Online shopping and businesses are thriving. Everyone is at home and needs items and services that they can buy online. Unfortunately, so too are your competitors. Trying to capture your customer base’s attention is fiercer than ever, with companies trying to offset their in-store income entirely online. To beat them, you need to diversify and focus on efforts that will help your business get to the top – the top of Google, the top of social feeds, and the top of their interest.
Hire an SEO Agency
First things first, if you want to improve where your website is located on a Google search, you will need to hire an SEO agency. There is a lot that needs to be done before you can start building your backlink profile, and all of it will help improve your SE ranking.
Audit Your Website
One of the first things that will need to be done is to improve your on-site SEO, which typically starts with an audit that looks for:
Keyword research is then conducted on your behalf to make sure that you know what your customers are searching for and what words they are using. You can then update your content and invest in better PPC campaigns.
Update Content
SEO optimized content is well-written, intended to entice your customers with punchy language and a compelling message. It is also designed to appeal to search algorithms that search through your site. On top of content updates, a new schema will be created to make it easier for these algorithms to understand your site and parse through it faster.
Offsite Link Building
Once on-site is optimized, it will be time to move offsite. White hat link building today looks like guest posts, where quality content in your niche will be added to other blogs and websites in your industry. It helps improve your organic reach and your SE ranking.
What You Can Do to Further Your SEO Campaign
SEO agencies can help improve the searchability and user appeal of your website, social media, and backlink profile. While they are working hard there, you will want to invest in:
PPC Marketing
PPC marketing will help you see results immediately, and you already have everything ready to go with your SEO efforts:
A great site
Keyword research
It is essential to know which keywords to invest in, however. Keywords can usually be organized based on buyer steps. At the very beginning of the buying process, customers are still researching what they want and are looking for. These keywords are often valued, and typically more expensive. If your goal is to gain a level of authority, then they are worthwhile to pay for, but if you want to boost sales, then paying for niche keywords or specific keywords should be your focus. As a bonus, these keywords are often cheaper.
Social Media Marketing
Finally, there is social media. You can pay for social media ads, but if you want to grow your business and customer loyalty, you will want to focus on good old engagement with the hope that users organically share and talk about your business on their own channels. This takes time, so start now and don’t cut corners – you need to be a real person when interacting with your customers.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/seo-896175_1280-1-1.png6731280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-04-09 20:00:052020-04-09 12:52:34How to Improve Your Website’s SE Ranking
No matter what industry your business is in, you need to find clever and innovative ways to stand out from the crowd. Grabbing the attention of your customers, you need them to opt for your products or services ahead of your competitors. Without garnering this attention, your business will soon lose revenue and profits – something that no small business or startup wants to face.
In the modern-day, one of the best ways to gain attention is through developing a strong online presence. To do this effectively, you can use one or several of the following methods:
Create A Killer Website
This should be one of the first things that you do as a business. Nowadays, many customers discover a new business purely through their website. Therefore, it’s vital that you create an extraordinary website that entices them into what you have to offer. As well as making your website accessible across several devices, you should include information about who you are as a company, a payment platform, why your services/products are the number one choice, etc.
You might also want to consider starting a blog. Detailing information about your product/service as well as the latest news in your industry and other related information, it’s a key way of attracting new customers onto your site. You can do this by adding backlinks to other articles, asking for guest blog posts and including high-ranking links.
Ask For Reviews and Utilize Local Listings
To establish credibility, reliability and authority within your local area, it’s a good idea to encourage past customers to share reviews about your business. These can be posted either on your website or within third-party review sites such as TrustPilot.
Alongside reviews, consider creating a business listing on Google. This way, customers can discover what you have to offer through an organic search and they will see your business as credible.
An Effective SEO Strategy
Throughout the last few years, the powerful tool that is SEO has taken over. A force to be reckoned with, a successful SEO strategy can increase your profits in the long term. When creating an SEO strategy, make sure that you optimize your website so that it’s fully-functional and accessible, discover high ranking keywords, publish high-quality content, etc.
Alternatively, you could seek effective seo services to undertake the role for you. Giving you on-going support and ensuring that your website is ranking highly, it will assist with business growth.
