Seo Archives - Content Trends

10 off-site SEO strategies to boost your rankings

July 23, 2017 by Gazalla Gaya

Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms. While it’s important to keep track, these days your off-site SEO efforts are almost as important as your on-site efforts.
A recent study by Moz found that off-site SEO-related factors likely carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight.

An article by Moz that search engines use off-site signals almost as much as on-site signals

Need just one sentence to summarize your off-site SEO efforts?

It all boils down to how your brand is perceived by your customers and more broadly in the community. Are you creating the best possible brand experience for your customers and community? Then, Google is interested in rewarding you with good rankings. According to Google, if you’re respected in your community as a leader you’ll also have:

Quality backlinks from authoritative and respected sites
Authority
A strong reputation and be considered a leader in your space

Building relationships and community outreach

Link-building in the past involved buying links. This technique has long been considered spammy but it didn’t stop people from using it. Then, the Penguin update was released in April 2012. Until then, even though Google had improved its link evaluation, this was the first step toward the modern ranking system we know today. Sites using spammy, “black-hat techniques” were penalized. On the other hand, Penguin rewarded sites that had a natural link profile.

Matt Cutts said in a video that when you approach building links only for search engines, you create a certain mindset. Think instead of who might be interested in your content in the community and build relationships with them. This way, link building is just a byproduct of their collaborative relationship with you.

Also, think of quality vs. quantity. There was a time when the number of links that you had were important. This was before the days of link-spammers and sites selling you links. Nowadays, the only links that count are from high-authority websites.

What to do

Think strategically. “What can I do to market my website to make it broadly known in the community?”:
#1.Talk to people in the media such as high-profile newspapers and online news sites.
#2. Network at industry conferences and forums. Build relationships which in turn may lead to opportunities for collaboration.
#3. Sponsor an event that will create buzz in the community and earn you links from the organizations whose event you’re sponsoring plus the media.
#4. Donate to charitable organizations that have a high degree of trust and good sentiment in the community.
#5. Collaborate with educational institutions. They are respected and have a great deal of authority online.

Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a ranking metric that Moz uses to predict how well a site will rank. It’s one of the industry standards we use when we talk about ranking on the SERPs. Moz has a free tool, Open Site Explorer (OSE) to check your DA.

Your DA depends on your MOZrank, how trustworthy your site is, links and domain age. Other factors include the number of social media mentions of your brand and brand search volume.

Brand reputation

Google takes the total brand experience into account. This includes user reviews, testimonials, social media shares, mentions and brand-name searches.

Google favors highly-rated sites

Google’s algorithms also factor the rating of sites, favoring the ones with the highest ratings according to a Search Engine Watch article. “It’s your social proof and authority that reviews can boost, which means that it’s not just about adding reviews to your site, you should also focus on how to improve them.”

What to do

# 6.Receive visible star ratings

When star ratings are displayed in Google search results, prospective customers can instantly judge whether they can trust your product enough to visit your site. This helps increase traffic and sales, but it’s not always easy to achieve it.

Google relies on specific third-party review sites to determine your star rating. You should have at least 30 unique reviews during the past year, with an average of 3.5 or higher.

Star ratings may lead to an increased conversion rate of up to 17%. This itself is a great incentive to research more about them, along with Google’s guidelines on how to be eligible.

If anyone leaves a negative review, it’s important to respond and find out the root cause. Many brands have turned these experiences into positive outcomes for their brand.

#7. Monitor your brand search volume

Paying attention to the discussions of your customers and prospects can also do wonders for your marketing strategies. Uncovering brand mentions can lead to:

Reputation management opportunities
Honest feedback and insight
A better understanding of how customers interact with your product or service

Listening online for brand mentions can also lead to legitimate link opportunities. Both branded and non-branded mentions of your company offer link prospects plus an exposure to new audiences and communities.

There are many tools that let you monitor brand mentions not only on Facebook and Twitter, but also on each and every website out there – whether they’re forums or news sites. These tools also allow you to respond immediately.

