Doing SEO for any client is intimately associated with getting the most out of every link. Anchor text is an important element that “unlocks” every link’s potential — to the extent that Google had to roll out its first Penguin update in 2012, cutting tried-and-true anchor text over-optimization methods out of the picture. Over the past five years, the best practices of anchor text optimization have considerably evolved. It is time to learn how anchor text best practices can allow you to get the most out of links in 2018. Anchor text and Google PenguinThe release of Penguin 1.0 in April, 2012 shook up the SERPs, affecting around 3% of all search queries in English, German, Chinese, Arabic, and other popular languages. Since then, there have been at least five major Google Penguin updates:
Since Google releases its Penguin updates periodically, some SEO professionals and marketers take advantage of the gaps, pushing up SERPs with gray-hat anchor text practices (e.g. targeted anchor texts, lower-quality link-building), and then get penalized for doing so. When it comes to the relationship between anchor texts and Google Penguin updates, the rule of thumb is simple: Follow Google’s guidelines and avoid trying to hack the system by using overly aggressive anchor text practices. Sooner or later, Google will come up with a new update, which will negatively affect SERPs. Major anchor text categoriesBefore providing specific tips on anchor text optimization, let’s recap the major categories of anchor text:
Best practices for anchor text optimizationKeep it natural… and versatileAccording to Google, every part of any website, including links and their associated anchor text, needs to provide real value to users. Links must be put only where users expect to see them, so they can get informed about something valuable to them. With Google’s algorithms getting smarter every year, you should avoid multiple repetitive and keyword-based anchors in your site’s anchor text cloud. Failure to do so will definitely result in a penalty. To quote Neil Patel:
Of course, you need to link to high-quality, relevant pages and disavow all links from low-quality, non-relevant web pages. Getting links from sites with high Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Trust Flow is also a must. Avoid over-optimizationGoogle does not appreciate overly-rich anchor text. A spammy, keyword-based anchor text cloud is a big red flag to Google. It indicates blunt manipulation with backlinks, which, obviously, results in penalties. Instead, try to keep your anchor text natural by spreading it across your inbound links in the right proportions (more about this below). For instance, instead of placing “Software development company” in every guest post, try using something like “companies that develop software” or “the most reliable software development firms,” etc. Keep anchors relevant to contentAs time goes on, Google will only improve its algorithms responsible for understanding the actual meaning of a web page’s content. Since 2015, it has been testing DeepMind, a natural language processing technology that allows artificial intelligence to learn just as humans would. Provided Google knows what is put on a concrete web page, it will not have any problems figuring out if a specific anchor text or link is relevant to a web page’s content. If you place an internal link with irrelevant anchor text on your own website, this is likely to harm your search ranking. The is true for backlinks with irrelevant anchor text. Google is obsessed with improving user experiences. It tries its best to provide relevant content in the most convenient manner. Clearly, non-relevant anchors with non-relevant links behind them lead users to non-relevant content, which Google does not appreciate. Engage in relevant guest bloggingThe relevance of the anchor text is one of key factors of a successful, cost-efficient guest blogging campaign, or of any healthy anchor text cloud for that matter. What it comes down to is this: If you are guest posting with the intention of pushing up your “Digital marketing tips” keyword, place links to pages that include information about digital marketing, with exact-match, partial-match, and LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords featuring the topic of discussion. Obviously, your “Digital marketing tips” anchor text, with an associated link, should not be put on websites that have nothing to do with digital marketing. Note: Do your best to use LSI and partial-match anchors in your guest post. In this way, you will achieve a more natural-looking anchor text cloud and satisfy the Google gods. Avoid links from and linking to spammy sitesWhile the first part of this one is self-descriptive (you should never build links from low-quality websites), it is not common knowledge that Google pays close attention to websites you link to as well. Actually, since the release of Google’s Hummingbird update, this type of co-citation can play a key role in calculating your site’s SERP placement. Check your outbound links to make sure you steer clear of low-quality sites. Even though you can get paid or rewarded with a couple of reciprocal links, linking to a toxic website has the potential to ruin your site’s authority and rank in the long run. Distribute anchors in the right proportionsWhile the “right proportions” part is always up for debate, it is pretty much indisputable that you should:
So, what are the right proportions? While the safe answer is, “It depends,” — some recommendations do exist. According to at least a couple of anchor text case studies, the golden formula is:
