Posted on

Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues

Technical SEO serves as a backbone for the promotion of your website. If you are working on SEO of your website, you may already know what technical SEO is. So let’s keep the introduction short and, instead, talk about the common technical SEO issues which can bring your website down in no time. Diagnosing these issues is very important because this is now you can get your website back on track.

Don’t be panic

Even if your website has dropped to the bottom of the ranks, you need to calm yourself. Some people try to perceive an emergency situation by creating panic for themselves. This approach is a perfect recipe for even bigger failure. When you face any problem and you find out that problem is a bigger one, you need to get up from the chair, have a cup of coffee and go out in the park for a short walk.

Understand the problem

Now after coming back to your seat, you need to open the email with detail about the problem. To understand the problem, you first need to ask yourself some questions.

  • What does the email say?
  • What is the underlying issue and what does email say about that problem?
  • What do I already know about the problem?
  • What are the symptoms surrounding the issue? (it may help in identifying root cause more effectively)
  • Do I really need to get the problem solved ASAP?

Keep in mind what Einstein said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Make a plan

When you have the data and you know about the problem, you can either start working on solving the issue or you can make a plan.Making a plan and working on it seems a lengthy process through which you might not be able to get the benefits of a quick fix. But the matter of fact is that a quick fix can do more harm than good.

Another major benefit of making a plan is that this process helps you is doing hypothesis – something which is quite essential in knowing about the real consequences of the problem well before the consequences start happening.

Working on the plan (analyzing)

Since technical SEO involves too many things, there might be too many factors contributing in the failure of your website. If you already know about the exact reason for the technical SEO failure and you know that solving the problem is not going to take much time and resources, you are in luck. But the major issue with the troubleshooting of on-page or off-page SEO is that any fix doesn’t make a change in the results on instant basis. You will need to wait for the search engines to do the crawling and give your website a clean chit.

The process of analysis may need you to rely on several tools and metrics. Even if there is a problem with the website structure, you might need to rely entirely on the analytics to know about the problem.

Suggest solution

After you have analyzed things well and got the complete report about the problem, now is the time to work on solution. Based on what you have discovered, you will need to make a strategy to solve the issue. Discuss it with your team and ask about their feedback. Ask for further suggestions. Once you have finalized the solution that you need to work on, you need to work on it.

Posted on

Best SEO Practices the Travel Brands Tell Us About

Travel industry has ensured its huge online presence. If you look at the websites such as Hotwire, Priceline, Travelocity, and TripAdvisor, you will find out that these websites have been doing really well in terms of SEO. And since there are many people interested in traveling to different locations, they search online for the best locations and best services. In this scenario, the brands can bring minor changes in the keywords to convert traffic into conversions.

What’s more interesting to note is that travel and tourism consultants hire best SEO teams to stay in the limelight. It means that there is a lot that you can learn from travel websites in terms of SEO. Some of the things that travel brands tell us about SEO are worth mentioning here.

Home Page Text

Most of the people do not pay attention to the text on home page. It makes sense. The page is here forever. So it should not be treated as just a fancy portal page. If your website is not focusing on the paid ads to earn revenue, you need to write high quality text content for the front page. You can surely learn it from travel websites.

Home page and internal links

Home page is the most linkable page for most of the websites. In this scenario, you will have to see if the link equity on your home page is directed to the most important pages of your site. That can happen only if you highlight those pages on the front page with the help of effective internal link building.

Internal links in the footer

Do you really need to put the links of your internal pages in the footer section? Some people say that it is a good way to get the most important pages of your website crawled and indexed. On the other hand, some people say that this practice can contribute to devaluation of the links which are being placed in the footer section.

In this scenario, you may wonder if you can do it. Well, it depends upon the size of your site. If your website has too many pages and, so, your home page has a lot of link equity, you can certainly put links in the footer section and expect better results.

