ready to roll. Feel free to choose one or a combination of these nine strategies.

1. Advertise with Targeted Ads

Using Google AdSense, you can display high-quality ads that are also relevant to your target audience. These ads are provided by online advertisers trying to market their own product or service.

You can choose which ads you want to display on your website and where they appear on the page.

There are two types of ads you can choose to display. These banner ads appear in sidebars or within the page content:

  • With PPC, or pay per click ads, you get paid when a website visitor clicks on the ad.
  • With CPM, or cost per mile (or 1,000 impressions) ads, you get paid based on the number of visitors who see your ad.

In addition to the Google AdSense platform, there are other options available such as Media.net, RevContent, and PopCash.

Advertisers will bid for this coveted ad space on your blog. By displaying these ads, you can make extra blogging money while controlling what displays on the page. 

2. Add Affiliate Links to Content

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, affiliate marketing experienced a 9.2 percent increase in 2017. Generating billions of dollars in sales, affiliate links are a great way you can make money while blogging!

Using affiliate links, you can suggest another company’s products or services on your blog. When done well, you can offer readers the value of a resource that’s relevant to their interests. 

To use affiliate links, you feature a link to another website where readers can sign up for a service or purchase a product. This link will feature a unique code, so the affiliate company can recognize where the lead originated from. Then, you receive a commission for generating that lead. 

You can also use affiliate links through banner ads on your blog. As readers click these ads and make a purchase, you gain a percentage of the revenue!

3. Sell Private Advertising Space

If you don’t want to use affiliate links or a platform like Google AdSense, try private advertising space. These can be banners, links, or buttons on your posts that lead to another website.

These also include writing guest blogs or sponsored posts where the advertiser pays for a “brought to you by” mention on your blog.

Check out these tips to guest blogging to improve your rankings. 

4. Offer Online Courses

Blogging is a means of sharing your personal expertise and experiences. If you’re interested in making money while blogging, you can leverage this expertise by offering your audience online courses.

As you share your knowledge, you also increase your credibility and authority in your niche market.

This will help you stand out from competitors and build your audience even more!

5. Market Your Business

According to Social Media Examiner, blogs that post every day get five times more traffic than those who don’t.

Whether you offer a product or service, blogging helps you promote your company to potential customers all around the world. Improving your search engine optimization (SEO) will increase traffic to your website, so you can market your business to even more customers. 

With blogging, you’re increasing sales while keeping costs low for an awesome ROI.

Here are some additional tips for generating SEO traffic for your blog. 

6. Sell E-books

E-books are another way to market your business and leverage your expertise.

By selling an e-book or workbook on your website, you can offer readers unique content while making a little extra blogging money.

7. Offer Consulting

As your authority and credibility grow, more people will be interested in your opinion and learning from your experiences. They may even ask for advice.

You can leverage your credibility and experience by offering other companies consulting services. As a result, you can blog and make money while providing your readers with additional value.

8. Host Giveaways

Giveaways can generate excitement and engagement on your blog. Similar to affiliate links, you can promote another company’s product or service while they pay you a small fee.

You can also host a giveaway that depends on referrals. The more visitors share on social media, the more times they’re entered to win. 

That way, you’re expanding your reach, generating a buzz, and growing your audience base.

9. Sell Memberships

Offer unique content to your readers through exclusive memberships. This can include in-depth posts and videos, a forum, or tool they can’t find anywhere else.

With exclusive memberships, you can provide additional value to your readers while making extra blogging money, too!

Blog and Make Money With These Strategies

With these nine tips to blog and make money, you can turn your blog into a new revenue stream. Try these strategies out for yourself and see which ones work best for your blog and audience. 

Don’t forget, your blog relies on unique, regularly updated content. With strong SEO and marketing strategies, you can keep readers eager for content and engaged with your business. 

Check out our website tips for more helpful blogging strategies.

use seo practices

Top Reasons to Use SEO for Business

Ever wondered if you should invest more on SEO? Do you think you’ve done enough to gain traffic and boost conversions to earn a decent profit?

If you haven’t, now is the time to reconsider. Businesses in the US alone spend $80 billion on SEO services. This investment includes a hefty local SEO campaign, on-page optimization, and content curation for backlinking. All of this helps to ensure your business stays competitive in the digital age.

