Category: Seo Tips

Local SEO is one of the most effective ways to reach customers searching for you locally. It works because local searchers have a special relationship with businesses in their area, and that’s the reason why these people visit your store more than others. Did you know that there’s an entire industry dedicated to local SEO? If you haven’t heard of local SEO, you will soon enough because it’s a very effective way to boost your organic search results.

Local SEO is a very powerful tool that helps you get found by your local audience. Many people think that local SEO is only for people who live in big cities. The truth is, it’s much easier to rank for local keywords if you live in a small town or city than if you live in a large metropolitan area. Keep reading if you’re ready to learn how to get found locally.

Local SEO is essential for getting found online in the modern world. More people are searching online for local businesses on their mobile devices. You could miss out on new business opportunities if you aren’t using local search engine optimization techniques. This course will show you what local SEO is, why you need it, and how to get started using it to get found online in your city.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is optimizing your website to rank higher on Google for local searches. Many businesses do not realize the importance of local SEO because they don’t realize how much they rely on it. Local search queries account for over half of all questions. Google says that “the average person today performs about eight local searches daily, and this number is expected to grow.” The bottom line is that you are missing out on a huge market if you are not optimizing your website for local search.

How do you optimize your website for local SEO?

Local SEO is a highly specialized type of SEO that helps websites in specific cities get found by those in those cities. Local SEO is also known as geo-targeted SEO, the most effective SEO strategy for local businesses. When it comes to local SEO, the location of your business is everything. If your company is located in a major city, you might be able to get away with a standard SEO strategy. Still, if your business is located in a small town, you’ll need to optimize for local SEO to get found by your target audience.

In addition to the location of your business, there are two other key components of local SEO. In addition to the obvious factors, such as the number of local companies, a Google map can be a huge help. It’s also important to get the right keywords. For example, a restaurant that is located in a major city is going to be searching for keywords such as “restaurant”, “food”, and “dining”. On the other hand, a local bar might be searching for keywords such as “bar”, “alcohol”, and “beer”. It’s essential to use long tail keywords, which are the ones that are more specific and more likely to rank in Google.

The most important factors in Local SEO

If you’re a local business owner looking to get found by your local customers, you’ve come to the right place. Local SEO optimization is the practice of using certain techniques to increase the visibility of your local business on the internet, particularly through the use of Google, Bing, and other search engines. Search engines are great tools for locating local businesses online, as they can crawl the web, find local companies, and rank them based on certain factors. Here’s what you need to know about local SEO and how to boost your organic search rankings easily.

Content for local SEO

Creating content for your local market is one of the easiest ways to start a local SEO campaign. There are two main categories of content:

Local events. Create content that shows how people in your area can benefit from an event or service you offer.

Local businesses. Find a company in your area that could benefit from your services. Write a testimonial or blog post about their business. Once you’ve created the content, you’ll want to submit it to local directories and review sites.

How can I do my local SEO?

Local SEO is a great way to get found by local people in your city. To be a local business, you must understand how to optimize your local SEO and target the right people. Before you start with any SEO tactics, you must ensure you have a local listing on Google My Business. This is an essential first step, as Google is the most popular search engine in the world, and many local people will search Google before they go to a website.

Google is a search engine, so it doesn’t know the difference between real and fake companies. Therefore, you’ll need to provide photos and reviews of your business on Google My Business. You can’t expect a local listing if you don’t have any thoughts or pictures. Once you have a local listing, you must “pin” it to the top. Pinning your local listing to the top gives it priority over other listings, meaning that it will appear first in search results when someone searches for local businesses in your city.

There are many ways to get a local listing, but the best way is to get a review on Google. Ask your customers to leave a review on Google. Another way is to ask your friends and family to leave a review on Google. If you’re not a local business, you can still ask people from your community to leave a review. You can also use Google Maps. Create an account for your business on Google Maps. Add photos, ratings, and reviews, and you’ll have a better chance of getting a local listing.

Frequently asked questions about local SEO

Q: Are there any tips or tricks for ensuring that the website gets more traffic?

A: You can use keywords on your page titles and descriptions to increase traffic.

Q: Is it important for businesses to have local listings on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, etc.?

A: It’s very important to be listed on Google Places and Yahoo Local. Your business will appear in the organic search results if you are listed.

Q: Do you have any advice for building a successful website?

A: To be successful, you need a great product or service, you need to build trust with your customers, and you need to make a loyal customer base.

Q: Do you have any tips or tricks for getting visitors to your site?

A: Use social media to attract visitors and promote your business.

Myths about local SEO

1. Local SEO is free.

2. Local SEO isn’t as hard as PPC.

3. Local SEO can be done with a $200 budget.

Conclusion

I’m very familiar with this topic because I do this kind of SEO myself. SEO is the process of optimizing your content so that people can find you when they search for keywords relevant to your niche. If you’re a local business owner, I highly recommend learning how to optimize your local search engine results.

Read Full Article

What is Meta Description SEO? Meta description is another important element in search engine optimization (SEO). Your meta description tag briefly describes your web page that appears underneath search results in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

Meta description tags are particularly important for SEO. The first 50-100 words of your meta description tag are the most important, and they should include your main keywords and key phrases. This helps search engines better understand your content.

If you do not use this tag, you may miss out on valuable traffic. The following tools can help you optimize your meta description tag.

