Category Archives: SEO and Link Building

SEO reputation management

SEO Reputation Management: A Guide to Building a Positive Online Image

Across all industries, 97% of business owners think reputation management is an essential addition to their SEO toolbox. The thing is, there’s a difference between managing your reputation and building a positive online image. One is a kneejerk response to negativity while the other is a proactive commitment.

In general, it’s better to take advantage of SEO reputation management before things get out of hand. The majority of online shoppers look at online reviews and company reputation before coming to a purchasing decision. If you have a superior brand image, your customers are willing to pay almost 10% more on your goods compared to your competitors.

In short, your online image can have a serious impact on your bottom line. Want to build a better brand? Then read our SEO reputation management guide.

1. Take Control of Online Reviews

Even if you’ve never claimed your business on a directory such as Google My Business or Yelp!, the odds are good that it’s already listed across the internet. That means your customers are free to leave reviews regardless of your input.

And if you’re not keeping a close eye on what your customers are saying online, that can come back to bite you. How? Since most consumers search for online reviews before making a purchase, they’ll likely search for any related to your company.

If the first post on the SERP is a scathing one-star review, that’s enough to turn people away without a second glance. But almost all business directories allow business owners to respond to reviews, whether negative or positive.

This gives you an opportunity to address the reviewer and apologize directly. Simple actions such as these go a long way in establishing your business as one that listens and cares about its customers. Plus, Google has said time and time again that businesses that interact with reviews benefit from a local SEO boost.

2. De-rank Negative Reviews

Sometimes reviews aren’t available on platforms that you own. What about a negative product review from a popular website? If one of these is in the top rankings, it’s definitely going to scare some consumers away.

It’s not something you’ll be able to fix right away in most cases. But if you happen to upgrade your product according to their review, reach out and encourage them to try your improved merchandise. Sometimes companies give the product for free to make it easier for the reviewer to write the article.

What if you believe the author’s review was subjective and unfair? You could ask them to remove it, but that’s a dangerous proposition. An unfair reviewer likely has a bias and will go out of their way to publicize your request.

Instead, you should analyze why the review is ranking so high in the first place. Oftentimes these reviews are propped up with little more than domain authority. With the power of relevant backlinks, you can boost up a better, objective review so consumers see this one first.

3. Create Multiple Domains

In a perfect world, your potential customers would only see websites owned by you whenever they made a search. That way you have full control over the content and branding they’re exposed to.

It’s possible to make this perfect world a reality.

By harnessing a variety of similarly-named websites, you can own the top of the SERPs. These websites may be alternative blogs, charity work, or a collection of helpful guides. With the help of great SEO, unowned content related to your brand isn’t likely to reach the top of the rankings.

You don’t even have to create new websites if it’s not your thing. A cheaper, easier option is to rely on subdomains. These can command the top spots with the right organization.

4. Write Content for Branded Searches

If your brand is big enough, people are going to search for more than relevant reviews. For example, they may seek to compare your company to a competitor. That could become an issue for your online reputation if it leads to your competitor’s site or a biased reviewer.

Access a keyword planner and see what people are looking for in relation to your business. If you find a branded search that could lead to negative information, it’s a good idea to write your own article with the relevant keywords. You simply can’t trust other individuals or businesses to do well by you.

That said, consumers can detect bias a mile away. If they visit your website to read a comparison article, they’ll likely expect you to rank your business as superior in every way.

Don’t do it.

Tooting your own horn won’t create a positive online image. Be fair and accurate with any content that could become a sales pitch.

Keep in mind that branded searches may not always involve a company comparison. You may discover some customers are having trouble with your product or service and are searching for a solution.

That tells you two things: First, you should improve your product or add more supplemental information to help your customers. It also means there’s room to create an article that offers a helpful solution. Otherwise, they’ll conglomerate on different help websites and may vent out their frustrations.

SEO Reputation Management: The Next Steps

When most people think about search engine optimization, they assume it’s all about increasing website traffic. The reality is SEO serves multiple functions, and one of its most important is managing your online reputation. By owning the content related to your brand, you’ll have more control to depict your company in its best light.

Looking to get started with great SEO reputation management? Backlinks are a potent way to get positive brand content at the top of the SERPs. Buy text links and keep your brand image in check.

monitor backlinks

How to Monitor Backlinks: A Dead Simple Guide to Tracking Your Links

A backlink is when a webpage links to a different page or site. Backlinks are powerful, well-proven ways to increase web traffic and they are a crucial part of any SEO strategy. They’re one of the best ways to make your website more popular.

But if you don’t monitor your backlinks, then you’ll have no idea what’s working and what’s not. Luckily, we’re here to help you. Continue reading and we’ll walk you through a dead-simple guide on how to monitor backlinks.

Why Monitor Backlinks?

There are a variety of factors that will help Google determine where to place your site among its search rankings. Some of these factors include social signals, the speed of your website, keyword usage, and the length of your content.

Another major factor is backlinks. When you have backlinks from other sites, especially ones that are authoritative and receive high amounts of traffic, you’re likely to rank higher.

There are three primary reasons as to why it’s important to monitor backlinks to your website. First, you will be able to know which of your marketing strategies are working and which are not.

Second, you will be able to give better reports to your customers. And lastly, you’ll be able to quickly add more social proof to your site.

When you monitor your backlinks regularly, you will see where you were successful and you can share that information with your clients. You can then repeat those strategies and build off of them to make your backlinks and overall marketing strategy even stronger.

The Two Phases of Monitoring Backlinks

As great as backlinks are, they’re not that valuable if you aren’t regularly monitoring and analyzing them. Let’s look at our two-phase process for how to properly monitor your backlinks.