Landing pages made to target organic keywords

This is one of the strategies which can bring a lot of traffic to your site. You will find larger brands following this technique to dominate in the tougher competitions. However, it doesn’t mean that this technique doesn’t work for the small brands. You can also build pages for the purpose of matching user intent. One thing work mentioning here is that the pages should be able to provide satisfying answers to the users.

Posted on

Increasing Keyword Rank without Link Building

Increasing keyword rank seems to be a game of link building because this is the way through which you can get traffic onto your website. But you may be surprised to know that this is not the only way to improve the rank of your website against the keywords that you are targeting. As a matter of fact, if you are not paying attention to the ‘other’ factors that we are going to talk about, you might not be able to get better results just on the basis of an effective link building approach.

It is worth mentioning that rank basically refers to the position of a website everyone sees while looking at the SERPs.Well, Google doesn’t work this way anymore.

The results change with the insertion of subtle modifiers such geo-location, local items like a map pack, and user personalization. Google pays attention to the words entered by the users. That makes it challenging for the websites to retain their visibility even if they manage to come on the top of the search results.

If you believe that only link building can help your keywords to get ranked, you are going to have to develop a complicated, exhausting and, at the same time, robust link building strategy. But the good news is that there are some other factors that you can work on in order to increase the ranks of keywords.

Site crawl and indexing improvements

A few questions that you need to ask yourself here may include:

  • Does Google crawl all of your website’s pages well?
  • Are there any redirect loops or spider traps?
  • Are you, unknowingly or knowingly, creating any roadblocks that are causing difficulty for Google to rank your site?

You can use a tool named Streaming Frog to see how well the pages of your site are being crawled.

Schema

Schema is not a direct ranking factor. However, it contributes in the process which leads to the pages ending up in the featured snippets. So, it is quite important to review the schema and find the ones that best for your site.

You can also go for what Google has been recommending, i.e. the JSON-LD version. It is worth mentioning here that the content of schema is the same which is present in the page.

Improving page speed

According to Google, page speed is the ranking factor. The reason is that it serves as a tiebreaker when your site equals your competitors in every other aspect. Remember, the page speed can be a tiebreaker only when your site’s speed is slightly slower.

Content relevancy and on-page optimization

First you will have to make sure that your page remains relevant right from the title till the end of the content in the page. Title tag is what that appears prominently in the SERPs. The content of your page needs to answer the search queries. This is the reason that it is highly important to make a research about the keywords in such a way that it becomes easy for you to identify and target user intent.

Other on-page optimizations include alt image attribute, H1 tags, a summarizing first paragraph, and captions around the image.

AMP

AMP is not directly helpful in ranking but they can help in the placement of pages at certain positions. For instance, it can bring your page into the Google News program if you want to be in the news counsel.

Posted on

Common WordPress Mistakes

Starting a website using CMS is a great idea. We will particularly talk about WordPress here because this platform is not only easy to work with but it can help you develop websites with complicated structures without deeper knowledge about website development. Moreover, it is very easy to work on the SEO of a WordPress based website.

Nevertheless, many people still make mistakes while working with the WordPress.And if you look at those mistakes, those are pretty much of beginner level. Some of those mistakes are worth mentioning here.

Not changing permalinks properly

Once you have set a permalink for any post or page on WordPress, you have to make sure that you do not change that permalink. The reason is that once your webpage is indexed, its permalink is the only way the searchers will be able to land at your post. If the permalink is changed and the previous one is indexed, the Google will keep showing that previous version of the link. Clicking that link will lead your viewers to the infamous 404-error.

Forgetting to update

While working with the WordPress, you may know about the concept of updating the plugins in a periodic manner. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to keep track of the frequent updates released by the publishers, especially when your site works smoothly. But ignoring these updates can lead you to miss the features which could be quite beneficial for your site. Therefore, it is quite important to work on a strategy to check for the updates on regular basis.

Too many plugins

In total, there are far more than 50,000 plugins available for the WordPresswebsites; and you do not need to install all of them. The availability of plugins in this number basically means that you have got too many options to choose from; and it can be quite difficult in most of the situations. You need to pick the best plugins for your sites. And it is quite possible for you ending up in installing too many plugins which might not be quite necessary for your site. Therefore, you have to make sure that you analyze a plugin thoroughly before installing it. You will need to see if this plugin is truly beneficial for your site.

