Bruce Clay's Blog, page 3
January 10, 2018
Are Writers Expected to Do SEO? New WordPress SEO Tools to Support Content Writers
Are Writers Expected to Do SEO? New WordPress SEO Tools to Support Content Writers was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
We’re in a time when writers carry a heavy responsibility. They produce the fuel — SEO-ready content — that marketing engines need to drive sales forward.
Content marketing requires a LOT of content. In fact, 72% of marketers surveyed said relevant content creation is the most effective SEO tactic.
It makes sense, then, that writers should be equipped with tools that help them make informed SEO decisions along the way to making relevant, optimized content.
At the beginning of each year I share my marketing predictions, and last year I wrote:
“New tools will help content marketers produce targeted, high-quality content at the time of publishing. Content writers demand more data and become more technically bold as easy-to-use tools provide traffic and competitor SEO stats, ushering in a new generation of targeted high-quality content.”
Admittedly, this led to the WordPress SEO plugin that we developed and announced last October. After all, if you predict something you should also act on it!
What a plugin like Bruce Clay SEO for WordPress does is give writers and publishers a tool to create targeted content that is reasonably search engine optimized. Writers are empowered with website and web page analytics data in a familiar environment in a user-friendly UX. Writers get competitive analysis of the targets they are aiming to outrank with their own content. And writers get all this at the point of publishing allowing for streamlined analysis within the World Wide Web’s most popular publishing platform.
This is critical because …
Original Content Is Becoming Harder to Produce
Marketers are increasingly turning to content as a way to market to ad-averse digital natives. As a result, the amount of content available on every topic possible has grown exponentially. Content works at every stage of the customer journey from brand awareness to lead generation. And everyone knows that content is needed to be in business today. This has led to content burnout.
It’s obvious that today’s best writers have a growing need for SEO skills to help them analyze data and decide what content needs creating.
Content burnout or overload has happened as so many topics have been covered in-depth online. Original content is harder to produce because so much has already been written on so many topics. Targeted content is in some ways easier to produce because of the amount of tools available and the lower volume of existing content online, but to produce both original and targeted content is still difficult.
Is Too Much Content a Bad Thing?
This content economy has positive implications for SEO. The more quality content you have on a site covering one particular topic, the more likely you are to rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs). We believe that authors need SEO to become first among equals.
Creating a massive amount of quality SEO content makes it hard for the competition to keep up. As long as your body of quality content is continually increasing, companies with smaller budgets or that begin producing later will find it difficult to ever catch up to your site in terms of domain authority.
But if you are new to the web, not all is lost. What helps new bloggers is that even though much content exists online, most of it never gets any attention. In a study of a million articles, 75% of 100,000 randomly selected pieces had no external links and fewer than 39 shares.
A 2015 study by BuzzSumo and Moz analyzed the shares and links of over 1 million articles to see the format of content that get relatively more shares or links.
We believe that writers who are able to produce great written content with search marketing value have a huge advantage. By properly optimizing their content for search, writers are gradually adding SEO to their normal content-focused duties.
Are Writers Expected to Do SEO?
At one point, 85% of B2B marketers reported they couldn’t connect their content marketing activity to business value. This led to a number of reputable organizations making it a priority to determine what the ROI of content marketing was, and what it should be.
Now we know a lot about the ROI of content marketing, like:
Content marketing brings in 3x leads per dollar spent vs. traditional outbound marketing.
Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads per month.
Even with all the information about content marketing ROI, only 21% of content marketers say they are successful at tracking content ROI.
Understanding the ROI of SEO has additional challenges because there are a number of ways SEO affects revenue, and a number of ways to “do” SEO.
We believe it is vital to provide authors with feedback on their work — traffic, time on page and bounce rate — in order to increase quality and SEO awareness.
Additionally, ROI from an SEO campaign often extends well after the campaign is over, making it even harder to track. Years ago, a study showed 43% of marketers couldn’t measure the ROI of their SEO. Imagine if every writer had access to data to see how popular their articles are and how much new traffic their content is bringing to a business!
As a writer, having access to the tools that show you how you’re performing provides focus and direction when deciding what pieces to create next to contribute to business objectives.
How Content Writers Are Doing SEO
The content marketing industry is becoming more data-driven as it matures. This means leading writers have adapted by becoming more technically savvy, using tools that provide data to justify why a particular piece of content is needed, as well as tools to show how it’s performing after publishing.
This Whiteboard Friday video details how bloggers should SEO-optimize their posts. A good portion of the video is devoted to teaching bloggers how to do research during the pre-writing process. The premise of the video is this:
Pick a goal for the post
Choose an audience
Find 3-5 long-tail keyword phrases
Scope the competition
Create the post
Only the last step has anything to do with the creation process; all of these SEO suggestions take place before the first word is written. As a result you would almost never find a content writer job description without SEO as a need-to-know skill.
As our dependence on data increases, writers need to continue to access as many data sources as possible to create new SEO content. Not only do writers need to know where to find data, they also need to understand how to use this data to create meaningful content that resonates with their target audience.
What Was Missing
Writing quality content may not be enough. The tie breaker we see over and over is a deftly search-optimized page. Tools have evolved to allow writers unprecedented access to data, yet there’s still plenty of room for improvement, especially in the area of SEO content tools.
Hunting for data on multiple websites, scouring through months of Google Analytics data and typing queries into Google itself eats up precious time that could be spent creating content that’s going to bring more traffic and revenue to a site.
WordPress, the world’s most popular content management system, boasts over 50,000 plugins. But with all its flexibility and power, the platform is still lacking. WordPress is a content management system and not an SEO tool. Let me repeat that. WordPress is obviously about content management and not SEO.
Here are some of the things we’ve found that most WordPress content creators still need:
Ability to optimize for more than one keyword
Content performance data
Visual map of keywords within a post
Customized keyword analysis based on the actual page content
Automatic tracking of which posts/pages are succeeding in search results with rankings and traffic data
Mobile-friendly scoring, mobile errors and page speed statistics
Duplicate content flag
Content reading level score of your post compared to the top-ranked competitors
Gamification for authors and contributors through author-specific post metrics (top posts, rankings, visitors and more)
Access to rich, integrated research and analysis tools
Many of the tools added to the WordPress platform are not adequate for a writer taking SEO initiative. Most data is not in one place and is not readily available to an author or publisher. If these tools were condensed into a single place within WordPress, then more writers would create quality content that is highly-targeted and data-driven. Because the tools and processes are scattered and time-pressed writers don’t often have the time to go to multiple websites to gather all the information, SEO success may suffer.
There Is an Easier Way
It’s obvious that today’s best writers have a growing need for SEO skills to help them analyze data and decide what content needs creating. In fact, it is a very big part of every writer’s job already and will become even more so in the future.
But hunting for data on multiple websites, scouring through months of Google Analytics data and typing queries into Google itself eats up precious time that could be spent creating content that’s going to bring more traffic and revenue to a site. The solution is to bring data to writers in the content publishing environment.
Adding SEO into the publishing workflow is the surest way to improve the distribution and visibility of labor-intensive content investments — that’s why we’ve been working hard to finish our coming Bruce Clay SEO plugin and bring it to the WordPress community.
If you’re looking for a solution that will quickly provide insights to writers and publishers looking to get answers without going through half the internet to find them, sign up for the early preview release of our SEO plugin for WordPress. It will give you answers to your most pressing SEO needs within WordPress, saving hours of frustration.
If you like this post, please share it with your friends or colleagues. For more like this, subscribe to our blog.
November 29, 2017
How Do I Rank Higher in Google Local Search? Bruce Clay’s Checklist for Local SEO
How Do I Rank Higher in Google Local Search? Bruce Clay’s Checklist for Local SEO was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
The good news: Showing up in Google’s search engine can be extremely beneficial to your local business.
The bad news: Google doesn’t care if you rank high or low. It cares only that there are quality results that answer the query to the total satisfaction of the searcher.
So the pressing question is, how do you rank higher on Google Maps and Google local search results? This list of local ranking factors is not exhaustive nor in priority order, but grouped into general categories which you can jump to as follows:
Housekeeping signals
Keywords and content signals
On-page signals
Linking signals
Local Pack signals
Social signals
Success signals
Housekeeping Signals
1. Branding
Being a respected business in your community will increase your local search visibility. Google pays a lot of attention to a brand’s perceived trust and expertise. Even if you’re just starting out, aim for happy customers and consistent quality to attract traffic and mentions.
2. Domain name
Your website’s name should accurately represent your business or brand. It’ll be in every URL, so make it something appropriate and easily remembered. Don’t use a keyword phrase alone (e.g., www.FloristLosAngeles.com) to avoid an exact match domain (EMD) penalty. On the other hand, including a keyword as part of your domain (e.g., www.FirstStreetDental.com) can help you as a local business if it’s tied into your brand name. Search algorithms are getting better and better at weeding out low-quality results, so make sure your domain doesn’t look like spam.
3. Hosting
When it comes to web hosting, think about speed, availability, and maintained software. Choose a host that ensures your content is served up quickly, since page load speed is now a factor in Google’s algorithm. Beyond the hosting platform, there are many ways to speed up your web pages. Using Accelerated Mobile Pages and/or Progressive Web Apps may be worth considering, as well.
4. Content management system (CMS)
Above all else, your CMS should be easy to use. Here, WordPress is king, consistently the top CMS used on the web. Consider how you can improve your system’s functionality with plugins — WordPress.org lists 1,864 plugins for “local” alone. And, don’t forget about a WordPress SEO plugin, too.
5. Compatibility
We’re in a mobile-first world, with the majority of searches happening on smartphones and Google evaluating sites based on their mobile friendliness. Check your site to make sure it’s mobile friendly and optimized for mobile devices — otherwise, your rankings and visitor counts will suffer. Voice search is the next big area of compatibility.
6. Email
Use your business’s domain in your email address (@bruceclay.com) rather than @gmail or another generic provider. It’s a small point, but worth putting on the housekeeping checklist to increase your professionalism and perceived trustworthiness.
Keywords and Content Signals
7. Keyword and content gap analysis
Identify the keywords working for you in terms of hitting key performance indicators and bringing in revenue. Use keyword research to find additional phrases that can serve your personas/community, and examine your competition online for their keywords. Wherever you find a gap in your own content compared to the top-ranking sites, expand accordingly.
8. Detailed competitive review
To get a more in-depth look at your competition, you’ll need to perform a detailed review. Examine their performance in every area in this checklist, then outdo them. The goal is to be the least imperfect with your local SEO.
9. Content creation
Content that informs, educates or entertains readers improves your engagement. We recommend siloing your web content based on the themes your business is about. Set up your navigation and internal links carefully to create a hierarchical structure for the content on your site. Doing so will strengthen your site’s relevance and expertise around those topics.
10. Content variety
Many different types of content can be “localized” to pertain specifically to your community. The list includes images, news, events, blog posts, videos, ads, tools and more. Having a variety of types of content indexed also gives your site more opportunity to rank, since they can appear in the vertical search engines (e.g., Google Images, YouTube, etc.).
Local content types diagram by Mike Ramsey
11. Content creation strategies
To establish yourself as a local authority, tell local stories and express your opinion about the topics your business and your customers are focused on. Excellent content can become a strategy for attracting search traffic and also local expert links.