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
This might sound like an obvious one, but it’s still worth a mention. For your small business, you need to create an effective marketing strategy. This can include what your marketing campaigns are and where you will place them.
Think about the best ways that you can market your product or services to customers – will you do this solely online or will you branch out to create physical billboards/advertisements?
Social Media – A Powerful Tool To Harness
When working on your online presence, you should focus some of your effort on social media. Many customers look towards a business’ social media accounts to discover more about them and how they tackle customer service enquiries.
Therefore, you should create and use your social media accounts to not only post articles and links to new products or services but as a forum for customers to connect with you by. Lots of small businesses utilize social media, so don’t get left behind.
To assist with this and to increase efficiency, you can use scheduling software to push the various posts out. An example of which is Hootsuite.
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If you have been doing Search Engine Optimization for your business website, you will probably understand the importance of backlinks. Do you want more traffic for your site? Do you want it to reach the top of the search rankings and sustain your position as well? Does your business reputation and customer trust matter the most? Well, you are not alone, because this is something that every business owner wants to do. And when it comes to achieving these goals, paying attention to your site’s backlinks is the key.
First things first, you need to earn (rather than buy or exchange) backlinks while following the best practices put down by Google. Relevance and authority of the source sites are equally important. But there is much more that you need to do than just sharpening your link building strategy. You also need to keep a constant vigil on every single backlink you build so that you retain the ones that are good and disavow the bad ones. Let us unveil the reasons why link monitoring is important and why you need to keep an eye on them constantly.
Reason #1: They are crucial for SEO
Over the years, it has been proved that backlinks are and will continue to be one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. If you want your site to reach the top of the search rankings, a healthy link profile is something you cannot afford to ignore. High quality and niche-relevant backlinks have the potential to get you to the top and fetch more traffic, which can yield more conversions for your business. Obviously, you will need to monitor them on a consistent basis so that you can be sure about having ones that add strength to your profile. At the same time, you must keep an eye on the new opportunities to earn quality backlinks that will help you get better results in the long run.
Reason #2: They can boost (or hurt) your reputation
Another reason why link monitoring becomes essential is that they have the potential to make or break your reputation. On one hand, backlinks from authoritative sources add credibility to your brand because a niche leader apparently endorses you by linking with your site. Conversely, the ones coming from illegitimate sources can cause extensive damage to your reputation. The worst ones can come from sources such as irrelevant sites, adult or gambling websites, and sites that don’t have a great reputation themselves. Not keeping an eye on your existing and new links can land you in deep trouble if there are some that happen to come from such sources.
Reason #3: They can bring Google penalties
Besides damaging your reputation, bad links can get your website penalized as well. This is something alarming because a Google penalty can push your site down the search rankings. This is the last thing you would want to happen because the site you may never be able to recover. Investing in software that helps with backlink building definitely makes sense as it lets you be selective about the ones you build. At the same time, you can also leverage a solution that tracks and monitors the existing ones constantly so that you can disavow the bad ones before they do any damage. This approach can cut down the risk of penalties to a considerable extent and save your ranking and reputation in the long run.
Reason #4: They give you the exposure you need
A constant track of your backlinks is a good approach because it enables you to ensure visibility to the right audience. Quality links come from niche-relevant sources that are bound to give you the exposure you need. At the same time, the ones that are authoritative as well pack all the punch for your site because they have a wide set of followers. Such backlinks are as good as brand endorsements that are capable of extending your website’s reach significantly. Once again, monitoring your links helps you stick with the sources that matter when it comes to getting you the right kind of exposure.
Reason #5: They protect your site from negative SEO
The business landscape is highly competitive and your rivals may do everything possible to push your website down the search rankings. They may even resort to sloppy and unethical practices such as spamming your website just to tarnish its reputation. A constant vigil on your backlinks helps you identify such harmful moves so that you can protect it from negative SEO. Even if your site does fall prey to such practices, you can immediately disavow the backlinks created with the purpose of bringing a penalty for your site. A monitoring tool, for example, can get you instant alerts when your site earns new backlinks.