#8. Use social media to spread the word about your brand

It pays to be there, be proactive and be human.
1. Be there: Make sure someone is monitoring your social media accounts and can quickly answer questions and respond to comments. You should also have special social media accounts set up just to answer questions and for customer service.
2. Be human: People online expect interaction, not robotic responses or constant brand promotion.
3. Be proactive: Use social media as a resource for the online community in the vertical you serve. For example, you can do that by answering questions on q and a sites like Quora or looking to answer them with a Twitter search.

Some strategies with social media:

Many brands make the mistake of being on all the social media channels. This dilutes your social media strategy. It makes sense to stay on the important social media channels you know your customers are likely to frequent plus those channels that are relevant to your business. For example, if you sell clothes, Instagram is a must-use social media channel.
Make sure that your social media profiles are up to date and correctly reflect your brand promise.
Social sharing contributes to a brand’s authority much in the same way that external links do. To search engines like Google, any indication of a verifiable external source validating your brand or your content is grounds for a small improvement in domain authority. Likes, shares, favorites, replies, and retweets all count toward this increased authority.

#9. Build connections with social media/online influencers

An effective strategy for enlisting the help of influencers to boost your off-page SEO is to get to know them in person, at events, and online via group chats/tweets and such, which puts you on their radar without much heavy lifting on your part.

Then, in the future, when you do create and share content, they’re more likely to recognize your brand and share the content themselves.

Even better, later on, after you’ve developed a stronger relationship, you might even collaborate together on a piece of content.

#10. Optimize all your digital assets

This includes having and optimizing:

A blog, so you share fresh content regularly — search engines love fresh content
A YouTube channel and a presence on other video-sharing sites
Images on image-sharing sites like Flikr and Instagram
Mobile apps
Podcasts

Increased engagement will lead to an increased online brand presence. This in turn will lead to more brand searches on Google, and the more branded searches your brand receives, the higher it’s likely to rank for non-branded keywords.

All these off-site SEO strategies combined are bound to increase your influence and rankings online. As with anything, SEO takes time. If you hear differently, run miles away like you would run from a snake-oil salesman.

Your turn

What strategies are you using to increase your rankings? Or do you have any other ideas to share? Or you just want to share some feedback on this post? I’d love to hear from you. Add a comment below. Thanks.

How to plan and create SEO-friendly content

April 2, 2017 by Gazalla Gaya

SEO-friendly content is all about ensuring that your content is timely, relevant and useful for your prospects and customers. Creating SEO-friendly content involves some planning before you structure your pages.

First step: Plan your topics around search terms your prospects use

So how do you help the right people discover your content? It’s simple. Just try getting into the minds of readers and thinking like them. This will help you use the right search terms that users use when they search for your product.

Content planning in 4 easy steps

Create personas of your buyers. This will allow you to map content according to their demographics, professions and interests
Find keywords for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Map keywords to content.
Understand how to create content for semantic search systems.

1. Create personas of your buyers

These tools help you understand your buyers’ habits and preferences:

Facebook Insights lets you upload your customer list to help you understand what Facebook knows about them.
Adwords Customer Match allows you to upload your email list to understand buyer behaviors so you can better target your ads.
Survey Monkey helps you directly find out what customers want by creating polls and surveys.
Twitter Analytics presents information on interests, location, gender, and people your followers follow on Twitter.

2. Find keywords for each stage of the buyer’s journey

Yes, keywords. So why are talking about keywords in 2017? Because keywords are still the best tool to plan your content and structure your pages since these are the search terms people use when they look for you. Using keywords on the page is an entirely different matter. You need to use keywords sparingly on a page but we’ll tackle that in the next post.

Most buyers begin with broad searches since they are in the research stage and once they know what they want their searches are more specific.

For example, let’s say I was planning content for a vacation tour agency. After studying my users, I came up with search terms for the different phases of my buyer’s journey. So searches in the initial phase would include these keywords:

European vacation packages
6-day vacations in Europe
Best places to visit in Europe

As I move through the buyer’s journey and become aware of options and narrow down where I want to go, searches will become more specific like:

Paris vacations
What to see and do in Paris
Compare hotels in Paris
Compare restaurants in Paris
Compare fares to Paris

I’m now in the Comparison phase — comparing various hotels and their features to determine which particular one is the best for me.
Finally, I may get very specific as I settle in on what I want:
Hotel Green reviews

Now I’m in the purchase phase. I know exactly where I want to stay.