12. Local videos
When you create videos that are appropriate to your website and region, you’ll soon discover that people will share them more on a local level. Build landing pages for your videos on your site to attract links and mentions. You can do this by uploading a video to your YouTube channel first, then embedding it on your page (copy the HTML right from YouTube’s Share tab into your page’s code).
13. Long-tail rankings
Use locally relevant content to rank higher in searches around the Local Pack. Examples would include posts like “The 5 Best Restaurants in Las Vegas,” which could answer long-tail queries such as, “What are the best restaurants in Las Vegas.”
14. Local relevance
Having content that’s locally focused can improve your reputation and reach in your area. This requires more than doing a find-and-replace on the city name to create hundreds of basically duplicate pages. You can start with templates, but make sure you’re including enough customized text, images and data to be locally relevant.
15. Landing pages
For the best local results, create optimal landing pages. For example, if your brand serves a wide region, you might have a different landing page for each city in that region, like “dog grooming Simi Valley” and “dog grooming Thousand Oaks.”
16. Schema NAP+W
Schema markup is code you can add to your website to help search engines understand your various types of information. According to Searchmetrics, pages with schema markup rank an average of four positions higher in search results.
Local businesses need schema in particular to call out their name, address, phone and website URL, also known as NAP+W, as well as hours of operation and much more. As an example, here’s what schema for our NAP+W would look like in the page code:
Local business schema markup example (in Google’s preferred format, JSON-LD)
Google is planning to expand its use of schema, so be sure to take advantage of all the structured data that applies to your content. Check out Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to confirm you’re implementing schema correctly.
17. Information in the Local Pack
Search engines want to make sure local business information is valid before presenting it in the “Local Pack” (the handful of local listings Google displays at the top of a web search results page, with addresses and a map). A business’s proximity to the searcher heavily influences whether it shows up in Local Pack results, so your location matters.
Keep your NAP+W data consistent across all sources. This is a local SEO priority, as it improves the search engines’ confidence in your business listing’s accuracy.
Be sure to include your business address on your own website. You can do this in the footer so it appears on every page, or at least show it on your contact page.
18. Google Map embedded
By adding a Google map to your contact page or footer, you can quickly show searchers and search engines exactly where you’re located. Using an embedded map rather than a static map image provides extra functionality and reduces friction — a human visitor can just click the map and grab directions. On our site, the embedded map shows in the footer when a user clicks [Location & Hour Information]:
Embed a Google Map to add an interactive element to your site.
19. Testimonials
To boost your brand’s credibility, you’ll need to get some local reviews or testimonials. Earn them (here’s a list of SEO-approved ways to get local reviews) and then add them, localized and with the author identified whenever possible. Testimonials, especially on a local level, can have a big impact. Seventy-three percent of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
20. Hawk update
Google has long had proximity filters in place that prevent multiple listings from the same business monopolizing local search results. However, in the August 2017 Hawk update Google tightened its proximity filtering for organic ranking. The filtering radius for a same category business has been reduced from 500 feet to 200 feet. Same category businesses at the same address, however, are still filtered. The more exact restrictions may benefit businesses that previously had a higher ranked competitor just down the street, as both businesses may now be able to show up in local results. (Edited, h/t Mike Blumenthal)
On-Page Signals
21. Technical on-page SEO
On-page elements are critical to get right for organic SEO on any web page. In addition to the standard optimization items (see our always-up-to-date SEO checklist for a list), a locally targeted page should have:
City in the title tag
Schema markup (as appropriate to the page contents)
Do not stuff keywords
Do not simply find-and-replace city names
Appropriate reading level and complexity (compare top-ranking pages to find your sweet spot)
22. Local keyword optimization
Be sure to mention local keywords on your web pages (such as the name of your city, state or region and other geographical/local references) to help solidify Google’s understanding of your location and help you rank for local keyword queries.
Linking Signals
23. Local link building
You cannot rank in a city without having local links. When relevant, quality websites within your city link back to you, it shows you’re a trusted local brand. Only links coming from unique IPs, unique domains and unique WhoIs for your geographic area will help you rank, so don’t fall for link schemes. The anchor text (clickable text) used in the links also send a signal to search engines. (See more link building guidelines.)
24. Local directories
To make it easier for searchers to find you, you’ll want to be included in geotargeted directories for services, such as Yellow Pages online, a local restaurant database, or other. These citations add more weight to your site in the local search ranking algorithms. (This interview with local expert Darren Shaw gives helpful information on local listings, including a directory list.)
25. Social and web mentions
Are people talking about your brand online? Even if they don’t include a link, brand mentions on social media platforms show engagement and interest in your business. These linkless mentions (and also “nofollow” links) help your business by attracting new customers and reinforcing your brand’s reputation, which can even influence local search rankings. Use a tool like GeoRanker to identify local citations and social media tools to keep tabs on the conversation.
26. External links
Boost your credibility by linking to local expert resources that would be useful to your site visitors. Choose external web pages that are relevant to your subject matter and region. Remember that in order to be viewed as a local expert, you should visibly network with other local experts.
27. Competitor backlinks
If someone is linking to your competition, they might link to you as well. Start by looking at the backlink profile of your top-ranked competitors (using a backlink analysis tool such as Majestic, Ahrefs or other). Identify good candidates — high-quality and relevant sites that don’t already link to yours. Then see if you can earn links from those same sites.
Local Pack Signals
28. NAP+W consistency
As mentioned earlier, NAP+W refers to your business name, address, phone number and website URL. The goal here is for your NAP+W to be consistent across the board — wherever it’s listed online. For local optimization, you don’t want to have various versions of your address and phone number out there, such as:
NAP inconsistencies identified should be fixed (via Yext)
To see if your NAP+W is consistent, try Yext’s free test.
29. Google My Business (GMB) optimization
Having a Google My Business listing is critical for businesses with service areas and physical businesses. It’s a free business listing to start building your visibility in Google Maps and Google Search.
In addition to ensuring NAP+W information is accurate, here are some optimization tips for your Google listing:
Add a unique description about your business. Make it long (400+ words), formatted correctly, and include links to your website.
Add your open business hours.
Select the best categories for your business (use Blumenthal’s Google Places for Business Category Tool).
Include a high-resolution profile cover image, plus as many additional photos as possible.
Use a local phone number (not a toll-free number).
Encourage reviews from your customers.
Use Google Posts to enhance your brand’s Knowledge Panel with upcoming events or special news. Your post displays only temporarily (usually for seven days), but will remain visible to anyone looking up your brand using Google mobile search, so make each post unique.
Secondly, create and optimize your business listing on Bing Places for Business.
30. Check your site on Google Maps
Your Google My Business listing and schema also help get your business to show up in Google Maps. Since navigation systems and customers may refer to Google Maps to find you, make sure the pin marks the correct location for your business. Here’s how to add or edit your site in Google Maps.
31. Local business listings
Increase your visibility by including your business on sites such as Yelp, Thomson Local, Angie’s List, Yellow Pages, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, OpenTable, Merchant Circle and Foursquare, as well as local travel and news sites — choose the sites that fit your type of business and customer base.
32. Better Business Bureau (BBB)
Boost your credibility by ensuring that your business is listed with the BBB. Monitor your ratings there and display your BBB rating on your website as a trust signal for visitors. As with all local directories, make sure your location information on BBB matches your NAP+W.
33. Citation building and reviews
Reviews will usually reflect absolute happiness or absolute misery. So it’s important to monitor the quantity and sentiment of your online reviews so you can actively manage your reputation.
Review sites to monitor include: Facebook, Google, Yelp, Bing, local chamber websites and more.
Sites where citations and mentions may occur include: Reddit, Quora, news media sites like WSJ, etc.
Consider adding a page to your website with instructions on how to provide reviews and feedback.
34. Location pages
It’s recommended that you have one or more pages on your site dedicated to each location your business is in. Dedicate a page to each keyword, for example, “real estate agent, Simi Valley” (services, then city). Design this to be a good landing page for anyone searching within that area, and make the content unique. Avoid laundry lists or simply doing a wild card replace for the city name. Search engines can spot that type of duplicate content a mile away. (See our tips for dealing with thin content on your site.)
35. Press releases
Press releases can be a great way to let locals know that you exist, especially if you have breaking news. Opening a new location? Hosting a charity event? Be sure to publicize it, and include the local geo references (city name, etc.) in your text. A press release published through an online PR site might catch the eye of a reporter who will publish a news article about your business in a local publication.
Social Signals
36. Social profiles
Being active in social media and sharing your content (think content marketing) contribute to keeping your business top-of-mind. On social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest, your profile pages matter — make them consistent with your brand voice and informative. Be sure to include your contact information. Engagement with your brand is a social signal, such as when something you’ve posted is shared or liked. It’s also a way to engage with current and potential customers.
37. Touch your followers
Help customers stay in the know. Social media can be an efficient way to spread news, local deals, alerts and updates to your customer base as well as get the word out to others. Interact with them one-on-one, and you may develop a brand advocate for life.
38. Become the local expert
Make yourself known as a trustworthy business by building local expertise and authority in your space. For example, you could teach a class or speak at a local event. Brainstorm presentations that bring value to an audience while showcasing your expert knowledge related to your business.
39. Local discounts
Attract local customers by offering discounts for locals. For example, you could offer members of a local organization $x or x% off your products or services, accept AAA discounts, or other.
Success Signals for Local SEO
40. Online and offline conversion tracking/analytics
Stay on top of your conversions — actual results and dollars earned from your website — through analytics. (If you haven’t yet, set up Google Analytics for free.) Pay particular attention to rising or falling click-through rates and bounce rates, which will show you how many searchers clicked through to your site and whether they liked what they found.
Enable mobile users to simply click to call your phone number wherever it appears, and track those interactions. Appointments and sales made online may also be important metrics for success. Remember, not counting progress is a failure.
41. Monitor rankings
Be aware of your rankings in regular organic results and in the Local Pack. I suggest you choose at least five specific local keyword phrases to focus on at a time, but test more for rankings. Regularly check to see whether your business shows up on the first page of search results; compare your results to that of your competition. You can do this through manual viewing of “[keyword] near me”-type searches, if you’re in the local area. You can also use a tool like AuthorityLabs to track local rankings.
While there’s a lot of work that goes into boosting your local search rankings, it will be well worth your time and effort as a local business. It may even mean your survival. The points on this local SEO checklist give you lots of ways to attract more customers with your online strategy.
I want to hear from you. Would you add anything to this list? Share your local checklist to-dos in the comments below. Then share this article with a friend.
Local Search Ranking Factors from Bruce Clay
How Do I Rank Higher in Google Local Search? Our Checklist for Local SEO
How Do I Rank Higher in Google Local Search? Our Checklist for Local SEO was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
The good news: Showing up in Google’s search engine can be extremely beneficial to your local business.
The bad news: Google doesn’t care if you rank high or low. It cares only that there are quality results that answer the query to the total satisfaction of the searcher.
So the pressing question is, how do you rank higher on Google Maps and Google local search results? Improving your local search rankings is possible, and the results are very real. A Google study found that:
4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information.