Are you still on the fence on whether you should use SEO practices?

Don’t worry, we’ve got more reasons down below. Read these benefits and get motivated with your SEO efforts today:

1. A Good SEO Strategy Improves PPC Quality Scores

There’s no denying that Quality Score is important for the success of PPC campaigns.

But did you know that your website content determines your final Quality Score? If you use good SEO strategies, you will make good products and services pages that have relevant keywords in your website.

If you’re using text ad messages, you can align it with your website content. If you drive more PPC traffic to these relevant landing pages, your quality score will see a lot of improvement. This reduces the cost per click while improving your PPC ad performance.

2. SEO Increases Market Access

Did you know that more than half of people using search engines only click on results showing up on the first page of the results page?

If you aren’t putting in efforts in an SEO strategy, you’re more likely to miss a lot of opportunities to make sales. Statistics don’t lie—Google owns about 92% of the entire search engine market across the globe.

Get a professional to help you optimize your business website for Google’s algorithm at least. Once you do, you will see the difference over time. Don’t delay and start using SEO practices as soon as you can.

3. SEO has a Huge Impact on the Research/Buying Cycle

The good thing about SEO is the fact that it increases your sales without increasing your marketing costs that much.

What this means for your business is that your profits will grow at an exponential rate over time. SEO will help accomplish your business goals with a better ROI rate compared to other online marketing methods.

Don’t assume everyone already heard of your business and think it’s the best place for their needs. People nowadays research a lot to get the best deals. With this, they use the internet and its socially-driven aspect to make a comparison before committing.

Always remember that SEO will play a crucial part in this cycle of researching and buying. It will act as a magnet and attract potential buyers to your business website. It does so with the use of relevant keywords and phrases with high search volumes.

4. SEO doesn’t Cost a Lot

A lot of experts see SEO as an investment, not a marketing cost. That means it’s always a smart business move to invest in an expensive company with the right set of expertise. Nothing is too expensive if it helps you accomplish your financial goals and growth targets in half the expected duration.

You can try getting an SEO pre-analysis to discover your growth potential. It will determine whether your market is big enough to give you enough customers to make it worthwhile. It also looks into your competition strength to see if it’s weak enough for your company to dominate.

5. SEO Gives Free Advertising Too

If you don’t make strategic title tags and meta descriptions, you’re doing your business a disservice. It’s like you’re leaving the generic “lorem ipsum” text on your storefront’s sign. To avoid this, you need to invest in SEO practices.

SEO will let you control how your business looks like on the search engine results page. Your prospects aren’t likely to click on your business if they’re looking at a random text when they see you. This is free advertising you’re missing out from.

The good news is that it isn’t difficult to fix once you acknowledge this fact. SEO makes it easier for you to take the reins of your company’s online presence. That way, you can steer it back to the right path.

6. SEO is a Good Social Sharing Leverage

Do you use any social media platform like Facebook? If so, SEO will play a critical role in your success. Users that share content on social networks have a direct relationship with SEO-specific parameters such as meta descriptions and title tags.

Those things are what people see when posts and stories get shared on their social media feeds. If you work with an SEO expert, you can manage this entire process. They can collaborate with your marketing and communications department to make the best results.

SEO gives you control on what people can read and do on social media. Your business can spread at a faster rate in their networks if you optimize your presence right.

7. SEO Builds Credibility and Trust

Your brand becomes stronger, better, and more recognized with SEO. Your goal is to show up at the top of the search results when people search for products and services related to your industry. This will make your prospects see you as the best and therefore trust you more.

Remember, everyone “Googles” when trying to find the best place for their concerns. If you’re at the top of the results, you’re boosting your business’s credibility. It’s all about being in the right place and the right time.

Use SEO Practices for Businesses Today!

If you’re not sure about the benefits of SEO to your business, these are compelling reasons that can make you take the plunge. There are a lot of other reasons out there, so it isn’t difficult to see how it gives value to your business. But it’s always important to remember that you’ll only get it if you do it right.

Do you need to use SEO practices for businesses? If so, you can read our guide here about the different types of link building.

seo optimized content

SEO Optimized Content: Complete Beginners Guide to On-site SEO

According to Statista, Google processed 10.34 billion search queries in October 2018. That includes cat videos, baby names, and of course, potential customers searching for companies like yours.