Meta-description is an important part of search engine optimization. While this may seem obvious, it’s important to realize that it’s often overlooked.

It’s one of the first things Google considers when determining the relevance of your content to a particular keyword or phrase.

So, if you don’t optimize your meta description, you’re missing out on much traffic.

I recommend testing different variations to see what works best for your audience.

For example, you may want to test a longer, shorter, more descriptive, and so on.

If you’re wondering what meta description SEO is, you might be surprised to learn that this is a relatively new form of SEO. A meta description is a short text snippet describing the page itself. It appears in search engine results pages (SERPs).

The meta description is a small window into your web page. In other words, it’s your first impression to a visitor. It’s how potential customers decide whether to click through to your page.

The meta description is your visitors’ first impression of your page.

What is meta description SEO?

Meta Description is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. A web page’s brief description or headline appears in the search results.

Meta Descriptions are different from Page Titles because they appear on the search results page instead of the actual page.

To rank highly for a specific keyword, you must use it as a key phrase in your meta description.

Google aims to show users the most relevant search results based on what they type into their search bar.

They use this information to determine how to rank your site in the SERPs.

Meta descriptions are the snippets of text that appear below your website’s title and URL in search results.

To increase your SEO rankings, you must ensure your meta description is optimized for SEO.

Why should you use it?

The meta description is the snippet that appears under the search results. A small page summary can be shown to users when they type into the search box. It is a very important part of the page because it shows up in search results for every search.

You can do many things to improve your blog’s SEO, but none is more important than meta description.

For those who haven’t heard of it, the meta description is a short snippet of text appearing in search results under your post. Google uses it to inform searchers about what your post is about.

The meta description is limited to around 160 characters, which is just a bit longer than a tweet. To get the most out of it, you must ensure it accurately describes your post and includes keywords people are searching for.

If you’re not using meta descriptions for your posts, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to increase your traffic.

What are the best practices?

Meta descriptions are a vital part of search engine optimization (SEO) because they appear in the title of your webpage.

The meta description is a short text that appears below your web page in search results.

Because Google places a huge amount of emphasis on meta descriptions, writing a compelling and interesting description for your webpage is very important.

Meta descriptions are those short snippets of text that appear below your video or image on the search results page. These descriptions are important because they tell Google what your site is about and whether it matches its user’s search query.

The meta description is the only place Google will show your video or image when someone searches for it. Therefore, it is important to write a compelling narrative for your videos or pictures.

As a beginner, you probably wonder how much you should spend on a video or image. Here’s the deal: it depends on how much you want to pay. If you’re starting, you can probably get by spending around $5-$10 per video. But you might want to start spending more as you get better and more creative.

It’s also worth mentioning that Google has recently been experimenting with including videos on the main results page. So, if you use video in your videos and description, you might see your video appear there.

How to do it right

Meta descriptions are snippets of text that appear underneath search results on search engines. They’re a great way to get more people to visit your site, especially when trying to rank highly for a specific keyword.

The first line of your description should be no longer than 50 characters. The second line should be no longer than 150 characters. To get the most out of your description, you should write a compelling piece that includes a few relevant keywords and ise readable and interesting.

SEO is one of those marketing strategies that sounds complicated but is very simple. And the thing is, it’s really easy to master.

A meta description is the first thing a user sees when they search on Google. It’s their first impression of your page, so it’s important to make it count.

In this article, we’ll talk about meta description, how it works, and how you can optimize it.

The meta description is a short snippet of text appearing on the search results page when someone types in a keyword. The idea is that it will be displayed above your page’s content.

This is important because when a person searches, they expect a preview of what the page will look like. The meta description is a way to convey that preview in a few words.

As a result, it’s often used to describe a page’s content. But it can also be used to express a product or service. In that case, it’s called “product description.”

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: What is Meta Description SEO?

A: It’s what comes after your keyword in the title and description of your web page. It helps Google understand your page, making it easier for searchers to find your website.

Q: What does it mean when a meta description doesn’t appear on Google?

A: When you cannot view your page’s meta description on Google, several things can be done to fix this. First, ensure that the description tag is inside the H1 and H2 tags. Second, check to ensure that your content length is between 200 and 2000 characters and that your description contains at least 150 characters. Finally, double-check to ensure no special characters are used in your report.

Q: How long should the meta description be?

A: Your meta description should ideally be between 150 and 250 characters, though Google recommends it.

Q: Why should we use Meta Description SEO?

A: It’s a great way to catch potential customers’ eyes while browsing the web. Your meta description can influence whether or not someone clicks on your link. If you have a good one, it will help your rankings.

Q: What are the different ways we can use meta description SEO?

A: There are three types of meta description SEO: keyword-based, HTML-based, and user-generated.

Myths About SEO 

1. Meta description needs to be short.

2. Meta description should not exceed 160 characters.

3. Meta description is not used for ranking but to increase your site’s visibility.

Conclusion

When you search for a specific keyword, a meta description appears on the Google search results page.

Itappearss in a small box below the title and above the snippet. This is the only text thatappearsp on the search results page.

The meta description is what people see first when they click on the search results page. It should tell people what your page is about.

You can use it to help direct people to the right pages of your site, but it should also be descriptive enough that people know what they’re looking at.

Two meta description tags appear on a page when someone searches for something online. These tags describe the webpage to search engines.