Reason #6: They help you see reviews and complaints
Monitoring backlinks is a smart approach if you want to go above and beyond for improving your business. By keeping a track of the new ones, you can come to know when someone posts a review or complaint about your business. Both positive and negative reviews can be leveraged as business opportunities. While you can propagate a positive one to enhance your business reputation, the negative reviews give you an idea about the areas where you can improve. Making conscious efforts to address the complaints indicates how serious you are about customer satisfaction. This mindset can actually strengthen your relationships with even the unhappy customers in the long run.
Undoubtedly, backlinks are crucial for any business and they deserve all the attention you can give. Constant monitoring, therefore, is something you must absolutely do. Since the number of links for your website is bound to increase with time, you cannot expect to keep track of them manually. Fortunately, you can use a reliable backlink management software solution to stay ahead all the time. Besides just monitoring the links consistently, you should also take the requisite action so that you can keep up the reputation of your business in the competitive scenario.
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You may wonder if this guide can be helpful to you. Well, it depends. If you have a digital marketing agency and you want to expand you range of services through SEO and you know that the most cost-effective method to introduce it to outsource SEO to a specialized, then yes, this guide will be very helpful to you and you will get all the information that you may need to know while establishing such a collaboration.
Also if you own a company that has a website, or you are in the leadership of such a company then this guide is also for you and it may help you to make the right decisions. You should already understand that it is much better for your company’s future to let a team of experts take care of your SEO needs instead of building your department. Such an investment will not only be expensive but it will also be very risky.
On the other hand, if you do not make part of the two categories above, then this guide may not offer you valuable information because it especially made to help the types of persons mentioned above to make the right decisions while they outsource SEO.
In this article, you will find explained all the steps you will need to go through until you start a successful collaboration. You will also find a good example of a company to which you can Outsource SEO. You do not need to follow the methods explained in this article to the letter because they are some general steps, and you should adapt your strategy based on your company’s situation.
2. The First and Most Important Step Is to Find an Optimal SEO Company
The SEO market had expanded very much in recent years and because of this, you will be able to find a very large number of SEO agencies. But, a big problem that you can encounter is that because the market is still new the price of these types of services varies greatly. And the worst part is that you will not even be able to deduce the quality of the services based on prices. Meaning, you could pay a lot of many for a low-quality SEO service.
Although there are many famous SEO agencies and you can be sure that they will produce the results that you want, but they also ask for exorbitant prices. You should know that there are SEO agencies that are less famous and much lower prices but they are also able to produce the results that you want.
These agencies that have reasonable prices can reduce their costs and also the price of their services to a very affordable level. There are many reasons through which they can do that. To give two examples would be because they do not spend as much on paid advertising and because they are based in a country that has a weaker economy.
You should start to look for an SEO agency in this type of country because they will not only be able to produce high-quality results at a much lower price, but they also lack the arrogance that these big shot SEO companies have.
If you are not a digital marketing agency, then you can search also for an SEO professional or a team of SEO experts. Are you not sure if this is a good idea? You can find the reasons why you should do it in this moz.com article.
If your site and company are new, then it will be better for you to do your own SEO or look for a freelance SEO expert because that will be much more affordable. But for bigger companies, it is recommended to outsource SEO to an agency because they have a full team of professionals.
3. Double Check Your Choice
After you find a company that fits the criteria that you had set, then it is time to double-check your decision. There are a few steps that you can follow to be sure that everything is all right:
Results checking. It is very important to check the results brought by your potential partner before you start working with him. Some professional SEO agencies will present their results on their website and you can see them there. They will also have reviews from their clients presented there. You need to check these reviews and if possible to contact some of their clients and ask them for a sincere opinion about your potential partner.
Offer to check. It is very important to check their offers and make sure of two things. One, that, besides their regular packages, they offer custom packages that are based on their clients’ needs. Not all websites will benefit from the same strategy and it is better than if there is a need for customization it should be possible. Two, you should make sure that your potential partner has a money-back guarantee. Not many SEO agencies offer such a guarantee because they do not trust that they will always be able to produce results. But, by offering this type of guarantee you can see the confidence that they have it their skills.