If your website lacks SEO optimized content, however, you’re missing out on every search that could lead customers straight to your door.

With on-page SEO optimization, you can give your website the boost it needs to take the top of any search engine results page. That way, you don’t miss a single customer—and the content you’ve been working so hard to create doesn’t fall flat.

How On-Page SEO Optimization Helps

On-site optimization doesn’t just help your website rank higher on search engine results pages like Google and Yelp.

Optimization also gives potential website visitors—and search engines—a glimpse of the actual page. That way, they have an understanding of the content before they even click on the link.

For search engines, that also helps determine if your content is unique and relevant. If so, then your website earns its ranking on those search engine results pages.

10 Ways to SEO Optimize Your Website Content

Attract more customers to your website and build your business with effective on-site optimization. Here are ten ways you can rock your on-page content to hit higher on search engine rankings.

1. Keywords

Recently, SEO optimized content has moved away from the exact match keyword model, though keywords still play a big part.

Your longtail keyword should appear in multiple places on the page, including the:

  • Title
  • Page URL
  • Headings
  • First 100 words of content

The keyword will also appear as you optimize images and set up the metadata (more on both later).

However, it’s important to make sure you’re not overdoing it. Too many keywords on a page and you’re keyword stuffing, which search engines frown on.

Instead, make sure your keyword is prominent (by bolding, using links, or a header) and naturally scattered throughout the content.

That way, you keep customers—and search engines—focused on content that’s aligned with the user’s intended search.

2. Image Optimization

Your uploaded file name, image title, description, and alt text should feature the page’s keyword as well. That way, if your image can’t display on the page for some reason, the alt text is there as a backup for you.

Uploading smaller image sizes will also improve your on-site SEO.

3. Links

From anchor text and backlinks to internal and external URLs, links on the page give your on-page content a relevancy boost.

For internal links, send readers to your services, blog posts, or the contact page with a strong call-to-action. For external links, keep focused on your post’s main topic—which will indicate to Google that your SEO optimized content is relevant.

4. Unique Content

Search engines keep an eye out for unique posts. If it’s posted somewhere else on your website, or on the internet, it probably won’t make the climb to the top of the results page.

One way to make sure your content is unique and relevant to the searcher’s intention is to focus on your company’s experience and authority.

What can you offer customers that no one else can? What have you learned in your industry that customers would consider valuable insight?

As a reliable resource of information, the content will speak for itself.

5. Made for Sharing

While social sharing isn’t a ranking factor, it can help generate more traffic to your website. As a result, your web page may be featured as a link on someone else’s blog post which expands your company’s reach, boosting that page’s relevance.

6. Mobile-Friendly

Google started rolling out their mobile-friendly requirements back in 2015. Having a responsive or mobile-friendly website ensures you’re not missing out on a huge percent of search traffic.

Prioritize user experience. Is the font too small to read or the page too long to scroll through? Look through the page on a smaller responsive screen and note what works and what needs changing.

7. Page Speed

Make sure everything loads quickly; otherwise, customers might leave the page before they even read it. Compress images and check your hosting. Slow load time could deter Googlebots from crawling your site too, so aim for two seconds or less.

8. Crawler & Robot Access

Bots catalog your SEO optimized content, searching for those alt tags and other items mentioned above. Fresh bots also crawl your website frequently for fresh content to keep your entire site indexed.

Make sure your content is original and redirects are working properly. Crawler access should be enabled.

The page URL should also be within the XML sitemaps file.

9. Meta

Be sure to set up unique metadata for the page.

This should include the meta description that’s relevant to the page content. As a result, the meta description encourages searchers to click on your link and visit your website.

The primary keyword should be featured in your meta description, as well as any secondary keywords or synonyms you’ve used within the page content. 

10. Schema

Schema microdata markups and structured data help search engines categorize your content. As a result, your content is displayed with more prominent visuals (such as a recipe snippet you might see at the top of a search page).

Structured data allows crawlers to find your relevant content, so search engines know exactly what your website has to offer. 

Taking the High Road with SEO Optimized Content

There are a number of ways to optimize on-page content, and search engines are constantly changing the criteria they consider essential for optimization. Keep your users in mind and provide them with a relevant, unique on-page experience every time.