50 percent of local smartphone searches lead to a store visit in less than a day.
18 percent of local searches on a smartphone result in a sale within a day.
If you’re asking, “How does Google local search work, and how can I rank higher in local search?” then this local SEO checklist is for you!
I first presented these 41 factors that contribute to local search ranking at Pubcon earlier this month (see my slide deck at the end). Here, I list them executive summary style, to help you understand how you can increase your local search rankings.
Disclaimers: Each of these topics could be an article in itself, but I’ve tried to give brief explanations and links for further reading, in keeping with a list format. This is not an exhaustive list of local ranking factors. It’s not in priority order either, but grouped into general categories which you can jump to as follows:
Housekeeping signals
Keywords and content signals
On-page signals
Linking signals
Local Pack signals
Social signals
Success signals
Housekeeping Signals
1. Branding
Being a respected business in your community will increase your local search visibility. Google pays a lot of attention a brand’s perceived trust and expertise. Even if you’re just starting out, aim for happy customers and consistent quality to attract traffic and mentions.
2. Domain name
Your website’s name should accurately represent your business or brand. It’ll be in every URL, so make it something appropriate and easily remembered. Don’t use a keyword phrase alone (e.g., www.FloristLosAngeles.com) to avoid an exact match domain (EMD) penalty. On the other hand, including a keyword as part of your domain (e.g., www.FirstStreetDental.com) can help you as a local business if it’s tied into your brand name. Search algorithms are getting better and better at weeding out low-quality results, so make sure your domain doesn’t look like spam.
3. Hosting
When it comes to web hosting, think about speed, availability, and maintained software. Choose a host that ensures your content is served up quickly, since page load speed is now a factor in Google’s algorithm. Beyond the hosting platform, there are many ways to speed up your web pages. Using Accelerated Mobile Pages and/or Progressive Web Apps may be worth considering, as well.
4. Content management system (CMS)
Above all else, your CMS should be easy to use. Here, WordPress is king, consistently the top CMS used on the web. Consider how you can improve your system’s functionality with plugins — WordPress.org lists 1,864 plugins for “local” alone. And, don’t forget about a WordPress SEO plugin, too.
5. Compatibility
We’re in a mobile-first world, with the majority of searches happening on smartphones and Google evaluating sites based on their mobile friendliness. Check your site to make sure it’s mobile friendly and optimized for mobile devices — otherwise, your rankings and visitor counts will suffer. Voice search is the next big area of compatibility.
6. Email
Use your business’s domain in your email address (@bruceclay.com) rather than @gmail or another generic provider. It’s a small point, but worth putting on the housekeeping checklist to increase your professionalism and perceived trustworthiness.
Keywords and Content Signals
7. Keyword and content gap analysis
Identify the keywords working for you in terms of hitting key performance indicators and bringing in revenue. Use keyword research to find additional phrases that can serve your personas/community, and examine your competition online for their keywords. Wherever you find a gap in your own content compared to the top-ranking sites, expand accordingly.
8. Detailed competitive review
To get a more in-depth look at your competition, you’ll need to perform a detailed review. Examine their performance in every area in this checklist, then outdo them. The goal is to be the least imperfect with your local SEO.
9. Content creation
Content that informs, educates or entertains readers improves your engagement. We recommend siloing your web content based on the themes your business is about. Set up your navigation and internal links carefully to create a hierarchical structure for the content on your site. Doing so will strengthen your site’s relevance and expertise around those topics.
10. Content variety
Many different types of content can be “localized” to pertain specifically to your community. The list includes images, news, events, blog posts, videos, ads, tools and more. Having a variety of types of content indexed also gives your site more opportunity to rank, since they can appear in the vertical search engines (e.g., Google Images, YouTube, etc.).
Local content types diagram by Mike Ramsey
11. Content creation strategies
To establish yourself as a local authority, tell local stories and express your opinion about the topics your business and your customers are focused on. Excellent content can become a strategy for attracting search traffic and also local expert links.
12. Local videos
When you create videos that are appropriate to your website and region, you’ll soon discover that people will share them more on a local level. Build landing pages for your videos on your site to attract links and mentions. You can do this by uploading a video to your YouTube channel first, then embedding it on your page (copy the HTML right from YouTube’s Share tab into your page’s code).
13. Long-tail rankings
Use locally relevant content to rank higher in searches around the Local Pack. Examples would include posts like “The 5 Best Restaurants in Las Vegas,” which could answer long-tail queries such as, “What are the best restaurants in Las Vegas.”
14. Local relevance
Having content that’s locally focused can improve your reputation and reach in your area. This requires more than doing a find-and-replace on the city name to create hundreds of basically duplicate pages. You can start with templates, but make sure you’re including enough customized text, images and data to be locally relevant.
15. Landing pages
For the best local results, create optimal landing pages. For example, if your brand serves a wide region, you might have a different landing page for each city in that region, like “dog grooming Simi Valley” and “dog grooming Thousand Oaks.”
16. Schema NAP+W
Schema markup is code you can add to your website to help search engines understand your various types of information. According to Searchmetrics, pages with schema markup rank an average of four positions higher in search results.
Local businesses need schema in particular to call out their name, address, phone and website URL, also known as NAP+W, as well as hours of operation and much more. As an example, here’s what schema for our NAP+W would look like in the page code:
Local business schema markup example (in Google’s preferred format, JSON-LD)
Google is planning to expand its use of schema, so be sure to take advantage of all the structured data that applies to your content. Check out Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to confirm you’re implementing schema correctly.
17. Information in the Local Pack
Search engines want to make sure local business information is valid before presenting it in the “Local Pack” (the handful of local listings Google displays at the top of a web search results page, with addresses and a map). A business’s proximity to the searcher heavily influences whether it shows up in Local Pack results, so your location matters.
Keep your NAP+W data consistent across all sources. This is a local SEO priority, as it improves the search engines’ confidence in your business listing’s accuracy.
Be sure to include your business address on your own website. You can do this in the footer so it appears on every page, or at least show it on your contact page.
18. Google Map embedded
By adding a Google map to your contact page or footer, you can quickly show searchers and search engines exactly where you’re located. Using an embedded map rather than a static map image provides extra functionality and reduces friction — a human visitor can just click the map and grab directions. On our site, the embedded map shows in the footer when a user clicks [Location & Hour Information]:
Embed a Google Map to add an interactive element to your site.
19. Testimonials
To boost your brand’s credibility, you’ll need to get some local reviews or testimonials. Earn them (here’s a list of SEO-approved ways to get local reviews) and then add them, localized and with the author identified whenever possible. Testimonials, especially on a local level, can have a big impact. Seventy-three percent of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
20. Hawk update
In the past, Google filtered out local listings that shared the same address or that were on the same street (part of the Possum update) under the assumption that those sites belonged to one business trying to get multiple listings. But since the August 2017 Hawk update, Google seems to have removed “same address” filtering for organic ranking.
On-Page Signals
21. Technical on-page SEO
On-page elements are critical to get right for organic SEO on any web page. In addition to the standard optimization items (see our always-up-to-date SEO checklist for a list), a locally targeted page should have:
City in the title tag
Schema markup (as appropriate to the page contents)
Do not stuff keywords
Do not simply find-and-replace city names
Appropriate reading level and complexity (compare top-ranking pages to find your sweet spot)
22. Local keyword optimization
Be sure to mention local keywords on your web pages (such as the name of your city, state or region and other geographical/local references) to help solidify Google’s understanding of your location and help you rank for local keyword queries.
Linking Signals
23. Local link building
You cannot rank in a city without having local links. When relevant, quality websites within your city link back to you, it shows you’re a trusted local brand. Only links coming from unique IPs, unique domains and unique WhoIs for your geographic area will help you rank, so don’t fall for link schemes. The anchor text (clickable text) used in the links also send a signal to search engines. (See more link building guidelines.)
24. Local directories
To make it easier for searchers to find you, you’ll want to be included in geotargeted directories for services, such as Yellow Pages online, a local restaurant database, or other. These citations add more weight to your site in the local search ranking algorithms. (This interview with local expert Darren Shaw gives helpful information on local listings, including a directory list.)
25. Social and web mentions
Are people talking about your brand online? Even if they don’t include a link, brand mentions on social media platforms show engagement and interest in your business. These linkless mentions (and also “nofollow” links) help your business by attracting new customers and reinforcing your brand’s reputation, which can even influence local search rankings. Use a tool like GeoRanker to identify local citations and social media tools to keep tabs on the conversation.
26. External links
Boost your credibility by linking to local expert resources that would be useful to your site visitors. Choose external web pages that are relevant to your subject matter and region. Remember that in order to be viewed as a local expert, you should visibly network with other local experts.
27. Competitor backlinks
If someone is linking to your competition, they might link to you as well. Start by looking at the backlink profile of your top-ranked competitors (using a backlink analysis tool such as Majestic, Ahrefs or other). Identify good candidates — high-quality and relevant sites that don’t already link to yours. Then see if you can earn links from those same sites.
Local Pack Signals
28. NAP+W consistency
As mentioned earlier, NAP+W refers to your business name, address, phone number and website URL. The goal here is for your NAP+W to be consistent across the board — wherever it’s listed online. For local optimization, you don’t want to have various versions of your address and phone number out there, such as:
NAP inconsistencies identified should be fixed (via Yext)
To see if your NAP+W is consistent, try Yext’s free test.
29. Google My Business (GMB) optimization
Having a Google My Business listing is critical for businesses with service areas and physical businesses. It’s a free business listing to start building your visibility in Google Maps and Google Search.
In addition to ensuring NAP+W information is accurate, here are some optimization tips for your Google listing:
Add a unique description about your business. Make it long (400+ words), formatted correctly, and include links to your website.
Add your open business hours.
Select the best categories for your business (use Blumenthal’s Google Places for Business Category Tool).
Include a high-resolution profile cover image, plus as many additional photos as possible.
Use a local phone number (not a toll-free number).
Encourage reviews from your customers.
Use Google Posts to enhance your brand’s Knowledge Panel with upcoming events or special news. Your post displays only temporarily (usually for seven days), but will remain visible to anyone looking up your brand using Google mobile search, so make each post unique.
Secondly, create and optimize your business listing on Bing Places for Business.
30. Check your site on Google Maps
Your Google My Business listing and schema also help get your business to show up in Google Maps. Since navigation systems and customers may refer to Google Maps to find you, make sure the pin marks the correct location for your business. Here’s how to add or edit your site in Google Maps.
31. Local business listings
Increase your visibility by including your business on sites such as Yelp, Thomson Local, Angie’s List, Yellow Pages, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, OpenTable, Merchant Circle and Foursquare, as well as local travel and news sites — choose the sites that fit your type of business and customer base.
32. Better Business Bureau (BBB)
Boost your credibility by ensuring that your business is listed with the BBB. Monitor your ratings there and display your BBB rating on your website as a trust signal for visitors. As with all local directories, make sure your location information on BBB matches your NAP+W.
33. Citation building and reviews
Reviews will usually reflect absolute happiness or absolute misery. So it’s important to monitor the quantity and sentiment of your online reviews so you can actively manage your reputation.
Review sites to monitor include: Facebook, Google, Yelp, Bing, local chamber websites and more.