But, once again, make sure that you do a thorough analysis of your niche and competitors. Your first priority is to reverse-engineer the anchor text cloud of websites ranked at the top, and only then can you start adjusting your website’s anchor text cloud. Focus anchors on deep-level pagesOne of the most common mistakes that beginner SEO professionals make is focusing the anchors they build on top-level pages, mainly placing links to a homepage, landing pages, or even concrete product pages. An anchor text cloud that is purely built around these shallow pages does not look natural to Google and other search engines, simply because people do not naturally place links in that way. As a rule, they link to worthy shareable content like blog posts. What you should do is focus your anchors on relevant, deep-level pages. Not only will you create a natural, versatile anchor text cloud, but you will also allow visitors to navigate to top-level pages. Place anchors where users pay the most attentionThis is more of a psychology-type tip. Since users often do not read but rather skim pages, a page’s first few paragraphs, its headings, subheadings, and imagery become focal points — people pay more attention there. Thus, it makes sense to put your anchor texts next to these “hot” parts of a page in order to increase click-through rates and engagement. Do not be overly obsessed with this one, though. If users find concrete anchor text to be descriptive and potentially valuable, they will click the link to check out what’s inside, one way or another. ConclusionAnchor text optimization practices evolve over time. As most of them get adjusted in line with the Penguin updates, pay close attention to keeping your anchor text cloud natural and versatile, which is the first point of interest to Google. “Organic” anchor text distribution influenced by averages for a targeted niche, and specifically for your competitor’s websites, plays a huge role, but keep low-quality links in mind. If your anchor texts are up to snuff, do a complete audit of incoming links to sift out and disavow those coming from untrustworthy, non-relevant websites. To sum it up, you need to remain on the right side of Google, one way or another. Specifically, do not try to game the system — it will not work in the long run. Instead, make sure that your anchor text is natural (avoid over-optimization, use relevant anchors, do not link to low-quality websites), and use keyword-rich links once in a while to help you rank. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/12/22/best-practices-for-anchor-text-optimization-in-2018/
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One key element of a search strategy we often see fail is prioritization. Whether working client-side or for an agency, being able to prioritize a link-building campaign, a content refresh or a technical fix on a site is essential to ensure you are making the most use of the limited resources you are given. Within this post we’ll run through a few different ways to show how to highlight opportunity across a keyword set and introduce a keyword difficulty metric you can use to take prioritizing work to the next level. Individual keyword opportunityWith a basic approach, opportunity can be found by merely completing keyword research, identifying those keywords with the highest search volume and targeting those. Clustering keywordsBy being a little more advanced, we could try clustering (or grouping) related keywords and then look at the collated volume of each cluster. After you have that information, you can then focus on the category of keywords which attracts the most search volume. Some different ways of grouping your keywords could be:
Introducing Traffic EstimationsIf you want to take this a step further, you could look at the incremental traffic to be gained from each keyword. This is based upon your current position, how many times it is searched per month, the estimated click-through rate (CTR) and the maximum traffic you can get from ranking in position one. To break that down: You can then assess the incremental traffic in relation to the ways in which you have clustered your keywords, and highlight any gaps in which you can gain traffic. The graphs for these would like the same as the ones above, except with incremental traffic, max traffic or estimated traffic plotted instead of volume. At this stage, you could even do an analysis of how much market share you have captured for each topic: Is this really highlighting opportunity?These methods of highlighting opportunity work, and the latter methods in particular are much better than just looking at search volume in isolation. However, none of these methods tells you how difficult it is going to be to attain the traffic figures you are highlighting. Opportunity is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as:
With both methods, we are only really showing where the volume is, we are not saying how possible it is for us to achieve those incremental traffic figures. So, are we truly highlighting opportunity? This is where we can introduce a keyword difficulty metric so that you can look at address both the opportunity and the difficulty in terms of your traffic figures. Once you have created such a metric, your opportunity analysis begins to look a bit more like this: Now, we are no longer just highlighting where the traffic is, we are also showing how difficult it is to get, which means we are now really showing the opportunity. From the above chart, we can now see that, while fridges have lots of opportunity for additional traffic, it makes far more sense to concentrate on microwaves and kettles as they both still have a large number of searches but the difficulty to rank well for these terms is far lower. Creating a keyword difficulty metricBefore we begin, here are some features of the keyword difficulty metric:
Rather than going into more detail on how the metric is created, first I’ll run through what you need to do so you can go ahead and start creating it yourself. Use our template from the next section and if you want to learn more about its creation , skip ahead to the end of the article. To start building this metric, you will first need to do some data collection. You will need to find:
Before we collect these, do some keyword research and enter your results into the keyword difficulty metric template we have created for you. Make sure to click ‘File’, and ‘Make a copy…’ to save your own version of the template. To start with, just fill out the ‘Keyword Research’ sheet with your list of keywords, categories and search volumes. Scrape the top 10 resultsTo get the top 10 results, I have access to our in-house rank tracker at Zazzle Media. You can, however, get this information from various tools such as:
