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Connection between Long-Tail Keywords and SEO

You may already have heard about the long tail keywords. They are the combination of a few words, typically heading towards the formation of queries that are entered in search engines to find content, products, and services.And there is a good reason to say that long tail keywords are generally less popular keywords.

Some myths about long tail keywords

A vast majority of people believe that long tail keywords are based on 3 – 4 keywords. It is entirely untrue. The most basic factor that brings a keyword into the category of long tail keywords is its rarity. The relative rarity of a keyword that tends to occur as a phrase in Google search is the factor that makes it a long tail keyword.

History of long tail

The concept of long tail keywords started with an article ‘The Long Tail’, which was published in the Wired magazine. The concept stated there says:

“…the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator… Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching—a market response to inefficient distribution.

…Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody.”

The notion here is that internet is a vaster realm as compared to the physical world. It is not restricted by the limited radio frequencies and limited spaces in the bookstores. Even if you search for something that has never been searched before, you are likely to get a result that might fulfill your needs. And if you are marketer or business, you can find an audience no matter how rare that audience is.

What’s good about long tail?

It is very difficult to optimize for the long tail keywords. According to the survey, about 15% search queries entered in Google are new; and so they care the long tail keywords. The question here is whether you can optimize for a keyword that has never been used before. Well, the chances are meager. But still this 15% of the search queries cannot be written off. The reason is that most of the search queries in those 15% are the ones that are meant to bring money to the businesses.

Now the thing is that you cannot do accurate optimization of those 15% search queries unless you get lucky. But you can stay close by avoiding ambiguity, being precise, avoiding going off topic, and answering the questions to meet the needs of the queries.

Long tail keywords and SEO

In general, you will want to get ranked against more common keywords because that’s how you can show up in the top of SERPs when people search for the types of service you offer. But the matter of fact is that working on long tail keywords is purely profitable because only the serious users, who get online for the purpose of getting converted, use those keywords. But since Google has gotten better in dealing with the phrases and it continues to get even better, you can presume that long tail keywords are going to get crucial.

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Attracting Valuable Links through Interactive Content

Links constitute a major ranking signal, meaning that you must work on links if you want to emerge well in the search engine’s arena. But since there is a saturation of contenders and this saturation continues to get bigger with the passage of time, we can presume that traditional methods to build links might soon completely seize offering the websites unique ways to rank.

What does that mean? It means that you need to do something different if you want to rank well.

Confused? The thing is that guest posting and other similar tactics of building links are still great and necessary ways to build links but they are not going to offer competitive advantage.

So, you are going to have to shift your focus towards incorporating something that has the potential to become popular immediately but your competitors are not working on it. For instance, you can work on interactive content.

A few of the interactive content ideas are worth talking about here.

Tools and calculators

The induction of tools and calculators that can help your audience to do something to make estimates in concern with the service you are offering can be great wayto build a reasonable audience which may even tend to convert. For instance, you can embed a dimensional weight calculator if your business deals with the packaging and shipping of products. This calculator will have to be able to tell the exact size, weight, and shipping costs of the packages.

Games and quizzes

If your website is not a portal from where the product and services could be purchased, you can embed the interactive content to keep your audience busy. Games and quizzes are the best tools to not only keep your audience engaged in your pages but they may also become an attraction for the users to come again and again to your pages. However, since these tools are resource-intensive in most of the situations, your pages might take a long time to load.

Interactive maps

A static map is not a bigger attraction for the users simply due to the act that they do not offer anything other than an option to zoom in, zoom out, and move around in the map. Interactive maps, on the other hand, are completely different in this scenario. In addition to allowing users to zoom in, zoom out and move the map, the interactive maps allow addition of data at different locations. The major reasons these maps are popular is that they allow users to compare places. This tool is particularly helpful for travel brands.

Interactive infographics and reports

Infographics are quite popular. But many people say that they are not as effective as they were in the past. The major reason is that people have lost interest in static pictures. What you may find more interesting here are the interactive infographics that allow the input of data to show the stats or results that you want. Incorporating such tools in your pages can help you enhance traffic to your website in a drastic manner.

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Tips for Effective Digital Marketing

Number one characteristic of an effective digital marketing strategy is that it is mindful, meaning that every aspect of this marketing is properly aligned with the strategy to perform its function in an ideal manner. Take example of Yoga. Yoga practice focuses on the enhancement of strength beyond physical. A typical Yoga practice involves a specific posture with closed eyes, deep breaths, and clearing of thoughts. The main purpose is to align physical and mental self and then working on a holistic way to extend the capabilities of both.