Some tools to help you mine keywords

Google Suggest completes terms based on the first few letters users type into the search box. You’ll get an idea of the most frequently searched terms.

Keyword Tool Dominator helps you find long-tail keywords your target audience is searching for.
Google Keyword Planner gives you an idea of how often people search for certain keywords and how their search volume changes over time.
Keyword Explorer by Moz helps you prioritize important keywords, and check keyword difficulty, volume, and competitive metrics.

3. Map keywords to your content

The next step is to actually map each of these keywords to one blog post or page. The most important goal with SEO and with anything on your site is to deliver the best user experience. For example, you could write a blog post on the different sightseeing options in Paris and link to the tour operators page for more info and to buy tickets.

4. Understand how semantic search engines work

Google and other search engines use complex algorithms to understand users’needs. They penalize websites that use keywords excessively on a page. So the trick is to use your core keywords sparingly on a page at the right places where they’ll be most effective. Semantic search systems look for synonyms and alternate words that describe your topic. For example for my vacation to Europe example, some alternate terms to use on my page would include holiday and trip.

Semantic search systems also look for other terms that relate to your topic. What else would you probably look for while shopping for a Paris vacation? You may also look for a hotel or a map.

LSIGraph/LSI Keyword Generator is a great tool for this. For my vacation in Paris, these are the alternate terms I got:
vacation in Paris reviews
holiday rentals in Paris
vip vacation in Paris
Paris vacation packages
map of Paris
best hotels in Paris

Measuring effectiveness of your search terms

Most experts agree that the best way to find out which terms are driving the traffic to your site, is to create content around each of these long-tail keywords. Your Analytics report will show you which pages are converting.

Second step: Create your SEO-friendly content

Once you have your keywords and semantic search times, it’s easy to build content. Next week, we’ll go through all the steps for creating and sharing your SEO-friendly content.

Your turn
Have a trend to report that you don’t see here? Or used any of these techniques and want to share your results? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.

How to Rank Well after Panda 4.0

June 8, 2014 by Gazalla Gaya

On May 21, 2014, Google unleashed Panda 4.0, an update to their famous filter known for flushing out low quality content. Panda’s main aim is to remove content that’s thin, low-quality or spammy from rankings so that the user gets the highest quality results. Panda was first released in February 2011 and has had several updates. Panda 4.0 is the largest update and has affected 7% of queries. It’s main aim seems to be to flush out “thin content from top rankings.”

As soon as Google made the announcement for Panda 4.0, the search world was buzzing. Updates to Panda were monthly and an announcement of an update was unheard of. It meant that this was a huge overhaul. Within, a couple of days it was apparent that certain sites took a huge hit and lost almost 80% of their organic results. According to Search Engine Land in their winners and losers post, Ebay and ask.com topped the list of losers. Ebay has a lot of doorway pages that have little or no content, just meant to lead the reader to a product page.

I think that this update and Panda are actually reasons for content marketers to celebrate. Now more than ever before it’s apparent that your content is the most important thing on your site, something that content marketers have been saying for ages.

Panda goes after thin and low quality content which is a boon for content marketers. Panda targets content that is:

Thin or little
Duplicate
Low quality
Plagiarized

What wins and comes up on top are sites that produce this type of content:

Original
High quality
Fresh

So what do we do to ensure that our site is not the latest casualty? And more importantly how do we rank well for all the content we’ve worked hard to create? Here are some ideas that come to mind:

#1. Do a content audit of your site

A content audit will allow you to at-a-glance root out content that may keep you from ranking well. Doing a content audit, if you have a have a huge site with several thousand pages is a gigantic task. Here’s a good article on how to perform a content audit.

If you don’t have the time to do a full audit, use analytics to get a sampling of popular, average, and low traffic pages. Also, you only need to look at the last year to half a year of blog posts. But you’ll be able to unearth a wealth of info such as:

Pages with duplicate content. A thorough content audit will point out pages that are redundant and need to be deleted.
Pages that are obsolete. For example: last year’s Thanksgiving sale and items on discount for that event. If a visitor lands on this page, it creates a poor user experience.