Sites where citations and mentions may occur include: Reddit, Quora, news media sites like WSJ, etc.
Consider adding a page to your website with instructions on how to provide reviews and feedback.
34. Location pages
It’s recommended that you have one or more pages on your site dedicated to each location your business is in. Dedicate a page to each keyword, for example, “real estate agent, Simi Valley” (services, then city). Design this to be a good landing page for anyone searching within that area, and make the content unique. Avoid laundry lists or simply doing a wild card replace for the city name. Search engines can spot that type of duplicate content a mile away. (See our tips for dealing with thin content on your site.)
35. Press releases
Press releases can be a great way to let locals know that you exist, especially if you have breaking news. Opening a new location? Hosting a charity event? Be sure to publicize it, and include the local geo references (city name, etc.) in your text. A press release published through an online PR site might catch the eye of a reporter who will publish a news article about your business in a local publication.
Social Signals
36. Social profiles
Being active in social media and sharing your content (think content marketing) contribute to keeping your business top-of-mind. On social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest, your profile pages matter — make them consistent with your brand voice and informative. Be sure to include your contact information. Engagement with your brand is a social signal, such as when something you’ve posted is shared or liked. It’s also a way to engage with current and potential customers.
37. Touch your followers
Help customers stay in the know. Social media can be an efficient way to spread news, local deals, alerts and updates to your customer base as well as get the word out to others. Interact with them one-on-one, and you may develop a brand advocate for life.
38. Become the local expert
Make yourself known as a trustworthy business by building local expertise and authority in your space. For example, you could teach a class or speak at a local event. Brainstorm presentations that bring value to an audience while showcasing your expert knowledge related to your business.
39. Local discounts
Attract local customers by offering discounts for locals. For example, you could offer members of a local organization $x or x% off your products or services, accept AAA discounts, or other.
Success Signals for Local SEO
40. Online and offline conversion tracking/analytics
Stay on top of your conversions — actual results and dollars earned from your website — through analytics. (If you haven’t yet, set up Google Analytics for free.) Pay particular attention to rising or falling click-through rates and bounce rates, which will show you how many searchers clicked through to your site and whether they liked what they found.
Enable mobile users to simply click to call your phone number wherever it appears, and track those interactions. Appointments and sales made online may also be important metrics for success. Remember, not counting progress is a failure.
41. Monitor rankings
Be aware of your rankings in regular organic results and in the Local Pack. I suggest you choose at least five specific local keyword phrases to focus on at a time, but test more for rankings. Regularly check to see whether your business shows up on the first page of search results; compare your results to that of your competition. You can do this through manual viewing of “[keyword] near me”-type searches, if you’re in the local area. You can also use a tool like AuthorityLabs to track local rankings.
While there’s a lot of work that goes into boosting your local search rankings, it will be well worth your time and effort as a local business. It may even mean your survival. The points on this local SEO checklist give you lots of ways to attract more customers with your online strategy.
I want to hear from you. Would you add anything to this list? Share your local checklist to-dos in the comments below. Then share this article with a friend.
Local Search Ranking Factors from Bruce Clay
November 20, 2017
How Close Are We to Search Engine Marketing Running Itself? – BruceClay
How Close Are We to Search Engine Marketing Running Itself? – BruceClay was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
We are well on our way with the fourth Industrial Revolution, and the internet is alive … almost.
All around the web are speculations regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of our civilization. The idea that computers will take over the majority of jobs in the workplace today has become well accepted. Some careers will be destroyed, although many more will be born as a result.
From the great benefits to the potential risks to our species, some of our modern day economic titans have expressed their hopes and concerns. A few examples …
Warren Buffett stated that he believes AI will kill jobs but is ultimately good for society.
Elon Musk is attempting to morph nature and technology with his new idea for Neuralink, a company he is launching to merge man and machine.
And Mark Cuban thinks that the world’s first trillionaire will be as a result of AI.
So what? How does this affect your day to day, or even your future?
What if I said that this future applies to PPC search engine marketing? We’re talking about the wave of SEM automation and the not-far-off day when search engine marketing runs itself.
PPC’s History
To understand the trajectory of SEM automation, let’s take a brief look at PPC history. GoTo.com (launced in 1997) successfully pioneered the pay-for-placement search marketing business model, which at the time was strictly based on pay-per-click.
The more a company was willing to spend per click, the higher its ad would appear in the sponsored ads section of the search engine results page. So the companies with more money to invest were able to gain an advantage.
GoTo.com search engine results page screenshot in 2001.
Google.com home page screenshot in 2001.
Then Google launched AdWords and improved the previous business model.
Google incorporated good user experience into the judgment of placements on the search results pages and rewarded advertisers with lower CPCs and better positions. Advertisers with better quality ads and bigger budgets had an advantage.
Over the years, more improvements were introduced, giving advertisers more control over how their ads were displayed. This allowed for a more targeted approach that resulted in a lower CPA for them and better-targeted ads for their customers.
With more advertisers adding product after product to their advertising portfolios, managing thousands of campaigns, ad groups, keywords and bids became a real challenge for both agencies and business owners.
Smart Automation Ramps Up in SEM
With all of the bidding options offered by Google, it was difficult managing all of them efficiently.
So bid management tools were developed. As the industry grew, there were constantly new opportunities to improve an advertiser’s efficiency with their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Since the opportunities were too many, machine learning bots were introduced to monitor, learn and run much of the bidding off of history, device, time of day, location, etc. We use the power of PPC automation tools to automate some of the common tedious and time-consuming tasks associated with data gathering and CPA optimization. Paid search campaigns are efficiently and automatically adjusted 48 times each day — far more than a human can manage alone.
Every day, the bots monitor and gather more information, allowing them to make better decisions. Each time a user conducts a search, it is a new opportunity for the bots to learn to become more efficient in maximizing profits and decrease an advertiser’s wasted spend.
Each account becomes a custom bidding portfolio, assuming it has been set up correctly. Over time and with data, the bots learn, increasing either click-through percentage or conversions while lowering CPAs/CPLs, depending on the client’s needs.
In time, the automation portion of web marketing increases alongside AI. An effective, streamlined marketing experience, a better user experience, and more profits for the search engines are the results.
We see news about machine learning technologies in the online advertising space every day. Platforms are being built and leveraged in this space more and more.
Today’s Machine Learning Advances
So who is the real winner when every business gets to take advantage of machine learning? Everyone involved! Why?
Advertisers win because the bots optimize for their specific website and its audience, factoring in all traceable micro-moments in the process. There will always be competition for traffic and conversions, but since each site is slightly different, bots can optimize for that specific site and its audience.
If a site is winning conversions at a certain time of day with a certain set of keywords, the competitors can also win, either with a slightly different set of keywords or slightly different times of day. Where two advertisers go head to head on a specific set of keywords at a specific time of day, account structure usually wins, as better structured accounts usually have a higher Quality Score.
Search engines win because a better user experience means more clicks, which results in more exposure and more revenue.
What’s Next for PPC?
Why isn’t all of this automated yet? Ideally, I believe we need to be living in a digital world where a non-tech-savvy small business owner has access to an SEO-optimized website generated by a smart bot.
The only work for the business owner would be to fill out a questionnaire with business and industry information, in order to guide the bot in the right direction.
Data and analysis by artificial intelligence should allow for an effective site to build itself, customizing and building for user experience.
Once the site is built and ready, the social media bots can begin the buzz to introduce the brand to the public.
Meanwhile, based on industry information gathered about the business and its competitors, an effectively built SEM account emerges, applying years of learning and best practices to begin and improve performance, to hit and exceed the client’s goals.
The bots will do it all, with the small business owner having zero knowledge of how the industry works. All he or she knows is that it works well and provides a positive return on investment, which is enough reason to increase budgets and ultimately profits.
The best part is that digital marketing applies to just about all industries, growing businesses time and again, industry after industry. So when will SEM run itself? In many ways, the transition is happening now.
And what does a business need to do to take advantage of the benefits provided when robots fine-tune and manage SEM?
Although we are on our way, I think it will still be a long time before the industry is efficiently automated. Until then, the business opportunities need to be captured through a competent search marketing agency. Especially one that utilizes nearly two decades of experience in building and scaling performance-driven client campaigns through experience and data.
Success is assessed through efficient client account growth, achieved in time through intelligence and effort. After 20-plus years helping shape this industry, we have built the talent and environment to start your efficient paid digital campaigns or scale them to the next level.
Are you ready to increase your digital profits? Contact us today.
How Close Are We to Search Engine Marketing Running Itself?
How Close Are We to Search Engine Marketing Running Itself? was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
We are well on our way with the fourth Industrial Revolution, and the internet is alive … almost.
All around the web are speculations regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of our civilization. The idea that computers will take over the majority of jobs in the workplace today has become well accepted. Some careers will be destroyed, although many more will be born as a result.
From the great benefits to the potential risks to our species, some of our modern day economic titans have expressed their hopes and concerns. A few examples …
Warren Buffett stated that he believes AI will kill jobs but is ultimately good for society.
Elon Musk is attempting to morph nature and technology with his new idea for Neuralink, a company he is launching to merge man and machine.
And Mark Cuban thinks that the world’s first trillionaire will be as a result of AI.
So what? How does this affect your day to day, or even your future?
What if I said that this future applies to PPC search engine marketing? We’re talking about the wave of SEM automation and the not-far-off day when search engine marketing runs itself.
PPC’s History
To understand the trajectory of SEM automation, let’s take a brief look at PPC history. GoTo.com (launced in 1997) successfully pioneered the pay-for-placement search marketing business model, which at the time was strictly based on pay-per-click.
The more a company was willing to spend per click, the higher its ad would appear in the sponsored ads section of the search engine results page. So the companies with more money to invest were able to gain an advantage.
GoTo.com search engine results page screenshot in 2001.
Google.com home page screenshot in 2001.
Then Google launched AdWords and improved the previous business model.
Google incorporated good user experience into the judgment of placements on the search results pages and rewarded advertisers with lower CPCs and better positions. Advertisers with better quality ads and bigger budgets had an advantage.
Over the years, more improvements were introduced, giving advertisers more control over how their ads were displayed. This allowed for a more targeted approach that resulted in a lower CPA for them and better-targeted ads for their customers.
With more advertisers adding product after product to their advertising portfolios, managing thousands of campaigns, ad groups, keywords and bids became a real challenge for both agencies and business owners.
Smart Automation Ramps Up in SEM
With all of the bidding options offered by Google, it was difficult managing all of them efficiently.
So bid management tools were developed. As the industry grew, there were constantly new opportunities to improve an advertiser’s efficiency with their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Since the opportunities were too many, machine learning bots were introduced to monitor, learn and run much of the bidding off of history, device, time of day, location, etc. We use the power of PPC automation tools to automate some of the common tedious and time-consuming tasks associated with data gathering and CPA optimization. Paid search campaigns are efficiently and automatically adjusted 48 times each day — far more than a human can manage alone.
Every day, the bots monitor and gather more information, allowing them to make better decisions. Each time a user conducts a search, it is a new opportunity for the bots to learn to become more efficient in maximizing profits and decrease an advertiser’s wasted spend.