The first kind of meta description is the title tag. You see this when you click on the page’s title on a search engine.

The second kind of meta description is the meta description tag. This appears at the top of the page when someone clicks on a link on a search engine.

The purpose of these meta descriptions is to increase the likelihood of someone clicking on your page or visitingt your website.

Read Full Article

SEO is one of those terms people try to use when they try updates without knowing much about it. Sure, most business owners know that SEO helps drive traffic to their websites via search engines. But how does SEO work? How much does it cost? And does your business need it? In this blog, we’ll boil SEO down to its basics to give you a rudimentary understanding of this complex yet crucial practice.

First of all, what is SEO?

Short for “search engine optimization,” SEO is a methodology used to boost a website’s ranking or frequency on search engine result pages, with the end goal of directing more traffic toward the site. SEO is a natural or organic way of improving a website’s visibility on search engines instead of “paid search,” which involves paying search engines directly for prime real estate.

How does it work?

Say you’re looking for a new pair of sunglasses and want to explore different brands and styles on the Internet. Conventional wisdom will likely lead you to a search engine like Google. You’ll probably type “sunglasses” into the search bar to initiate your search. The results will reveal everything you need about a website’s SEO prowess. Websites with the best SEO will appear first, while websites with poorer SEO will appear on secondary pages in My Update Studio.

Why should I care where my website is ranked?

No matter your website’s purpose, being on page 1 of search engines for search terms most relevant to your business is essential. According to studies, Page 1 garners 92 percent of all traffic from the average search. The higher you’re listed on Page 1, the better. On average, the top-ranked result for any given search scores 32.5 percent of traffic share, while the second-ranked result gets 17.6 percent. The drop-off gets even steeper from there.

READ ALSO : 

How do I get my website to rank higher?

You can take several steps to improve your SEO, which will boost your ranking. Updating your website content to incorporate keywords is the first step. There is no substitute for well-written and relevant content. Optimizing your metadata and alt tags is also very important. Getting other websites to link to yours is also valued by Google’s algorithms, as it helps to establish your website’s credibility.

Alt tags? Metadata? What are those things?

An alt tag is a text alternative for an image or object on your page. Metadata is data that provides information about other data.

Read Full Article

The fintech ecosystem in India Vinzite has been blossoming for the last couple of years. While payment tech firms have existed for over a decade, there has been a lot of development in other FinTech verticals. The subject of discussion here is the insurance tech space. Online companies are cutting short the lengthy process of negotiating with brokers and banks, followed by endless documentation exchanges to allow consumers to buy insurance policies with just a few clicks.

Insurance 2015 to 2020, reaching Rs 15,000 crore. This indicates the opportunity created by technology, which organizes the scattered space of insurance retail. Two leading firms in this space are Policybazaar and Cover Fx, with 1.5 million and 350,000 visits monthly, as per SimilarWeb. They are also the most funded firms in their segment, with $69.6 million and $14 million raised to date.

Among these established firms, some startups gradually carve out a share of the total market opportunity by building their own USP. The larger objective is still to make insurance buying easier for all users through technology. Subir Mukherjee founded GIBL in 2014 with a similar aim: to eradicate the misselling of insurance policies through an easy, informative web and mobile app-based procurement platform.

An Introduction to GIBL

Subir’s own bad experience in dealing with health insurance brokers and ‘nightmarish’ paperwork led to him establishing GreenLife Insurance Broking Pvt. Ltd. The company is building an intuitive web and mobile platform to enable customers to make their own decisions for policy buying through a tech-guided and personalized process. GIBL isn’t only an aggregator; it has a broking license from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority.

“We are giving customers the option to see multiple quotes & the features at their fingertips. Within a few minutes, they can understand what is good or not for them and decide accordingly. It removes the dependency on what the agents say and accepts the price they are quoting,” says Subir.

About the Product

The product curates quotes from over 25 insurance providers across segments and allows users to review them per their requirements. Additionally, understanding the need to present documents repeatedly to redeem or renew policies, the mobile app acts as a policy vault to store all policies, claim history, etc.
The company claims to have partnered with insurance firms to offer its customers a better price and an option to buy policies instantly without uploading documents.

When asked why a consumer would download an app for policy buying, Subir responded, “Our App gives our customers the flexibility to purchase a policy or do the research on the go. It will store their required policy documents, claim details, motor RC copy, and all related documents at their fingertips. Now e-Policy for a motor is being accepted, so there is no need to carry the hardcopy.“

The platform is built on Microsoft MVC technology and takes pride in its integrated workflow and customer relationship management system. “We integrated continuous machine learning, profiling, and pattern matching algorithm in our integrated system, which brings automated sales suggestions to our team and helps them bring more sales,” says Subir.

Progress Till Date

The company claims to have approximately 500,000 registered users and sees around 20,000+ monthly transactions. Subir says they are growing at a 50% rate month on month. It acquires most of its users through content marketing and SEO efforts. In FY15-16, GIBL claims to have grown 5000% over the last financial year. Additionally, the company sees a 90-95% renewal rate for policies bought through its platform.

Challenges in Building an Insurance Tech Firm in India

“Our biggest challenge is the people’s faith in God and karma. As a nation, we believe nothing bad could happen to us as God is watching if we do good. So they feel God has already safeguarded them and will protect them from any disaster. As a result, they think they don’t need any insurance protection from any company.” shares Subir. “Most people in India will prefer to take the chance more than being insured. It is an extension of the Jugaad mentality. So educating the masses is still the pivotal challenge.” he adds.