Not creating a child theme while making changes

When you install WordPress, you get a basic theme. It is highly likely that you are not going to like that theme. So replace that theme with the one which looks good. But after working on the new theme for a few minutes, you realize that the old theme is better than the new one. In that scenario, you revert back to the old theme and start over with the website. This entire practice can be quite time consuming. However, the best way to deal with this situation is to install a child theme and work on it before making changes to the main theme. This way, you will be able to test whether or not the new theme is going to work for you.

Posted on

Why You Need To Focus On Long Tail Keywords?

If you are into the SEO business, you may already know the importance of keywords. In this scenario, it gets important to work on the long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are basically the phrases which are usually longer and more specific. And these keywords are not used for as many times as the normal keywords are used. These keywords do not get much traffic. However, they can lead to higher conversion rates. And the good thing is that they can help you gradually build more traffic to your website.

Now, you need to have a clear vision about your company, products and your website if you want to work with the long tail keywords. In this article, we are going to discuss what long tail keywords are and how they can be used in an SEO strategy.

What are long tail keywords?

These keywords are more specific and less common. The main focus of these keywords is the niches. The name ‘long tail keyword’ comes from the book named “The Long Tail”. This book tells that there is a market for virtually every product. However, this market may be quite tiny. And since we use long tail keywords for the promotion of products on internet, the prospects of forming a market are higher.

Even if you are promoting the same product across different blog posts or pages, the long tail keywords may differ in every post. That’s because of the slight change in the focus in every post or page. And that’s where you are going to have to do the analysis in order to choose the best keyword that is a fit for the specific topic.

Reason you need to focus on long tail keywords

Ranking for the long tail keywords is quite easier as compared to the e-commerce keywords. Reason is that you will not have to compete much for the ranking against that specific keyword. The longer and more specific the keyword is, the easier it is going to be to rank against that keyword. And the good thing is that the vastness of internet will allow you to get traffic to that keyword. Gradually, you will be able to build an audience based on that specific keyword.

Another benefit of long tail keywords is that they are mostly used by highly motivated audiences. Hence, if your website comes up in the search results of a long tail keyword, you are more likely to get an order for the purchase.

Posted on

The Rise of Rich Results

Google has done enough to bring richness to the search results. The main purpose is to provide users significant information on the SERPs.This is the reason that search results today look quite different from what used to appear on the screens a few years back. The search results we see today have extra information beneath the links of the sites. This information can be in the form of images, videos or any other visual content to elaborate the listing.

What are rich results?

First of all, it would be worth mentioning what snippets are. A snippet is basically a search results with black lines beneath the title. There is also a piece of content that explains the search result. Now, rich results are the listings that seem prominent due to their location and on-screen formatting. In most of the cases, these search results tend to catch all of the words in a search query. Those words are highlighted with bold letters.

With the help of these rich results, search engines try to provide results to the users in fastest way possible. These results also give other types of information about the listing such as product reviews and available.

One thing worth mentioning here is that rich results on mobile screens tend to provide actionable options to the users.This actionable information is displayed directly from the site.

The rich results also include rich snippets and answer boxes. Answer boxes are based on the information which Google itself knows about.This information comes from the Google’s knowledge graph.

Building blocks for rich snippets

If you want to get rich snippets, you will need to add structured data to your site. This structured data is stored in a vocabulary called Schema.org, and there are different ways to add it to your site. If you are working with CMS, adding structured data becomes a game of add-ons. Most of the add-ons use JSON-LD to add a lot of structured data to your site.

Benefits of rich snippets for SEO

With all that talking about the rich snippets, you may be surprised that these snippets do not improve the ranking of your site in a direct manner. However, the indirect benefit is so huge that you will find it to be one of the best things happening to your site. The rich snippets help your site get a prominent representation among the searchers.