Each account becomes a custom bidding portfolio, assuming it has been set up correctly. Over time and with data, the bots learn, increasing either click-through percentage or conversions while lowering CPAs/CPLs, depending on the client’s needs.
In time, the automation portion of web marketing increases alongside AI. An effective, streamlined marketing experience, a better user experience, and more profits for the search engines are the results.
We see news about machine learning technologies in the online advertising space every day. Platforms are being built and leveraged in this space more and more.
Today’s Machine Learning Advances
So who is the real winner when every business gets to take advantage of machine learning? Everyone involved! Why?
Advertisers win because the bots optimize for their specific website and its audience, factoring in all traceable micro-moments in the process. There will always be competition for traffic and conversions, but since each site is slightly different, bots can optimize for that specific site and its audience.
If a site is winning conversions at a certain time of day with a certain set of keywords, the competitors can also win, either with a slightly different set of keywords or slightly different times of day. Where two advertisers go head to head on a specific set of keywords at a specific time of day, account structure usually wins, as better structured accounts usually have a higher Quality Score.
Search engines win because a better user experience means more clicks, which results in more exposure and more revenue.
What’s Next for PPC?
Why isn’t all of this automated yet? Ideally, I believe we need to be living in a digital world where a non-tech-savvy small business owner has access to an SEO-optimized website generated by a smart bot.
The only work for the business owner would be to fill out a questionnaire with business and industry information, in order to guide the bot in the right direction.
Data and analysis by artificial intelligence should allow for an effective site to build itself, customizing and building for user experience.
Once the site is built and ready, the social media bots can begin the buzz to introduce the brand to the public.
Meanwhile, based on industry information gathered about the business and its competitors, an effectively built SEM account emerges, applying years of learning and best practices to begin and improve performance, to hit and exceed the client’s goals.
The bots will do it all, with the small business owner having zero knowledge of how the industry works. All he or she knows is that it works well and provides a positive return on investment, which is enough reason to increase budgets and ultimately profits.
The best part is that digital marketing applies to just about all industries, growing businesses time and again, industry after industry. So when will SEM run itself? In many ways, the transition is happening now.
And what does a business need to do to take advantage of the benefits provided when robots fine-tune and manage SEM?
Although we are on our way, I think it will still be a long time before the industry is efficiently automated. Until then, the business opportunities need to be captured through a competent search marketing agency. Especially one that utilizes nearly two decades of experience in building and scaling performance-driven client campaigns through experience and data.
Success is assessed through efficient client account growth, achieved in time through intelligence and effort. After 20-plus years helping shape this industry, we have built the talent and environment to start your efficient paid digital campaigns or scale them to the next level.
Are you ready to increase your digital profits? Contact us today.
November 15, 2017
Make Content Your #1 SEO Strategy Initiative in 2018 – BruceClay
Make Content Your #1 SEO Strategy Initiative in 2018 – BruceClay was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
It’ll be 10 years ago this January that I first walked through the doors at Bruce Clay, Inc. and entered digital marketing.
I was fresh out of journalism school, which I’d studied because I wanted to write truth to the world. By making information publicly available, I thought I could contribute to the greater good. I saw myself educating readers by sharing the stories of the world. Pretty altruistic, right?
I never thought I would work in marketing. Who plans on a career in marketing? What 10-year-old says, “I want to be a marketer when I grow up, Mommy!”
Well, I’ve learned that marketers play a similar role as journalists but in the private business sector. We’re in the business of communications — crafting messaging and figuring out how to get those messages in front of as many people as possible.
We use our storytelling talents and distribution know-how for our companies and our clients. Our job is to get the right story in front of the right audience.
I’ve learned that SEO wins happen at the intersection of identifying storytelling opportunities and maximizing the visibility of those stories through search.
And yet I think it can be easy for an SEO to forget a critical role they play for clients and for organizations: that of the content evangelist.
SEOs can fall into a trap of focusing on the technical requirements for making content findable by search engines. And while crawlability and accessibility issues are key SEO responsibilities, big brands today are demonstrating that the competitive advantage lies in crafting 10x content and investing in SEO content strategy.
The Job of an SEO
Here’s an infographic you’ve probably seen before. It’s Search Engine Land’s Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors. It does a really good job of hitting on every component of an SEO’s domain.
Click to visit SearchEngineLand.com where you can download the Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors.
It’s neatly divided into on-page and off-page factors. Of course, nothing in real life is ever so neat. There’s always overlap and grey. There are no links without content. But if we accept this diagram at face value, we can still interpret a lot about an SEO’s top priorities.
For instance, look at the on-page factors. You’ll see content and you’ll see technical SEO. We know that Google has said that the two most important ranking signals are content and links. From that we can infer that technical SEO does not provide as big of a competitive advantage.
Technical SEO is more like the barrier to entry for ranking. Is your site crawlable, is all the HTML in the right place, are duplicate pages consolidated with canonicals and parameters excluded in Search Console? These technical SEO issues are critical to search visibility. Still, I’d argue they represent the lowest common denominator. You’re rarely going to climb to the first page or the top 3 rankings on the basis of clean, crawlable code. Not having these things will hurt you, but having them won’t give you a competitive edge.
Remember what Google said — the most important ranking factors are links and content. And if you have to prioritize one of those things, it has to be content, because content is what generates links.
Why Content Should Be Your Top SEO Priority
Here are concrete ways that you can empower your role in SEO by evangelizing content to your company or your clients.
1. Content is in your control.
When it comes to generating links and content, don’t put the cart before the horse. As long as you’re not buying links (and you’d better not), you’re going to need link-worthy content on your site that attracts links.
Who links to you is an X factor. It’s not as squarely in your control. What is in your control? Content.
Who links to you is an X factor not in your control. What is in your control? #Content.
Click To Tweet
2. Content has trackable metrics.
What gets measured gets done. While bottom-line KPIs are traffic and conversions, those results are the outcome of the effort you put in to make your site an authority with a satisfactory user experience.
Leading metrics you can focus on improving are:
The number of thin pages that you make better.
The number of new ranking pages you add to the site.
The number of pages on the site and pages indexed.
What’s awesome about focusing SEO campaigns on content is that you can truly track your progress while you’re creating more great content.
3. Bigger sites make more money.
When your boss asks you, “What’s the ROI of this content initiative?” you can say that big sites make more money.
When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, he brought a new growth strategy to the paper. WaPo grew WaPo traffic 28% from 2015 to 2016. The effort resulted in WaPo surpassing The New York Times’s traffic in 2015. How did they do it? By adopting a content strategy around producing a high volume of content aimed at long-tail and niche interests.
How can a small website compete with a larger one? Who are the major competitors in your space? How many pages do they have on a topic? More pages mean more opportunities to rank. More pages demonstrate depth of expertise, making you more likely to rank on a topic.
Just like a company needs to grow to make a profit, so does a website.
How to Set Content Apart as 10x
At this point, you might agree that an SEO has to prioritize content strategy. You may be thinking to yourself, “OK, I get it. I can make the push for my clients or in my group to add good, quality content to the site to see ranking gains.”
That is certainly a worthy goal. But the truth is that good, quality content isn’t good enough. Today’s bar for Page 1 rankings is 10x content.
The skyscraper technique popularized by Brian Dean is the process of looking at the top result for a query you’re targeting and then outdoing that top-ranking page with your own page. Dean calls this content marketing for link builders. See what ranks the best and then shoot even higher with your own answer to the query. Sounds like a lot of work, right? It is. Of course, smart SEO minds have refined the process.
So what is the process for creating 10x content? For a succinct answer we turn to Rand Fishkin’s classic Whiteboard Friday “Why ‘Good, Unique Content’ Needs to Die (And What Should Replace It).”
Research the pages that are ranking. Use Google to see the top-ranked pages and use BuzzSumo to see the most shared content on a topic.
Then ask these questions as you’re taking it all in:
What are the questions that are asked and answered in these pages?
How thorough is the information? What’s missing? HubSpot shared word-count analysis of its blog posts compared to organic traffic and found that a word count of 2,250–2,500 words gets the most traffic. So you definitely want content to be thorough and comprehensive.
What’s the format and delivery mechanism of these pages? You might also call this the user experience. Is it visual? Is it video? Is it rendered well for the device? Is the info I’m looking for on the page, or do you have to click to another page? Is it easy to find an answer?
What are the sources of the information and are they credible?
What’s the quality of the writing?
Once you collect all these answers and identify what search engines are rewarding and what people are sharing, you’ll know what you at least have to do to compete. And you can figure out how to better it.
My 3 Best Tips for Capturing 10x Content Magic
Here’s the sucky thing. Generating 10x content requires sweat and grind. But there are some likely sources of 10x content magic that you can mine.
Data-driven content: This is the Pricenomics model. Pricenomics is a content agency that turns company data into content and then tracks the distribution and performance of the content.
If you read the Pricenomics blog, they’re always posting this in action. It’s a really fun blog, so I recommend you check it out. Here’s an example:
Venngage, an infographics company, used the Pricenomics content marketing model to sift through all of their client data and come up with the most popular font types in America. What data can you bring to light that will make people think, “Huh, I’ve always wondered!” or “Hey, I never would have thought.”
There’s story in data and people just eat that stuff up.
Expert voice content: This is just journalism 101. You go to the expert source and you name your sources.
Honestly, if you can find a good expert, maybe someone on your staff or maybe the biggest name in your industry, and they agree to an interview, this is one of the fastest ways to 10x your content.
You get that credibility factor. You get the network effect of the expert and their followers sharing and reading.
What you want to steer clear of here is the trap of the expert round-up. I think we’ve all seen that. And those aren’t all bad, but they are kind of cheap.
We’re not going for cheap. What you’re looking for in talking to your expert is to raise your page to the next level. Bring something to the forefront that the normal person misses, but that will create that light-bulb moment in those reading it for the first time.
Start your practice of nurturing relationships with experts with this Bruce Clay guide.
Voice of Customer content: Writers start by thinking about their audience. You get into the target audience’s head to find out what they want, what they need, what they know, what they don’t know they need. And then you write to solve a problem in that audience’s – or persona’s – life.
In marketing, we’re matching the pain point with our solution. And what really resonates with your target audience is hearing or reading the thoughts that are actually going on in their head, or close to it.
There are many possible ways to gather the information used to synthesize VOC: focus groups, individual interviews, and contextual inquiries (like on-site surveys) are a few. But you’re basically using structured in-depth interviews, focusing on the customers’ experiences with current products or services. Need statements are extracted, organized into useful categories, and then prioritized and used by the business all the way from product development to marketing.
I learned about the methodology around Voice of Customer data from Copy Hackers. User-generated content, product reviews and testimonials are essentially forms of VOC content.
And maybe this is where the altruist in me comes out, because when we turn our focus on SEO content, we’re doing something special. We’re not trying to find a loophole to exploit and win on a technicality. We’re sharing stories that will enrich people’s experience. We’re teaching people about solutions that will make their lives better. And we’re making connections with people like us.
SEO has to encompass those 30-or-so factors on the Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors. But the forensic-style technical SEO is not the bar you’re holding your work up to — it’s the minimum viable SEO. Today, getting the technical stuff right is just the ticket to entry.