Phase One: Make Backlink Monitoring Part of Your Work Schedule

There are two approaches to how you can monitor your backlinks. The first way is the manual method. With this method, you would perform search after search and add links to a spreadsheet as well as other important information.

This approach can certainly work but it’s also quite time intensive.

The other method is to do automated backlink monitoring. With this solution, the system will automatically monitor your backlinks for you. This kind of solution typically costs money, however.

Either way, after you’ve chosen your preferred approach, you want to schedule time in your work calendar for when you will regularly monitor your backlinks. It can take several hours if you with the manual approach. However, it will usually take less than one hour if you go with the automated method.

A good thing to keep in mind is to not just look at your own backlinks. Some automated solutions will also provide analyses of backlinks from your competitors. This is a handy tool that can help you optimize your own backlink strategy.

You’re then going to want to divide your backlinks into different categories. These categories will be split into desirable, undesirable, and everything else.

High-quality websites will result in better backlink opportunities. Also, strive to build relationships with domain managers in order to better establish your website and backlinks.

Phase Two: Apply What You Learn from Backlink Monitoring

Your work doesn’t just stop at monitoring your backlinks. You then have to take what you learn and apply it to your reporting and outreach.

If you’re at all involved in proving marketing or SEO services to customers, then your reporting is extremely important. By knowing how to properly and effectively monitor backlinks, you’ll be able to show customers how your work is benefitting the business of your clients.

Whenever you can, make the correlation between backlink monitoring and the desired business outcomes of your clients.

In order to improve your reporting, it’s important that you focus on the outcome of your backlinks. Not sure what sites are applying your backlinks.

You can also use backlink monitoring to see how long it takes for your backlinks to increase your outreach. The first thing you want to do here is to identify your backlink opportunities. You can do this by picking some of your competitors in order to find the best backlinking opportunities.

Then, go ahead and rank the backlink opportunities for their value and relevance. You might become overwhelmed if you end up with hundreds of potential backlink opportunities. To prevent this problem, you’ll want to rank the backlinks for their relevance.

For example, you may decide to not pay attention to backlinks from certain publications because it will be too hard to reach the kind of people you’re trying to target. By putting your attention on sites with good Domain Authority scores, you can better optimize your targeting.

You also need to make sure that you execute your outreach strategy correctly. There are certain tools online that can help you find email addresses at websites you choose to target.

The Importance of Knowing How to Monitor Backlinks

By knowing how to monitor backlinks, you can greatly enhance your SEO efforts as well as increase your ROI and conversion rates. Backlinking isn’t always easy, but monitoring backlinks will reduce the amount of trial and error and help get you stronger backlinks in no time.

Having an experienced company help manage your backlinks is one of the best ways to quickly and effectively increase your web traffic.

Are you interested in buying backlinks? Consider getting a free SEO consultation to help with your link building!

twitter seo

9 Twitter SEO Tips You Need to Know for Your Business

Are you looking to boost your SEO game on Twitter? Worry no more about which tweets will hit or miss the mark. Below, we’ve got a list of 9 Twitter SEO tips for your business.

Why use Twitter and Twitter SEO to promote your business? It’s practical social media marketing, especially when you consider how many people are on it. In the United States, there are over 68 million active Twitter users per month. 

1. Promote Your Brand via a Fully-Optimized Profile

When you’re creating a Twitter account, you want to use a handle and username that promotes your brand. Use the same or a similar name you use on your other social media. This is how your audience finds you on your social media.

The verification badge is a key icon that helps build trust and authenticity. This badge disappears whenever you change your name. Thus, avoid changing your username as much as possible.

Another important Twitter SEO tip is to optimize your profile photo. Use a profile photo with an optimized filename. Rename it with keywords separated by dashes. 

2. Make Your Tweets Re-Tweetable

A great way to build your presence on Twitter is to get users to share your tweets. To do this, limit the characters in your tweets. The best number of characters is somewhere between 110 and 120.

When you tweet, consider the length of your links. If it’s too long, use URL shortening sites like bit.ly. Avoid sharing URLs without context since it can confuse followers. 

Do you want to know how to get on Google search? Under certain circumstances, a tweet with countless likes and re-tweets can go there. This, however, is unreliable unless you have a hefty following that always reacts to your tweets.

3. Use Keywords in Your Tweets

Keywords are vital to your Twitter SEO and any other SEO. They make your brand easier to search online. Know which keywords will work best with your brand and incorporate them in your tweets. 

Figure out your primary keyword. Use this as a hashtag in each of your tweets. This way, when people look up the keyword, your posts will come up.

The tweet may even pop up in the Trends Feed.

However, be careful about overdoing it. Despite keywords, you must offer valuable content to your followers still. 

4. Choose the Best First Characters in Every Tweet

Did you know that your first 42 characters are a bit more important than the rest? Yes, the first characters of your tweet can give the most impact on its SEO value later. The first words you write will come up as the tweet’s title tag on a Google search. 

These 42 characters include important details. On a Google search result, your account name and the first characters show up. Don’t stress out too much on pushing all your keywords forward.

Most search engines still index your entire tweet. 

5. Provide Relevant Content Experience

Using social media like Twitter promotes brand awareness through influencers or hashtags. However, it’s easy to get your followers’ attention with clickbait titles. Avoid these and offer authentic and relevant experiences instead. 

If you’re adding links to your tweets, make sure they bring users to the right landing pages. Remember that internet users want what they want right away. They don’t enjoy having to look around your website for what they want, so don’t make them.

Use hashtags for events your brand is a part of. Seasonal events are also great for adding more applicable keywords. It’s a great way to keep up with competition who also use seasonal keywords. 

6. Optimize Twitter SEO with A Great Bio

Every Twitter business page needs a short, comprehensive bio. The best way to use it is to focus on what your brand specializes in. Mention which industry you belong to and what followers can expect from you.