An ideal way to do the digital marketing is quite similar to that of yoga. It means that this approach needs to be flexible.

Finding purpose

An important purpose of yoga is to clear the thoughts and focus on the core values without paying attention to the external pressure. Using this very same approach in business and marketing process can help you get the best results. Example of Steve Jobs is quite prominent here. We all know about Apple Company being a trendsetter in the tech industry. And what’s more interesting is that they bring innovation that doesn’t seem risky. It is because of the fact that experts working in the company know the company’s value and they do not get obsessed with a wilder thought of introducing innovation.

Same thing can be done with the digital marketing.Focusing on your company’s core value and clearing the thoughts can help you think about the best digital marketing approach that is going to be extremely beneficial for your company.

Staying positive

The main purpose of clearing thoughts during yoga practice is to get rid of the negative thoughts and emotions. And then, what are going to fill in this ‘empty’ brain? Surely it is not going to be a negative thought.

As a marketer, you may be at the center of customer-driven activities in certain occasions. That’s where multiple conversations can delude your mind and make you do something which is not good for your business.In such scenarios, the best approach is to take a deep breath and focus on the desired outcome you are working for.

Developing empathy

The kind of marketing that involves crafting a pitch and then saying it in front of the masses without paying attention to the general and specific needs of audience is an easy and cruel approach. Even if you somehow manage to convince someone about buying a product based on some powerful words, it is not a long terms strategy because you are not paying attention to what your audience want.

The best thing to do here is to work on unique goals and motivations of the target market and provide them proper guidance through the marketing funnel. That is possible only if you do research to know about the specific requirements of your audience and focus those requirements during production and marketing procedures.

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Tips To Optimize Your Business Listing On Yelp

Yelp is a great platform for promoting local businesses; and the reason it works pretty well is that it doesn’t appear to be a search engine (even though it does have a core algorithm with a job of assigning listing the ranks). The powerful factor behind ranking of a listing on Yelp seems to be the reviews – and that’s actually true.

Now, what may come as a surprise is that a search result can have the suggestions which do not have the most reviews. And that’s where you can presume that the Yelp’s algorithm actually pays attention to a number of other factors besides just the reviews. And that’s where you may realize that you definitely need to optimize your Yelp’s listing to make it more prominent over this bigger platform.

It may be worth noting that Yelp doesn’t provide information, on frequent basis, about the steps that businesses may consider in order to improve ranking of their listings. Nonetheless, there are the basic things that can be done in this regard to meet the objectives.

Filling out all of your information

It’s a no brainer that complete information about your business is going to convince the potential customers about considering your service. And from the perspective of optimization, a complete Yelp listing is definitely going to win the platform’s trust. The simple fact to keep in mind in this regard is that your listing will look complete as compared to the ones with incomplete business details.

Adding photos

A page simply appears fancy when there are photos in it. Thus, it is an ultimate requirement to add as many photos as required to explain the product or service nicely. This would include the photos that you are uploading as well as the photos which your reviewers are uploading.

Respond to reviews

As a general rule of thumb, your page will remain in the high ranks if it receives fresh content every now and then. Your Yelp listing is going to receive the reviews. In this scenario, you are going to have to respond to the review that you receive. This will not only keep the page updated with fresh content but it is also a nice way to engage with your customers. Satisfaction of your existing customer will reflect through the reviews; and it will help you get new customers.

Optimize for keywords

You will want your listing to be available against certain keywords. And according to the best SEO standards, you will have to make sure that your listing is optimized for humans, not bots.

When it comes to keyword optimization, it is important to pay attention to the content as well. Tags related to the pages are important but if a specific volume of keywords is not present in the content, all search algorithms are going to consider such content irrelevant.

Pay attention to the categories

If there isa category available that can accurately represent the type of your business, there is no point in choosing the round-about categories. It means that you are going to have to be careful while selecting the category for your business while creating a listing.

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What Is the Role of Technical Audit in Website’s Improvement?

For many people in the past decade, SEO has been all about throwing a few links and working social signal to get the rankings improved. Not many people used to pay attention to the role of technical audits in the website’s SEO. But lately, many people seem to be getting it.Still, the general mindset that is used in approaching the technical audits is not something that can guarantee great results.

For starters, people seem to be paying more attention to the use of tools and data in order to do the audit. They don’t seem to be focusing on getting a sense about the needs and goals of the website. As a matter of fact, understanding the requirements and objectives is needed long before you ask about the use of tools and data.