After conducting the audit, for each page ask yourself:

Does this page contain enough of content? The page should have at least 300 words or it’s considered very thin content.
Is the content valuable to its audience? This is obviously somewhat subjective, but you can understand if it is once you look at your metrics such as bounce rate and time spent on the page.
Does the content contain targeted keywords? Do they appear in the first few paragraphs? If you want to rank well, it helps to use the search terms people are using.
Does the content have keywords stuffed in it? You want to include keywords in your content, but you don’t want to go overboard.
Does the content have spelling and grammatical errors? Grammatically wrong content is a dead-giveaway to search engines on the lookout for spammy content. Spell check is your best friend.
Is the content easily readable? This article goes into depth about making your content readable and how to check your readability statistics.
Are search engines able to index this content? Do you have an XML site-map? Are you stopping search engines with your robots.txt file?

#2. Have a content marketing plan in place

Search engines love fresh content and lots of it. And of-course high quality content. Your content marketing plan needs to include a plan for all the types of content you will be creating during the year. This includes blog content, social media content, customer newsletters and emails, any whitepapers or eBooks. the best way to sort yourself through this maze of content is:

Have a content calendar. This will keep you on track.
Build plenty of pages targeting keyword variations. The days of keyword-stuffing are long past. If your site ranks well for certain articles, it makes sense to create variations around those terms.

#3. Do an SEO audit

Remember, when doing the SEO audit that you’re doing it to find content on your site that is Panda-unfriendly. Check for duplicate meta titles and descriptions. A great tool to use for this is Google Webmasters Tools. If you go into your account:

Google Webmaster Tools – Search Appearance – HTML improvements, you’ll see any duplicate titles and meta descriptions.
Check for duplicate URLs

#4.Take care to only hire the best copywriters and content creators – you get what you pay for

Because of the need to constantly churn out fresh content, many businesses are outsourcing their content creation efforts. One caveat: you get what you pay for. High quality copywriters don’t come cheap but you are guaranteed original, high quality content. In the eyes of Google and even the world that’s priceless.

#5. Improve the user experience on your site

There are several ways to improve the user experience on your site. And most of these things you are probably already doing:

Have a mobile-optimized site with responsive design. Search engines now prefer sites that work well on mobiles.
Make sure that your site’s architecture is easy. If your audience has to drill down many levels to get to your content, that creates a poor user experience.

#6. Market your content

Marketing your content on many different channels ensures that your audience will see your content. This sends a signal to search engines that your content is valuable.

Plan to market your content on all the social media channels that your audience may use such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+
If you sell products that are good on visuals such as fashion wear or interiors, Pinterest and Instagram have growing communities that are worth tapping into.
Try reaching out to people in the community who may be interested in your content. They may like your content and link back to it. Sites such as news sites or non-profits and charitable organizations that you may have donatated to are great for getting links.

Your turn

Was your site affected by Panda? Do you have more ideas on how to keep content high quality? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please share them in the comments below. Thanks.

Your Essential Guide to Writing Content for Semantic Search

March 12, 2014 by Alan Eggleston

If you’re anything like me, when you first heard of “semantic search,” “semantic web,” and “entities,” you thought – not more monsters to tame! When did they think these up?

Actually, they are all part of the same “monster” and they’ve been around a while, lurking under the bed waiting to come out of their dark corners. But now that they’re out and functioning, they’re more like the characters in “Monsters Inc.” than the freak in “Frankenstein’s Monster.” Get to know them and you may actually like them.

True semantics

Here’s a simple way to think of them:

Entities are attributes like names, numbers, addresses, or other items of data that reside on the Web.
Semantic Web is where the entities reside and how they’re coded to make them accessible to anyone from anywhere.
Semantic search is the relation between all the entities that give wider meaning to our content and the searches for it.

Behind that simplicity is a more complex explanation and you can find it by Googling any of the terms.

What will be more useful to you as a content producer is how you use them to build better content and attract more traffic.

Hummingbird is semantic search in flight

Google Hummingbird is semantic search in practice. Bing has its version, too, although they haven’t given it a name. You can see it in use in the way Google and Bing display information to answer your queries with sidebars (Knowledge Graphs, Rich Snippets) or carousels of information you didn’t ask for but that help you learn if your search engine understood your query.

