Category Archives: SEO and Link Building

seo terms

10 SEO Terms Everyone Should Familiarize Themselves With

Feeling a bit lost when it comes to SEO?

93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. You can’t afford to not take your SEO seriously. 

There are a lot of terms that are thrown around when it comes to search engine optimization. It can be hard to keep up with the constant changes in algorithms and all the confusing jargon.

Still, your website can’t thrive without SEO. Which means neither can your business. 

The importance of SEO is universal to every industry in 2019. Here are 10 SEO terms everyone should familiarize themselves with.

1. 301 Redirection

Every once and a while you may upgrade your website or decide to change your business’ domain name. When this happens, your old pages will no longer be connected to the same links. This can be a problem for all the traffic and SEO that you’ve built up over the years.

It also means that any backlinks on other sites that are directed to your old pages are going to break. That’s where a 301 redirection comes in. What this does is redirects someone who clicks on the old link, to the location of the new page. 

This is a permanent redirection. It allows you to keep the traffic coming and not lose your SEO ranking even when you want to change the domain name of your site. 

This is opposed to a temporary redirection that would not keep its ranking and is only used for a period of time before returning users back to the original page.

2. Affiliate

This term can refer to a number of different business connections and agreements between companies. When it comes to SEO, affiliate programs are created to help different sites build traffic or sell products. This can be done by exchanging commissions or fees for doing a service.

For example, a company might have a blogger write an article on their site and include their product as a recommended purchase. If people click on the link within the blog and purchase the article due to the recommendation, the company provides the blogger with compensation for making the sale.

In this way, both the blogger and the business benefit from this transaction. This is just one example of how an affiliate could work.

Having an affiliate program on your website can help you earn extra money on top of ad revenue. If you are looking to become an affiliate, this can help you increase traffic to your website. 

3. Backlinks

These refer to links that are on other websites that point back to your site. Having backlinks on high traffic websites can not only direct users to your site. It can also help your site rank higher the more backlinks you have.

That’s because backlinks show search engines that your site is a reliable source and recommended by other websites. Sometimes businesses will work together to either purchase backlinks or exchange them. 

It’s a great way to improve your site’s SEO!

4. Algorithm

When you hear SEO experts talking about an algorithm or “algo” it is usually referring to what automated formula search engines use to rank your site and also how they determine what pages to suggest to users. 

The reason an algorithm like Panda or Penguin is so important to SEO specialists is that this is what they use to build a strategy. Knowing what methods the algorithm uses to make your site appear first is key to good ranking and increasing traffic to your page.

5. Duplicate Content

This is referring to the amount of content on a website that is repeated. A search engine will actually search for duplicate content on a site. If your page has a lot of duplicate content on it, the search engine will penalize it. So you may not be ranked or approved by Google Adwords.

Therefore, an SEO expert may tell you to avoid or reduce duplicate content on your website.

6. Gateway Page

This is an SEO term that refers to a page that is meant to bring traffic onto your website from a search engine. It will then redirect users to other pages within your site. It is yet another tactic to increase the traffic to your website.

7. Impression

When used in an SEO context, an impression is any time a user views or visits a webpage one time. Impressions are also used when referring to someone viewing a digital ad.

8. Keywords/Key Phrases

If you’ve been in the world of SEO for even a little while, you’ll hear the term keyword and/or key phrases tossed around a lot.

A keyword is a search term that a user will type into a search engine in order to find information. Key phrases are also tracked by search engines, which are a string of words or a full sentence. 

The reason they are so important in SEO is that these search terms are used to increase traffic to your website. This is done by researching which keywords or key phrases are searched most often.

If your website can rank for a popular search term and be the first website to pop up on a search engine, your site can gain a ton of traffic.

9. Internal Vs. External Links

When it comes to internal and external links, both are important parts of good SEO. Internal links are any links on your website that send users to other pages within the same site. These are recommended to keep users on your site and lead them to more of your pages.

The longer a user is on your site, the more likely they are to take an action such as purchasing a product or service, as well as clicking on an ad.

External links are ones that connect to pages on a different website. Search engines also look to make sure you are using external links on your pages. Both types of links are used to improve your ranking on search engines.

10. Alt Text

This refers to the text used to describe an image on your website. It’s important to provide alt text on all of your images. This is because it is used if the image is unable to load.

The alt text is also read by search engines to know what types of images you have on your website. It can contribute to your site ranking and help users more easily find your pages.

Discover SEO Terms

We hope this guide to essential SEO terms will help you and your business create a successful website! 