Most people might not think of purchasing insurance unless they buy something new or come in close contact with a health or accidental mishap. The traditional path of buying insurance is also tedious; there’s no straightforward way, nor are the consumers aware of a go-to person or a destination who would guide them right. BCG’s research also predicts that in 2020, 25% of insurance buying decisions will be influenced by digital.

The startup operates as a customer-first broker, educating and guiding customers wherever required. It aims to make policy buying and claim settlement easy. Subir shares, ‘Recently, we fought against two mighty insurers and settled more than Rs 15 lacs of claims for our customers. They were delighted, and their smiles made our job so easy.’

On Competition and Market

Considering that the investor-funded companies have built a name among consumers, we asked how a new player like GIBL would sustain itself in the space, to which Subir responded, “There are few companies out there who have raised funds in this space. But the current status of most of these companies is just like their other eCommerce peers. They are at a big loss; if you dig deep, you will discover they are struggling for their existence. Spending money on advertisements can create the brand, but this doesn’t guarantee revenue. Their current revenue does not justify the big spending. The burn rate of these companies is high.”

READ ALSO : 

Also, quoting the prediction mentioned above of the Rs 15000 crore market size by 2020, Subir opines, “Online insurance is very fragmented, and still there is not a single player with more than 10% of the existing market.” hence, there is a lot of opportunities for more companies to startup in this space. That said, the online insurance industry has many players in the market, such as Policybachat, EasyPolicy, NammaPolicy, InsuringIndia, PolicyX, and more.

“Being an insurance broker gives us the advantage to design our policy and expand both offline & online. The industry will take time to go online, so we move at our own pace. We are building up our niche and our special customer-centric process, which will keep us ahead of the competition.” says Subir.

Read Full Article

It’s a no-brainer that getting Universe Inform funded is a great achievement. You can hire the best talent, move into a proper workplace, and invest more in improving your product. Also, now you can go all-out marketing yourself, and that is where the problem begins. Once you get funded, there’s an irresistible desire to explore all marketing options you could not afford previously. And that is perfectly understandable. We all want to grow and start marketing ourselves to our target audience. Still, a careful approach will ensure you reach them with maximum effectiveness while burning considerably less money.

Digital-marketing-for-start

Let’s dive deeper and find out how you can optimize your approach towards marketing to get better results.

Hire a senior digital marketing resource.

Instead of a digital marketing executive, I strongly suggest you go with a senior resource with seven to ten years of experience handling overall digital marketing for startups/brands.

You will be developing a marketing strategy at this time, and his/her insights will help you chart a long-term plan. When hiring a marketing person, make sure that he/she is proficient in all the major digital channels, such as SEO, SEM, social media marketing, email marketing, and digital PR. Good knowledge of analytics is also a must.

However, from my personal experience, I have noticed that people from digital marketing agencies don’t live up to the expectations, possibly because agencies have different teams handling all the above digital channels. I would suggest that you hire people from other startups/brands that are in the same niche as yours or somewhat related.

PS: I am suggesting a digital marketing resource because it has a low entry barrier. Traditional marketing channels are costly, and you will quickly spend your money.

Work on your branding.

Once you have decided to kickstart your marketing activities, you need to start working on your communication.
Developing a brand personality will help you define your brand’s identity. This, in turn, will develop an emotional connection with your customers and also help you stand apart from your competitors.

Once you have this in place, you will find that coming up with a tweet, an ad copy for an SEM campaign, or even a landing page becomes much easier. Please refer to my earlier column on why startups must have a brand personality to read more about this. Start creating remarkable content.

Content marketing is the most reliable way to impact your audience. Having good content writers on board will ensure you create content that people like and share. More than that, it will ensure that people get to know you and adopt your product/service.

This is a huge playground; you can dabble with many options here. You can create and share content in several ways, from videos to infographics to blog posts and downloadable content.

However, you should avoid fluffy content if all it gets is page views but no leads/sales. There’s no point in having a blog that shares listicles on food and lifestyle while dealing in real estate.

So, regularly analyze your content strategy’s impact on your KPIs (brand awareness, leads, sales, etc.). You should always see content to increase sales, not just a channel to get more likes or pageviews. Great Report.

Focus on product marketing.

While the initial version of your product was about giving customers a good experience, you should now consider maximizing your returns from customers’ usage of your product.

We all know that product marketing is a good way to spread the word organically, and it saves a lot of money, but many startups wait till they hire a good growth hacker to get started with this. However, this shouldn’t be the case.
Numerous case studies have pointed out that simple tweaks can lead to good returns, and your senior marketing resource should be able to pull this off (with some training, if required).

Work on your landing pages.

Since you will be beginning your paid marketing campaigns, you must have a landing page that converts like a charm. As the customer’s first point of interaction with your brand, it becomes imperative that you focus on delivering a great experience.

Instead of using a template and letting it run on autopilot, you should run A/B tests on all the crucial aspects of conversion (headlines, text, CTA, button, color scheme, etc.). This should be an ongoing process and not a one-time affair.

Invest in great tools.

Now that you have the funds, you should consider using premium tools that do a better job than the free ones you’ve used all this time.

