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Content Marketing 28 Experts Reveal The Top Content Marketing Trends For 2017Michael Brenner looked towards 2017's content marketing trends in a post on Digitalis Magazine's site. Brenner asks twenty-eight experts for their predictions, including Vertical Measures CEO Arnie Kuenn.
Content and SEO: Building Linkable ContentAndrew Dennis wrote about creating content with SEO value on Search Engine Land. Dennis discusses how to turn one's content into a linkable asset that is easy to promote and share.
Paid Search 5 Unique Facebook Ads Targeting Tips that Drive Serious ROIAndrew Hollington of Vertical Measures posted about Facebook Ad's targeting options. He shares five that have been proven to drive profitable conversions.
Google's New Expanded PPC Text Ads: The Impact on AdvertisersWesley Parker wrote an article on Google's recently expanded text ads on the Econsultancy blog. Parker talks about the changes made to the text format and the impact this will have on advertisers as they completely replace the old format in 2017.
Social Media 6 Tools for Superior Social Media Measurement and AttributionJawad Khan posted about social media measurement and attribution on Social Media Today. He first reviews social media attribution models to use and those to avoid, then lists six tools to achieve better marketing attribution.
More New Features for Facebook's Analytics for AppsDavid Cohen's article on AdWeek highlighted recently released features for Facebook's Analytics for Apps. Cohen relays the details for the recent updates provided by product manager Josh Twist.
SEO Penguin 4.0 UpdateAaron Wall wrote about the recent Penguin 4.0 update on SEOBook. He talks about the details behind the update and its effects on search.
How a Single Piece of Content Increased Our DA by +7 Points [Case Study]Serge Stefoglo published a case study performed by Distilled on Moz. The case study takes one of Distilled's clients and explains the ideation and implementation process behind a piece of content that led to a significant domain authority boost.
Link Building Case Study: 5 Creative Link Building CampaignsSam Miranda posted about out-of-the-box link building campaigns on the Advanced Web Ranking blog. Miranda analyzes five creative campaigns ideas and the type of results they can drive for clients.
3 Surprising Lessons From Building 26,000 LinksOn Moz, Kelsey Libert wrote a summary of lessons the Fractl team learned in the process of building twenty-six thousand links. The three mains lessons learned focus on social shares, how sites will link to you and the value of visual assets in certain verticals.
Upcoming Events October 5 – 7: AMA Annual Marketing Conference – Orlando, Florida October 11 – 12: Digital Summit – Detroit, MichiganTags: arnie kuenn, best of internet marketing, content marketing, internet marketing, Link Building, paid search, PPC, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, vertical measures
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The affiliate marketing vs AdSense issue is mainly pertinent for those starting out in internet marketing, or those running a blog and are wondering how to use it to make some cash. There are pros and cons for each of these quite different ways of monetizing a blog or website.
Each of these has its proponents and detractors, so let's have a look at both and perhaps you can make your own mind up on this issue.
What is Google AdSense ?When you check out a Google search engine results page, you will see the organic search results on the left and adverts to the right. Google adverts also appear immediately above the search results, labeled 'Sponsored'. These adverts are what Google refers to as its AdWords program: pay-per-click (PPC) adverts, where advertisers pay for every click made on the advert. They are listed in order of how much the advertiser offers to pay Google for the click – the more you are willing to pay, the closer to the top of Page #1 of the SERPs your ad will appear.
Google also publishes these adverts on web pages and blogs who request them, such publications being offered a percentage of the click price for doing so. This is Google's AdSense program. Here's briefly how it works:
Affiliate marketing involves selling products belonging to other people for a commission. It's a bit like being an online Avon or Amway agent, but you can sell any product offered for affiliate commissions. Popular sources of affiliate products include ClickBank, Commission Junction, Amazon, Maxbounty and JVZoo.
You advertise a product on your blog and you get paid whenever somebody purchases. Affiliate commissions can be 50% and over of the sales price for electronically deliverable products (eBooks, software, etc) that have no replacement costs. Physical products can offer 2% commission upwards. It doesn't sound a lot, but if you sell a $10,000 entertainment system from a click on your site…
To become involved in affiliate marketing you should join a program – try ClickBank to begin with if you are new to affiliate marketing – then advertise products on your website or blog including your affiliate reference in the sales link. Your affiliate program explains how to do this, and most will provide graphics and promotional material to help you sell.