If you’re looking for more ways to boost your SEO and enhance your site then check out our blog for more amazing tips and tricks.

corporate memes

Corporate Memes: Benefits Of Memes In Social Media Marketing

There are countless memes floating around the internet every single day.

Some memes are meant to be funny. Others help spread political messages or educate people about a certain topic.

Memes can be a powerful marketing tool. They’re so effective, they can be used to influence buying decisions and political opinions.

Read on to find out what a meme is, how they work, and how you can create corporate memes to market your business.

What is a Meme?

A meme (pronounced as ‘meem’) is anything that spreads. The phrase was coined in 1976 by author and biologist Richard Dawkins. In his book, The Selfish Gene, he said that an idea could repeat itself and enter the mainstream the way that genes spread and multiply.

Fast forward about 40 years and memes have taken over, and at times, broke the internet. In the late 90s, The Hampster Dance dominated the world with its silly hamsters and annoying music. Yet, there was something about it that went viral before going viral was a thing.

The Dancing Baby meme (remember that?) and Grumpy Cat became global sensations overnight.

A meme is powerful because people remember them. Social media posts have an awfully short shelf life compared to other forms of marketing. You literally have a split second to make an impression as someone is scrolling through their feed.

Let’s see how long social media posts last. On Facebook and Twitter, they last about three hours. You’re also fighting among a ton of other content to get traction.

Facebook and Instagram have been notorious for limiting engagement once they reach critical mass. That lack of engagement forces everyone to purchase ads.

If you want to be seen organically without spending a ton of money on ads, corporate memes are the way to go. Here’s how you can get started.

Using Memes in Marketing

When memes are done well, they can add to the conversation and give your brand some credibility.

Ruffles successfully used a meme to encourage grillers to show off their grilling disasters. It showed the funny side of the brand. It also reminded people that Ruffles are a great compliment to any grilling situation – success or disaster.

When done poorly, you look like a 45-year-old trying to fit in with the 22-year-old kids. It can come across as disingenuous and do more harm than good to your brand. It shows like an older person hanging out in mom jeans.

Some of the worst corporate memes were companies like IHOP, which was trying to be ‘on fleek.’ Another example was Toshiba encouraging its users to twerk at work.

Yeah, that didn’t work at all.

You definitely don’t want to be like that when you use corporate memes.

Successfully Using Corporate Memes

How can you use corporate memes in your marketing? There are some things that you can do as part of your marketing strategy to create fantastic memes related to your business.

What is Your Brand About?

Marketing always starts with your brand and your niche audience. Your brand is the emotional connection that people have to your company. You need to know how you want people to feel about your company.

For example, if your business is a pet store, you would people to think about the love that they have for their pets when they think of your brand.

This is important to know because you want to make sure that your memes apply to your brand.

Be a Good Listener

The next thing you need to do is to be a good listener. You want to monitor the conversations that happen online related to your brand.

Let’s say that you have a political consultancy. You can monitor hashtags like #demdebate and see what people are saying. You also want to watch out for trending hashtags on Twitter, Instagram, and whichever channels you use the most.

Be Relatable

The reason some memes are successful and others aren’t is because the successful ones are relatable. Everyone can relate to leaving things on the grill for too long.

Even if your brand is a serious corporate brand, you can still be relatable. Everyone who works in an office can relate to certain things. They can relate to the guy who has to call a meeting over every little thing. They can relate to having silly, useless reports to do.

Your job is to find the humor in various situations and show people that your band can relate to them.

The Timing of Memes

When you’re listening to various online conversations, you want to make sure you time your meme right. For up to the second trends, you must get content out the door immediately.

If you’re timing your meme with an event or trend, you need to get the content out at that moment. A day later is too late.

However, if you’re capturing an everyday moment, like a water cooler conversation at the office, you can be more flexible when you send them out.

Corporate Memes to Boost Your Business

Whenever you are using social media marketing to boost your business, be smart about it. Everyone is on social media, and it’s a tough challenge to be seen.

You want to use memes sparingly. Otherwise, your brand will look like you’re trying to fit in. You also want to make sure that they’re relevant to the conversation and your brand. Constantly posting memes that are off-brand won’t do you any good.

The best corporate memes are fun, engaging, and create conversation. They also get people to link to your site, which can be a boost for business and other marketing efforts.

Do you want to know more about link building? Sign up for a free link building consultation today.

what is keyword density

The Ideal Keyword Density for Ranking

what is keyword density

Is there an ideal keyword percentage to meet Google’s needs?