Since it’s a small bit, you can do this one yourself. You don’t even need to make it longer than a paragraph. Your bio only uses 160 characters at most.

Be simple, brief, and attention-grabbing. Add your links in later. Add the even more intriguing content later.

7. Make Your Twitter Handle Visible in Your Website

There’s one way to get onto the game and that’s using your handle on your website. You can even use it as a link to direct site visitors to your twitter profile. This way, they can follow you once they reach your Twitter page.

Do this by adding the Twitter button on the site or your username as a link. Keep it next to your other social media buttons. This way, visitors can find your social media accounts like Twitter with ease.

Keep both your Twitter and your website accessible to new followers. This is useful if you have a lot of website visitors. After following a business, 85% of followers feel they’re more connected to it.

8. Be Bold, Add Visuals

Humans are visual creatures by nature. We depend more on our visual senses than on any of our other senses. Take advantage of this fact of nature in your Twitter SEO game.

Be as visual as you can be.

You can do as little as add emojis to your tweets. This creates a visual point that can change the entire mood of the tweet. Tweet photos and use memes.

9. Insert Links

If you want to get a twee page indexed on Google, use links. This is a more reliable way of getting on a Google search page result rather than depending on retweets and likes.

Using links on your posts helps create a solid backlink profile. As we mentioned earlier, use URL shorteners to keep the character count in check. TinyURL and Bit.ly are two popular URL shorteners.

Be More Social, Be More Present

That’s it for our guide on Twitter SEO and how you can optimize it for your business. Now that you’re done with the list, do you see how easy it is? We hope you enjoyed reading about these 9 SEO tips. 

Are you a new player in the digital marketing game? Do you want to know how to find more people interested in your business and/or services? Do you want to know the basics of generating inbound leads? 

Check out this guide and learn how to inbound lead generation works. 

What Are Guest Blogging Services and How Can They Help Your Business?

Do you think your site looks pretty enough to stand out from the crowd?

Good web design is a start but you need to do a lot more to build traffic. With over 30 million small businesses and websites in the US alone, you need to conduct every tactic in the book to get ahead. 

Perhaps one of the best tactics to invest in is guest blogging. You can even avail of SEO experts for guest blogging services to give you a significant boost. 

But how do guest blogging and expert guest blogging services even work? What are the benefits of both?

Let’s tackle them both below! Read on and discover how guest posts and guest post services can give your business a much-needed advantage:

What is Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging is exactly as it sounds — you’ll create blog posts for someone else. You’re the “guest” and the other website is the “host.” It’s as simple as creating blog posts for your site, except it’ll go on someone else’s platform.

Does this benefit both parties? Some people assume it only boosts SEO efforts for the host but the truth is it assists both. You can enjoy a ton of benefits from reaching out to other websites and companies and asking permission to guest post.

It’s a two-way street, after all. They’ll provide exposure and boost your backlinking profile — we’ll tackle this more in-depth below — and you give them more content for their audience. Guest blogging counts as one of the 6 main types of content you should focus on!

How Does Guest Blogging Help?

Let’s dive into the benefits a bit more. How does guest blogging help you and the host?

Let’s get the biggest benefit out of the way first. Every time you guest post, you should include links back to your site. This counts as a way to boost your backlinking profile.

The thing is, your backlinking profile is one of the 4 main ranking factors calculated by Google and its algorithm. If your host is a reputable site, those backlinks gain more authority and thus further boost your site’s rank. 

However, it doesn’t end there.

Guest posting also widens your brand reach. Think about it this way: let’s say your website has no traffic but the host sees an average of 5,000 visits per page daily. Your guest post exposes your brand and the backlink to your website to all those visitors. 

Their audience can become yours. 

You also gain authority. People visit the host because they’re an established authority regarding a specific niche. Visitors will read your guest post and immediately trust the content because they trust the host.

What about the host? How does guest posting help them?

They don’t have to worry about writing the content. That’s your job as the guest. This frees up their time to worry about other details, such as their social media marketing or paid ads. 

It’s like getting free content to entertain and educate their audience and all you ask in return is the chance to add a few backlinks to your website. It’s a win-win situation for both.

Understanding Guest Blogging Services

Now that you understand how guest posts work, what are guest blogging services? Why do many SEO experts offer this?

If you plan to approach websites by yourself, it can take up a lot of time. You might get rejected more often than you’d think. Others might require payment.

However, SEO companies and experts already have deals and partners. They might already have a network of 10 or more websites that accept guest posts. The hard part of the work is already done and you simply have to hire the SEO company to grant you access to that network.

Benefits of Guest Blogging Services

Why hire experts for guest blogging services? Let’s break down the different benefits here:

First off, you don’t have to waste time going around approaching different websites and companies. The SEO company already has a network and you simply have to get in touch to gain access. Of course, you and the SEO company need to make sure your content matches the needs of the websites in their network.

Secondly, you can save money. Some websites and companies demand a high price before they allow others to guest post. Hiring an SEO company with access to a wide network of guest post-friendly websites is considerably cheaper.

Third, you gain wider exposure. Instead of reaching out solely to one website to submit a guest post, you can get multiple posts submitted to a dozen different hosts. This means you get exposure to all their visitors simultaneously!

Finally, there’s the benefit of letting the experts create the content for you. If your business doesn’t prioritize blogging, keyword research, and other SEO aspects then it’s better to let them do the work for you. You get the guarantee that they’ll pour all their resources and tools to get it done right.

Should You Hire Experts?

Is it worth the time and money to hire SEO experts and avail of their guest blogging services? 