And then, there is “cookie-cutter SEO” which also includes audits. Depending on the budget, goals and limitations, SEO audit can be vary. For instance, a stand-alone technical audit is going to be more comprehensive as compared to the one which is conducted as part of an ongoing program. You also have to take needs and limitations into considerations.

Understanding the business

There can be different requirements of the people coming and asking for the technical audits of their websites. These requirements are first based on the type of business they are running or the situation that has led them coming to you and asking for the technical audit. The purpose here can include anything from improving the site’s performance to fixing any issue to risk assessment.

After determining the purpose comes the onboarding phase. This phase includes the following procedures:

  • Asking right questions
  • Getting past data from SEO and developers’ teams
  • Getting to know about the business model

The initial onboarding process can never be ignored here. You need to get the answers of following questions in this regard.

  • Did they read a blog post?
  • Are they coming to you with specific concerns?
  • Are they coming to you after having an advice from someone?
  • What is the end result they want from the audit?

In other words, you need to know about the factor that motivated them to have a website audit. This way, you will not only be able to manage their expectations but you will also be able ensure the provision of actionable reports to them.

At this point, you need to know about your main point of contact. There are certain possibilities such as:

  • A team leader
  • Marketing director
  • Business owner (in case it is a small business)
  • SEO agency
  • Web design firm

Depth of the audit

You need to determine the type of audit that you need to perform. There are two types of audits that you can do here.

The first type of audit is the limited site audit. This approach works well for the people with limited budgets. This process is based on a top-down analysis which tends to identify the elements which need to be analyzed in depth. Surely you are not going to do this further analysis because you job is to identify the elements.

The second type of audit is the comprehensive site audit. This audit involves a deep dive into the entire list of elements which need to be analyzed during an audit. Obviously this audit is going to be costlier because of the level of efforts and expertise required in the task.

Reporting and deliverables

After you have worked on the audit, you need to determine what should be in the report. A few things that you will need to consider in this regard are as under.

  • Make sure that the report is functional
  • You need to know who is doing implementation based on the report you have submitted
  • You have to see if it is a first time or a quarterly review
  • You need to know if there is more than one team working on the report

Make sure that you are delivering manageable reports which include proper information about the elements with problems. You need to suggest practical solutions to the problems. And for best results, you need to meet with the contact and the teams which are going to be assigned the task of working on your recommendations.

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Use of Keywords in the Content Written For Search Audiences

SEO professional, who have been working in this area throughout the past decade, will know how much has changed during this time.

There was no Panda, Humingbird, RankBrain or BERT in 2010. But it is surprising that many of us still think about SEO content as something which involves:

  • Addition of target keyword and its variants in the content for a specific number of times
  • Addition of keyword in the major places such as title tag, Meta description, and H1
  • Paying strict attention to the word count

However, this isn’t how things work now because Google has matured well over all these years. The practice of stuffing keywords in different areas of content is not how you can get it ranked now. You ultimately have to pay attention to what searchers are looking for.

What is SEO content?

SEO content can be defined as the content which is written for the purpose of improving search engine’s ranking of the webpage or website. This term was invented at the time when SEOs literally used to write content only for search engines, not for humans. And so, this term has fallen out of the favor with many professionals working in the SEO industry today.

Advancements in search engines have made the flaw within this term quite obvious. Search engines have worked well to become programmatic representation of the searchers. Search engines algorithms now focus more on what searchers would pick as the best result after entering their query. In this scenario, the answer to “how to rank” is to pay attention to what is more valuable for the searchers.

Making content SEO friendly

If you want to write SEO friendly content, you are going to have to focus on the intention behind searcher’s question. Furthermore, you will also have to pay attention to the high degree of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the content in order to make it rank well within SERPs.

When it comes to answering the question based on user intent, you will first have to pay attention to the title. Make sure that title is exactly the query that searchers enter into the search bar. And then, you will have to make sure that the content under that title fully answers the query.

E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) has become one of the major points of discussion in the SEO industry. High E-A-T content tends to attract more attention.

In other words, SEO friendly content is not the type of content that involves seemingly mindless insertion of keywords in different areas of the content body. SEO is well past that point.

Importance of Keywords for SEO

You may wonder about the use of keywords while learning about the role of E-A-T and searcher-focused content and titles. Do they really matter in modern day SEO?

The matter of fact is that the keywords have transformed into queries in the modern day SEO. Instead of looking for the ways to use keywords in the content, you need to focus on answering the queries. It means that you essentially need to do research about the top queries that searchers are using in order to get suggestions for the type of content they are looking for.