Add the URLs for your top 10 results, along with the associated keyword, into the ‘Keyword Difficulty’ tab of the template. The sheet should now look like this: Once you have added all this information to your sheet, you need to collect the number of referring domains to both the URL and the domain. To do this, I usually use Majestic and URL Profiler to quickly pull data via the API. Both Majestic and URL Profiler are paid tools, but they are worth spending the money on given the data they provide. Copy the URLs from your keyword difficulty sheet and paste them into URL Profiler. Select the URL Level Data and Domain Level Data tick boxes for Majestic; you may need to link up to the Majestic API when you do this. After, select ‘Run Profiler’ in the bottom right. Once you have the export, copy and paste the URL, domain referring domains and URL referring domains over to the ‘Keyword Difficulty URLs’ tab. The ‘Keyword Difficulty’ sheet will now create the difficulty metric for each URL ranking in positions 1 – 10 and will look like the below. Of course, we want results for each keyword, rather than for each URL ranking in the search result. If you go back to the ‘Keyword Research’ sheet that you originally put all your keywords and data into, you will see that the keyword difficulty metric has been averaged across all sites ranking within the top 10 for that keyword. Opportunity ChartsNow, when you go into the ‘Category Opportunity’ tab, you will be able to see the ‘volume against keyword difficulty’ charts shown earlier as well as ‘traffic captured vs overall’ and ‘incremental traffic by category’. Along with these, I have also added a difficulty distribution bubble charts in the ‘Category Difficulty Distribution’ and ‘Keyword Difficulty Distribution’ tabs. Here is what a category difficulty distribution chart looks like: Here is a keyword difficulty distribution chart: When you have inputted your data, you will see actual keywords and categories rather than the dummy data I’ve currently inputted. To give you a bit more of an idea what you can gain from these charts, here are some descriptions of how you should target keywords or categories depending on their location on the chart: Upper Left: High Difficulty, low opportunity. These are usually not worth the investment in link building activity. Bottom Left: Low difficulty, low opportunity. We should target some of these keywords, especially the ones in the right side of the bottom left quarter. Upper Right: High difficulty, high opportunity. It will take a lot of work to rank for these, but we will see a large return in traffic from doing so. Bottom Right: Low difficulty, high opportunity. We can rank for these keywords with a smaller link building campaign and we will see a high return in traffic. These charts can be handy if you are struggling to see category opportunity from just analysing the bar and area chart in the ‘Category Opportunity’ tab. More about the metricCorrelation studies all state near enough the same thing, namely that links to your site are still the most influential factor when it comes to ranking a page. Here is a recent example of this from Ahrefs (which also has its own Keyword Difficulty metric if you don’t mind paying for it): Because the data says links still correlate the most, it makes sense to base the keyword difficulty metric on this. The Ahrefs study above states that referring domains correlate with rankings less than referring domains to an individual URL. Because of this, it also makes sense for our metric to put more weight on the number of referring domains to the URLs, rather than the number of referring domains to each domain on the search result. Here’s how the difficulty scales for links to the URL (making up 75% of the score): Here is the scale for domains referring domains (making up 25% of the score): ConclusionIf you’ve read through this and managed to calculate keyword difficulty, you should now be able to increase the quality of your opportunity analysis tenfold and be able to highlight whether or not targeting a topic/niche for traffic is viable for you. Moving forward, you should be able to target queries and users based upon whether ranking for a term is achievable, not solely on whether or not people are searching for it. If you have any questions feel free to tweet me at @SamUnderwoodUK. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/12/21/how-to-highlight-search-opportunity-and-create-a-keyword-difficulty-metric/ Since the early days of search, Google has used links as a means of judging the reputation and relevance of webpages. The more links pointing to a particular page, particularly from other reputable pages, the more importance Google would award it in search. And so link-building developed as an SEO strategy, with SEOs doing everything they could to win, buy or otherwise gain links pointing to their website in order to boost it up the rankings. Over the years, Google has made a lot of adjustments to the way it treats links, cracking down on paid-for or freebie links and implementing algorithm updates like Penguin or Fred which penalize sites with a lot of spammy links. This has made link-building a lot trickier for SEOs than it once was. At the same time, the web has evolved, and search engines have evolved along with it. With the rise of social media, digital assistants and voice interfaces, and the increasing merging of the online and offline worlds, the number of links pointing to a site seems like a slightly outdated way of judging its reputation – not to mention easy to game. And in fact, it’s not the only means that search engines have of judging reputation. Over the past few years, major search engines like Google and Bing have developed the ability to gauge a website’s reputation via any reference to a brand, anywhere online, together with the sentiment it is mentioned in. These references are known as “linkless mentions”, or “linkless backlinks”. We touched on the rise of linkless mentions in our recent piece ‘How to future-proof your SEO for 2018’. In this article, we’ll look more closely at how linkless mentions have changed the nature of link-building, and how you should adjust your strategy to account for them. How do linkless mentions work?Previously, Google