The short answer is yes! The benefits listed above heavily outweigh all the downsides. After all, spending a little bit to let the experts handle guest blogging is a lot cheaper compared to the losses you risk if you do it by yourself. 

What happens if you get scammed? What if you approached a website without a large audience or isn’t an authority for their niche? You’ll have to start from the beginning, all over again!

Hire the Best Experts Today!

What are you waiting for? Consult experts today and avail of the best guest blogging services available. This is the best way to help build backlinks, gain more traffic, and boost your site’s ranking on Google search.

Of course, we offer more than guest blogging services. If you want more advice and expert tips and tricks, why not check out our other guides here? You can start with this one discussing how to build better transition sentences!

how to make your website popular

How to Make Your Website Popular: 7 Ways to Increase Traffic

Do you have a pretty, modern-looking website? Do you sell the hottest products or do you have a service you know people need?

That’s all fine and dandy until you realize no one visits your site. You’re sitting on a gold mine but there’s no one to sell to.

But, don’t fret. Understanding how to make your website popular and see a steady flow of traffic isn’t too difficult to grasp. We’ve got 7 tips right here for you to start learning the most efficient ways to succeed:

1. Prioritize Profitable Traffic

Getting more traffic isn’t the end-all goal. There’s no point in getting more traffic if you’re not seeing an increase too in conversions. You’ll be spending all that time, money, and effort without seeing an increase in sales, inquiries, or subscriptions.

Learn how to drive traffic to your online store by tracking ROI-related metrics. Monitor things like the total sales on a product landing page, conversions per ad clicks, and the conversions-to-traffic ratio.

Monitoring metrics like likes and shares is important to some extent but it doesn’t directly correlate to profit. Focusing too much on vanity metrics won’t get you popular; it’ll run your resources dry.

2. Guest Blog

Want to know how to make your website popular? One of the most important factors is your backlinking profile. The more reputable backlinks you have, the higher you’ll rank on Google searches and the more traffic you’ll get too.

You can build a strong profile by guest blogging. People will let you guest post — it’s one of the most important types of content, after all. You’re creating content for their site and in exchange, you get a good backlink to your site and you get exposure to their audience.

Blend this tactic with some of the others on this list. Make sure your guest post remains relevant for months, use long-tail keywords, and see if it answers a specific, niche question or concern.

3. Target Long-Tail Keywords

Gone are the days when you can rely on short keywords. The competition and Google’s changing algorithm demolished that system. Nowadays, it’s all about providing content related to specific, niche inquiries.

This means you need to utilize specific, niche keywords too. Don’t simply try to rank for “best HVAC repair company” and instead aim for “HVAC repair company in Tallahassee, FL.” The latter caters to a specific crowd, meaning you’re hyper-focusing your content for that audience.

Targeting long-tail keywords also help you stand out. There’s a lower competition but you still get a high search volume. It’s a win-win situation as long as you use those keywords right.

4. Evergreen Content

Hoping to generate free traffic sources over time? Create evergreen content!

This refers to content that remains relevant long after you initially uploaded it. This type of post doesn’t lose value and it doesn’t rely on things like current trends or pop-culture. It might even gain more traction as time passes.

Why is this helpful?

You can always share evergreen content repeatedly and so will others. Other websites and blogs might feature it in their posts. People might link to it in social media.

Because the content will remain relevant, this cycle can keep going! You might have one blog post that becomes viral and will skyrocket your site’s popularity through the roof! It’ll turn your site into the go-to authority for your niche.

5. Take Advantage of Email Marketing

Sometimes, it’s not about increasing raw traffic. Gaining popularity and meaningful traffic can sometimes come from people who already showed interest. After generating interest, make sure you follow-up by taking advantage of email marketing.

Modern email marketing is nothing like how it started years ago. You should prioritize dynamic, personalized messages.

Let’s say your business offers a subscription for a document editor tool similar to Google Docs or Microsoft Word. You can include personalized information in the email, such as letting the recipient know how many documents they created or how many words they typed within the past 30 days.

6. Utilize Social Media

Social media isn’t a ranking factor for Google. This means social media doesn’t affect SEO directly. That said, it still boosts your SEO efforts and increases brand awareness in many discreet ways.

For example, you can get on Twitter and share a link to your latest blog post. The link itself won’t affect search engine signals but you still get to showcase your post to the hundreds or thousands of people following you on Twitter. If a majority of them click on that link, you’ve already gained high-value traffic.

Now imagine if someone retweeted your post. This means they exposed your new blog post to their followers too. This cycle can keep going and this is how powerful social media can become.

It’s the modern form of word-of-mouth marketing and you shouldn’t ignore it!

7. Paid Ads Combined with SEO

More free traffic is always appreciated but this doesn’t mean you can rely solely on SEO. You’ll still struggle even with the best content, solid guest posting strategy, and smart use of social media platforms.

Boost your efforts with a well-planned paid advertising campaign.

Set a budget, take the time to craft expertly-designed ads, and manage your campaign with meticulous care. You might need to outsource if you’ve never handled a PPC campaign before but it’s a worthwhile investment.

Instead of focusing entirely on SEO or entirely on a paid ads campaign, try to strike a balance so you can do both.

Learn How to Make Your Website Popular

Knowing how to make your website popular isn’t rocket science. Simply keep these 7 tips to heart and you’ll be well on your way to boosting meaningful, profitable traffic.

However, gaining more traffic is only part of the struggle. The good news is we’ve got you covered!

Why not check out our other walkthroughs today? Here’s one discussing how often you should write new blog posts!

digital content strategies

Digital Content Strategies to Use in 2020

Around 34% of consumers are more likely to make unplanned purchases from brands that personalize content. Learning more about trending digital content strategies will give you the competitive edge you’ve been looking for.