Do a search on a topic and a Knowledge Graph will display data on locations or people or organizations associated with, conferences or speeches about it, with links.

Website programmers use semantic coding (RFD, RSS, OWL sound familiar?) to highlight data in text documents not yet structure for accessibility and, thus, create structured data to populate the search results to provide immediate answers. They also use this semantic language to create structured data in other data formats using predetermined codes provided at schema.org that allow for standardized use across the Web. The creation of all this “semanticized” data and the engines to access and determine its relationships is the actual Semantic Web.

So how do you make use of semantics?

Nine ways to tame the semantic beast

#1. First, don’t be afraid of it

It isn’t really a monster, it’s more like a robot you program to make life better. Robots are good, right?

#2. Write with Hummingbird in mind

Remember what we said about writing for Hummingbird?

Google’s new search algorithm (September 2013) is all about building nuance for your keywords:

Move beyond the single keyword model and work with long-tail keyword strings, incorporate keyword synonyms, and add links to quality pages whose association also add meaning to your content.
With entities or data mined from trusted sources on the Web or social media, you can take it a step further, finding ways to link to data to build even more nuance.
Create content that answers the questions search users are asking when they do a search!

#3. Broaden your keyword reach

Plan out future content for building breadth and nuance.

Create a list of keyword variations to produce content about related topics. Searching those keywords, you may also find related authoritative content for linking.
Extend the list to include theme or concept related words or phrases. Example: If your topic is cars, a related theme might be mini-vans or SUVs; if your topic is lawn care, a related concept might be lawn sprinkling or pool care.
Look for keywords that anticipate your readers’ next questions or needs. This is a lot like cross-marketing, only the effect is extending meaning across pages as well as leading the reader to the next logical step in your website.

#4. Get your programmers involved

Your programmers should know more about the semantic Web and how to code for it.

Make available what data you can that both builds your authority and creates nuance for your brand.
You want entity extraction (pull data from existing unstructured Web documents) and enable new data with schema coding.

#5. Build site authority

Make your pages informative, feature unique information or your unique take on existing information, link to additional data, share via social media engagement, and become a source – first to report rather than being a second or third voice.
Be the best at presenting information. Make quality, depth, and authenticity your hallmark. (See “Authority – How to Build it into Your Site.”)

#6. Enhance site quality

Provide value.
Write well, ensure accuracy, never duplicate articles, and avoid spam at all costs.
Find ways to package data that others can access and use the semantic web to pass it along.

#7. Create volume

By this I mean create both depth (long material) and breadth (lots of articles). This creates plenty of opportunity for the search engines to understand the nuance of your site and your content.
The more you link between related content, the better.
The faster you do it, the more quickly you can benefit from the indexed relationships.

#8. Engage through social media

Build relevancy through shares, likes, RTs, and +’s on social media. More than ever, you need an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
This isn’t just about networking, this is about showing that your content has authority and quality and all this interaction establishes nuance for your content.

#9. Establish Authorship

Finally, although some have pooh-poohed Google authorship, there is some evidence that establishing authorship creates authority and builds nuance and veracity for the topics you cover.

It doesn’t take much to set up and I can’t think of a negative to doing it.
If you already have a Google account, why not?

No monsters here

Really, most of the work in semantic search you may already have been pursuing because of Google Hummingbird. The other half requires a little understanding but is best handled by programmers and then the usual link research. So making use of entities through the semantic Web to enhance traffic by way of performance in a semantic search isn’t as monstrous as you may have thought – right?

Bien écrire!

Your Turn

What are your thoughts? We’d love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.

SEO Copywriting after Hummingbird

December 5, 2013 by Alan Eggleston

Some time ago, SEO copywriting for the Web was about maximizing for keywords. A whole industry solidified around writing for a certain percentage of a given keyword within the copy and managed the creativity or sell message around that. Then came Google Hummingbird. To be perfectly accurate, then came Google Panda, Penguin, and – finally – Hummingbird.

The Evolution of SEO Copywriting

The change in SEO copywriting habits has evolved.

First changes began in 2011 with Google’s introduction of Panda: Filtering content for quality, it penalized for poor quality such as duplicate content and content of little value.
In 2012 came Google Penguin: Filtering content for spam, it penalized for things like poor quality links and poor keyword strategies.
In 2013, Google totally rewrote its search algorithm folding elements of both Panda and Penguin into Hummingbird, upending much of the SEO copywriting practices of the past.