By prioritizing your customers, your on-site SEO pages will provide them with the information they searched for. Quality user experience and relevant page content are exactly what search engines are looking for when adjusting the results page rankings.

With SEO optimized content, your website will rank higher, attract more customers, and help your business grow!

Ready to give your website that boost? Learn more from our website tips to improve your website’s ranking.

backlinks

What are Backlinks and How do I Get Them?

In the past decade, around 90% of all search engine queries were made through Google. With that much traffic on the line, everyone is competing for the prize of a high-ranked website and the eyes of the customers who come with it.

When it comes to your website’s SEO rank, content isn’t always king. Too often companies forget to flex their networking skills and embrace the power of backlinks. A backlink is a crucial SEO element that boosts both your website’s traffic and rank in Google.

Not sure what backlinks are, or how to get them? Our guide has you covered.

What Are Backlinks?

A backlink is an external link that leads to your website domain. These are sometimes referred to as “inbound links.” Backlinks are ranked differently from internal links because a website outside of your immediate authority has decided to link back to you.

Why Do I Want Backlinks?

As people come across backlinks that lead to you, you’ll increase traffic to your website. Increased traffic can positively affect your website’s search engine rankings.

But more importantly, a backlink tells search engines that your website is a valuable or credible source. If a major website with significant domain authority backlinks to your website, your search ranking will increase much more than if you received dozens of backlinks from low-authority sites. In the SEO world, quality trumps quantity.

Everyone knows the value of a high-ranked website. The first five Google results receive nearly 70% of the traffic. The rest are competing only for the dregs. More eyes on your website mean more traffic, more sales, and more ad revenue.

How Do I Get Backlinks?

1. Make Great Content

Why do people backlink to your website anyway? Probably because you have something good to say or offer. If you create well-researched, informative content in a solid niche, you’ll increase the likelihood of other websites linking back to your blog.

Generating passive backlinks sounds like a dream come true. The reality is far harsher.

Creating great content isn’t easy, and so many companies produce really, really good content. If your website or business has even a moderate amount of competition, it’s likely their content is as worthy of backlinks as your own. Still, for the right business or content marketer, great content will attract great backlinks.

2. Fix Broken Links

You could be inundated with potential backlinks and not even know it. Any time someone has mentioned your company, that’s an opportunity for a backlink to link to your website. But some people aren’t as knowledgeable about SEO, or just don’t care to put in the extra work and link back to you.

Search your brand name and look for any mentions of your company — barring social media, anyway. Even if you find a website that mentions your company, now is the time to reach out. Outreach the website with a simple email asking if they’ll switch the blank text for a backlink, so people can better find your site.

This may seem a tad formal and overzealous for something so simple, but it’s really not. Backlinks are simply this powerful of a tool to increase your website’s search rank. Don’t disregard this option just because you have to shoot off a few emails.

3. Tap Your Network

Few businesses or websites are insular. Do you work with other people in any capacity, from vendors to networking specialists? Anyone who has anything to do with you or your website could be a source of free backlinks.

Contact these businesses or people you work with and see if they have a page about clients, partners, or even customer testimonials. While these companies are advertising themselves, they’ll still be dropping your name. And any time your business or website is mentioned, that’s a prime place to include a backlink.

4. Use a Backlink Service

Backlinks aren’t always easy to acquire. If you find your business or website is too new or obscure to be mentioned, a backlink service may give your search rank the boost it needs to gather some buzz.

These services have a staggering number of websites with varying domain authorities and categories, all ready to provide backlinks to your site. Save yourself the trouble of competing with content marketing or shooting off prospective emails to people who won’t get back to you.

Sign-up for our backlink services. We’ll do the work for you.

5. Write Guest Posts

As a complement to the fantastic content on your own blog, guest posts are a time-intensive way to land some quality backlinks. A guest post is when you write an article for another website. Generally, they’ll get a free, well-written blog post, and in return you can include a backlink to your website in the article.

But don’t write for just anyone. Choose reputable websites with decent domain authority. Since guest posts require a significant amount of work, you want your backlink to have a significant amount of value.

Even if a potential website for your guest post doesn’t include a “write for us” section, contact them anyway! Few businesses and websites will refuse free work, as long as it’s high-quality.

Raise Your Search Ranking

With regular maintenance and effort, your cultivated backlinks will passively increase traffic and improve your website ranking. But backlinks are only one part of an effective SEO strategy.