Different audiences engage with digital content to different degrees. The average American spends 8.8 hours daily engaging with digital content. Millennials, on the other hand, tend to spend around 11 hours per day doing the same. 

Sure, it’s true that content is king in SEO and digital marketing. But developing a content marketing strategy will ensure that you create the informative, and marketable content your audience desires.

Here are some digital content tips you should consider using in 2020.

Long-Form Blog Posts

If you’ve noticed your competitors’ blog posts getting longer, it’s not your imagination. In fact, the length of the average blog post has increased by 41% in the past 3 years. 

Articles around 500 words were once average and ideal, but the standard has since changed. Now, the highest-ranking blog posts contain about 1,142 words.

Blog posts give you the opportunity to create branded content that’s useful to your audience. In Google’s eyes, longer blog posts tend to be more informative than shorter ones. That’s why long-form blog posts are reigning supreme in the worlds of SEO and digital marketing.

Long-form blogs let you delve deeper into topics that matter to consumers. This allows you to include new information that your competition isn’t talking about and update it as time passes. If your blog post is more recently updated and longer, it’s more likely to be a valuable resource than your competitors’ blogs are.

No matter how good your blog posts are, consistency is the key to achieving success in blogging. Learn more about how often to write blogs to get a better idea of what your content schedule should look like.

Search Intent Matters

Building a content strategy that works in 2020 involves taking users’ search intent into consideration. In turn, knowing more about search intent will help you create more targeted content for your audience.

A user’s search intent is the intention behind their search. Are they seeking information, trying to find a certain website, or looking to buy something? Finding out this information will clue you in on what kind of content to market.

The keywords a user chooses will usually clue you in on their search intent. For example, a user who googles “best moisturizers of 2020” is probably looking to compare products. Another user might google “moisturizer reviews” with a similar intent.

Some of the best examples of content marketing zero in on search intent. At the very least, the result is content that’s more useful to consumers.

After learning the important SEO terms you must know, create digital content around the search intents that arise in your audience. It’ll be easier to market and make your website more visible in SERPs (search engine results pages).

Video Content, YouTube, and Live-Streaming

Don’t forget to incorporate videos into your online content strategy! Next to blogging, video content is the second most popular form of branded content. 

Internet users are more likely to share video content than written content. Videos also hold the average person’s attention for longer periods of time than written content does.

By not creating video content, you could be alienating an entire group of people without realizing it. Not everyone is up to the task of reading a lengthy blog post. Many people would rather watch a 5-minute video about a product instead of researching it.

Plus, video content is more accessible to people with learning disabilities that make reading more difficult for them. 

YouTube is one of the hottest platforms for brands to post videos on in 2020. Not only is YouTube a great source of publicity, but it’s also good for branding and marketing.

Once you upload a branded YouTube video, it can continue generating revenue and plenty of views for years after the fact.  This is especially the case for videos about evergreen topics.

Live-streaming is also getting hotter by the second. Live video streaming gives you the chance to connect with your audience more, answer their questions, and generate leads. Consider hosting live webinars, product demos, and other live video events. 

Live-streaming also helps you boost your brand’s social media presence.

Pillar Content and Filterable Posts

Pillar content is some of the most strategic content you’ll find on the internet in 2020. It’s a piece of content with a central theme that’s broken down into different sections and materials. The user clicks on the different sections to explore the information.

Why is pillar content becoming more popular? Because it provides a more personalized user experience. It also makes the buyer’s journey more seamless. 

This kind of content is also highly organized. People enjoy digesting content in sections rather than all at once. For this reason, filterable posts are also useful to consumers.

Filterable posts let you filter what kind of content you’re looking for. Users simply click on the boxes that apply to their needs and voila! The content is now personalized.

People are more likely to buy from brands with personalized content, so jump on this trend as soon as possible!

Optimize For Voice Searches

Thanks to smart devices, voice searches are becoming more commonplace. Optimizing your content for voice searches will help you tap into a market that many other brands are neglecting.

You see, voice searches are a recent phenomenon. Sure, Alexa is a household name, but many brands haven’t caught up with this trend yet. That means it’ll be easier for you to stand out and attract buyers!

Use The Best Digital Content Strategies of 2020

Out of all the people who responded to a recent survey, 70% conducted voice searches at least a few times each week. Jump on these fresh digital content strategies like voice search optimization before other brands do!

The more you know your audience, the easier it’ll be to create compelling content they enjoy. Either way, it will result in more sales or brand awareness.

Make your content more visible in search engines—buy text links today! Your business’s website will thank you for it.

headings and subheadings

Structure Matters: How Your Blog’s Headings and Subheadings Affect SEO

Headings and subheadings — are they really that important to SEO?

While you might already know that readers love being able to scan your pages for the most important information, you might not understand how it can play into the SEO side of things.

If you’re ready to understand blog headers and subheaders, continue reading this article, and we will show you how you can make them work for you.

Elevate User Experience

Search engines like Google care about user experience. When Google sees that people are enjoying their experience on your website, this is a good signal and may help you with your SEO efforts.

Structure Your Content for Easy Understanding

When you use headers, you structure your content in a way that people can read through like they’re riding on a raft down a smooth river. Without headings, subheadings, and proper structure, it’s more like being on a raft with rapids and rocks.

Improve Accessibility

For people that can’t read easily from the screen, having headings and subheadings allows them to access the information easily due to the HTML. The HTML makes it easy for a screen reader to understand the structure of the article so it can read it aloud to the person that needs help.

Screen readers help by offering shortcuts from one header to the next header, which makes headers even more important for the visually impaired.

Headings Carry More Weight Than Normal Text

When it comes to SEO and optimizing your on-page content, headings carry more weight than normal text. Since headings carry more weight than normal text, it is important to add your primary keyword into at least one of the headers in your content.