There are many good tools out there that can help you with SEO, lead generation, project management, and analytics. Give their free trials a spin and see which ones fit your requirements. Suggested tools: Moz Pro, Crazy Egg, WebEngage, SumoMe, Wishpond, Mixpanel, or Kissmetrics.

Follow Pareto’s principle.

Your eagerness to market aggressively would be wise if you don’t spread yourself too thin here. You don’t need to do everything to build up your sales funnel. More often than not, you will see a handful of marketing activities giving you maximum returns.

READ ALSO  : 

Once you begin your marketing activities, you will start seeing the effectiveness of various channels. Invest in the ones that are more impactful than others. Maybe it is SEO, SEM, or product marketing—it can be anything.
Running after every marketing channel is not going to help you. Stay focussed.
Work on your employer’s branding.

Since you will only grow more in the coming months, you should invest in branding yourself as a good workplace.

Hiring is a lot of pain, and trust me, there are very few talented people out there. This makes employer branding all the more important for you. Having a nice team page and a company blog always helps, but nothing beats tapping into the contacts of your current team via social media.

When people see their friends having a great time at their workplace, they aspire to a workplace like yours. This positive perception of your brand comes into force when you ask your team members to share the current job openings in your brand within their network.

I hope the above pointers helped you and gave some direction to your marketing aspirations. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below; I will do my best to answer them as soon as possible.

Read Full Article

Samsung India has launched the new Galaxy J5 Prime and Galaxy J7 Prime, the successors to the Galaxy J Series. The dual-sim devices come with a trendy metal Unibody design. Both devices will be available in Black and gold.

Both devices have a premium metal finish with 2.5D Gorilla Glass, giving them a luxurious look and feel. The Galaxy J7 Prime has a 5.5” Full HD Super AMOLED screen with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080, while the Galaxy J5 Prime has a 5” HD Super AMOLED screen resolution of 1280 x 720. Both devices deliver a perfect viewing experience to users.

The New Galaxy J7 Prime has an Octa-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A53 processor backed by a Mali-T830MP2 GPU. The device comes with 3 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, which is expandable up to 256 GB via micro SD card. The New Galaxy J5 Prime is packed with an Octa-core 1.4 GHz processor. The device comes with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, which is expandable up to 256 GB via micro SD card.

The J7 Prime has a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and an 8MP front camera. Both cameras have an f/1.9 aperture that delivers a bright and sharp picture. The device is action-packed with a 3,300mAh battery, providing long-lasting performance. The J5 Prime has a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a f/1.9 aperture; the device also has a 5MP front camera with an aperture of f/2.2. The device has 2,400mAh for everyday use.

READ ALSO : 

Both devices are powered by Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with the latest TouchWiz UI on top of it. The device also has a fingerprint sensor on the front home button. Samsung has also built unique features like S Power Planning and S Secure. These ‘Make for India’ features are some exclusive features. For example, the S Power Planning will reserve a battery for calls, enabling the user to allocate a certain percentage of the battery for calls and messages. The S Secure feature will allow the user to hide or lock apps and even let you create a Secure encrypted network while using public WiFi.

The Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime costs 18,790 INR, while the Galaxy J5 Prime costs 14,790 INR.
That’s all for now, guys. Stay tuned for more updates, and don’t forget to subscribe to the website and our YouTube channel.

Read Full Article

To many people, SEO is a Vlogger Faire minefield of misinformation and conflicting advice.
Trust me; I’ve been there. When I first Googled “SEO” for the first time, I was overwhelmed with many anecdotes, case studies, and “best practices.” I picked up a few tips but couldn’t make heads or tails of what I read for the most part.

After years of in-the-trenches online marketing and PR work, I eventually put the puzzle pieces together. But I’m no SEO guru. Most of my best SEO successes have come from old-school PR. That’s because, when you do it right, PR equates to link building or building backlinks to your site to get higher rankings in search engines.

But over the last few months, I’ve read that “link building is dead” and that “Google doesn’t care about keywords anymore.” Instead, the search engine is supposedly more concerned with high-quality content, schema markup, and social media shares. I’ve been busy with my startup, so I haven’t had time to keep up with the latest trends in the SEO world.

Fortunately, someone else recently took the time to make sense of the topsy-turvy SEO landscape. Brian Dean and a team of data partners at Backlinko recently analyzed 1 million Google results to see which ranking factors are important for SEO in 2016.

Here’s what they found: Backlinks are still (very) important. Of the 20-ish ranking factors Dean looked at, he found that backlinks are still the most important ranking signal Google uses. But not just any backlinks. This study found that you need backlinks from a bunch of different domains.

In other words, if you get 100 backlinks from the same domain, it won’t blast you to the top of Google. But you’re in business if you get 100 backlinks from 100 different domains.

The question is: how do you get these backlinks? Spam 10,000 sites with blog comments. Just kidding 🙂
In my opinion, the best links you can get are contextual mentions from authoritative media outlets. Google highly values these links and can bring in a boatload of traffic. I wrote a guide that will help you get links using PR.

More bounces equal lower rankings. This study also found that bounces aren’t just bad for your bottom line; they can throw a monkey wrench into your SEO efforts. Using data from SimilarWeb, the study found that sites with a high bounce rate tended to rank lower in Google than sites with a low bounce rate.