Another benefit which makes all your efforts to get a rich snippet justifiable is that this representation can add significantly to your site’s credibility. The people will think of your site as an information resource which is preferred by Google. And they will think of your site to be an authentic source of information.

Posted on

Tips to Craft Great Page Titles

When you into the business of SEO, you are going to have to make sure that you have the necessary skill to write good page title. The reason is that a page title is the first thing the users see when they find your website in search results. Moreover, it is the page title which helps search engines to understand the topic of your website or web page.

HTML title tag and main heading

Many people think ofHTML title tag and main heading as two names of the same thing. However, these are different. HTML title tag appears as the name of a page on the tab of the browser. On the other hand, the main heading is inside the body of the page.

Page title’s role in SEO

The main purposes of a page title are as under.

  • The page title has to help your page to rank against the relevant keywords.
  • It needs to be attractive enough for the user. It needs to make the user click on link in search results.

It is worth mentioning that both of these factors are quite important. If your website ranks well but it is not clicked by the users, this good ranking is of no use. As a matter of fact, the ranking of your page is going to deteriorate over time.

Click through rate

Click-through rate is the factor used by Google. This factor helps Google understand how relevant a website is against a specific keyword. If the CTR of your website is not number that Google expects in order to rank the website for a certain position, the rank of your website will drop. Page title has huge role to play in this regard.

Focus keyword in the title

If a specific focus keyword is something your page talks about, make sure that you add that focus keyword into the page title. As mentioned above, Google looks at the page title to figure out what the page is all about. Thus, not adding focus keyword can be quite detrimental for the overall SEO of your website.

One thing worth mentioning here is that the purpose of adding focus keyword into the page title shouldn’t only be helping search engine in figuring out the topic of your post. The title with focus keyword needs to be attractive for the users as well. This is how they will be compelled to click on the link of your page.

Ideal title length for SEO

There is no fixed character limit of the page title. However, you have to make sure that it is neither too short nor too long. The title needs to give a little description about the page. And if it is long enough to hide in the SERPs, it will also not serve the purpose. It is worth mentioning here that Google SERPs have a specific width, in terms of screen’s real estate, allocated for the page titles. You can keep in mind that width limit while crafting a title.

Posted on

Bringing Synchronization between Branding and Keyword Strategy

You may wonder if there is a difference between the brand and your keyword. Well, there is not much of a difference in this regard and you have to make sure that both are synchronized with each other. For this purpose, you are going to have to use both of them effectively. The matter of fact is that your brand name is one of your keywords. Here, you will have to make sure that it is not your only keyword. And a scenario in which there are lots of keywords with no brand is also not ideal.

Branding and keyphrases

You may have heard about the brand keyword. It is a keyword which the people use in order to find your brand online. Branding is actually a procedure in which you sell your products or services after including your specific company name with the name of the product or service. It is actually a way of marking your ownership.

Branding your products

One thing about brand name is that it doesn’t have to be a generic name. As a matter of fact, it would be better if you select a specific name instead of a generic one. It would be worth mentioning here that a generic name has extra capability to get ranked in Google search results. But these results aren’t usually permanent because people tend to forget the generic names. On the other hand, a specific or unique brand name is remembered by the people. It is quite ideal for the long term marketing of your brand. It is going to entirely depend upon how well you spread awareness about your products and brand. This way, people will search using your brand name in search engine. That’s where you will be able to get your brand ranked by leaps and bounds.

Branding your homepage

The page of your site that has the utmost importance in terms of branding is the homepage. The only task of your homepage is to rank for your brand. You can look at all of the famous brands. You will find the homepages of their websites doing the branding work.

Keyword strategy

People usually talk about the keyword research. However, not many people pay proper attention to keyword strategy. Keyword strategy is as important as keyword research. After you have extracted a long list of keywords which your website needs to be ranked against, you will need to have a strategy to use those keywords for the better ranking of your website. You will need to decide which keywords need to rank against on top priority. This decision making and all other kinds of keyword related strategic decisions are the important processes of a successful keyword strategy.