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Ways for the Travel Brands to Compete In Organic Search

Travel brands have become prominent enough to make the industry of travel and tourism a prominent one. And due to this very reason, travel brands seem facing a tough competition within the industry.

Another thing to keep into consideration here is that the travel industry is one of the most data-rich industries due to different types of user demands and the efforts made by the brands to make things more predictable.

Brands tend to bring transparency in the process through which the customers select different packages. And since larger companies are usually successful in keeping complex things simple for the users, they are preferred more by Google. But it doesn’t mean that relatively small players cannot be prominent. Running business operations and marketing, especially the digital, in an organized manner is the best thing to do.

In this article, we are going to talk about the ways travel brands can prepare themselves for the tougher competition out there.

Engage with travel influencers

If you want to make your travel brand widely known among a targeted audience, you are going to have to find someone who can have an influence over that audience. Yes, I am talking about influencers here.

Today, the influencers use different platforms from where they can address a bigger audience. Those platforms include YouTube, blogging platforms and other social media platforms. Larger brands are usually found engaging with influencers over YouTube and Instagram. And small brands focus on getting links through bloggers.

Remember, the only way you can get brand exposure is to get your business announced through a person or business that has an influence in the industry.

Be ready to address new audiences and markets

If you are targeting only one specific market and audience, your business is not going to grow. You are going to have to do consistent research on the ways to explore different new markets and audiences to get the new customers and connections. And the role of influencers is huge in this regard. You don’t need to work to become an influencer. Instead, you will have to find influencers in the newly explored markets.

Another important thing to take into consideration is the SEO. Make sure that your website is fully optimized to become accessible to the types of audiences you want to target. And make sure that your website has all of the necessary information to give nice overview of what you have to offer.

Leverage micro-moments

Travel industry focuses on bringing the customers on board at different points. When a customer visits a website, they look for the content which can help them getting converted. Having that said, content on the travel brands’ websites needs to be in such a way that it focuses on leveraging each of the micro-moment. Your job here is to get to know about the micro-moments that bring conversions in the travel industry. And so, you are going to have to develop the content by keeping in focus those micro-moments.

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Top Misconceptions about Link Building

Link building is an important aspect of SEO because Google ranks your site on the basis of links you have acquired. With this statement in mind, you will be compelled to find the best ways to build links. And that’s where you are going to do the Googling.

A person with sound knowledge about how things work would not go for any recommendation about building links simply because there is a risk for the practice to be counterproductive. Many of the people do some pretty strange, even outdated, things to build links; and what’s more dangerous is that those practices work for them for once or twice. And they share those methods by portraying them as standard practices. This is the reason that many of the so-called informational websites are stuffed with the misconceptions which the readers perceive as legitimate information.

In this article, we are going to talk about some common misconceptions about link building.

Misconception 1: if your content is truly engaging, you don’t need to build links

There is no denying of the fact that good content is crucial for your site to perform well. But if you are relying only on the good quality content and not paying attention to building links for your pages, you are actually keeping the webpages private; which is certainly against everything you do online in order to promote your business.An effective link building strategy is one of the most important things that you need to work on if you want your brand to be known to the audience you target.

Misconception 2: There is no difference between buying and earning links

For many people, a link is a link whether it is a purchased one or an earned one. However, you have to keep in mind here that it’s much like a slippery slope.

An effective strategy to earn links is basically an investment that brings a huge return in the long term. This is due to the fact that an earned link tends to gain value with the passage of time. And so, you can expect a valuable rise in authority and traffic. Let’s just say you have earned a link at a site with a domain rating of 39. With the rise in DR, that earned link is going to be more valuable for you.

In case of purchased link, there is no surety regarding what will happen to it in the future. As a matter of fact, a purchased link loses its value with the passage of time. The major reason is that many other buyers would have purchased links from the site you have earned link from. It means they are doing this business for living. And this is the very practice which can earn them a penalty from Google. You can assume what happens when you have a link at a site which has been penalized.

Misconception 3: Digital PR Campaigns bring you the best links

An example of the PR campaigns is a strategy that involves targeting of the media outlets. And those campaigns do not target the niche blogs which can be more relevant to the business intending to get links.  This practice may be able to bring traffic for a time being but you are not going to get conversions through it.

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Tips To Identify and Eliminate Keyword Cannibalization

A common myth is that if more pages on your site target a specific keyword, you are going to rank well for that keyword. According to this concept, you can actually insist Google more on picking your pages for ranking.

Well, it is not true actually.