Affiliate marketing is most profitable if you generate your own emailing list using an autoresponder. This involves some initial expenditure, but the rewards of creating a list can make the work well worthwhile. By communicating with your list and providing useful information on your niche you can gain their trust. List members will then be more likely to listen when you recommend certain products to them.
AdSense tends to pay less, but involves less work. To maximize their income, some people create content pages specifically to attract people interested in certain topics, particularly those with highest-paying clicks (e.g. legal and medical services). So, back to the original question:
Affiliate Marketing Vs AdSense: Which is More Profitable?A lot depends on the amount of work you are prepared to do. If none, then AdSense will be better. If lots, then you will make more money using affiliate marketing. In between these two? Here are the pros and cons of each.
Google AdSense: ProsSo, affiliate marketing vs AdSense: which is more profitable? Both are profitable if applied correctly, but generally, affiliate marketing is best if you want to build a long-term business online. AdSense is good if you want to make some residual cash from your website or blog. It is not a full-time business model, and many who try to make it so went too far and lost their accounts forever.
That is not a good basis for running a business. However, you can apply both on the same blog. By using AdSense blocks within blog posts or pages not being used for any other form of income, you can make use of such pages for residual income. You might make only a few dollars a week, but it all adds up.
Never use AdSense on your affiliate marketing pages. You will potentially earn much more from a click on an affiliate link than on an advert. If you publish any clickable link on a page also containing a link to an affiliate pre sales or sales page, then you are diluting your potential income from that page. Why pass up the chance of a $47 sale to get a 20 cent click on an AdSense ad? That is not an exaggeration, yet some people do that!
So Which is Best: Affiliate Marketing Vs AdSenseAffiliate marketing will give the better opportunity to make the most money. AdSense will make you smaller amounts of cash regularly with very little maintenance. However, it needs a fair amount of traffic to be really profitable, while you can use a mailing list to sell your affiliate products. You can build up a large list over time, even with a small amount of daily traffic.
AdSense is a good choice if you don't have the technical ability to operate autoresponders or the time to seek out appropriate affiliate products for your site. However, you will find that autoresponders are usually made very easy for newbies to operate, and you need very little technical expertise to build your own list and sell to it.
The main problem with AdSense is the relatively low income per click, so you need a lot of traffic to make money. You are also trying to persuade people to click on adverts selling products you could sell yourself as an affiliate! Affiliate Marketing Vs AdSense – the choice is yours.
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But it goes much further than that.
A remarkable CTR is not only the most important thing in AdWords, but it is also extremely important for other marketing channels. These include organic search, CRO, social media, and email marketing.
Here are five surprising benefits of having a remarkable, unicorn-worthy CTR across all your marketing channels.
1. Much higher ad impression shareYou get big discounts from having a high CTR. Namely, a lower cost per click, which really adds up as clicks accumulate.
This is true not just of vanilla search ads, but all Google properties, whether we're talking about theGoogle Display Network or Gmail Ads.
But a remarkable CTR doesn't just impact CPC. It also impacts your impression share – how often your ads show up in the first place.
On the Google Search Network, every increase (or decrease) of 1 point in Quality Score can make a huge positive impact on your impression share:
If you can increase your Quality Score by one point, your impression share on average will increase by about 6% on desktop.
This is even bigger deal on mobile, where impression share is twice as competitive.
Increasing your Quality Score by one point would increase your impression share by an average of 12%!
Data sources: Impression share data is based on an analysis of approximately 10,000 small and medium-size accounts (spending between $10,000 and $15,000 per month), based worldwide, advertising on the Search network in Q1 and Q2 of 2015.
2. Your organic search positions will get a boostWe recently conducted research to test whether achieving above-expected user engagement metrics results in better organic rankings. We observed an unmistakable pattern:
You want your pages get as many organic search clicks as possible, right? Attracting more clicks means more traffic to your site, which also tells Google that your page is the best answer for users – it is relevant and awesome.
Another thing we discovered was that the weighting of click-through rate is in Google's organic search ranking algorithms is becoming more important every month this year.
Here I was tracking a group of 1,000 keywords and URLs for the past 5 months. What I found was that the Google algorithm is shifting to increasingly higher CTRs for top-4 organic ranking status.
This is what you would expect to see if Google Search were employing a machine learning-based algorithm that reordered listings based on CTR – people would see more of what they were hoping to see at the top, reducing the need to scroll lower down into the SERPs.