This data suggests bounce rates may cause lower rankings. After all, if people bounce off your site like a trampoline, it sends a pretty clear message to Google that people don’t like reading your content. So, it makes sense that Google may downrank sites with lots of bounces. However, Dean mentions in the report that a low bounce rate might be a byproduct of excellent content in general. In other words, if you write a kick-butt article, people will stick around longer.

How do you decrease your bounce rate, you ask? It’s not rocket science. On my blog, I ensure that my content is above the fold — and that the first few sentences draw people in. If you can hook them quickly, they’re significantly more likely to view another page. Another way you can improve your bounce rate is to break your content up into small chunks. In my experience, walls of text make users run for their lives. But when you break your content into two to three-sentence paragraphs, it becomes much easier to digest.

Bottom line? Spend some time improving your bounce rate. It won’t hurt your SEO (or conversions), so investing time to improve it makes sense. Long-form content ranks better (surprise, surprise). “People online have short attention spans.”

How many times have you read that?

Yes, certain people live and breathe too; do (i.e., too long, didn’t read). But you don’t want to architect your content marketing strategy around this group. Think about it: if you found a 3,000-word article on “why you’re so awesome,” would you skim it? Of course not! You’d read every word.

While that’s an extreme example, it shows that people are willing to read long-form content. Just look at the runaway success of waitbuywhy.com, which publishes posts that are more than 10,000 words long!And the study points out that not only do people like reading long-form content, but it tends to rank better in Google:
According to Dean’s data, the average first page results in Google boast 1,890 words. That’s a hell of a lot more than your average 400-word blog post.

If you use long-form, you need to write well. So when you can combine compelling writing with long-form content, you have a mighty one-two punch. Other studies (like this one by BuzzSumo) found that longer content tended to get more shares on social media:

And I’ve found the same phenomenon on my blog. When I look at the content that brought in the most shares (and got the most Google traffic), they tend to be more than 2,000 words:

Does the increase in social shares explain the association between long-form content and rankings?

It’s impossible to say from this study because it only looked at correlations. Like with bounce rate, publishing long-form content definitely won’t hurt you. And it will probably help. So give it a shot. In-depth, focused content outperforms content about ten different topics. As I said, you can’t publish 1,890 fluff words and expect to light the world on fire. And this study found the same thing.

READ ALSO :

They discovered that content rated by software as “topically relevant” ranked above content with a low content score:

So what does this mean, exactly?

It means that when you write about something, cover one topic in-depth. For example, here’s a post about building an email list from the Buffer blog. In this post, they write about one thing only: how to grow your email list. They don’t meander off and talk about social media. Or content. Or blogging. Or building relationships. It’s 110 percent about getting more emails. That’s it.

That focus is why the post ranks #4 in Google for the keyword “list building.” That’s what you want to do with every post that you write. In my experience, this approach produces flat-out better content in general. And it may also boost your rankings.

That’s what you want to do with every post that you write. In my experience, this approach produces flat-out better content in general. And it may also boost your rankings. Site speed makes a difference. You’ve probably heard that Google prefers fast-loading websites. Google has emphasized using site speed as part of its algorithm.

According to this study, this appears to be the case:

How can you make your site load faster?

At Criminally Prolific, I use a (free) plugin called WP Super Cache. I’ve noticed that it makes a huge difference in my loading speed. And it takes about 5.3 seconds to set up. Other programs people use include WP Rocket, WP Smush, and Max CDN.

Read Full Article

Keyword research is an extensive and important part of the Houston SEO process. It’s the first and most vital step in obtaining accurate key phrases. If you want to redirect organic web traffic to your site, keyword research is the foundation. These magical words determine who visits your site and why. The more relevant you make the phrases, the brighter the prospects of getting web traffic from your target audience.

Four tips small businesses can use for fast and effective keyword research.

1. Relevancy

Finding keywords relevant to your page or blog post is one of the most important things when conducting keyword research. As Houston SEO experts, we know relevance is more important to your readers (and Google) than ranking. You want to rank high on search engines, but visitors will click off your page if your keywords aren’t relevant. This could be a reason for changing website data, such as high bounce rates.

2. Focus on Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keyphrases are longer and more specific keywords that a target audience will search for when they are close to the buying stage. They are typically phrases with 3-5 or more words in length and are the key to finding a relevant topic on any subject. Google is improving at analyzing the intent and the relevance of search queries and content. Therefore, it has become vital to shift to long-tail keywords.

For example, if you’re selling jewelry, instead of using the keyword “necklaces,” a long-tail keyword like “sterling silver oval pendant necklace” is more specific. Someone searching for this key phrase knows exactly what they’re looking for and is, therefore, most likely in the buying stage.

3. Check Out Your Competition

Look at your competitor’s blog-it’s the easiest and quickest way to find high traffic and bright keywords for your content. Identify the keywords and use them to create your unique content. For this technique to work, you must produce content of higher quality than your competitors. Could you not copy what they have already said? Instead, use your voice and perspective to add a unique spin to the same topic. Effectively managing this technique can help you pick the most relevant keywords during your research.

READ MORE :

4. Monitor Trends

Trends will show which keywords might evolve in a few years or months. You should plan content based on these predictable keywords to be ahead of others. Google Trends will show the recent rise of keywords on the traffic charts. If you target these keywords, your content will be ranked without much SEO practice since competition on these words is lower. If you are in a new market sector with the latest products, you can target upcoming keywords in advance using trend data.