Service checking. Although you can get a lot of information from the methods presented above and you could make sure that you have made the right or wrong choice, but if you are still undecided, then you should also try their services yourself. That will be the best way to get a feeling about how long cooperation with your partner would feel right. An important aspect is to make sure that your partner of choice is always up to date with the latest Google algo updates.
4. Start the Partnership
After you have selected an agency with which you want to partner, it is time to get to the next step, which is to find the best way to work together with it. If you are an agency, then there are two ways through which you should implement this partnership.
Your company can openly admit to their clients that they outsource SEO completely, this method will make sure that your clients will know what they are dealing with and the possibility that they will try to make your problems will be nill.
You can get white-label reports and be vague about it while letting the impression that some tasks are indeed outsourced. This is also an alternative because it is not a lie. This method is mostly used if the clients care less about the results that they get and more about other factors.
The choice that you should make depends mostly on your company’s situation, more exactly on your clients. You are the one that knows them better so, you are also the one that needs to make this decision.
A bad alternative would be to market the service as produced by you, but in this case, you risk losing a large number of clients when the truth comes to light, so this method is not advised. If your company is not an agency, then then the best way in which you can cooperate with an SEO agency is by learning the basics of SEO. In this way, you will be able to understand the quality of the results that you will get from the partnership.
If you consider that the information that you acquired in this article is not enough to help you choose a good agency, then you can find even more information on Neilpatel.com
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Whether you’re a business owner or a marketing manager, you’ve probably heard about the importance of SEO for your company on more than one occasion. Maybe you’ve even already put in the leg work toward kickstarting your SEO and creating a solid plan to grow your online presence.
But, having an SEO plan in place isn’t enough. It needs to constantly be looked at, tweaked, and changed in order to fit with trends and algorithm changes. Google made headlines in 2019 with its BERT algorithm update, and the search engine shows no signs of slowing down on changing the way it promotes pages and content.
That’s just one example of how quickly things can change and how fast technology moves. If your company isn’t keeping up with it by allowing for an adaptable SEO strategy and by using quality SEO services, it won’t take long for you to fall behind in your marketing efforts.
So, what are some of the trends you need to keep up with in the world of SEO, in order to stay relevant?
1. User-Focused Content
For years, you’ve likely focused on keyword strategy and link-building. While those things aren’t just going to disappear overnight, it’s important to start shifting the way you create content. For example, with Google’s ever-changing algorithms and people’s desire to form more relationships with businesses, rather than just be target demographics, content is going to have to focus more on user intent.
It’s not going to be enough to piece together words and phrases people might search for. Even keyword research tools may become less useful as time goes on.
So, what can your business do to keep up with the change in where content is going? Listen to your customers, clients, and followers. Focus on their questions, concerns, and comments through every aspect of their journey with your company, whether they use your product/service or not. By really listening to what people are saying about your business, you can hone in on what they’re looking for, and develop your content accordingly.
2. High-Quality Content
It’s no coincidence that the top two spots on this list focus solely on the content of your website. Content is king for a reason, after all.
Not only is it important to shift your content more toward the reader, but it’s equally important to make sure that content is readable.
What does that mean?
Simply put, if the content you’re pushing out on a regular basis isn’t easy to understand, it’s going to start to rank poorly. Google might not be advanced enough to play the role of editor yet, but there’s no doubt that day is coming, soon.
In the past, releasing new content regularly was a good tactic for boosting your rankings. While updating your content regularly is still a must-do, it’s not enough to put together poorly-written pieces just for the sake of a ranking. Instead, your mindset should be to have the best content on the web, consistently. If you don’t feel that someone on your team has the writing skills that will continue to get you noticed, it’s worth it to hire professional writers, even on a freelance basis.
3. Managing Your Reputation
As more businesses and websites compete for high-ranking spots, your reputation will start to play a big part in where you’re found on that list. Google will look at the E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) of a business based on its digital impression.
You should only be publishing content about things you know. With words like “fake news” trending in today’s society, it’s easy for people to be skeptical about things they read online, so you have to prove yourself as a trustworthy source of information. Always double-check what’s being published to make sure it’s accurate and true. One false statistic or exaggerated claim can end up causing a lot of damage.