used an algorithm known as PageRank to assess a page’s authority. In essence, PageRank considered links pointing to a page to be like “votes” for that page; the more votes a page received, particularly from other pages with a lot of votes, the more importance it was given. Of course, this has never been the sole factor that Google uses for determining ranking, and plenty of commentators warned against the dangers of thinking that a high PageRank instantly correlates to a high search ranking. But it was given a lot of emphasis in SEO nevertheless. An illustration of how PageRank works for a simple network, with percentages to represent page authority. Times have moved on since then, and in early 2016 Google officially retired PageRank from its toolbar in order to avoid misleading website owners about just how important PageRank was. While Google still uses PageRank internally, it’s clear that there is a lot more to how it judges a website’s authority. Meanwhile, evidence has been mounting that both Google and Bing are able to associate mentions of a brand or website without a link, and use that as a trust signal. At SMX West 2016, Duane Forrester, Bing’s former Senior Product Manager, stated that linkless mentions can be just as strong a signal as regular links, adding that Bing figured out how to associate mentions without a link, as well as determine sentiment and tone, “years ago”. As for Google, sharp-eyed industry commentators noticed a patent that Google filed in 2014 which defined non-linked mentions as “implied links”. Simon Penson, writing for Moz, explained exactly how this works in practice:
But the shift towards unlinked mentions as a trust signal was most clearly spelled out by Google’s Gary Illyes, in a keynote at Brighton SEO in September 2017. Talking about SEO best practices that webmasters should stick to, Illyes said:
It couldn’t be spelled out more plainly: Google considers all mentions of your brand on the internet, not just links, to be akin to a trust signal, and is taking them into account. What does this mean for link-building strategy?What does this development mean for the way you should approach link-building strategy? A lot of the same principles of a good link-building strategy still apply to building linkless mentions, and if you’ve got a link-building strategy going that’s working well for your brand, of course you should continue it. Links still matter – but they don’t always need to be the ultimate goal of link-building. Tactics like tracking down mentions of your site and badgering the website owners into adding a hyperlink aren’t necessary any more; just the mention by itself, assuming it’s not a negative one, is enough to provide Google with a trust signal. Here are some other steps you can take to make sure that your link-building strategy also targets linkless mentions: Aim to build overall brand awareness and reputationLink-building isn’t just about hyperlinks any more, and over time we may well see the term change to something more general like “reference-building” or “reputation-building”, to reflect what’s really involved. For the same reasons, it’s helpful to broaden your goals beyond gaining backlinks to include other, positive mentions of your brand. Some things that can contribute to this include:
Track all brand mentions – not just backlinksIf you’re pursuing a link-building strategy, it’s always a good move to invest in some backlink analysis tools that will allow you to track links back to your site and understand your link profile. With linkless mentions, the same principle applies – but you need to be tracking all kinds of mentions, not just backlinks, which requires some slightly different tools. Some tools which allow you to track mentions of your brand across the web include:
Comparing competitor data in Mention | Source: mention.com Optimize your off-page SEOSimilar to our first point about building overall brand awareness and reputation, if you haven’t set out to optimize your off-page SEO, you absolutely must. Off-page SEO encompasses all of the aspects of SEO that don’t take place on your website, such as your social media activity, customer service practices, online reviews, influencer marketing and more. As such, anything that’s great for off-page SEO is also great for building brand reputation and mentions. For more on how to nail off-page SEO, don’t miss Amanda DiSilvestro’s comprehensive guide: How to achieve off-the-charts off-page SEO that will boost traffic. Carry out reputation managementJust as backlinks pointing to your site are only beneficial if they’re reputable, non-spammy links, mentions of your brand are only beneficial if they’re positive mentions – so a reputation management strategy is a must. Be proactive in monitoring the sentiment of the conversation around your brand; many of the mention tracking tools listed above will allow you to do that. This will allow you to spot any potential problem situations brewing before they develop into a full-blown crisis. Make sure you take the time to engage with and respond to individuals reporting a negative experience with your brand, and do your best to resolve the issues they have. Actively promote your brand name online, so that the positive and authoritative mentions of your brand will inevitably drown out any negative mentions that do arise. Check out Marcela De Vivo’s guide to Online Reputation Management: Beyond Damage Control for more practical advice on managing your online reputation, and what to do in a reputation crisis. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/12/21/why-linkless-mentions-are-the-future-of-link-building/ What’s Your SEO Score?Enter the URL of any landing page or blog article and see how optimized it is for one keyword or phrase. from http://kanwarmanoria.digital/seo-toronto/free-seo-report-card/ from http://kanwarmanoria.weebly.com/blog/free-seo-report-card Your ad campaigns should bring you closer to new prospects and clients. But how well are you able to judge their success? Your conversion rate in AdWords is your success rate at persuading consumers to click on your ads and carry out a particular action, such as a product purchase. It is estimated that the average conversion rate for an Adwords account is just 2.35%. According to analysis carried out by WordStream on more than 2,000 client accounts, the top 25% of accounts had conversion rates of 5.31% or higher, while the bottom 25% of accounts had a conversion rate of 0-1%. Where on the performance scale do your ads sit? An alarmingly high proportion of PPC campaign managers and marketers don’t know how well their ads are performing. Or maybe you do know, but aren’t sure what to do to improve your conversion rate. In this article, we’ll outline three areas where you should focus your efforts to improve your AdWords conversion, and give practical tips on how you can nudge the scale in the right direction. First: Establish which conversions you’re trackingThe first step to improving your conversion rate is to know how your campaigns are performing. Thus, you will need to set up conversion tracking to keep track of your ads’ performance. According to a report by Disrupt Advertising, only 57.7% of Adwords accounts have set up conversion tracking. This means that 42.3% of the respondents are not able to tell if their campaigns are successful. Conversion tracking allows you to analyse the performance of your ads, your ad groups and your campaigns. This makes it easier to find the ROI for each investment, while it also makes it easier to measure the exact number of conversions. So far, so good; but in order to track conversions, you need to have established which outcomes you want to achieve with your PPC campaign. For example, for an ecommerce company, a conversion is usually interpreted as a product sale. However, you many be interested in tracking:
Not all of these actions directly produce revenue, but if your aim is to increase engagement and awareness, then these are viable conversion goals for your business. 3 tips to improve your Adwords conversion rateImprove Quality ScoreImproving your Adwords Quality Score can significantly impact your conversion rate in two ways: one, by lowering your campaign Cost Per Click (CPC), allowing you to get your ads in front of a wider audience for the same budget; and two, by serving as a metric for how good your ad experience is for the consumer. The best ways to improve it are to:
Improving the wider experience of your Adwords campaigns will improve your Quality Score, and by the same token, increase the chances of seeing a higher number of clicks and conversions. According to Google, the three main components that define how your Quality Score can affect a real-time auction are: Overall, the Quality Score is Google’s attempt to reward quality and relevant ads, and a focus on improving it can lead to more successful Adwords campaigns. Optimize your landing pagesThe design of your landing page plays a key role in your number of conversions. A good ad campaign may bring more people to your landing page, but if it’s not optimized to facilitate conversions, then you’re likely to lose those potential customers before they convert. A high-converting landing page is:
Every element should be tested, from the CTA to the colour of the buttons and their placement. Carrying out A/B testing allows you to minimize the risk of wasting your budget on a low-converting page. Optimization should start by ensuring that your landing page facilitates the customer journey. Think like a user to spot the problems that can affect your page’s performance. A good way to increase your chances of conversion is to align the ad copy with the landing page. You don’t want your ad copy to be misleading, as it risks losing the user’s trust. Similarly, you don’t want the copy to be vague, as this will affect the number of clicks. The copy of your ads should align with the content of your landing pages. You need to live up to the expectations to increase the conversion rate and this can also improve your quality score. Overall, the optimisation of your landing page should include: Appealing and targeted copyA good headline along with relevant content can make a landing page more interesting for your target audience. Eye-catching visual contentAs with the copy, images and videos can grab the audience’s attention and facilitate the conversion. The type of image, the size, the design can all affect the outcome of a visit. A well-tested CTAOne of the most important elements to test on your landing page is the CTA. Your call-to-action button will affect the conversion rate and that’s why you need to test the ideal colour, size, placement for it. Good user experienceUser experience can significantly affect the conversion rate of your landing page although it can still be overlooked during the A/B testing. Your visitors expect a good user experience when visiting a landing page with a fast loading speed, a fully functional page and a properly tested form. Every element of your landing page appeals to UX and accessibility can also be part of it. Conversion becomes easier when you ensure that your landing page is optimized for every single visitor. Responsiveness across all devicesAs with user experience, a responsive page that is equally well-presented across all devices maximizes the chances of conversion. The increased number of mobile users calls for a fully functional mobile page that takes into consideration a good user experience. Except for the page speed, the copy should be also short and engaging, while the form has to be limited to a set number of fields to avoid losing the visitors’ interest. For more tips on how to design a high-converting AdWords landing page, check out these guides:
Adjust your keyword matching typeAdwords allows you to add keywords that are:
A broad match keyword shows your ads to anyone searching for your selected keyword. For example, if you add “black iPhone price”, your ad will show up to anyone searching for it, no matter what order the words show up. This increases the reach of your ad campaign, bringing more clicks to it. A phrase match keyword shows your ads to anyone searching for the specific phrase, either the way it is or as part of a sentence, such as “how to find black iPhone price”. This type of keywords allows you to filter your ads to a more specific audience, while still maintaining a significant reach. An exact match keyword is the most specific type, only displaying your ad to anyone searching for the exact keyword you input, and in the same way that you’ve structured it. If the search is not an exact match, then your ad will not show up. Ad campaigns that focus on exact match keywords can have a higher conversion rate as they attract a smaller, more highly-targeted audience. If your goal is to narrow down your audience then this can be a useful option. However, if you want to cast as wide a net as possible in the hopes of attracting different types of consumers who might convert, a phrase match or broad match keyword might be more suitable. It’s a good idea to test all the variations in order to determine which one works better for your campaign and your target audience. You can start by focusing on narrow results through exact matches and then scale up your efforts to expand your campaign reach if you don’t achieve your desired conversion rate. For more detail on the different types of PPC keyword matching and how to set them up, don’t miss Amanda DiSilvestro’s guide: Common PPC keyword mistakes (Understanding broad match vs. phrase match vs. exact match). OverviewConversion is a key metric for measuring the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. The higher the conversion rate, the better the chances of meeting your business goals and driving ROI. However, it’s useful to remember that there also needs to be an evaluation of the quality of the conversions and whether they match your target audience. It’s tempting to reach a wider audience and see the conversion rate improving, but do they really serve as leads and prospect clients? This depends on your goals and your expectations from every campaign and that’s why it’s useful to keep analyzing the performance of your ads. The most important tips for improving your conversion rates are to:
from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/12/20/how-to-improve-your-adwords-conversion-rate/ I was playing a game of dota 2 and after the game was finished I was tipped by two players 0 battle points. I’m unsure of what this means. from http://kanwarmanoria.digital/seo-toronto/what-does-it-mean-to-be-tipped-in-dota-2/ from http://kanwarmanoria.weebly.com/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-be-tipped-in-dota-2 I was on Google.ca and typed “New Democratic Party” but once I clicked search I did not see Jagmeet Singh’s website. I encourage Jagmeet Singh to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to improve his online visibility. Jagmeet Singh can choose my competition by typing “seo toronto” and finding an internet marketing agency that will outsource to India or you can get your custom SEO done by a Canadian in-house. Jagmeet Singh I have also embedded an album you should take a listen to. from http://kanwarmanoria.digital/seo-toronto/jagmeet-singh/ from http://kanwarmanoria.weebly.com/blog/how-jagmeet-singh-can-become-a-prime-minister The complexity of an organic search campaign necessitates some technological assistance. There are plenty of tools on the market, but they vary in price, functionality, and effectiveness. Once you have all the basics in place, which SEO tools should you invest in to take your strategy to the next level? The SEO landscape is highly competitive, with every company battling for precious real estate at the top of page one. The points of differentiation between competitors fall into the following, intertwined categories: people and technology. Assuming you already have your SEO team or agency partner in place, you will need to enable them with the best technology on the market. The Google-owned products (Keyword Planner, Search Console, Google Analytics) are essential to cover the basics, but an advanced SEO strategy usually requires some investment in third-party technology. That need has created a crowded market – one that can be difficult to navigate without guidance. Moreover, there is overlap to contend with, as so many tools appear to do so many similar things. In truth, every tool tends to excel in one or two areas. Many will promise to be an all-in-one solution, but the task is too gargantuan to be tackled convincingly. Instead, a combination of tools is required to cover all the bases. Any large-scale SEO campaign will encompass the following areas:
At each juncture, we are met by a lengthy list of technology solutions that can reveal new insights, automate the drudgery, and tell us whether our strategy is working. Marketers should prioritize these categories, as budgets are rarely limitless and many of the best SEO tools do require investment. Previously, we have covered the best free SEO tools and the best tools for a mobile SEO strategy. In this article, we will review the best tools to invest in for each of the core areas of an advanced SEO strategy. Research: Moz ProA Moz Pro licence provides access to an impressive suite of SEO tools. Customers can utilize a site crawl, a keyword tracker, and an on-page grader, among many others. That gives Moz Pro mass appeal, but it is essential to take note of where it excels, and where it is surpassed by other solutions. The Keyword Explorer tool is particularly valuable for research, going far beyond what Google’s Keyword Planner can offer. Moz’s keyword research tool provides a range of suggestions for keywords to target and groups these together by their degree of lexical similarity. At a time when sophisticated SEO professionals have moved beyond keyword matching to a more nuanced targeting approach, this capability is indispensable. Open Site Explorer (OSE) is a long-time member of the standard SEO toolbox and it retains its usefulness for competitor backlink analyses. Proprietary Moz metrics like Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Spam Score add extra depth to OSE and, while it is not comprehensive enough to suffice as the only backlink checker in an SEO’s armoury, it forms a natural complement to the likes of Ahrefs and Majestic. The Moz toolbar also made our list of the best Chrome extensions for SEO, providing access to all the Moz Pro features as you visit websites. Cost: Ranges from $99/month for the basic package to $599/month for the premium offering. Honorable mentions: Similarweb. Technical SEO: BotifyTechnical SEO is a complex field, characterized (perhaps even caricatured) by never-ending spreadsheets and impenetrable code. The gap between technical SEO experts and business leaders has therefore always been significant. Tools like Screaming Frog, which are highly valuable but difficult to decipher for the novice, have not helped to bridge this gap. And yet, the importance of technical SEO for performance means that its messages need to be communicated to non-technical audiences. Botify manages to dive deep enough to the data to provide meaningful analysis, but also display this in a compelling manner that gets the message across. Core to its effectiveness is the Botify Log Analyzer, which collects and analyzes data at the server level. This provides an accurate record of Googlebot’s visits to the site and highlights any crawling issues. The significance of this data was highlighted just last week, with Google’s John Mueller suggesting log file analysis as the ideal resource for site owners that want to see if they have been switched over to the mobile-first index:
Another albatross around the neck of technical SEO has been that its improvements are hard to tie to performance. Aside from serious issues that are causing URLs to be left out of Google’s index altogether, for example, many technical recommendations can end up gathering dust while the more glamorous changes are put into effect. Botify Keywords is a handy feature in this sense, as it pulls in Search Console rankings data that can be tied back to any technical changes made on the site. This brings an extra element of accountability to technical SEO, all of which is tracked in the user’s dashboard automatically. Cost: Varies, depending on site. Honorable mention: Deepcrawl. Keyword tracking: BrightEdgeModern-day keyword tracking is something of a thankless task. With the twin advances of personalization and localization, there is really no such thing as a ‘true’ ranking position for each keyword. Google’s rankings differ based on so many factors that they can no longer be considered a static resource, but we can’t simply ignore rankings. As a result, SEOs will typically use a combination of tools, including Google’s Search Console, to get a handle on how well their site is performing. BrightEdge is the choice of many large corporations for SEO performance tracking, due to its user-friendly interface, customizable reports, and analytics integrations. It also provides the ability to track rankings down to a specific metropolitan area, which proves invaluable for brands with a presence across a range of territories. Though the platform has evolved to encompass these new products, at its core BrightEdge is still a reliable rank tracker that provides at-a-glance performance insights for stakeholders from the SEO specialist to the CMO. Cost: Dependent on number of keywords, domains, and territories required. Honorable mentions: STAT Search Analytics, SearchMetrics, SEMrush. Backlink analysis: AhrefsWhen assessing a backlink analysis tool, there are some essential fields to consider. Firstly, the size of the technology’s index of URLs should be assessed to discern how accurate its findings will be. None will exactly match the scope of Google’s index, which of course is significantly larger than any SEO tool could muster. However, it is important to bear in mind that each tool crawls and creates its own index, so the results you see in your dashboard on each may be different. Next, check to see how frequently the index is updated. Given the importance of links for SEO rankings, most practitioners will want to see the quantity and quality of backlinks directed to their site on at least a weekly basis. Ahrefs’ index contains 3 trillion URLs and is updated daily, which gives it the edge over its competitors. It provides a comprehensive overview of historical backlink performance and helps SEOs to pinpoint any issues that may be hampering performance. Ahrefs is also a great resource for competitor analysis and can be used to find new websites to target through outreach activities. All in all, Ahrefs provides the best package for advanced backlink analysis. Cost: From $99/month to $999/month. Honorable mention: Majestic SEO. Content marketing: BuzzsumoBacklinks are a vital factor in how Google crawls the web and ranks websites, but social shares and mentions are the next stage of evolution for a content marketing strategy. Essentially, a site with content that attracts a lot of relevant, authoritative links and large quantities of social media interactions may be looked upon favorably when it comes to ranking websites for a specific query. That is easier said than done, of course. Buzzsumo has become an important tool for SEOs precisely because it aids us in this difficult task. Marketers can enter a domain name or just a keyword to see which pieces of content are performing best in terms of backlinks and social media shares. The intuitive interface allows for a lot of customization, so it is possible to hone in on particular social networks, dates, or topics. This makes it a helpful resource for influencer research too, as it also identifies the individuals that have helped certain content assets to ‘go viral’. Buzzsumo can’t write the content for you, but it does a great job of at least telling you what to write about. It also provides almost instantaneous feedback on how your content is performing, making it an infinitely valuable tool for an advanced SEO strategy. Cost: $79/month to $499+/month. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/12/19/which-tools-should-i-buy-to-advance-my-seo-strategy/ Without proper link growth your site is not a living organism. This is very crucial if you want to be an authority in your niche. You can supplement backlinks by using GSA SER and have it running 24/7 in the background. I want to tell you that by doing this you’ll be growing your website, dramatically. And more importantly, you will have higher organic rankings on the SERPS. You can also order fiverr gigs every month to supplement link growth. I would highly recommend that you use fiverr – you can take advantage of leverage and really grow your backlinks out.