3. Your conversion rates increaseIncreasing your click-through rate will also increase your conversion rates. If you can increase your CTR by 2x then your conversion rate should increase by 50%.
That's why click-through rate is the most important conversion metric (in my opinion).
For example, look at this data from one large client's account:
This is just one example. We see this same conversion curve in many accounts. (It's just difficult to combine multiple accounts into one graph because conversion rates vary depending on factors like the industry and offer.)
What's happening here is that if you can get someone excited to click on your website (via email, ads, organic search listings, or whatever), the excitement carries through to sign-up and purchase.
4. Free clicks from social AdsFacebook and Twitter don't have a Quality Score. Well, they do, Facebook just calls it Relevance Score and Twitter calls it Quality Adjusted Bid.
Whatever they call their version of Quality Score, having a higher score results in a higher ad impression share for the same budget at a lower cost per engagement. A high engagement rate means your ads will be more visible and more cost effective, as shown here:
Notice how the cost per engagement on Twitter Ads falls dramatically as the engagement rate of the post you're promoting rises.
One of the surprising benefits of having high engagement on Facebook and Twitter is that you'll benefit from free clicks. How?
On Facebook, if someone shares one of your boosted posts, that will show up in another person's news feed and you won't get charged for any of the additional engagements that happen there.
On Twitter, if you do a Promoted Tweet, when one of your followers retweets or shares it, you'll get more totally free organic impressions.
5. People will actually see your emailsNow let's talk about email marketing. How many emails do you get each day? Dozens? Hundreds?
If you engage with the emails that brands and businesses regularly send to you, you'll continue to see them. If not, it might get filed away in Outlook's Clutter folder or it may be relegated to Gmail's Promotions tab – or even worse, the Spam folder.
Microsoft Outlook's clutter filter regularly filter emails I've opted into receiving – including internal emails from my own company! These emails are being filtered out based on machine learning.
What does this mean for your company?
If your emails have a higher CTR (though for emails the better equivalent is actually higher open rate), then it's more likely that your emails will actually get seen, opened, and clicked on. If your click-through rates are terrible, your emails will be rounded up and thrown in the dark "clutter dungeon."
One thing we did was to delete people from our email lists who were unresponsive. If you're just accumulating emails over many years, why? Do you think someone who has been dormant and never engaged with your emails is going to magically turn into a sale 5 years later?
Deleting half your database is one way to instantly more than double your CTR. Email providers will notice that more people are engaging, making it less likely your emails will end up in the dungeon.
This is an abridged version of an article published on Larry's WordStream blog: High CTR benefits.
Want to stay on top of the latest search trends? Get top insights and news from our search experts.
Related readingWe see mixed result across both platforms, depending on the account we're working on, so it's difficult to identify trends in the differences between the two networks, when we're trying to optimise campaigns.
Like a lot of marketers, I find LinkedIn Ads frustrating. The thing is, by making just a few needed improvements, both LinkedIn itself and advertisers could greatly benefit.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google's SVP of Ads & Commerce made two major product announcements this morning at DMEXCO 2016.
Facebook conversion campaigns have some fundamental differences from Facebook awareness campaigns, in terms of goals, KPIs, ad types, ad messages, and landing page activities.
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A couple of weeks ago I was at MeasureCamp London and shared how we're dealing with custom data The Next Web's Google Analytics setup. As I couldn't share the whole presentation I've decided to write more in depth about it.
Do business with 5,000 peopleMomentum by TNW is our New York technology event for anyone interested in helping their company grow.
This particular piece focuses on the calculated metrics feature in Google Analytics (360), which we use to create metrics that don't exist by default in GA. We'll be sharing 24 recipes and examples on how we use them at the moment.
What are Calculated Metrics?The Google Analytics Help Center puts it best:
"Calculated Metrics are user-defined metrics that are computed from existing metrics and drive more relevant analyses and enable greater actionability without leaving the product."
So for example if you want to know the percentage of people that don't bounce – Non Bounces – you'll have to create this metric yourself. As you can use them in your (custom) reports, they're very useful for things that aren't available as a metric by default.
What are we using them for?As we track so much information about readers, it's important for us to make a clear distinctions between Users, Sessions, and Pageviews, as well as what their impact is on a visitor. As some default metrics are only based on Sessions or Users, we sometimes want to calculate them as well on a Pageview or Session basis. By doing this we get more insight in what happens during each stage of a user's life cycle.