If you’re actually trying to reach the top, you’re going to prioritize content as the top SEO issue for you to solve.
If you like this post, please share it with your friends or colleagues. For more like this, be sure to subscribe to our blog.
This post is based on my presentation “Thin Content Is THE Top SEO Issue” which I shared at Pubcon Las Vegas last week. Check out the full deck below.
Thin Content is THE Top SEO Issue from Virginia Nussey
Make Content Your #1 SEO Strategy Initiative in 2018
Make Content Your #1 SEO Strategy Initiative in 2018 was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
It’ll be 10 years ago this January that I first walked through the doors at Bruce Clay, Inc. and entered digital marketing.
I was fresh out of journalism school, which I’d studied because I wanted to write truth to the world. By making information publicly available, I thought I could contribute to the greater good. I saw myself educating readers by sharing the stories of the world. Pretty altruistic, right?
I never thought I would work in marketing. Who plans on a career in marketing? What 10-year-old says, “I want to be a marketer when I grow up, Mommy!”
Well, I’ve learned that marketers play a similar role as journalists but in the private business sector. We’re in the business of communications — crafting messaging and figuring out how to get those messages in front of as many people as possible.
We use our storytelling talents and distribution know-how for our companies and our clients. Our job is to get the right story in front of the right audience.
I’ve learned that SEO wins happen at the intersection of identifying storytelling opportunities and maximizing the visibility of those stories through search.
And yet I think it can be easy for an SEO to forget a critical role they play for clients and for organizations: that of the content evangelist.
SEOs can fall into a trap of focusing on the technical requirements for making content findable by search engines. And while crawlability and accessibility issues are key SEO responsibilities, big brands today are demonstrating that the competitive advantage lies in crafting 10x content and investing in SEO content strategy.
The Job of an SEO
Here’s an infographic you’ve probably seen before. It’s Search Engine Land’s Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors. It does a really good job of hitting on every component of an SEO’s domain.
Click to visit SearchEngineLand.com where you can download the Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors.
It’s neatly divided into on-page and off-page factors. Of course, nothing in real life is ever so neat. There’s always overlap and grey. There are no links without content. But if we accept this diagram at face value, we can still interpret a lot about an SEO’s top priorities.
For instance, look at the on-page factors. You’ll see content and you’ll see technical SEO. We know that Google has said that the two most important ranking signals are content and links. From that we can infer that technical SEO does not provide as big of a competitive advantage.
Technical SEO is more like the barrier to entry for ranking. Is your site crawlable, is all the HTML in the right place, are duplicate pages consolidated with canonicals and parameters excluded in Search Console? These technical SEO issues are critical to search visibility. Still, I’d argue they represent the lowest common denominator. You’re rarely going to climb to the first page or the top 3 rankings on the basis of clean, crawlable code. Not having these things will hurt you, but having them won’t give you a competitive edge.
Remember what Google said — the most important ranking factors are links and content. And if you have to prioritize one of those things, it has to be content, because content is what generates links.
Why Content Should Be Your Top SEO Priority
Here are concrete ways that you can empower your role in SEO by evangelizing content to your company or your clients.
1. Content is in your control.
When it comes to generating links and content, don’t put the cart before the horse. As long as you’re not buying links (and you’d better not), you’re going to need link-worthy content on your site that attracts links.
Who links to you is an X factor. It’s not as squarely in your control. What is in your control? Content.
Who links to you is an X factor not in your control. What is in your control? Content.
Click To Tweet
2. Content has trackable metrics.
What gets measured gets done. While bottom-line KPIs are traffic and conversions, those results are the outcome of the effort you put in to make your site an authority with a satisfactory user experience.
Leading metrics you can focus on improving are:
The number of thin pages that you make better.
The number of new ranking pages you add to the site.
The number of pages on the site and pages indexed.
What’s awesome about focusing SEO campaigns on content is that you can truly track your progress while you’re creating more great content.
3. Bigger sites make more money.
When your boss asks you, “What’s the ROI of this content initiative?” you can say that big sites make more money.
When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, he brought a new growth strategy to the paper. WaPo grew WaPo traffic 28% from 2015 to 2016. The effort resulted in WaPo surpassing The New York Times’s traffic in 2015. How did they do it? By adopting a content strategy around producing a high volume of content aimed at long-tail and niche interests.
How can a small website compete with a larger one? Who are the major competitors in your space? How many pages do they have on a topic? More pages mean more opportunities to rank. More pages demonstrate depth of expertise, making you more likely to rank on a topic.
Just like a company needs to grow to make a profit, so does a website.
How to Set Content Apart as 10x
At this point, you might agree that an SEO has to prioritize content strategy. You may be thinking to yourself, “OK, I get it. I can make the push for my clients or in my group to add good, quality content to the site to see ranking gains.”
That is certainly a worthy goal. But the truth is that good, quality content isn’t good enough. Today’s bar for Page 1 rankings is 10x content.
The skyscraper technique popularized by Brian Dean is the process of looking at the top result for a query you’re targeting and then outdoing that top-ranking page with your own page. Dean calls this content marketing for link builders. See what ranks the best and then shoot even higher with your own answer to the query. Sounds like a lot of work, right? It is. Of course, smart SEO minds have refined the process.
So what is the process for creating 10x content? For a succinct answer we turn to Rand Fishkin’s classic Whiteboard Friday “Why ‘Good, Unique Content’ Needs to Die (And What Should Replace It).”
Research the pages that are ranking. Use Google to see the top-ranked pages and use BuzzSumo to see the most shared content on a topic.
Then ask these questions as you’re taking it all in:
What are the questions that are asked and answered in these pages?
How thorough is the information? What’s missing? HubSpot shared word-count analysis of its blog posts compared to organic traffic and found that a word count of 2,250–2,500 words gets the most traffic. So you definitely want content to be thorough and comprehensive.
What’s the format and delivery mechanism of these pages? You might also call this the user experience. Is it visual? Is it video? Is it rendered well for the device? Is the info I’m looking for on the page, or do you have to click to another page? Is it easy to find an answer?
What are the sources of the information and are they credible?
What’s the quality of the writing?
Once you collect all these answers and identify what search engines are rewarding and what people are sharing, you’ll know what you at least have to do to compete. And you can figure out how to better it.
My 3 Best Tips for Capturing 10x Content Magic
Here’s the sucky thing. Generating 10x content requires sweat and grind. But there are some likely sources of 10x content magic that you can mine.
Data-driven content: This is the Pricenomics model. Pricenomics is a content agency that turns company data into content and then tracks the distribution and performance of the content.
If you read the Pricenomics blog, they’re always posting this in action. It’s a really fun blog, so I recommend you check it out. Here’s an example:
Venngage, an infographics company, used the Pricenomics content marketing model to sift through all of their client data and come up with the most popular font types in America. What data can you bring to light that will make people think, “Huh, I’ve always wondered!” or “Hey, I never would have thought.”
There’s story in data and people just eat that stuff up.
Expert voice content: This is just journalism 101. You go to the expert source and you name your sources.
Honestly, if you can find a good expert, maybe someone on your staff or maybe the biggest name in your industry, and they agree to an interview, this is one of the fastest ways to 10x your content.
You get that credibility factor. You get the network effect of the expert and their followers sharing and reading.
What you want to steer clear of here is the trap of the expert round-up. I think we’ve all seen that. And those aren’t all bad, but they are kind of cheap.
We’re not going for cheap. What you’re looking for in talking to your expert is to raise your page to the next level. Bring something to the forefront that the normal person misses, but that will create that light-bulb moment in those reading it for the first time.
Start your practice of nurturing relationships with experts with this Bruce Clay guide.
Voice of Customer content: Writers start by thinking about their audience. You get into the target audience’s head to find out what they want, what they need, what they know, what they don’t know they need. And then you write to solve a problem in that audience’s – or persona’s – life.
In marketing, we’re matching the pain point with our solution. And what really resonates with your target audience is hearing or reading the thoughts that are actually going on in their head, or close to it.
There are many possible ways to gather the information used to synthesize VOC: focus groups, individual interviews, and contextual inquiries (like on-site surveys) are a few. But you’re basically using structured in-depth interviews, focusing on the customers’ experiences with current products or services. Need statements are extracted, organized into useful categories, and then prioritized and used by the business all the way from product development to marketing.
I learned about the methodology around Voice of Customer data from Copy Hackers. User-generated content, product reviews and testimonials are essentially forms of VOC content.
And maybe this is where the altruist in me comes out, because when we turn our focus on SEO content, we’re doing something special. We’re not trying to find a loophole to exploit and win on a technicality. We’re sharing stories that will enrich people’s experience. We’re teaching people about solutions that will make their lives better. And we’re making connections with people like us.
SEO has to encompass those 30-or-so factors on the Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors. But the forensic-style technical SEO is not the bar you’re holding your work up to — it’s the minimum viable SEO. Today, getting the technical stuff right is just the ticket to entry.
If you’re actually trying to reach the top, you’re going to prioritize content as the top SEO issue for you to solve.
If you like this post, please share it with your friends or colleagues. For more like this, be sure to subscribe to our blog.
This post is based on my presentation “Thin Content Is THE Top SEO Issue” which I shared at Pubcon Las Vegas last week. Check out the full deck below.
Thin Content is THE Top SEO Issue from Virginia Nussey
November 10, 2017
How to Optimize for Voice Search – Content Marketing & Technical SEO Tips
How to Optimize for Voice Search – Content Marketing & Technical SEO Tips was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
In 2016, Google reported that 20% of the queries it gets today are voice searches. (Source: SearchEngineLand)
Around the same time, Mary Meeker shared a prediction that by 2020, 50% of searches will be voice or visually based. (Source: Recode)
If you’re not familiar with visual search (and I wasn’t in this context), it’s search and retrieval instigated by the searcher “showing” a device or product like the one they’d like to buy (or if not buy, then get more information about). Here’s an example: shop for dog food by showing your device the near-empty bag of dog food in your pantry, and then buy it from Amazon or another online retailer. Go ahead and look into the Amazon Echo Look for a visual-search-type device that’s almost to market.
If we as marketers understand that text-based search is trending-down-to-obsolete over the next two years, and that our customers will be searching with their voices and images, what do we do to evolve our marketing strategies?
Director of Account Strategy at Marketing Refresh, Katy Katz, and VP of Industry Insights at Yext, Duane Forrester, shared their plans of attack for exactly that with the rapt audience at Pubcon Las Vegas this week.
This post covers (jump to section with links):
Eye-opening stats and findings about how well voice search serves consumers
Technical considerations for SEOs and content marketers optimizing for voice search
User behavior and new technology that is shifting SEO
Tactics to compete in voice search
Skills required of the digital marketer of the future
Eye-Opening Stats and Findings about How Well Voice Search Serves Consumers
What are people trying to do with voice commands today? Katy shares the findings of SEER Interactive’s 2017 study about the kinds of actions people use voice search for:
Look at those top voice-activated actions! They’re pretty personal. Your customers expect personalization. They’re expecting you to know who they are and what’s important to them. They want you to personalize their experience.
Consumers ask questions in a personal way. Artificial intelligence (AI) is now smart enough to answer these questions. Katy’s 5-year-old used Alexa and said, “Alexa, play Darth Vader.” Smart Alexa played the Imperial March.