The right keyword density for SEO is not an exact amount. There are no clear rules that define keyword density or how many keywords a content should possess. Google has no data you can rely on when it comes to using the right keywords in a webpage content.

What is keyword density, and why does it matter in the digital era?

Below is all you need to know about keyword density

Keyword Density

Keyword density is a term used to describe the number of times a keyword shows up at a given webpage or in a given piece of content as a ratio or percentage of the inclusive word count. Keyword density is sometimes referred to as keyword frequency. It is, therefore how frequent a specific keyword shows up in a webpage.  

Keyword density can be calculated. To conclude how frequent a keyword appears on a webpage, you divide the number of times the specific keyword is brought up by the total number of words on the page.

A more advanced keyword density formula known as TF-IDF. TF-IDF means term frequency and inverse document frequency. This advanced formula is used during information retrieval or text mining. 

It acts as a way of determining how significant the specific word is to the content of the webpage. Search engines use deviations found in TF-IDF as a way to quantify the relevance of the content in the page to the queries of the users.  

Blackhat Links

A review on blackhat links has explained how search engine rankings can help you improve your searching with Google. Many are confused about whether blackhat links building services from SEO forums work or not. 

Honestly, it depends. It depends on factors such as the number of cases, the type of services, the number of websites, the number of niches and the number of keywords targeted.  

Quality backlinks 

Learning how to get quality backlinks is considered one of the best and oldest ways for effective SEO tactics. Links are used by search engines such as Google to attest whether a website is trustworthy. Links are important for search engines to rank a website.  

Search engines use links to vote for which websites to trust because of the quality of their content. Readers trust in your content if your website is cited by other sites.  The more outside links you have pointing towards your site, the more reliable your content becomes. 

The quality of backlinks rather than the quantity is more important when measuring the credibility of the webpage content. This means, therefore, rightfully earned links from an authorized trusted site will give you a more positive review than numerous purchased links from spam sites. 

Using links from spam site increase the chances of lowering your rating. Using links from spam sites reduces your visibility chances in search results. Google, for instance, punished websites in 2015 for using link schemes to manipulate its algorithm. 

Manipulating its algorithm came as a result of selling or buying links, using automated programs to create links, using excessive link exchanges, and using article marketing campaigns on a large scale.

Link Building Companies 

2019 has shown that there are link building services that actually work. Here are link building services that actually worked as reviewed in 2019: 

Infographic Design Company 

It is a company that creates visual contents and infographics. It works by creating a topic for you, helps you find relevant data, and helps you design the infographic. 

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) 

This is a service that journalists use to find expert information through quotes. If your website has the relevant information they can use, you can get a backlink from them. 

Blogger Outreach Services 

This is an individual or agency that helps you market your content through the building of blogger outreach or building manual links. 

Guest Posting Services

This work by hiring an agency to help you publish guest posts on behalf of your website. It creates backlinks to your site. 

The agency helps you find sites that would accept guest posts, help to make a pitch, finding you editors, and even help you write your posts. Guest posting services are often considered time-consuming.

Content Marketing Agencies 

This is where you hire an agency to produce content for your blog. It works by paying a monthly fee to an agency to produce several articles per month. Other agencies, however, charge a fee per article.

PR Agency 

This is an agency that helps your company get mentioned in the press. It works by helping you come up with a newsworthy story that can be bought by media outlets. A newsworthy story can either be something you sell or information you share on your website.

SEO Agency 

This is an agency that caters for all your SEO needs, including the building of links. It works through having the agency optimize your webpage for search engines. It features some sort of link building components.

Niche

Making the best out of your site involves creating the best market for your product. Here is a quick look at the most profitable niches on the internet: 

  • Fitness and weight loss 
  • Personal finance
  • Health 
  • Dating and relationships 
  • Self-improvement 
  • Gadgets and technology 
  • Pets
  • Wealth building through investing 
  • Make money on the internet 
  • Beauty treatments 

You can get money from niche site ideas. Niche marketing is important for financial understanding. Here are four main ways you can earn from niche marketing:

  1. Pick the best niche that goes with your products 
  2. Explore the possible affiliate networks present in those niches. 
  3. Study the present online businesses in the niches and see what they are doing. It should also help you understand how to market your products to your niche. 
  4. Once you understand the present businesses, model your business to those who seem successful.

What Is Keyword Density?

What is keyword density?

Keyword density and link building remain one of the most effective ways to get ranked and drive more traffic to your site. With this information, you can easily make sure your website shows up higher than all competitors do.