The 24 examples of Calculated MetricsSo let me share the 24 calculated metrics that we have in our set-up. The format that I'll try to explain this in is: {Name of the Calculated Metric} – {Format of the Metric} – {Type of the Metric}. Followed by an explanation of what it will provide us with and how we use it.
Already by going through this list I came up with new ideas for calculated metrics that we want to track.
One of things that you might have noticed is that we don't have that many calculated metrics yet to figure out the revenue per user based on publisher advertising (via DFP). Currently our set-up between the two isn't amazing yet, which causes a lot of Publisher Revenue data to be incorrect.
This has to do mostly with our set-up on the side of DFP. Once we get them fixed permanently we'll be doing more and more reporting on revenue from a Google Analytics perspective. So expect an update on this in a couple of months!
So now we shared our calculated metrics, what metrics are you missing? Which ones are you using in your own Google Analytics setup?
If you missed previous posts in this series, don't forget to check them out: #1: Heat maps , #2: Deep dive on A/B testing and #3: Learnings from our A/B tests, #4: From Marketing Manager to Recruiter, #5: Running ScreamingFrog in the Cloud, #6 What tools do we use?, #7: We track everything!, #8: Google Tag Manager , #9: A/B Testing with Google Tag Manager, #10: Google Search Console, #11: 500 Million Search Results and #12: How are you engaging with this page?, #13: Supporting Schema.org
Leading Marketing at The Next Web, responsible for the execution of its marketing strategy involving: audience growth & engagement, marketing analytics, product and data across all projects related to The Next Web: Deals, Academy, Index.co & Conference.
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These agencies are investigated in order to identify which produce the top overall agencies. This is achieved through the use of a set of investigation criteria consisting of five verticals of evaluation used to benchmark and compare mobile marketing agencies based on the most important aspects. The five verticals of investigation used during this process include organic capabilities, reporting, current, paid capabilities, and campaign analysis.
The rankings are revised each month based on the assumption that the search marketing industry changes over time. Companies are evaluated based on the latest trends and developments most important to buyers. Often times the research team at topseos.com spends time communicating with clients of competing companies for a more thorough look.
SEO Brand has been awarded the rank of best mobile marketing service in the monthly rankings at topseos.com due to their exceptional customer satisfaction, their comparative performance over previous months, and their dedication towards excellence. It is due to this information that topseos.com suggests customers of internet marketing solutions consider SEO Brand.
About topseos.com
topseos.com is a provider of online marketing research. The primary purpose of topseos.com is to determine and publish those individuals or services producing top online marketing solutions available. Mobile marketing services are put through a in-depth examination to ensure the ratings contain the absolute best services the online marketing industry has to offer.
Those interested in applying for the rankings can visit:
http://www.topseos.com/apply-for-rankings-research/
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September 25, 2016 03:00 ET
NAPLES, FL--(Marketwired - September 25, 2016) - topseos.com has named SEO Brand the best search engine optimization agency for September 2016. SEO Brand was selected due to their strong performance in the proprietary evaluation process. While there are thousands of firms competing to be the best, the rankings consist of only the 100 best companies offering a variety of online marketing solutions.
These services are put through the topseos.com genuine evaluation process in order to determine which services provide the top overall solution. Services are identified based on their performance in a benchmarking and analysis of their core services. This process consists of the use of a set of evaluation verticals, connecting with client references, and performing various market and industry research projects.
The rankings are revised each month based on the assumption that the search engine marketing industry changes over time. Services are evaluated based on the newest trends and developments most important to clients. Often times the research team at topseos.com spends time connecting with customers of competing services for a more thorough look.
SEO Brand has been named the top search engine optimization firm based on an in-depth examination of their provided solutions. The independent research team has named them due to their continued performance and their history of successful search marketing solutions. Those looking for an effective search engine optimization solution to meet their specified needs should consider SEO Brand.
About topseos.com
topseos.com is an online organizer of independent reviews and ratings. The recommendations of the best internet marketing agencies are released monthly to assist businesses in connecting with search engine optimization agencies which feature a history of effective solutions. Thousands of internet marketing agencies are put to the test while only the absolute best agencies are highlighted in the recommendations.
Those interested in applying for the rankings can visit:
http://www.topseos.com/apply-for-rankings-research/
For a better experience using this site, please upgrade to a modern web browser.