Read Full Article

Being a solopreneur isn’t easy.

It’s a lot of responsibility, and sometimes Web Posting Mart even struggles. You’re dealing with all sorts of risks you would be shielded from if you were working a “normal” job. You’re facing greater obstacles and dealing with many different types of stress.

One of the biggest challenges solopreneurs face is marketing their businesses effectively. This is especially true of online marketing. It can be incredibly frustrating if you’re not familiar with how it works. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the areas that vexes many solopreneurs. As you already know, making it easy for prospective clients to discover you online is important.

Good SEO will get your business in front of the most eyeballs, so it must be done right. As you read through this post’s end, you will get seven proven tips that will help you improve your search rankings.

When you start implementing these tips, you will watch your search rankings grow over time. One thing that is important to remember is that SEO isn’t a sprint—it’s a marathon. Don’t expect instant results. If they happen, you’re lucky. If not, it’s okay. Just keep trucking, and you’ll see the reward.

If you’re a small enterprise — and you probably are if you’re running it solo — most of your business will come through word of mouth, human-to-human organic “marketing.” Because of this, you will need high-quality content on your website. It’s a well-known fact that content marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand.

Here are some points to remember when creating content:

Is it relevant to my prospects? Does it relate to what my business does?
How is this piece of content helpful to the reader? Does it inform, educate, or inspire?
Is the content easy to read? Or will my readers have to work hard to understand it?
Moe Kermani, the founder of Natural Area Rugs, is well aware of the importance of high-quality content:

“We sell decorative area rugs, so the content on our blog focuses on giving practical tips on decorating and interior design. Not only does this help our readers design their rooms, but it also positions us as an authority in our space.”

I agree. Creating this type of content also makes it more likely for prospective customers to find their website. If they search for tips on decorating with area rugs, they will likely find Kermani’s company.
That’s how it works.

High-quality content is important because search engine bots are getting better and better at telling what is readable and what is not. Also, genuinely useful content is more likely to be shared on social media. Social signals will give you a huge boost in search engine optimization. It’s the “social proof” that spiders like the Googlebot seek.

Another thing to consider regarding content is ensuring your material is fresh and published consistently. This will entice visitors to come back more often and induce search engine spiders to visit your site more often to update their search content promptly. So, update your content frequently to keep the humans and the bots interested.

2. Do Keyword Research

Keyword research isn’t too hard if you use the right tools. Google has a keyword research tool, but you must sign up with their Adwords program to access it. Other free and premium tools will help you hone in on related keywords that your audience may be searching for that you may not have thought of yourself. The sweet spot is finding keywords with decent monthly searches and not too much competition.

3. Watch the Keyword Density

In the early days of the Internet, when the basics of SEO were first discovered, it was the norm for people to keyword-stuff their web pages, making the text look oddly redundant to human eyes.
Don’t do this. It’s a bad idea.

Not only will that not help you rank on sophisticated search engines such as Google, but it can also penalize you. This type of practice is known as “black hat SEO,” and you want to avoid it at all costs. By all means, include keywords, but try to go for a natural flow. Keep the keyword density at less than 3 percent, or it will look unnatural to the bots and the humans.

4. Display Your Keywords Prominently

Now that we know we shouldn’t go overboard, it’s important to note that keywords should be placed in certain key places in your page’s content. In particular, put your keywords in your page’s title, the header of your page, and in the body of your content, especially as close to the first and last sentences of the content as possible.

READ MORE 

5. Make Keywords Part of Your URL: Ensure that relevant keywords are included in the page’s web address that you are optimizing. Google uses the text in your URL to help it determine the topic of your content, and it’s also more human-readable to edit your URL and add keywords than many of the random default URLs that some content-management software can spit out.

6. Don’t Neglect Local Searches

If you are a local business, be sure to focus some of your SEO efforts on local search. Target keywords that are particular to your area, and you may be able to rank quite a bit higher than your competitors.
Suppose your business is located where your competitors are not using local search. In that case, you will have a tremendous advantage over them because your company will rank higher. When your prospective customers use Google, they will see your listing first!

7. Take Social Media Seriously

As mentioned, social signals are important in modern SEO, and having your web page go viral on Facebook can do wonders for your ranking, not to mention all the free traffic that you may be able to snag from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sources in the first place. Most people expect to contact and interact with the companies they buy from, so you should be on social media anyway.

Read Full Article

October 20, 2016, Sydney, Web Posting Pro Australia: Husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Lel and Khai Ngo are event enthusiasts who enjoy celebrating life. The co-founders of The Kit Source want to take the hassle and stress out of celebration planning.

The duo sources, curates, and packages bespoke beautifully themed party supplies and deliver them directly to your door. Every theme is carefully styled and assembled, so all the party organizer has to do is unpack and enjoy the party.

They share their unique start and start-up tips:

It’s about embracing change…

In mid-2013. We both lost a little motivation with our jobs and decided we needed a challenge. Khai was keen to study again, and I planned to start a career as a freelance event consultant, so moving overseas would be the perfect way to get a new perspective and start afresh. We considered a few locations (even the Netherlands – I have a Dutch passport), but as we’d both traveled to the States before and fallen in love with San Francisco, an international program at Berkeley – just outside San Francisco – fit the bill.