Check out this page for more information on SEO.

backlinking

15 White Hat Backlinking Hacks for SEO

Did you know that the United States alone spends a lot in search engine optimization (SEO)?

After all, it’s expected for the country’s businesses to spend $80 billion within the next year. It will grow from here, as businesses become more competitive with their online presence.

Expect to spend money too, especially if you want to beat the competition. Fortunately, you don’t need to resort to black hat SEO techniques to gain an edge. We’ve got a great list below showcasing effective white-hat techniques, from proper backlinking to video tutorials.

1. Internal Linking

This method is big but often overlooked by most businesses. It helps you transfer links through your pages while maintaining link control. It makes a natural profile of links that Google can use to crawl your website faster.

2. Ask for Credit

Regardless of what you do, ask credit from both your clients and partners. The best time to do this is when your clients are happy with your service. Make the whole process easier by putting the link on their website or make a snippet they can embed using HTML.

3. Ask Suppliers and Distributors

Do you buy products or services from a supplier? If so, you can ask them to spare a link to your website. Your suppliers will want you to succeed, meaning they’re more likely to oblige to your requests.

4. Make Message Board Signatures

When using the forums, make sure to put a link to your website in your signature. Most of it are “no-follow”, but it can still bring a decent amount of visitors to your website. That will helps ensure you keep up your site’s natural link profile.

5. Use Directories

You can submit your website’s link to niche directories or local business directories. Be wary of general web directories since they’re often filled with low-quality links. You don’t want to get associated with these since it will lower your Google rankings.

6. Make Video Tutorials

Did you know that a lot of people say that product videos help them decide what to buy? In a recent study, it’s shown that about 90% of viewers’ buying habits get influenced by videos they watch online. Once you make your tutorial video, you can share it on forums where people get a link back to your website for more information.

7. Guest Blogging

You can connect with popular bloggers and pitch them an idea for a blog post. If you aren’t a big firm, use guest blogging networks as a starting point. With guest blog posts, you can get some backlinks from high-quality sources.

8. Write Testimonials

Businesses are at their happiest when seeing clients use their products or services. You can endorse the suppliers you use and write great reviews about them. Once you’re done, you can ask them to share this testimonial on their website, linking back to you.

9. Comment on Blogs

This tactic won’t earn you backlinks in most cases. Most blog comments will only net you some no-follow links, but it still helps people check you out at least. Also, you might find that some blogs will allow do-follow comments.

10. Join Communities

There is no limit to the communities you can, whether it’s a subreddit or a business hub. It’s still a great way for you to drive more people to your website and get some good links. It’s important to remember that these links are usually no-follow.

11. Answer Online Questions

You can go to websites like Quora and Yahoo Answers to answer questions related to your field. This will help you garner more website traffic from people impressed by your expertise. With that, you can build your own credibility as a thought leader in your sphere of interest.

12. Do Some Giveaways

One of the easiest ways to earn white hat backlinks is to give something away. A good way to start is to give influencers some incentives in exchange for a product review. But it’s important not to go overboard with the charity, or you’ll find yourself losing money faster than you like.

13. Convert Unhappy Customers

No matter what industry you’re in, there is a chance that you’ll get some negative comments. You’ll find some reviews or articles lambasting your brand, regardless of your service excellence. But that isn’t the end—do what you can to convert them by helping them solve their problems with your business.

14. Make Sure the Links Point to the Right Page

You can try using tools to track if your links are pointing to the right page in your website. Don’t wait until you get too many 404 errors since that will damage your link profile. The good thing is that you have some easy approaches when this happens, such as:

  • Inform site owners to repurpose the link
  • Use 301 redirections to another page

This will ensure that your link integrity holds up no matter how much you change your website.

15. Get Your Competitors’ Backlinking Profile

Do you have a competitor with a higher ranking in the Google results page? If so, you can use tools to find their links using their website URL. That way, you’ll get inbound link data like the number of links, referring domains, and more.

Start Backlinking Today!

If you want to get easy backlinks, you can use these tips to build a legitimate link profile. Black hat SEO tactics might tempt you since they offer immediate results, but it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Remember, Google often updates its algorithm, and it’s gotten better at detecting illegitimate ways of growing link profiles.

Stick to white hat link building tactics, and you will have a sustainable means of growing your online presence. If you need more means of becoming noticeable online, you can read our guide here. It’s a complete beginners’ guide to on-site SEO—perfect if you don’t have prior experience.

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. 

 

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.