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Over the past few years, the on-page "rules" have changed drastically as Google tries to ensure they're delivering the best results. Now, a standard search result page shows pages that don't necessary have the exact match query—or keyword—in their title tag or meta description.
Now, we're dealing with ranking algorithms that include Hummingbird, Panda, Rankbrain and semantic importance within the page.
What is On-Page SEO?If you type "on-page SEO" into Google, Moz will tell you—through a featured snippet—it is "the practice of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals."
It takes into account all aspects of the webpage that, when added together, will improve your rankings in the search results. As Google becomes more sophisticated, one of the major factors influencing on-page optimization is relevance. How relevant is your page to the query? That's how you have to think when you're developing the page.
Think of these tasks as a benefit to your end user. You have about eight seconds to influence a visitor to interact with your website. The more interaction and engagement, plus the longer your users stay on the site, the better their experience.
If you put effort into these categories and strategies, you'll see a boost in traffic and a rise in your search presence. Once you understand everything that goes into your on-page SEO efforts, conduct an analysis of your site to see how the anatomy of your page is performing.
Meta TagsPerhaps the most vital aspect of your on-page SEO efforts is the implementation of tags. Some are not as useful to SEO as they once were, but if written and utilized optimally, will improve your traffic.
Meta tags are used to provide search engines with information about your page. To achieve high rankings, it has to do with relevance and user satisfaction, but including custom meta tags will influence users and increase your click-through-rate.
Title TagsThere are multiple tags on your page. The most important is your title tag. The title is what users see in the search engines for both organic results and paid ads, and the words that appear at the top of each tab in your browser.
The title tag outlines what the page is about. When ranking web pages for particular queries, Google looks at the title tag and compares that to the rest of the content on the page.
If you're working in HTML, the code for the title tag looks like this:
<title>Everything You Need to Know About On-Page SEO</title>
However, the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast allows you to create a custom title tag within the platform. Keep your title tags descriptive and short. Google recently increased the character limit for page titles to 70 characters before showing ellipses.
Best practice is to ensure you stay below the character limit so your titles display properly. You can use Snippet Optimizer to simulate how your title and meta description will appear in SERPs.
Use your title tag to stand out from your competitors, appealing to your visitors. Make sure all the pertinent information is included, including your keywords and location for local businesses.
While it's recommended to use your core keyword within the title, Google is shifting toward relevance and semantics in the results. Users aren't blindly clicking on the first result, reading the titles and descriptions to find the best answer to their query.
Meta DescriptionsThe meta description conveys what users will find on the page. While not a direct ranking factor, search engines read the meta descriptions to determine the page's topic and the audience that will find value.
A well-written meta description can generate a competitive advantage in the search results, creating a higher click-through rate with a greater chance of conversions. While there is a possibility that Google will omit the custom description and pull an excerpt of the content on the page, it is recommended that you fill in the meta description for every page of your site.
The best way to check which pages are missing a meta description is to run your website through Screaming Frog's SEO Spider. It shows you every URL under your domain, the meta description, and its length.
Earlier in 2016, Google extended the length of descriptions for both desktop and mobile. For desktop, users will see up to 200 characters, while on mobile they'll be shown up to 172 characters. To appeal to users on both devices, keep your description between 165 and 175 characters.
Clearly outline what users will find on the page. Add your brand name and sprinkle in a keyword or two if they don't sound forced. Think about synonyms and other terms that will get the point across.
This is the first interaction many visitors have with your brand. Make it welcoming.
Tell users what's in it for them to click through to your site. Include an offer or call to action to entice a click. You'll also see some websites show multiple site links to direct users to the page they're looking for. My company, 1SEO.com Digital Agency, has multiple pages you can click on to find out more about the agency.
To find success and steady traffic to your site, it starts with your title and meta tags. Once you get the clicks, it's up to your user experience and quality content to maintain engagement.
Heading TagsYour landing page or blog should include multiple heading tags, from the h1 down to a potential h6. The most important is the h1. You should never have more than one h1 tag on any page. Include multiple h2's or h3's as users scroll down the page. These are used as subheadings.
Use the headings to represent the different sections of the page. You'll notice the impact from both an SEO standpoint and a usability standpoint.
SEO FactorsAs an SEO factor, complementing the title of the page with the words used in your heading tags should provide users with a clear view of what the page is about. The search engine algorithm compares the section of content underneath each heading tag to establish relevancy.