We can type 40 WPM, but we can speak 150–160 WPM! With voice search, people will articulate their queries more specifically and precisely.
In SEO and content marketing, voice search is making a big impact on strategy in these areas: keyword research, content strategy, and technical implementation. (That’s all. Just like, everything.)
Technical Considerations for SEOs and Content Marketers Optimizing for Voice Search
First, understand the anatomy of a voice query. These are the key features:
The 5 Ws: Voice-triggered searches are usually looking for a result that answers a who, what, where, when, why or how question.
Conversational: Voice searches are typically conversational (that is, use natural language).
Long-tail: Voice searches are long-tail queries by their conversational nature.
Mobile: Voice searches are done primarily on mobile devices.
Clear intent: Voice searches are performed with a very clear and specific intent in mind.
Here’s an example voice search query where we can see how a digital marketer’s work to identify keywords, implement structured data markup, and gain positive reviews come into play when Google is determining result relevancy:
To establish a solid foundation for voice search SEO:
Define your goals. You know the drill. Make sure they’re specific and measureable. Help you focus on what to focus on. She probably spends 80% of her time helping clients identify the goals that will give the highest ROI.
ID your audience. Take the time to get to know your audience in audience interviews. You’ll learn about their pain points and goals and the questions they want to answer. There’s nothing else like talking to your customers.
Achieve language-market fit. This term isn’t used a lot but it’s a big deal when it comes to search. It’s qualitative research into the exact words and phrasing that your buyers use to describe your product, service or category. Talk like your customers!
Katy Katz speaking at Pubcon Las Vegas
Map the buyer’s journey. Your customers are working through questions at each phase. If there are gaps in your content you’re missing out on opportunities.
With your foundation in place, optimize for these technical considerations for voice search:
Long-tail keywords. Here are keyword research tools for long-tail:
Keyword.io
Answer the Public
Buzzsumo Question Analyzer
SEMRush
KWFinder
Quora
Google autocomplete
Snag those snippets. Design your content to optimize for featured snippets. Google Home and Siri are pulling quick answers for this. Short in nature. Simple, concise. Answers the questions in a way that provides utility for the user. The amount of snippets doubled this year. A snippetable post is short and digestible, fact-based logic; if Google already owns the Knowledge Graph, don’t even try to answer it.
Schema markup. Tell the search engines and AI what information is about. Making sure your house in order with different schema types is imperative for voice search.
Brand optimization. Manage your brand across the web. Off-site SEO and PR is everywhere. Local SEO, social media, off-site SEO, reviews are all influencing your consumers throughout their journey. It takes 6-8 touches for a prospect to convert to a sale. For local SEO, check out Moz Local, Yext, Reach Local, GMB. For reviews, check out Get Five Stars, Review Trackers, Yotpo, Reputation Loop — help you with automated tools to grow your reviews and show yourself as a trustworthy provider.
In sum, your buyers have questions each step of the way. There is no part of the journey that is more important than any other. Own the conversation. Own your brand.
The Future of Searchable Content | Voice Search & AI from Katy Katz
User Behavior and New Technology That Is Shifting SEO
Duane Forrester speaking at Pubcon
The media we consume is shifting from the silver screen to our digital devices. With that, influence is shifting and celebrities are losing ground. Today, 6 in 10 YouTube subscribers would follow advice on what to buy from their favorite creator over their favorite TV or movie personality.
And there’s the consumer dependence and preference for their mobile device. Technology companies are investing across the board in assistants and AI. Duane asked the audience, “Who believes in the mobile-first Google index?” Well not only should you believe in it, Duane says that it is certainly live now and in use. He expressed that there’s one index and it’s filtered for mobile. He challenged marketers with the question, “Why would the search engine trust your site for the desktop user when you haven’t invested in the mobile user?”
Another area where user behavior is opening new avenues for marketing is local search. Location search is exploding. Note, however, that the growth in “near me” searches is flattening as it becomes assumed.
Want some more eye-opening stats? Duane shared these ones on local search and map behavior:
76% of people who use location search visit a business within one day.
28% of location searches result in a purchase.
Digital maps reduce travel time by 12% on average.
Digital maps save people more than 21 million hours per year.
63% of digital map users take advantage of them to plan safe routes.
Digital maps have supported more than $1 trillion in sales for businesses.
Geospatial services help companies raise revenue and diminish costs by more than 5%.
Hundreds of attributes contribute to local visibility:
Anyone hear about RankBrain lately? No one? That’s because it’s too busy out there learning.
Voice search is an important inflection point for us in the marketing community. Where we saw mobile coming, voice search is now here because all the tech that makes it possible developed independently.
There are 180 companies in China developing voice search speakers. Duane predicts that in a year, North America will be inundated with cheap, accurate voice search systems. The current players will carve out the higher end and the newer players will carve out the lower end that is able to perform nearly as completely.
Voice search is going to take off because people are lazy. Now we can just talk and get what we want. The next stage is visual search (image-based search) where the Alexa or Home device will show the searcher what they are trying to buy to confirm that’s what they are looking for.
Voice search tech is being embedded into home products like refrigerators and coffee makers. Your refrigerator will ping your phone when you’re at the store and tell you that you’re out of milk.
Tactics to Compete in Voice Search
Google’s not going to tell SEOs via Search Console which organic queries were performed with text search and which were voice search. Look into your site’s organic keyword data and find the queries that brought one visitor, maybe with the stop words removed, and then bundle those up and consider them your voice search terms.
Make sure your site is clean and accessible. Mobile-friendly matters and consumer behavior is happening on mobile devices. PWAs are the future – one code base for all UX and devices. Your developers are going to love having only one code base to manage, but it’ll be a few years for the technology to allow for this.
Secure your site, move to HTTPS. Check out the Wired.com articles where they detailed their move to secure. It was hard.
Today’s consumers want to attach to businesses that reflect their values. That doesn’t equate to donating to a cause, it’s more like getting your whole company to do a 5K in support of that cause and documenting the whole thing. Really invest in developing your brand in terms of its support of relevant and interested communities. Brand loyalty dropped a while ago and now businesses have to demonstrate their mission in their actions.
Skills Required of the Digital Marketer of the Future
This is your future: the digital knowledge manager. It’s a senior-level, cross-functional position. The digital knowledge manager requires a deep, varied career that has spanned many of the traditional core digital marketing competencies.
The digital knowledge manager needs to be able to speak the language of everyone. They will be adept at persuasion and convincing different groups to take on specific tasks. They are an investigator, negotiator, communicator, thinker, and builder.
As always in digital marketing, the future is now.
Save
Save
November 6, 2017
Bruce Clay’s Views on Building Links for SEO
Bruce Clay’s Views on Building Links for SEO was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
Links are the fabric of the web. And in the SEO world, how we view them and earn them has changed dramatically in the past 20 years.
If you’re in the business of attracting traffic to a website and building brand awareness, you should care about how links impact your key performance indicators. As an SEO agency, we’ve written about how to get high quality backlinks in the SEO Tutorial. That resource covers link building best practices in black and white. But where personal experience and opinion is concerned, we have our own view of how links should be managed.
While we are sure some people will disagree with some of these views, we created this declaration that outlines what we hold true when it comes to web links.
We believe …
Google likes links. Google does not like link building. Links are the “voting system” of the web, and Google believes that they should be earned. They are earned by the nature of the content as a result of it being useful or entertaining to a particular audience.
Links are contributors to expertise, authority and trust. A link is a vote for a website. The more links it has, the more votes, showing Google that the website is one of authority. Within that, there are weighting factors for how strong the signal is. When weighing inbound links, a high expert ranking is a stronger signal than a spammy site.
Content is a link magnet — without it there is nothing to link to. Content is the stuff the web is made of. It’s what people want to link to and share, and it allows you to acquire links naturally when it’s quality.
Content needs to be relevant to your brand. The only way to become a subject matter expert in the eyes of Google is to have a themed website. A themed site happens when a brand contributes meaningful content to the conversation that it is an expert on. Sites that have too many topics all across the board are confusing to both search engines and users.
Content builds trust … over time. As a website adds more and more content on a particular subject, the audience starts paying more attention to it. Do it at the right level for that particular community, and people will start remembering the brand.
Write to high quality, not to high volume. It is far better to write high-quality content than to aim for quantity of content. Follow that rule, and gain readers’ trust and links. Once you can maintain quality, then you can increase quantity. Maintaining high quality is the only way to “blog often.”
You need standout content to earn links. Millions of web pages are published daily. Content needs to be able to be noticed among all the content out there. Only a handful of web pages are considered relevant enough to make the first page of Google. In addition, create and follow a supportive outreach strategy to inform others of your content. In theory you have already earned the link through great content, but nobody knows about it until you tell them.
“Unicorn” content gets a lot of shares, links and traffic. Publish content and pay attention to the popularity and traffic, visitors and shares. If it does well, then publish on that topic again, perhaps with additional content. Keep hammering on what people are excited about versus blindly following an editorial calendar. Know the competition and watch for their unicorns, too.
Cheap content doesn’t perform. “Cheap” content can end up being expensive in the long run. You get what you pay for when low-quality content doesn’t perform for a site. As the saying goes, “The cheaper you want it, the cheaper you get it”– and that hurts quality. Hire true professionals, optimize the content, then publish. And remember that content contributes to a brand’s key performance indicators, brand awareness and ROI.
Optimize articles to match the links. Make sure that your content uses keywords and is clearly relevant to linking anchor text for greatest positive SEO impact. While building links is a natural process, too many “click here” links could indicate that there is too much complexity to your page. Content, once written, needs to be reanalyzed and its inbound links evaluated.
Opinion pieces, once you are an an authority, get links. Establish your brand and its people as subject matter experts. With credibility in place, opinion articles become very valuable.
Certain types of content get links. Articles showing the results of worthy research will get links; detailed and lengthy research articles do well. “How to” articles, because they are searched on a lot, also get links.
Looking for inspiration for content worthy of links? Check out these 35 link earning ideas.
Evergreen existing content; don’t allow content to become stale. Content that was once great can age, leaving it less useful. Refreshing those pages, and linking to them from somewhere else on a website can renew interest and perhaps, links.
Keyword and topic analysis drives content. Identifying opportunities to create content based on active keyword queries, social media topics and “unicorns” the competition has can drive important content for a website. If it is useful to others, determine if it is useful to you.
Choose guest blogging partnerships wisely. Posting to other authority websites may make sense, but if the site is not considered “expert,” adding content may be a waste of time. Choose carefully when vetting and strategizing your guest blogging opportunities. Google’s official stance is that guest blogging for links is against their guidelines.
Link spam kills rankings. Google’s link scheme guidelines state: “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.” This includes paid links, unnatural links, low-quality site links, off-topic links, widget links, footer links, run-of-site links (links in a template placed on many pages across a site), unpoliced post sites, reciprocal links, links from pages of all the same PageRank, many links from the same IP or sharing the same WhoIs, and links with the same anchor text. Google fights this link spam.