You’ll make it easier for people and search engines to know what your page is about. Search engines can decide whether they should rank your page, and people can decide whether it is relevant and whether they want to read it or not.

Using H1 & H2 Header Tags

If you look at a website that isn’t optimized properly, one of the most common offenses you’re likely to notice is the lack of h1 and h2 header tags. Many people don’t even know the importance of using these tags, which is why they go unused.

When you look at a website, the header 1 text is usually the text that is the largest on the page. Most of the time, this is the content’s title, and it tells the reader what to expect within the content’s page.

While you can make bigger text without using h1 or h2 header tags, it isn’t going to work the same way.

The h2 header text helps guide the reader to the part of the content they are interested in. People will scan your page and look for the specific answer they are searching for, and the h2 header text should be the one helping them with this task.

Is On-Page SEO Really That Important?

We all love backlinks, right? I mean — hello! Of course, we do.

We know that backlinks are an important part of SEO and gaining rankings in the search engines, but are on-page SEO elements like headers and subheaders moving the needle?

It’s easy to get caught up with building backlinks, but we have to give our backlinks something worth linking to, or our SEO efforts are in vain. No matter how many links you build to your site if your content isn’t serving the searcher, it’s not going to rank well.

Part of serving the searcher is taking care of on-page elements. Here are some things you should take into account when you’re working on each page of your website.

1. Site Speed

If your site is too slow, people likely won’t get to see your headers because they are going to click away. People are very impatient and want to get their information right away, so they won’t wait on your website to load more than a few seconds.

2. Navigation

Your website navigation should be easy to go through to make it easy for people to go from one interesting page to the next. You may have noticed that many people sites have “relevant” or “related” posts on the site’s sidebar, within the content and throughout the rest of the site.

The longer people stay on your site and interact with it in a positive way, the more positive signals report back to Google.

3. Content Structure

We’ve talked about structuring your content with headers and subheaders, but that isn’t the only thing you can use to structure your content. Use images to make your content flow nicely and to support those text elements of your website.

People love images, and it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words. Don’t forget about adding your primary keyword in the alt text in at least one of your photos on the page. If the image doesn’t load for people, you want them to know what it is, and you also want to send signals to the search engine that they should consider your page for that keyword.

You’re a Headings and Subheadings Master

Congrats! You’re now a headings and subheadings master, and you know how to use them to your advantage. The main reason headings and subheadings affect SEO is that they provide better user experience and signals to Google that your content is relevant.

Are you ready to take your website to the next level and get more organic traffic from Google and other top search engines? We’ve helped many other businesses, and we can help you too. Sign up for an account today and start getting real links from real authority sites.

transitionsentences

Transition Sentences For More Powerful SEO Marketing Content

SEO covers a lot of topics, including backlinks and web design. However, there’s no doubt that the backbone of any SEO strategy is content.

The content serves as the “bait.” Your posts lure readers into your website, promising the exact information they seek.

Like a good backbone, it also supports the SEO of the rest of the website. It allows you to place internal links, external links, and so on.

That said, it should be high in quality. Interesting topics and proper grammar are a given, but there’s one element of it that only a few writers take seriously: transition sentences.

These sentences help readers get through the content by bridging one idea to another. Let’s learn more about them below.

First, What are Transition Words?

Transition words show the relationship between two sentences, phrases, or paragraphs. It links the two together so that the reader knows to connect the meaning of the two. 

Take, for example, the sentences below.

Example A: “I have a 63-year-old grandmother. She looks beautiful.”

Example B: “I have a 63-year-old grandmother. Despite that, she looks beautiful.”

In example B, our connecting word – or phrase – is “despite that.” Using it, the sentences flow more fluidly. It also lets the readers know that the grandmother looks beautiful despite her age.

Without the transition phrase, it looks like the narrator was spouting random facts. 

What are Transition Sentences?

Transition sentences, like connecting words, then bridge one idea to another without letting the readers fall into a state of confusion. 

Like so, they have the same uses: 

  • To change the subject
  • To introduce a contradiction
  • To emphasize a point
  • To show agreement to the preceding idea
  • To show cause and effect
  • To provide clarification
  • To give examples
  • To conclude an idea
  • And so on

They establish an organizational flow, making a blog post look more cohesive rather than pure word vomit. 

Types of Transition Words

Transition sentences make an explicit connection between two sentences, paragraphs, and ideas. It’s best not to use the word “this” when referring to the previous point, as it’s not always clear what the word refers to.

Like you would expect, they use transition words. Check out some essential words/phrases below that will help you make good transition sentences. 

1. Contradiction

These are words showing a contrast between two sentences, phrases or paragraphs. You use it to point out alternatives or introduce a change of reasoning.

Examples are “but,” “although,” “instead,” “however,” “otherwise,” “whereas,” “albeit,” “besides,” and so on.

To give you a simple example, here are two contrasting sentences:

“I’m not fond of social media. But I have a Facebook account for keeping in touch with friends and family.”

For a transition sentence, you can say something like:

“However, the scenario we explained isn’t always true.”

Then, proceed with a contrasting point.

2. Similarity

In contrast to the above, this type shows a similarity between two thoughts. It’s used for reinforcing the preceding idea or agree to it.

Examples are “as well as,” “together with,” “in addition,” “likewise,” “in the same vein,” “by the same token,” and so on.

Let’s use that in a sentence, “In the same vein as ~this example~, here’s ~another example with a similar result~.”

3. Cause / Condition

This type of transitional words shows there are a cause and an effect. Other words under this category also present specific conditions or intentions. 