Your headings should be used to structure the page. Make sure the content supports the heading.
The primary keyword of the page should be included somewhere in your h1 tag. Avoid skipping the h1 on a page, as it lets both your visitors and Google understand its subject. Many blogs, especially those in WordPress, automatically include the title of the blog post as an h1. Make sure to look at the HTML version of the page to ensure the h1 tag is present.
When it comes to headings, there are factors you want to avoid to maintain your presence in the search engines, notably stuffing unnecessary keywords in the tags.
Don't use the same h1 tag on multiple pages of your site. This can have harmful effects on your SEO as Google won't know which page to rank for a query containing that heading.
The Yoast SEO plugin on WordPress helps you understand how strong each page is. It analyzes on-page factors to help ensure your page is fully optimized. An added benefit, it alerts you of any issues with the page title, meta description, headings, images, content, and more.
Usability FactorsFor landing pages and some blogs, keep in mind that your users are not reading the entire page. They're scanning and browsing quickly, looking for a section that answers their questions or provides value.
Headings and subheadings split up the page, making the presentation look cleaner.
Subheadings help users navigate throughout the page. If you're changing the subject or discussing a different aspect of the service, use h2s. If you break it down further and need a sub-sub-heading under an h2, use an h3 tag.
Headings should not be overlooked. They hold more weight on the page than a standard paragraph <p> tag or a bolded word. Always be sure to keep your readers in mind when writing headings. They shouldn't sound—or read—like your forcing a keyword for the sake of further optimizing the page.
URL StringsWhen it comes to writing URL strings, they should be short, concise, and easily readable. How can we create the perfect URL string?
When analyzing the length of URLs, Ahrefs found that shorter URLs tend to rank better. The study looked at the length of the URL and a number of folders. They counted each root domain as one folder, and each backslash after the root as another folder.
The report concluded that URLs with fewer folders tended to rank better, as well. Rand Fishkin of Moz said more folders can "create a perception of depth for both engines and users, as well as making edits to the URL string considerably more complex."
From interior product or service pages to blog posts, the way we write URLs is an SEO practice that you must consider. Each word in your URL should be separated by a hyphen (-) and not an underscore (_).
When you have two pages displaying almost the same content or information, set up a 301 redirect or canonicalization tag (rel=canonical) to the stronger page. This avoids duplicate content and shows Google which page to rank.
Keep your URL short. The shorter the URL, the easier it is to share or embed while creating a better user experience. You want your readers to quickly identify what your page is about without seeing numbers, categories, symbols, or a mixture of everything included in the string.
Utilize your primary keyword in the URL. Like other factors of on-page, don't let your URL string sound unnatural or forced with keywords. Try to make it around five words, clearly outlining the information your users will find.
Don't leave your visitors left wondering what's on the page before they click. The title, meta description, and URL should make it clear.
User-Friendly, Authoritative ContentAs Google crawls your page, they're looking to match user intent. Your content should clearly explain what product or service you're offering, or the exact topic of your blog.
The internet is cluttered with content, and it's important that you ensure yours is unique. One of the most common sayings you'll hear in the world of SEO and content marketing is "content is king." In fact, SEO and content marketing do a lot of overlapping.
They complement each other. Content involves the use of words—keywords—and writing for human value while still appeasing the search engines. This is what makes the foundation of SEO and the vast majority of your on-page.
Think of content as having a conversation with your readers. Are they going to be interested or entertained? Or are they going to be bored and leave your site?
When you create content, it must prove you're an authority in your field. The best content speaks directly to your customers, shows them the value you offer and entices them to read further or contact your company.
To improve your on-page and SEO to increase your traffic, content must solve a user's problem while being well-written without spelling or grammatical errors. Be careful not to run into any problems by failing to adhere to the major Google algorithm updates.
Be Aware of the Google AlgorithmTo help weed out the websites that achieved high rankings with spammy, keyword stuffed, and thin content, Google unleashed the Panda algorithm in February of 2011, updating it regularly. If you still have low quality and thin content, your website won't be found online.
Jennifer Slegg wrote an informative and definitive guide to understanding the Panda algorithm. She quotes a Google spokesperson as saying, "At the end of the day, content owners shouldn't ask how many visitors they had on a specific day, but rather how many visitors they helped."
Now, Panda is a core ranking signal, and you'll receive a boost in rankings if you are consistently meeting the expectations of your users. While continuing to roll out and update, make sure you focus on creating quality content that is optimized for a high-volume keyword and is written with the user in mind.