Your reputation will also be scrutinized when it comes to negative comments and reviews posted about your business online. Negative comments may have deterred potential customers away before. But, now? They could turn Google off from giving your site a high ranking.
If you have other people writing for you or contributing pieces of information to your website, it’s just as important to make sure they have a solid reputation, too. Quoting someone who has been proven to be a fraud or someone with no authority in a particular subject could make your content (and business) seem just as ill-informed.
So, do your research, write what you know, and work hard to preserve positive customer experiences.
4. Focus Your Attention on Mobile
Did you know that 60% of Google searches are done on a mobile device? Or, that over 2 billion people use their smartphone exclusively to access the Internet?
If you’ve been ignoring optimizing your website for mobile, it’s time to make it a priority. Mobile search is only going to become more popular over time thanks to a society on the go, and consumers are growing used to instant gratification. If your website doesn’t load quickly on a phone or is impossible to navigate, they’re going to turn away in a matter of seconds and look elsewhere.
It’s worth it to higher graphic designers or web designers who specialize in mobile web development to make sure your site is easy to work through, even on a smartphone. It used to be the norm to create a site on a desktop and later optimize it for mobile. Now, the trends are showing us that it may be time to start flip-flopping that old rule of thumb.
5. Building Your Brand
More companies are starting to focus on paid advertising, especially on social media. There was a time where spending very little on social media could get your business heavily-noticed. Now that the practice is becoming more saturated, the ROI is reduced. It’s also likely that the cost will go up, so you’ll have to spend more to get less.
Chances are, you’re going to have to continue to spend something on social advertising, just to stay relevant. But, it shouldn’t be where you focus all of your attention. Instead, shift your goals toward building your brand and promoting brand awareness.
Both Google and Bing have made it known that linkless mentions of your business are used as ranking signals. So, the more people that are talking about your company online, the better.
When you utilize social media listening, you can pay attention to how often your brand is being talked about and what people are saying. It also gives you a great opportunity to interact directly with customers and followers of your business. When you give your business a personality by talking directly with your audience, you’re developing trust. That can help you to stand out among competitors who are simply following the normal trends with canned responses and limited social interaction.
6. Voice Search Optimization (VSEO)
By 2022, voice-based shopping is expected to reach up to $40 billion. That’s just one of the staggering stats associated with this phenomenon that continues to grow in importance. VSEO is huge among teenagers and young adults, so it’s undoubtedly going to take over the next generation of searchers.
What does that mean for your business? Since people are asking more direct questions via voice (and typically doing so using full sentences), you’re going to have to consider exactly how those questions will be asked.
What makes VSEO different from traditional search is that when someone is typing, they’re more likely to use snippets of a phrase, or just one to two words in order to get the information they want. Since searching via voice tends to feel more conversational, they’re going to use longer questions and phrases. Those same questions and phrases need to be brought up in your content in order to be seen. Think about how most questions start, with the same few words:
How?
Why?
What?
When?
If your content isn’t including those key terms or the answers to the questions people are asking, you’re going to become less relevant when it comes to your overall ranking.
So Many Changes, So Little Time
With technology changing so quickly and Google coming out with new algorithms all the time, it can feel as though it’s hard to keep up with the latest SEO trends. But, there’s one major theme that you can probably see through all of these trends: The user should be your focus.
When it comes to the content you produce, the trustworthiness of what you say, the ease of which people can view your site via mobile, and how well your brand connects with consumers, it all comes back to user experience (UX).
So, while keeping these trends at the forefront of your marketing/SEO plan will help to keep you from becoming stagnant in your efforts, the most important thing to keep in mind is how those efforts are targeted toward the people searching for you, and those who have already discovered you. That’s a “trend” that will only continue to become more important each year.
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Online shopping and businesses are thriving. Everyone is at home and needs items and services that they can buy online. Unfortunately, so too are your competitors. Trying to capture your customer base’s attention is fiercer than ever, with companies trying to offset their in-store income entirely online. To beat them, you need to diversify and focus on efforts that will help your business get to the top – the top of Google, the top of social feeds, and the top of their interest.
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