Want to learn more about link-building strategies? Put yourself on the right path by utilizing our SEO experts and schedule a free SEO consultation.

global seo

Global SEO: What Is It and How Does Backlinking Help?

Do you want your business to have a global reach?

Then you’re going to want to learn about global SEO. It’s no secret that traffic from organic search leads to higher conversion rates and higher quality traffic than other sources.

That’s because people are visiting your site with a specific intent. They’re going to stick around longer. To get this traffic, though, you have to get your site towards the top of search results.

There’s a difference between global SEO and local SEO. Read more to discover what the key differences are and how you can use backlinks to improve your search rankings.  

Global SEO vs. Local SEO

You may have heard that local SEO is a great way to focus your SEO efforts. What if you’re not a local business? That’s why you need to know the difference between global and local SEO.

Local SEO is about the search results that rely on your physical proximity in relation to the person who’s searching. One of the most notable examples is when someone does a ‘near me’ search.

Near me searches are becoming a very common way for people to find services and products near them. People will search for ‘bike shops near me,’ ‘restaurants near me,’ or ‘landscapers near me.’ Search engines will then display the top search results according to the location of the person, along with the many other SEO factors that determine search results.

For brick and mortar locations or service providers that work in a certain area, it makes sense to focus on local SEO.

What if your business can do business anywhere? E-commerce stores, coaches, people who sell courses or online memberships don’t have to rely on a local audience for business.

That’s when you focus on global SEO. In this case, you’ll focus more on the searches that people use to find your products or services online. You want to focus on the buyer’s journey and user intent, rather than searches for a specific location.

Understanding What Matters in Global SEO

When you realize that your business needs to focus on global SEO, you need to know what will make an impact in your search rankings.

SEO has shifted over the years. It used to be that if you focused on keywords and used certain keywords a lot throughout your web page, it would be placed at the top of search results.

Keywords still matter, but Google is shifting its algorithm to rely more on artificial intelligence to determine the user’s intent and try to match the results to what they’re looking for.

They’re also using AI to differentiate the steps of the buyer’s journey and provide results for each step. Some search terms like ‘where to buy product XYZ online’ is a sign that someone is ready to buy. A search like ‘what is the best product XYZ’ means that someone is still researching the product and isn’t ready to buy at the moment.

Google’s goal is to provide search results that give its users exactly what they’re looking for at that moment.

Why Backlinks Matter in Global SEO

Where do backlinks fit in all of this? As search engines determine what the most relevant search results are, they need a way to differentiate quality sites to make sure they’re providing the best search results possible.

Of course, search engines want to provide high-quality content to its users. It matches the intent of the user with high-quality search results.

How do search engines know what is a high-quality search result?

That’s where social signals like backlinks come into play. With these signals, it’s a sign to Google and other search engines that since other sites are linking to your site, it’s a sign of quality content.

Other things like the length of the content send a signal to search engines that a page is providing quality, in-depth content to help users solve a problem.

That being said, backlinks are still a very critical part of the equation.

How to Get Quality Backlinks

How do you get backlinks to your site to improve global SEO? When it comes to getting backlinks, quantity does not necessarily mean quality.

What that means is that you can’t go around and buy 5000 links for $5. That’s one of the biggest link building mistakes you can make.

That will send a signal to Google, but not a signal that will help you. You can actually get penalized and have your site removed from search results if you try to game the system that way.

You want to focus on high-quality links to your site. You can buy quality links, but they have to be from a reputable source, like Backlinks.com.

There are other strategies that you can put in place to get more backlinks, but it will take work.

One of the top strategies is to use guest posts. With guest posts, you research the sites you want to submit content to, send a request to offer content, and then see if they accept your submission.

Another way to get backlinks to your site is through social media. You want to make sure that all of your profiles are filled out online and you post on a regular basis.

Posting quality content that’s fresh and provides value is likely to get more shares and links to your site organically.

Global SEO for Your Business

No matter what kind of business you have, SEO can make a huge difference in the number of online leads and sales you get every day.

The question that you need to answer is whether or not you need to focus on global SEO or local SEO. Once you know the answer to that question, then you can start the process to get backlinks for your site.