As we move into the age of artificial intelligence, SEOs and marketers have been trying to figure out the effects of Google RankBrain. The machine learning system was implemented around the spring of 2015, and has become the third highest ranking factor.
Search Engine Land answers frequently asked questions regarding RankBrain, where they attest it is part of the Hummingbird algorithm. The main point you have to consider, which has been said time and time again, is to write in natural language. That's the best way to "rank" under RankBrain.
In the article, Danny Sullivan says, "RankBrain is mainly used as a way to interpret the searches that people submit to find pages that might not have the exact words that were searched for."
RankBrain was put into place to help determine how to rank queries there is no historical data for. It has since evolved and is used in almost every query to affect the rankings of most searches, so be sure to optimize your content for the ranking signal!
For best practice, answer user's questions in the least amount of time as possible. Google is garnering the ability to learn user intent and return the best results, especially with the rise of voice and natural language searches.
Look at the long-tail queries and use a conversational approach to your content. While keywords play a significant role with your on-page SEO, Google is using semantics more and more to deliver the best user experience.
Keyword Targeted ContentWhile you must maintain a user-friendly and authoritative tone, the focus keyword is still of vital importance. Like with your meta tags, you will either outline meta keywords for a product or service page that is targeting multiple queries, or a single focus keyword for blogs.
All of this is available in WordPress pages and posts. But why is targeting a keyword important? Using them correctly will directly affect the return on your digital marketing investment. The more you understand about keywords, the better you will strategize with your marketing.
Always make sure you're providing the most value for your brand by targeting keywords that have search volume.
To get the most of your on-page, perform keyword research and be confident your company can convert for the targeted terms. There's nothing worse than appearing first in the results for a query that leads to zero conversions.
Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner to see search volume, or analyze what your competitors are targeting with SEMRush. The Keyword Planner offers you similar variations of your keyword that you can include on the page for further optimization.
Through content marketing, employ keywords strategically.
Think about the types of keywords and what will work best for your company.
To determine the relevance for a particular query, Google looks at LSI keywords, or synonyms for the searched keyword. LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, determining patterns within the terms, topics, and concepts of a page.
When writing long-form content, you can include LSI keywords more naturally. According to Bruce Clay,
"In latent semantic indexing, Google sorts sites on the frequency of a variety of terms and key phrases linked together instead of on the frequency of a single term."
The content shouldn't have just one focus keyword. Your goal with on-page SEO should be to rank for all synonyms and related queries.
Back to the term relevancy. Though your focus keyword may have 50,000 monthly searches, your page can rank higher for the similar query that only has 1,000 monthly searches.
Write content that will drive traffic from many related queries. The goal is to generate clicks and use the factors of your on-page to increase conversions.
Internal Links and Outbound LinksLinks carry the most weight in your SEO. Earning links from quality sources and authority sites strengthens the domain, while linking internally throughout the site benefits the user experience and enhances your SEO.
The actual practice of earning links is part of your off-page SEO strategy. Use additional content marketing, email outreach, and other creative ways to build links back to your site. Backlinko has published an all-inclusive guide to link building that offers value when you're starting your link building campaign.
Focusing on the page, internal linking to other pages of your site will strengthen the keywords and enable Google to determine where to rank a particular keyword. Linking internally—between service pages and blogs—helps improve the crawlability of your site, showing Google the site's most important pages.
If you include a new link on your homepage, it becomes easier for Google to see that you've updated your site with fresh content than crawling the entire site for the new material.
The benefit of internal links is giving your audience further options to stay on your site. The more engagement to relevant pages, the more Google takes notice. Don't put an internal link in every sentence, but include multiple links per page to bolster your SEO.
Optimize Your ImagesWhen you're adding images to the page, it benefits the user experience. But, you can also help your SEO strategy by optimizing the image. Make your top targeted keyword the alt text and create a title that is unique, but stays applicable to the image. The featured image of this article has a unique title and the alt-text of what this post is about.
Optimizing the alt tags gives Google another indication of what your page is about. The alt tag should be used to describe what's on the image, so we're back to relevance again. It won't make sense to have a picture of a Hummingbird with the alt tag "panda."
Here's the value of the alt tag. Think about when the image won't load, what will the user see? The alt tag. Don't stuff your keywords into alt tags. Make sure they fit with the image and make the picture relevant.