As a matter of fact, targeting one phrase or keyword across multiple pages can have the opposite effect. And it will be more harmful for the SEO of your website. The reason is that when you target one keyword across different pages on your site, you actually make those pages compete with each other. They are not going to work in a collaboration which you were assuming.

As a result of this scenario, each of those pages will have lower CTR, poor authority and dissatisfactory conversion rate.

This misstep is called Keyword Cannibalization.

Identifying keyword cannibalization

Identifying and fixing the keyword cannibalization is quite easy. We will talk about the identification of the problem first. This process is much similar to that of creating the keyword matrix.

You will first have to create a spreadsheet in which all of the site’s important pages and their associated keywords will be listed. You can also use the keyword mapping tool.

This data will be based on a list of important URLs and the keywords associated with the pages of those URLs. Then you are going to have to look for any duplication. If there is duplication, it means that your site is suffering from keyword cannibalization.

Fixing the keyword cannibalization

Your approach in solving the keyword cannibalization problem mainly depends upon the root of the problem. Having that said, there are a few solutions which you can go for in order to fix the issue of keyword cannibalization.

  • The simplest solution that can help you eliminate the keyword cannibalization is the restructuring of your website. This method mainly involves turning your most authoritative page into a landing page.
  • There may be a case in which you lack a landing page that consolidates all of the product pages in one place. In this scenario, you can create a new landing page and link it to all of the unique variations. This page is going to server as your authoritative source page.
  • If multiple pages on your site target the same keyword and those pages do not offer uniqueness of content, you can consider consolidating the content. In other words, you take multiple underperforming pages and combine them to make one authoritative source of information.
  • If you already have unique content in the pages across your website but you are using poor keyword strategy, you can consider finding new keywords for the pages. In this scenario, you are going to have to make sure that the keywords are aligned with the content in the pages from the perspective of context.

These are a few but highly effective ways to fix keyword cannibalization. Since this problem has become more prevalent these days; and so, it is very important to keep your pages and keywords under a tight check to make sure that your site is performing well.

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Tips To Create Great Meta Descriptions

Meta description is the first thing about a website that we see on the SERPs. And so, it is highly important to make sure that you have optimized your Meta descriptions in an ideal manner. It may be worth mentioning here that Meta descriptions are not directly helpful with the rankings. However, this signal, even being an indirect one, plays a huge role in your SEO.

Things that are dependent on Meta description include click-through rate, perception about the quality results, and a perception about what is being offered in the web page.

Importance of Meta description for SEO

In the olden days of SEO, Meta description was perceived to be the factor helping in the SEO. You may wonder if it helped the websites to rank. Google states it categorically that neither Meta description was a part of ranking process in the past nor it is the case in the present. However, it is actually the primary description that helps your users understand what’s in the web page. If they like the description, they enter the website. And if the description is not convincing, they simply refer to other search results in the SERPs.

Given the function the Meta description has to perform, it becomes evident that it is the very first step that can help you in improving CTR, boosting traffic, increasing the chances of more conversions.

Difference between Meta Description and SERP Snippets

Many of the people mistake Meta description and search snippets to be the two names of one thing. It is not the case actually. Meta description is mainly an HTML tag which you can control. Its creation and optimization is entirely up to you.

On the other hand, search snippets are controlled by Google. Google creates them and show them on the SERPs. A search snippet may contain Meta description or the Google may choose to use any other part of description from the content body of the web page.

Now, we are going to discuss some tips to improve your Meta Descriptions.

The ideal or recommended length of Meta description

Over the years, the best SEO practice had been to keep Meta description no lengthier than 160-165 characters. However, Google changed it in the last year. Now, you can insert a Meta description of up to 300 characters. It means that you have got more space in which you can add an extra bit of details to the summary of what you want your users to see in the Meta description.

Research the SERPs

It is actually more of a manual approach to see what is going to be ideal for you. You can do a little SERP research to find out what is going on in the industry.

  • First, you need to research the SERPs using your targeted keyword. The process can be a bit of time consuming but it is actually quite straightforward. And it is the way you can see where your competitors stand when people use the targeted query you are using at the moment.
  • Then you are going to do a little research on what your competitors are doing. SERP research is helpful in this regard obviously.
  • The data being displayed from the above two steps can be exported in the spreadsheet. This way, you can do an effective tracking.

Researching your clients

Another factor on which the success of your Meta description depends heavily is the description’s alignment with what your customers like at every phase of the buying journey.That’s where you are going to have to do an extensive research because the marketing funnel can be different for different audiences.