In many cases, the cause/effect’s implied, like so: “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

However, not all sentences make themselves look this clear. These cases then elicit the use of a transition word or phrase. You can use “therefore,” “thus,” “as a result,” “under those circumstances,” “consequently,” and so on.

4. Example

This one’s self-explanatory: you use a transition word to give an example. Phrases that can help the readers grasp the concept include, “for instance,” “for example,” “to demonstrate,” “to illustrate,” and so on.

What follows right away is an example; you might even notice some scattered here in this article. 

5. Clarification

This one’s used for clarifying the previous idea. In other words, it’s used for presenting the same idea in a manner that readers might understand better. 

See what we did there? For this one, you can use “in other words,” “that is to say,” “to clarify,” and more.

6. Emphasis

Don’t confuse this for clarification. It’s used for emphasizing the previous point, like so:

“Many Americans are obese. In fact, over 50% of American men and women are obese or overweight.” 

7. Time

To give the readers a clear indication, limitation, or restriction of time, we use transitional words of this type. You can use “at the present time,” “meanwhile,” “subsequently,” “until,” “since,” “henceforth,” and so on.

Let’s use an example sentence to connect two different ideas:

“In the past, women weren’t able to vote. They weren’t able to enjoy much freedom as the men did.

That was all in the past, however.

At present, women are now enjoying the same privileges only men were previously entitled to.”

You can see how the transitional phrase prepares the reader for the different idea that it was about to present. 

8. Space

Much like in the case of transition phrases representing time, those that represent space give the readers a description of the spatial order or reference.

Examples are, “in the middle,” “here,” “next,” “around,” “alongside,” “before,” and so on.

9. Conclusion

This type summarizes all the points presented or indicate a general statement. You often use phrases like, “to summarize,” “in conclusion,” “in short,” “in either case,” “in any event,” “by and large,” “for the most part,” and so on.

An example sentence will be “All things considered, there’s a strong hint of life beyond our galaxy.”

Use the Right Transition Word, Phrase, or Sentence

Follow these guidelines for effective transition sentences. Yes, attracting readers is one of the main goals of SEO, but making them stay is another.

Don’t worry, it won’t be long until you see the results of being nitpicking each part of your SEO strategy. Check out how long it takes to get results in this guide here.

branddesign

Make an Unforgettable Company Identity with Smart Brand Design

When most people think of the concept of “branding,” they have a tendency to write it off as little more than a buzzword

“Branding” can be a bit difficult to define, but the reality is that it’s the difference between success and failure for many companies across a variety of industries. Branding isn’t just about choosing company colors or dreaming up a logo design. 

Instead, think of it as the entirety of your company’s image. 

It helps to think of brand design as a person. People don’t show their identities solely by the clothes they choose to wear, right? They also show people who they are by the way they talk, the hobbies they’re interested in, how they respond to stress, where they work…this list could go on forever. 

Your brand is like the personality of your company — and you need to take corporate identity design seriously to stand out. 

So, how do you create winning brand designs? 

Keep on reading to find out. 

Start With Questions

Before you do anything else, you need to ask yourself and the other founders of your company a few questions. 

If you didn’t know anything about your brand, what kinds of questions might you ask? These are the things you need to consider when developing your brand design. 

For example, why did you start your company? Why does what your brand does matter to you on a personal level? How will it make peoples’ lives better? What’s your experience within this industry? Who do you primarily sell to? How are you different from your competitors? 

These questions will help you reintroduce yourself to your brand, and allow you to build a foundation for your overall brand design. 

You can also send brand surveys like this one to your employees and existing customers to learn about what other people associate with your brand. This way, you’ll learn about what other people actually think of your brand — not just what you want them to think of it. 

Make a Customer Prototype

In the introduction to this guide, we talked about the advantages of seeing your brand as a person. 

Next, you should take things a step further and create a customer prototype personality to assist with your brand identification plan. Essentially, you’ll need to create a character of your ideal customer — and tell the story of how your brand can help them. 

Decide how old this customer is, what they struggle with the most, their income level, their priorities, their location, and their hobbies/interests. Then, tell the story of how your product or services will help to improve their quality of life. 

You can even use this mock customer in your marketing materials. People will certainly see themselves in your creation. This means that it will be even easier for your market to identify themselves and choose to follow your company because it’s relevant to their interests. 

Create a Mood Board

Next, you should create a mood board for your brand — the first step towards truly visualizing what your brand design will look like. 

If you’re a tour guide company, put up pictures of popular destinations. Write down a list of adjectives that people associate with your brand. Figure out the different phases a customer goes through before they decide to buy your product/services, and put those phases up on the board. 

Even put up a few images you’re considering using in your logo, and pin a few potential color palettes to your board. 

Once you see everything laid out, it’ll be much easier for you to create a brand story and make the right choices when it comes to typography, social media presence, your logo, and your company colors. 

Make Brand Design Choices

Perhaps the most well-known aspect of brand identity development is the design element. 

Look back at the way customers and employees have responded to surveys and questionnaires. Notice words that keep coming up over and over again, like “outdoors,” “dependable,” or “time-saving.” 

These words will inform your brand design elements, like your company colors, your logo, and your business’s slogan. 

For example, let’s say you’re a wedding flower shop, and “creative” is a word you see over and over again in your results. You want to pick a logo symbol that makes it clear what you do, but also differentiates you from your competitors. 

We love the logo design idea of having a bride walking down the aisle carrying an oversized, over-the-top bouquet.

First of all, the design is active. Secondly, it’s obvious you’re a wedding florist. Finally, it says that you’re for offbeat brides that want something different than what everyone else has. 

You’re Ready to Get Started with Brand Design

We hope this post has helped you to understand just how important brand design is to every business. 