Domain authority, however measured, helps. The domain authority of the linking site, while it’s not pure “PageRank,” does indicate expertise. In an ideal world, expertise and authority is what domain authority is all about. If a high-domain, authority site is linking to a website, in theory, that site will have elevated domain authority because an expert links to another expert most of the time.
Link relevance to a website and query are big ranking factors. The relevance of the page that’s being linked to should match the relevance of the page it’s coming from. But it shouldn’t just be about the target page, it should also be that the words should match how people search. When a link points to a page, that page and the anchor text pointing to it should contain keywords with high search volume that matches the content of that page.
The theme of the linking site is important. If you have a link coming in from an unrelated site, Google will take that into consideration when evaluating links. Links need to come from sites that are in the same realm of topics as the site being linked to.
The linking site’s quality counts. Google looks at the quality of sites linking to a website, and takes that into consideration when evaluating the site’s authority.
Internal linking matters. Siloing is a way to theme the content on a website through links, and it helps the website become a relevant source on the topics it publishes. It helps search engines better understand what the website is about through the strategic organization of content.
It is wrong to say that links make up a certain percentage of the algorithm, since the algorithm changes for every query. In 2016, Googler Andrey Lipattsev said the most important ranking signals were links, content and RankBrain. It’s still wrong. however, to think a third of the Google algorithm is based on links for every query. For every keyword, based upon the intent and geographic location of the searcher, the algorithm itself will vary the percentage in weight of inbound links.
Major ranking signals include mentions. Online mentions are important for search engines because it helps them to determine that people have an interest in what a brand is about. Social updates may not generate very valuable links to a site, but they signal to the search engine that people are talking about a brand.
Social media works well for links; fish where the fish are. To catch fish, you have to use the right bait (what the fish are eating) and fish where the fish are. Write what the audience wants, and then put it in front of them. Social media puts the bait in front of the fish and gets links and traffic.
Influencers with a large following can generate both links and traffic. Think of creative ways to engage the influencers in a space, whether it’s co-marketing, collaborating on projects, interviews or having them write for the brand’s website. Including their opinion in “roundup”-type content can increase the content’s visibility by leveraging the influencer’s audience.
Links from within your expert community are great. Every industry has a pool of “experts”—sources that are known as subject matter authorities. Links from other experts to a website show a brand’s authority. You can also partner with non-competing experts to gain PageRank and links.
A competitor’s links are a gold mine. Identify sites that link to the competition and determine why those sites link to them. Then, reach out to those who link to the competitor, and offer them a better page to link to.
When trying to get a link from journalists, put yourself in their shoes and their audiences’ shoes. Journalists respond to their favorite topics and news. The only good way to get a link from a journalist is to understand what they like, what they normally write about, and understand that they are writing for their audience. You don’t only want to pick a topic that a journalist may like; you also want to write about what their readers will like as well. In other words, target the journalists and their audience.
Videos are link magnets. Make relevant videos and keep in mind duration best practices, then host them on a website and YouTube to drive links and traffic. Videos also contribute to a brand’s expertise.
Use testimonials for links and conversions. A testimonial on a website helps with conversions, and it also helps with links. Give a testimonial to another site, and they will often publish the testimonial and link to the source (the site the desired link should go to).
Good online reviews generate traffic and conversions. If you have a positive review, the sentiment is positive and it will be considered to be a testimonial by Google—whether or not it’s passing PageRank.
Email as a way to get links has been overdone. Using email as a way to try to get someone to link to you is played out and ineffective. My advice is not to bother.
Advertising drives traffic, not link equity. If you are buying advertising, expect no link equity or PageRank. If you’re buying advertising to get a link that passes PageRank then expect a penalty. You should not be able to buy links, and advertising is often a purchased link. If buying ads, make sure they are “nofollowed.”
Broken links on your site are bad, but it’s worse if someone is linking to your site with a broken link. When a site has a broken link to another site, the user will arrive at the new site and see a 404 error page. The majority of people will have an immediate perception of a low-quality site when they land on the linked-to website. Identify incoming broken links and recover the link equity and traffic with 301 redirects.
Broken links to competitors is an opportunity. Determine who has a broken link pointing to a competitor, and contact that website publisher and ask them to consider replacing that broken link with a link to your desired website instead to improve user experience with current and updated content.
Local links are absolutely needed for local businesses. A company cannot be an expert in their region without having experts in their region link to them.
So there you have it — my linking view. We urge you to follow these guidelines and hope your link building journey is one of safe travels.
Do you identify with my views on link building for SEO? If so, share it with a friend or post it anywhere.
October 24, 2017
The WordPress SEO Enhancements You Wish You Had, And Now Can — Part 3
The WordPress SEO Enhancements You Wish You Had, And Now Can — Part 3 was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.
Announcing Bruce Clay SEO WP™ …
If you’re a WordPress publisher, you have many options for boosting your search engine optimization. You may be using Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, or another plugin to help you cover many SEO bases for the content you publish.
However, as I’ve been pointing out through this series of posts, current SEO plugins don’t go far enough. A lot of enhancements are needed to take you from just “best practices” to targeted and specific guidance that shows you how to get the maximum visibility for each of your posts.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I explained gaps that currently exist between SEO plugins available and the needs today. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for well over a year, as well as dreaming, planning and developing …
Now in this Part 3 post, I’m pleased to share a solution that has been months in the making.
The Bruce Clay SEO plugin for WordPress brings the power of our proprietary SEO diagnostic tools to the WordPress environment. And it adds search ranking and analytics performance metrics to the WordPress interface.
The combination of the new plugin and the SEOToolSet™ powering it is a MASSIVE difference-maker. We set out to “bridge the gaps” and enable any WordPress copywriter, editor or publisher to implement smarter SEO improvements, monitor their content’s reach, and much more.
Introducing a new WordPress plugin that bridges the gaps to add search ranking and analytics performance metrics to the WordPress interface. Sign up here for an invitation
Here’s what WordPress SEO has been missing until now.
Competitive Insights
Optimizing content based on SEO best practices is like trying to do surgery with a cookie cutter.
Smart SEO considers the variety of pages that Google is already ranking for any particular query. You can then improve a page that matches the query intent and content type to be the best result.
To make this easy for WordPress users, the new plugin presents customized guidance on how you should alter your content elements. Recommendations reflect what Google is rewarding in the search results per keyword. The Bruce Clay SEO WP plugin brings insights from analyzing the top-ranked competitors right into the publishing environment.
You can also see which of your posts are succeeding in the search results. Based on metrics from Google Search Console like pageviews from Google visitors, you’ll know your best performing content from an SEO perspective and be able to create more unicorns like it.
Until now, you haven’t been able to easily see what competitors are doing. And you don’t receive guidance adjusted per keyword for your content targets. That ends here.
Keyword and Content Insights
What’s the optimal reading level for your content? It depends. Each keyword query can have its own set of signals when it comes to the search engine algorithms and what searchers expect. So readability scores naturally vary based on the query.
Smart readability goals should assess the reading level of your page or post compared to the top-ranking pages for the targeted keyword. This lets the author instantly know if the new content is on par with the competition at the top of the search results.
Keywords shouldn’t be limited to one per post, either. While the premium versions of some plugins do let you specify more than one focus keyword, most of the SEO plugins used today do not. Authors need to be able to focus on more than one keyword per page and know what the optimization targets are for each. So we created our plugin with this ability built in.
Once you’ve selected your keywords, how do they appear through your content? It’s valuable to distribute keywords throughout the content. If you’ve mentioned them only near the top, or clustered them in just one paragraph, a search engine bot might not consider your page as relevant as another page that uses the phrase throughout.
Color coding shows you where your keywords appear, using a different color to highlight each focus keyword. So at a glance you can check your keyword distribution before you publish to make sure you’ve used them consistently, not too much and not too little, throughout your post.
Sitewide Insights
SEO includes improving a site’s “Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness.” One way you grow your expertise on a subject is by developing a lot of content around it. Search engines evaluate a site’s depth of content on a theme to help determine its expertise.
Until now, SEO plugins haven’t shown you an analysis of your content depth site-wide within the WordPress environment. But that’s exactly where you need to plan and create!
So the plugin tells you how many times you’ve written about a topic in the past. And, by integrating data from Google Search Console, you can see exactly how many times you’ve focused on a keyword and how those posts are performing — without leaving WordPress.
Duplicate content is another headache for SEO-savvy publishers. To avoid inadvertently duplicating page elements, the plugin checks and alerts you when there is a possibility of duplicate content.
For example, you’ll know if the title tag, meta description or the content on a new page appears on multiple pages of the site. Where you previously had to go to an external tool to check and fix duplication issues, you’ll now see them reported at the point of publishing.
One more important sitewide analysis you can now get from the comfort of WordPress is access to all-important mobile performance stats. Rather than having to check various external tools, you can confirm the “mobile-friendly” score of your pages and see details about issues with mobile usability that could impede the site’s SEO and user experience. This is increasingly important with Google’s promised mobile-first index rolling out in the coming months.
Author Metrics
Which pages are your top performers and who are your top authors? These can change daily or weekly if you’re running a busy enterprise blog. But the standouts are incredibly helpful to know — especially if you plan on creating a reward system to encourage authors to hit certain goals for page views, engagements, or posts published.
When authors and publishers can access data that shows top-performing posts by author, a system of gamification and incentive can be fostered.
What you’ll get from the Bruce Clay SEO plugin for WordPress is access to data on the top performing posts or pages by contributor to the website as measured by actual visitors over a selectable period of time. It’s a scoreboard right in your WordPress environment.
Access to the SEOToolSet Engine Powering the Plugin
Enriching your publishing work space with both performance insights and optimization targets customized based on real-time search results is what makes the new plugin from Bruce Clay unique. To accomplish it, there’s actually a huge engine working behind the scenes to deliver insights inside the WP plugin ━ and plugin users can access that proprietary software, too, as part of their subscription!
Called the SEOToolSet, it’s a software suite for the serious search optimizer. As a Bruce Clay SEO WP user, you don’t ever need to leave WordPress or check out the full SEOToolSet at all. But here are a few reasons I think you’ll like the SEOToolSet and want to explore:
An SEO tool with a site spider that proactively and regularly searches your site and alerts you of potential issues.
An SEO tool that complements your plugin with historical keyword ranking reports.
An SEO tool that offers inbound (backlink) analysis and link quality scores.
An SEO tool that complements your plugin with a detailed analysis of a page as seen through the eyes of Google, including resolved and executed JavaScript, WP custom fields, images, and tags.
It’s the combination of the new plugin and the SEOToolSet™ powering it that will put you light years ahead of your competition!
Finally, the SEO Plugin You’ve Been Waiting For!
Now is your chance to try Bruce Clay SEO WP™ completely FREE.
You can be part of our special FREE preview release. You’ll be test driving the tool to give us early user feedback and getting access to the cutting-edge of WordPress SEO.
Sign up here for an invitation to our limited free preview release. See what your SEO has been missing!
Bruce Clay SEO WP™ gives you smarter SEO insight. It adjusts recommendations per keyword, so you can optimize content in real-time as you create it. It integrates analytics and the power of the SEOToolSet to help your site earn traffic from search.
If you have friends or colleagues that could benefit from better WordPress SEO tools, then share this post series with them. And if you just like how we think, then tell everyone.