Posted on

Important Local SEO Practices to Consider

Local SEO is just as important as big business SEO.  You need to learn how to connect to your customers, who want to purchase.  Local SEO does bring up a lot of checklists and valuable information, but many enterprise companies won’t target that since they don’t optimize for local searches. But, you should, especially if you want to reach a local market.

The patent for a business only requires you to have four things, a physical address with a legitimate phone number, the H1 matches the name of the business, the URL, and the page has links posting to it from other pages or location and a business name.  The Maps feature also should be utilized, since it forces websites to optimize for the countries, provinces, states, and cities as well.

Since then, the goal of this is to push for local results in websites, and that means that you need to make sure that you have the location specific to the business as well. Otherwise, it’s going to be dropped.  This is something that has recently been used with the Panda and Penguin updates, so remember that.

With enterprises, you want to try to make sure that you claim your business on Google Places, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Groupon, and other location services. But, you want to make sure that you add local links to this as well.  you’ll want to make sure that this manages the local pages, gives you an interface to monitor and respond to various reviews and also pushes the information out to different location sites too.

You should make sure that you establish authoritative pages for the location, the H1 has the location name, the content has the addresses and phone numbers, and you have local schema for the local information in place too.

If you have URLs, you need to make sure that you have the business name as needed. Yext and SweetIQ services will also give you local signals to other locations. You should have everything also optimized for Maps, preferably Google Maps, on pages with the pin to address.  Unique content, whether it be customer reviews, specific location services, links to nearby locations, hours of operation, an event happening, and a location description.

Images are also great because people want to see your business. That way, you’ll be able to show it off, and you should include both text and alt text.  Sub-pages with additional information and internal links to pages as well are also incredibly important.  Ranking for this is super important to have, and if you’re a business who is trying to win in the local market, you need to have a good idea on what it is that you need to do in order to rank in this, so you can do it as needed.

Location is important, and a local business needs this to survive, so always make sure that you’re putting that info in no matter what, since it makes a big difference in the way the business is inevitably ran.

Posted on

Link Building 101

While this is an introduction to effective link building, here, we’ll tell you about Suggest a Link, and why it works.

Some people may call it link begging, but it’s so much more than that, and if you know how to increase conversions, this is integral for it.

This consists of link building to websites and pages like your own and asking publishers to link to the page, and this type of link works amazingly with websites that have resources or link pages. This is great for linking to useful sites, and you can suggest relevant and useful web pages for this.

However, in order to obtain a link, you need a relevant web page, which means you need to take the time to review the links that are listed that you want a link from. The work is exclusive, and it is something that’s excluded, so if you link exclusively to educational or government pages, then you should skip it since it’s a waste of time asking for links such as that.  You will notice that excluding all sites from that is possible.

If your site is commercial, you want to link to other commercial web pages, even if it’s just a singular one, and you should visit the commercial link, and from there identify why the page is linked to there. Is the link to a product specifically, or is the link to an informational article.

If you link to an article, you’ll have a much higher success rate if it’s a useful article. You may also link to a product page within the article, which is the next best thing to do, and it isn’t as useful as going straight to the products page, but it helps. If you have a commercial site, getting natural links about products is ideal, but it’s difficult since many don’t’ link directly, so set your expectations for this in a rightful manner.  Remember that obtaining links does take effort too.

When building links, you should review the pages that are linked, and from there, suggest similarly useful web pages, and link to more than just a page too, but you should suggest other pages as well. You can link from sites whose readers will find this useful. If they don’t already exist, work to create pages that are useful to sites that you want to link from. Remember as well not t worry about metrics including domain authority. As long as it isn’t a spam site, and it’s relevant, then that’s fine.  Finally, you should make sure that you don’t fret if the link is redirect or no-follow.  This is still a useful link at the end of a day, and it can be good for you to try especially if you notice that you need links.

Building links can be incredibly hard, and there is a lot that’s going on, and a lot that you can deal with. The right links and the right building can be incredibly useful.