One afternoon in February 2014, after being in Berkeley for a month, I was completing an assignment and had to find classy, themed partyware for a few hypothetical events. I realized I loved putting together color and pattern combinations (mood boards) for these themes. Before I knew it, I was off Googling whether Party Kits existed – all I could find were ‘packs’ with the same tacky image on each item – a lazy and tacky approach in my eyes.

It’s about finding the gap….

That afternoon, when Khai walked in the door to our tiny, dingy college-town apartment, I told him about the apparent gap in the market and, without really thinking about it, joked that we should fill it by opening an online store that curates party supplies into kits. Inspired by his Entrepreneurship subject, Khai pulled out an article on writing a Lean Canvas and said they’d complete it the next day. That next afternoon, they planned the entire business out in about four hours and were so tired from all the idea generation that they couldn’t discuss it again for weeks! Lel then began researching shopping cart platforms, suppliers, and the market and listened to hundreds of podcasts, such as eCommerceFuel and My Wife Quit Her Job. The event consultant idea was forgotten about!

It’s About Inspiration…

At this point, the ‘Start-Up’ scene hadn’t quite reached Sydney to the level it does now—it was born in the Bay Area (SF, Silicon Valley).

Not only this, but we were exposed to SO MANY new ways of doing things, especially online or via Apps—Uber was already deeply ingrained in society, food delivery services were huge, Meetup groups were everywhere… we experienced a lot of new services that were completely different (and more efficient) than the things back home.

I decided to follow creative pursuits while setting up my consultancy – studying event and wedding design (online) and floristry at the San Francisco School of Floral Design. During these courses, I realized that I desperately needed creativity to be at the core of my career, no matter how successful I was as an event coordinator. When the idea of an online store struck, it was like I found my calling! There were many logistical and organizational tasks, but I could design the website, take all the photos, and, most importantly, curate the Party Kits!

It’s about excitement, suspense, and passion…

Beauty, fashion, and food subscription boxes inspired us. I was inspired by the ‘unboxing’ of a curated collection of products. As a passionate online shopper, I find it exciting and suspenseful to open a box and pull things out, item by item. I’ve grown up using Apple products, where packaging and unboxing are well-constructed and purposeful. One day, I hope to recreate that experience with our Kits.

It’s about like-minded, positive people.

Khai’s Diploma was only for international students, so our friends were from Brazil, France, Spain, Japan, Germany, Argentina, and India… they were all at a similar stage in their life – postgrad study to upskill and start something new. Almost every one of our friends had a business idea or planned to stay in the US to work in a start-up… we were surrounded by people who had such a passion for change; they were excited about business and life (sadly, this wasn’t the case for a number of our friends back home). This meant that when we returned to Australia, our friendship circle changed; we realized that being around like-minded and passionate people would keep us motivated.

It’s about learning who your target audience is and adapting.

When we started, I wanted to focus on the ‘young corporates with disposable income’ market – I was creating the product for myself. After some time on the market and seeing who our customers and followers were, we realized that this wasn’t the market that needed our help – the time-poor mums felt the pressure to live up to their fellow mum’s expectations. I enjoy catering for Mum’s market; they’re grateful for all the assistance and time-saving!

It’s about being true to creativity and intuition…

I usually find one item that is the jumping-off point for a kit – as much as I should research upcoming trends, I tend to come across things I love, and ideas snowball from there. One of my favorite Kits, the Black and White Party Kit, was inspired by a patterned carpet in a hotel we stayed at in 2009. My ideas truly come from anywhere, and I guess that makes it hard to imitate what we do. I’m more about creating timeless products than keeping up with whatever fleeting trend other stores might be pushing.

READ MORE :

It’s about collaboration…

Khai and I have very complementary skill sets. Simply put, I’m about form, and he’s about function. I love the design side of things, whereas he’s very analytical. He’s a very successful business manager—handling all of the financial, operational, and logistical aspects that I don’t have an interest in. This isn’t to say he isn’t creative, though. Some of our most random (and successful) products or marketing efforts have come from his creativity in problem-solving.

It’s about quality and honesty.

My main quality benchmark is “If I don’t use it myself, I won’t offer it to our customers.” Have you ever attended a party and tried to cut your food on a flimsy white plate with bendy cutlery? It’s awkward and frustrating—we even filmed a plate test to show how we focus on quality!

In addition, Khai and I have taken it upon ourselves to learn as much as possible. Khai’s learned the basics of html, CSS, and SEO; I’ve upskilled in graphic design programs and photography. One day we’d like to outsource these sorts of things, but we should learn what we can first so we don’t get ‘screwed over’ later (I’ve heard too many horror stories about entrepreneurs paying thousands in SEO a month with no results!).

It’s about celebrating life…

I was always on the fringe of the event industry, but when we began The Kit Source, I became involved and interested in what other party stores, stylists, cake makers, etc., were doing. It was then I realized that throwing parties should be simple. I was no longer interested in coordinating party items and selling them in kits; I wanted to simplify party planning and show people that less is more. I vividly remember parties from my childhood, with homemade cakes and silly games – it wasn’t about expensive decorators or how much my parents invested, it was about the memories – it’s cliché, but it’s true! If we can get people hesitant about throwing a party because of time restraints (or perceived lack of creativity) to grab a kit and celebrate, then we’ll be pretty happy no matter the occasion.

Read Full Article