To recap from a copywriting perspective, here is where we are today.

Copywriting Rules After Panda and Penguin

Thanks to Google Panda (and continuing with Hummingbird):

No more duplicate copy; however, Google (and other search engines) can distinguish between same copy shared between global versions of a website. To be really sure, websites can mark one set with a canonical tag for indexing.
No more writing the same story for multiple sites and expect to rank for it.
No more slipshod articles written simply to rank for a keyword or keyword string and missing quality or value (such as content farms).

Thanks to Google Penguin (and continuing with Hummingbird):

No more spam activity, like writing copy by simply repeating a keyword or keyword string.
No more copy with links using the same keyword or keyword string for anchor text and links that do not lead to valuable content.

How Copywriting Is Different After Hummingbird

Google is now changing the whole search dynamic. How the user is expected to do a search:

Searching by asking questions
doing a search using mobile, while in motion
anticipating what you want before you finish the search string to speed up delivery of information

All will make how you write copy much different. Most important to you as a writer is helping establish nuance to your page.

Building Nuance in Your Copy

Before Hummingbird, you wrote around a keyword. Today, you still need to:

Begin with a keyword, the key concept behind your page.
Extend the keyword to keyword strings and work with synonyms for your keyword, letting the search engine know how much more your page is about than simply that one, solitary keyword.
Provide links that both verify your keyword and that build that extended meaning.

Add Authority to Impress Hummingbird

Hummingbird awards authority, so you need to build on page authority, by providing

information versus fluff
depth versus surface
backup versus bluff
the long read versus the short read (not necessary long sentences and long paragraphs, but lengthier information, more data or facts)
All of this together tells Google, Yahoo, and Bing, on complex searches, this is the many ways this page fits because this is the many things this page is about and it’s by someone of substance.

This is important for all types of copywriters:

sell copywriters
article writers
brand writers
white paper writers

It actually is important for anyone writing for the Web.

How to Work with Keywords Today

It is still important to begin with that basic kernel of the keyword or keyword string.

Google did away with its free keyword reporting tool, but it offers a free keyword planner in its Adwords program that doesn’t require actually planning an ad campaign to use.
Bing and Yahoo have a free keyword tool, too.
There are others with limited free use. Google “free keyword tools” for more.

You can still identify the most effective keyword strings as a beginning point for your page and build from there.
For some searchers, a simple keyword string search is still useful and for a while may suffice while users adapt to the new power opening to them through Google Hummingbird. So, don’t eliminate the keyword as a basic strategic tool!
But widen your word palate as you work with copy:

If you’re writing about Chevrolets, consider that they’re also known as Chevys, Malibus, Impalas, and Cavaliers.
They aren’t just automobiles, but also cars and vehicles and sedans.
A dealership isn’t just a sales floor but also a dealer showroom and service center and GM portal.
Find better ways to redefine your keyword in a meaningful way.

Link to a site’s Interior pages as well as to authoritative pages outside like

news sites
reference sites
universities and research pages
white papers
other links with authority

Link to pages that provide

definition
nuance
depth or breadth

Don’t link to pages simply of opportunity that lead the reader to nowhere.
One way to make use of question search strings is to write questions into your copy that search engines can pick up in a search. For instance:

Anticipate a search string as one of your first questions in an FAQ page and answer it, including a link to an appropriate page on the website.
Write a headline or subhead leading with “How” or “What” or “When” that builds into the keyword.

How to Copy Write for Hummingbird

Many of the old rules-of-thumb for SEO copywriting still apply.

Use keywords or keyword strings early on the page and in headlines and subheads.
Use keywords or keyword strings in meta tags.
Create unique page titles and meta descriptions for every page (no duplicates!).
Use keywords in anchor text for links in first use, vary verbiage in anchor text afterwards.
No more keyword stuffing! Write sensibly for your audience.

SEO copywriting has evolved, especially more recently. But its goal has always been the same: Reach the audience with dynamite copy. Today more than ever, that is done by writing quality content, in partnership with Google Hummingbird.