Resources:GSA SER Fiverr
from http://kanwarmanoria.digital/seo-link-growth/ from http://kanwarmanoria.weebly.com/blog/seo-link-growth You don’t need us to tell you about the importance of mobile. You already know about the mobile-first index and that mobile constitutes more than 50% of all website traffic. So instead, we’re going to tell you what to do about it. Mobile optimization should be an integral part of your SEO strategy, and it goes beyond just checking whether your site passes Google’s Mobile Friendly test. In order to cover off all the factors involved in achieving the ultimate mobile-optimized website, it is necessary to carry out a mobile SEO audit on your site. In this post, we explain the key components of a comprehensive mobile SEO audit. From keywords and UX through to handy tools and content, you’ll be dominating the mobile SERPs in no time at all. Mobile keyword strategyDue to the nature of mobile searches, users typically use different search queries on mobile than on desktop. When typing in a query, search terms tend to be shorter and less wordy, as speed and accessibility are key on mobile. Aside from query length, there is also a greater emphasis on local searches. People using mobile for searching are often on the move, hence the need to focus more heavily on a local search strategy. Another aspect to factor in is voice search. With the recent proliferation of devices offering voice activated services, it is becoming an increasingly popular method of searching. Optimizing for voice search should therefore be an integral part of any SEO strategy. Rather frustratingly, in contrast to our advice about utilizing shorter terms for mobile searches, voice searches tend to be longer and more conversational. It is therefore necessary to achieve a balance between these different strands of the mobile search realm. Remember that you can find out which keywords searchers are using on different devices via Google Search Console. Within your Search Analytics, select ‘mobile’ under the Devices dropdown. Google Search Console data is never fully comprehensive, but it is nevertheless useful as a guide and for a touch of inspiration in the research phase. Google Search ConsoleOn the topic of Google Search Console, be sure to make use of the various tools available through this platform:
There is a bit of debate as to whether you should submit a separate mobile XML sitemap to Google Search Console. In short, as long as your site utilizes responsive design then there should be no need to do so. If, however, you have two separate versions of your site – one for desktop and one for mobile – then it may be worth submitting a separate mobile XML sitemap. Do also remember to check any redirects are working correctly if this is the case. However, we would always recommend responsive design as the most effective in terms of a mobile-friendly and SEO-appropriate user experience. Site speed on mobileIt goes without saying that site speed is absolutely crucial. This is especially true on mobiles, due to the combination of less power and a reliance on data over wifi. Your first port of call should be Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which helpfully provides a list of recommendations to improve your site speed on mobile. Follow these as closely as possible, without sacrificing the overall look of your site. If mobile site speed is causing you headaches then you may want to consider an AMP plugin. Accelerated Mobile Pages is a result of a collaboration between Google and Twitter, with the aim of quickly optimizing mobile pages. We’d need a whole series of blog posts to cover off this topic, so we’re going to stick to the subject in hand for now. However, when you get a minute (hour), spend it reading up on AMP, as it is definitely worth your time and consideration. Design & user experienceDeploying responsive web design is by far the most effective way of ensuring a top-notch user experience across multiple device types. You may even want to consider mobile-first design; given that over half of all website traffic is via mobile, it makes sense to prioritize it over desktop. There are a whole myriad of factors which contribute to a mobile-friendly user experience, but here’s a top-line checklist to get you started:
Finally, don’t forget to test, test, test. And not just on your iPhone. Test with both iOS and Android, as well as various different tablets. Cover as many types, sizes and browsers as you can to ensure a seamless user experience for everybody. Written contentDetermining how much written content to feature on your site can be tricky. We all know that long form content can be incredibly valuable to an SEO campaign, but mobile users generally don’t have the capacity to consume larger volumes of content. What’s the best way to resolve this dilemma? We recommend avoiding overly wordy content on the key pages of the site, saving the longer form content for blog posts. Do not use this as an excuse to skimp on copy across the site though, as informative and valuable copy is still important for ranking purposes. Feature the key information in the first paragraph or two so that mobile users can access what they need quickly and efficiently. It’s all about balance and a handy way of judging how much content is necessary is to keep an eye on the bounce rates of key pages. If users are prepared to spend a solid amount of time on any given page then there’s no need to go chopping that content. If users are bouncing pretty quick, then it’s worth reviewing the content. Reporting & trackingAs with any digital marketing campaign, tracking and reporting is integral to the process. Remember to consult your Google Analytics data to measure and track your mobile traffic. Use this data to guide your audit, helping you to make informed decisions with regards to the implementation. Consider the proportion of traffic via mobile, as well as the behavior of mobile users. Monitor whether there are any changes to this data following the implementation of your mobile audit. With any luck, you’ll see the proportion of mobile users increase, the bounce rate decrease, a better user flow and higher conversions as a result. from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/12/18/how-to-carry-out-a-mobile-seo-audit-on-your-site/ |
ABOUT MEPleasure to introduce myself I am Gillian 32 from Calgary, Canada. I am working as social media expert and have helped many clients with their social media marketing. Archives
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