A solid branding strategy is what helps you to connect to your target market, allows you to evoke emotion in your customers, and separates you from your similar competitors. 

Once you’ve developed your brand design, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to share it with the world. 

Search engine optimization — SEO for short — is the most effective way to get your message out there in today’s climate. 

We can help you to master it with the fine art of backlinking. 

When you’re ready to take your digital marketing level to the same high level as your branding strategy, rely on us to help make it happen. 

see results

How Long Does it Take to See Results from SEO?

The great thing about this SEO (Search Engine Optimization) question is that you can run tests of your own to verify our results. We have created and built hundreds of search engine tests to try to figure out how to get results and see results more efficiently. Our experiences are listed below in this article, and each experience is repeatable.

What Replaced Google+?

In the old days, if you had a new web page, you could post it on a semi-popular Google Plus profile, and it would be indexed within as few as two hours. Even if you submit URLs to the Google Search Console, it takes between two days and two weeks before you see any impact. Link to a page from a popular YouTube channel (YouTube being owned by Google), and it takes longer than if you submit a sitemap or URL to the Google search console.

So, what has replaced Google Plus?

The odd answer may be Facebook and you can run a few tests of your own. If you post a link to an un-indexed page on a followed Facebook profile, on a followed fan page, or into a Facebook community where you receive an additional share, then your page is indexed in as quickly as two to four days. Make sure the Facebook page is open to the public (aka, you do not need to sign in to see it).

Google may be monitoring Facebook more closely than it is letting on. Try an experiment for yourself but remember to run dry tests to see how quickly Google crawls your pages without you affecting the crawl rate.

Submitting a Sitemap to The Google Search Console

To start with, make sure you read an SEO guide on how to submit a sitemap for your website. It is easy to get wrong, and despite our own troubles submitting sitemaps, it is often easier than you think to submit a sitemap to Google.

Our results were very odd in this regard. For example, we submitted a sitemap for a Blogger blog called Reasons To Giggle. We were sure that it would be crawled and indexed quickly because it is running on the Google-owned Blogger and Blogspot system.

We later discovered that it took over 2 weeks to be crawled and indexed. What is more, only around five of its dozen web pages ranked inside of the 100,000 page result mark. We submitted using this line after the “Add/Test Sitemap” function:

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

We suspect that some of the website’s pages did poorly on the Google search engine results because they are a little on the short side. There is also suspicion that some posts had no easily quantifiable theme, which may have also hurt their search engine rankings.

Submitting A Second Sitemap to The Google Search Console

We submitted a sitemap from a website called, “Findoutfree.co.uk,” which is an older website with a very strong gaming-forum following. The SEO results showed it was indexed within 12 hours and its page update had also been cached.

We also submitted a sitemap from a financial news website, with 500% more online content and a smaller online following and it took three and a half days before we started to see results.

It seems that if you have numerous and different types of links from active websites, forums, social media pages, and online apps/tools, then your website is crawled more quickly when you submit a sitemap to Google.

Do We See Results from The URL Submitting Function?

This is the “Submit a URL” function at the top of the Google search engine results. We have noticed that it takes roughly the same amount of time it does to validate an error fix.

Our experience is that a submitted URL takes four working days. This is the same amount of time it takes when we have an error reported on a URL and we click the “Validate Fix” button on the Google search console.

Adding Meta Tags to Websites

The very notion of adding keyword tags and descriptive tags to websites was laughed at during the late 00s, and yet these days they are as important as ever. But, it is not because Google is using them to rank websites. Google ranks websites based on their popularity with each user, which is why your search query results may differ from that of another person who searches for the same thing.

Adding meta tags helps online tools, online software, apps, web spiders, and other websites to find and identify your web pages. This exposes your pages to more people, which makes them more popular, which help rank them up through the Bing and Google search engines.

How long does it take for your meta tags to have an SEO effect? They cannot take effect until Google and/or Bing have crawled and indexed your website unless your website is being monitored by certain web crawlers; such as how Amazon is frequently crawled by price-comparison websites.

In truth, the positive effect of meta tags can take between two weeks and years to have any effect.

Adding Alt Tags and Titles to Images

Some of our most exciting results have come through experimenting with images and Google.

Professionally sold and licensed images such as those on ShutterStock will often rank very easily on Google images and as a byproduct on Google’s primary search engine. If the image is already listed on Google thanks to the image selling company, then it will appear very quickly in the search engine results, which will help drive traffic to your website.

If you are using a picture that you copied (legally or otherwise) and that you didn’t buy from a major image seller, then your image will have very little effect on your SEO. In fact, other than improving the usability of our blog posts, we have seen less than a 5% benefit from adding images to blog posts.

However, if you take a brand new photograph, and you add a suitable title, and you add a descriptive (not too long) alt tag, and you upload it on your website, you will see it listed on the Google images search engine very highly. You may also see it listed for other keyword searches.

In short, a “good” and original image that has been correctly optimized can act as an ambassador (and traffic funnel) for your web pages. In terms of SEO investment, this is the most volatile (in a good way) method. It won’t help your web pages get to page one on Google, but it will draw traffic to your web pages and draw positive attention if it is done right.

The Obvious Conclusion is to Experiment A Little

What we didn’t expect was how much fun we would have while experimenting with SEO and how long it takes to see results. We were having ideas such as starting five new Twitter accounts and seeing if posting the same link on all five would have it indexed. We also considered starting experiments with competing websites where all meta tags on the web pages were deleted.

We encourage you to play around a little too. We are not living in an age where you can damage your website’s SEO too deeply (unless you start using black hat SEO), so we encourage you to experiment a little to see what new SEO tricks you can discover.

It is good to experiment for yourself but professional online marketeers already know what works. We offer a number of services to improve your SERPS. Create an account and get started today.