That will be sure to get quality traffic from SEO to your site. Want more killer SEO tips? Check out these 5 backlink strategies that are sure to give your site a boost.

cheap marketing strategies

Strategies to Market Your Business While Not Paying an Arm and a Leg

As of 2017, there were 22 million small businesses in the United States. And like you, most small businesses don’t want to spend a fortune on advertising.

Fortunately, thanks to the Internet, cheap marketing strategies abound to allow you to show off your goods or services without breaking the bank.

While it might seem like it’s incredibly expensive to get anyone to notice you, there are several things you can do to get noticed while you’re still working on your cash turnover.

Read on for some of the best cheap marketing strategies you can employ, whether online or off.

1. Increase Footfall with a Cute Window Display

If your store is a brick and mortar store, you can instantly increase footfall with a cute window display. Make your windows look inviting by keeping it simple and focusing on just one or two items.

Make the personality of your store shine through, and don’t underestimate the importance of lighting. With a cute display in your window, pedestrians won’t be able to just walk past without taking a quick look inside.

The people popping in for a quick look are already attracted to your wares, thanks to the cute display window, and therefore, they might be ready to buy something.

It doesn’t take hiring an interior designer and a ton of money to create a cute display window. You can do it yourself after reading some top tips. Then, watch traffic soar.

2. Work with Microinfluencers

You’ve likely already heard of influencers before, but you might have no idea about microinfluencers.

Influencers are social media personalities who create content for their fans. Often times, this content centers around something like food, clothing, make-up or homeware. With beautiful photos, vlogs and blogs, they captivate their audience and give them ideas of things to buy.

Influencers can have a huge say in what their audience buys, and they can suggest a product or service that their audience might have never thought they would need.

Working with huge influencers can be expensive. So, you’ll likely want to cross off the Kardashian-Jenner clan when deciding whom to target. But, working with smaller influencers, or microinfluencers, is a great and inexpensive way to get noticed.

Microinfluencers are those with a smaller following, and therefore less expensive to work with. Not only that, their audience is in tune with the blogger or vlogger and is actually interested in what they have to say.

These influencers have really high interaction rates, so you’ll know your product is getting seen. Provide a discount code or free gift for their followers and voila!

3. Advertise on Instagram

Many individuals are bemoaning the fact that advertising on Instagram is now a norm for ensuring your posts get seen. And while it is annoying for those who are used to organic traffic, it is still a great way to reach people.

Create a gorgeous Instagram post or ad detailing some of your best products. You’ll want to be sure the photography or video you show is eye-catching and attention-grabbing, as those scrolling through their feed may not stop unless you provide them with something worthwhile.

You can then use Instagram’s PPC or pay-per-click option. If you’re a small business, you can put in a relatively small budget and still reach a lot of potential customers. For around $30 over five days, you could potentially reach about 10,000 people.

You can either specify the type of person you’d like to advertise to or if you’re already an active user on the app, they can target the individuals like those who have interacted with your account in the past.

While you’re unlikely to make 10,000 sales from the post, you’ll still get eyes on your content, which is what you really want.

4. Create Shareable Content

Creating shareable content is a free way to get “butts in the seats.” Shareable content includes things like viral videos, listicles, and quotes.

Of course, you can’t predict when something is going to go viral, so it is a bit optimistic to say you’ll be creating a viral post. But, creating something many people are apt to share is relatively easy.

The cheapest (read free) way to do so is to create a shareable quote. You can do this on a site like Canva or Picmonkey, and specify it for whatever medium (Facebook or Instagram) you’d like to share it on.

Make sure that you mark your company’s name somewhere on the photo so it doesn’t just become a nice quote that’s lost in the ether.

Then, simply post it. You can also do a PPC for something like this to get more people to share it. That will give people the incentive to see who created the quote and come back to your business to see what you’re all about.

The Best Cheap Marketing Strategies

The best cheap marketing strategies mostly include being Internet savvy, but also include figuring out your target customer. Without knowing who exactly you want to reach, you won’t be able to create a meaningful marketing strategy.

In today’s world, you can’t simply cast the net wide and hope something sticks. Instead, you need to know exactly who you’re targeting so that you can be sure and retain customers that will want to purchase from you again and again.

Creating a website for your business? If, so (and we think you definitely should!) click here for some great SEO solutions to ensure it gets seen by the right people.