As Yoast says, "The image should reflect the topic of the post, or have illustrative purposes within the article, of course."
Images play a crucial role in conversions. For SEO purposes, make sure they're scaled correctly. The larger the image, the longer your page will take to load. Scale the image appropriately and make sure it shows in the smallest possible size.
We're living in a visual world, and while content is the most important, make sure your images are capturing attention, as well.
Mobile ResponsiveFor your page to be found relevant and your on-page SEO to improve, your website needs to be mobile-friendly and responsive in 2016 and beyond. Responsive websites provide the same experience with your brand no matter what device they're using.
There are multiple benefits to making your website responsive and appeal to mobile users. You'll see a positive ranking signal thanks to the 2015 Mobile Algorithm Update that continues its aim to provide the best results.
Over 50% of users are spending their time browsing and searching on mobile devices over desktops. Use the Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to understand how a Googlebot is viewing your page.
To continue to provide users with the fastest and best experience, Google started showing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in the search results. Mainly beneficial for news outlets and articles, these pages load instantly and are easily identified with a lightning bolt symbol. The faster the load time, the more appealing it is for mobile users. You can learn all about AMP and its impact on your SEO in this article by Search Engine Journal staff member Anna Crowe.
Remember that when users access your website or blog, chances are they'll be on their mobile device. You can check to ensure your website is mobile friendly through Google's test tool. If your site is not mobile-friendly, Google will outline what you can do to fix the issue.
You'll satisfy your customers with its functionality, making your website more relevant.
Site SpeedIn today's technology age, speed is essential. We don't want to wait. If a page isn't loading right away, we find another website that will. Are you helping or hurting your user's experience?
Nearly half of all mobile users will leave a site if it doesn't load within 3 seconds. Backlinko.com found that fast-loading websites are significantly more likely to rank in Google.
Keeping visitors happy increases your conversion rate. According to an infographic from Kissmetrics, 58% of mobile users expect your mobile site to load as fast, if not faster, than the experience seen on a desktop.
Optimize the site and take care of underlying factors that will shed some seconds off the page load time. Look at your site and see if there is anything slowing down the speed.
According to a report from Radware, image compression and optimization are vital factors in the speed of your website. The study says that images hold 50 to 60% of the total weight of the page. If your image files are too large, they could be dragging down the site's performance.
There are tools you can use to ensure the performance of your site is up to your—and your visitors—standards. If you have a Google Analytics account, you can look at your site speed under the "Behavior" tab in the left sidebar.
Other tools that provide performance tips and feedback on page speed, along with suggested fixes, include:
The faster your website loads, the more engagement you'll receive. Once all other on-page SEO factors are in place, focus on minimizing the load time. Your customers will prefer your site to others.
The Perfectly Optimized PageFrom the top down, make the use of your website seamless. From the appearance of the page to the backend technical aspects to the optimized meta information, the perfectly optimized page incorporates all aspects.
Digital marketing is about communicating with your audience. Guiding them to make a decision while educating yourself on what aspects are benefiting your search presence. It boils down to this:
Ensure you're providing Google with the right signals. Implement custom meta tags, title tags, headings, and always write quality content. Provide your visitors with the information they want, and learn how they interact with your site through analytical tracking.
That goes into the technical side of SEO, away from the techniques and optimization strategies included on the page.
When everything is in place, look into your Google Analytics and Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) to see how your site is performing.
As search engines cache and crawl your page, are they running into any crawl errors? This could hinder your performance. Crawl errors include broken links, dynamic pages, 404s, errors in the robots.txt files, sitemap errors, and more.
Using some of the SEO tools and resources I have outlined in SEJ's Beginners Guide to SEO, you can test the performance of the site and see if you have any crawl errors. This means that some pages are not accessed easily by the search engine bots. Google lets you address and update the health of your entire site.
Your goal is to generate conversions. Implementing these on-page SEO tactics will set a strong foundation that informs Google and entices your users.
It will increase traffic, improve your search engine rankings for the most relevant keywords to your business, and drive leads. Do you have everything implemented for the perfectly optimized page? How are your results?
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Gregory Dyson. Used with permission.In-post Photo #1: bakhtiarzein/DepositPhotos.comIn-post Photo #2: Image by Gregory Dyson. Used with permission.In-Post Photo #3: Image by Gregory Dyson. Used with permission.All screenshots by Ryan Clutter. Taken September 2016.