Working with a SEO Agency to Get More Business
SEO Company Secures More Sales Leads for Businesses
Let’s face it – it seems like anyone with a slight grasp of the digital marketplace nowadays is a so-called expert in search engine optimization (SEO). However, in practice, not every SEO company lives up to the expectations of the business that hired it in the first place. Why?
Sometimes it is a lack of setting proper online goals, or lack of communication, at SEOBANK we do a lot of listening to our client’s needs. More often than not, it’s that the “so-called expert” actually lacks the skill set to advance the companies ranking online. Trying desperately to run SEO campaigns that might have worked better in the mid 1990’s.
SEO has Evolved, so have We.
Most CEOs know that a professional SEO company for their small businesses will make a world of difference in traffic, leads, and sales. We all want to rank better on the search engines. Still, the harsh reality is that the search engine algorithms change as we speak, and only a SEO expert can make most of those changes. So not only is SEO landscape changing but SEO companies seem to pop up and dissapear just as quick as your positions in search results.
Always check out the History of an SEO Agency and see if you can find out a few of the following as a guide line before hiring anyone and trusting them with your businesses rank and sales. Whenever dealing with any marketing or seo vendors, ensure that you manage your vendors properly by tracking your key metrics and KPIs. Which ultimately should be coming from the SEO Firm in the way of reports.
Questions to Ask any SEO Firm Before Getting Started:
1. How will you improve our search engine rankings?
2. How will you keep me informed of any website changes?
3. Can you share information on some of your past clients and their results?
4. Do you always follow Google’s best practices?
5. Which tools do you use?
6. What types of SEO work will you do?
7. Can you guarantee that our site will rank #1 for a major search term?
8. How often will you report on your work, and what will it look like?
9. What is your payment structure?
The above questions come from Quick Sprout’s blog Don’t Get Fooled: 17 Questions to Ask before hiring an SEO Company and I wanted to repost the article because it’s worth the read, if you schedule some SEO consulting time, we will answer any questions you may have about our SEO process.
But before we go into detail about the value of a true SEO expert, let’s cover more about the what an SEO firm and can do for your business online and bottom line sales.
So, What does an SEO Agency actually do for Your Business?
Basically, SEO companies that work with small businesses are often misinterpreted as agencies that help businesses rank higher on Google. Aside from only ranking higher which is obviously just one small business’ goal. A professional SEO company works to enhance and maintain the business’ online reputation, brand and increase sales through online leads. But it’s also good to know that it helps to scale that business, through all types of technology so that it will survive the ever changing landscape of Google Updates and be able to attract and retain new visitors in the long run.
The entire process of hiring an SEO expert starts with a Free SEO Evaluation of where the company gets it’s current website ranked against the digital market and learns that the essential steps are to improve its traffic, speed and most of all, visibility on the search engines.
Having in mind that more than 60% of the internet searches in the US are conducted using Google, most of the SEO companies for small businesses prefer choosing Google as the one-and-only indicator and roadmap for ranking. We look at all major search engines and ensure to rank you, in them all.
Aside from increasing the traffic and visibility on Google, an expert SEO firm works with you to optimize your website, it’s code structure and set your keyword focus, page per page to gain victory over the search engines.
Another thing that can have great impact on the overall success of the SEO campaign is adding proper call-to-actions within the website to capture visitor traffic and ultimately, get that lead into the marketing funnel to ensure a sale now or in the future.
Still, there is one major thing that every expert SEO company initiates to truly expand your reach online…. content marketing.
Content Marketing: The true driver of authority to any small business website
There is one thing every small business should know.
Without content, there is no SEO. Without it, there is also no possibility to rank higher, get traffic or ultimately, convert visitors to customers. Other SEO Experts and Companies have coined the phrase, “Content is King”, however that content doesn’t matter until it has the authority to be seen.
A true holistic SEO campaign should start with great Keyword Research, which filters into amazing valuable content that gets shared socially and garners tons of links beacuase people think your article is worth the share. It has VALUE. You can also create some of your own backlinks to start getting some attention, but articles that help reads solve problems will always do well online.
And that is exactly why content is the focus of every SEO company when hired by a local business. Now, a content marketing campaign can be a daunting process without a SEO expert by your side. That is mostly because it includes a lot of planning, keyword research, idealization for content and incorporating all marketing channels to expand the company story and reach out to your ideal clients no matter what stage of the buying cycle they are at.
Content marketing and SEO go well together. In fact, they cannot survive without each other – just like you cannot optimize a website with no content, or write content and then do nothing in terms of SEO. Functioning together, both SEO and content marketing help your visitors discover, engage and convert with a website.
The real magic is this, right now someone, somewhere is actively SEARCHING for your products and services and if you are at the top of Google you can gain more than 91.5% of all traffic for that keyword search term if you are at the #1 position. Even being close to the top gets tons of business, way more than lets say, running a newspaper or radio campaign at $60,000K or more per year trying to get drivers attention as they are headed down the Highway to catch your next big Biz Idea. Yeah Right. Google and SEO both dominated and pretty much destroyed, all other forms of marketing because of this fact.
People are Looking for you Online, Are you at the Top of Google, Right Now? or Not?
Anyone remember the YellowPages Books? At one time it was a viable form of marketing, creating a phone book listing. Now they too are a digital marketing company. Evolve or die. Get more people interested in and reading your content and get them to convert to customers.
Speaking of converting…
Conversion: The Ultimate goal of SEO for Small Business
Last but not the least, the number 1 goal of an expert SEO working with any business is trying to implement, analyze and get MORE website conversions.
Basically, when visitors are able to find the website in search, click the link, engage and connect with the person on that page, so that they take action, conversion happens.
Now, conversion can take many different forms. It can be a newsletter sign-up, a product purchase or an E-book file download. No matter what form it takes, the goal of leading visitors into the lead funnel where the ‘offer’ or ‘call-to-action’ makes the client jump on board is a true measure of a successful SEO company. We would like to guarantee everyone sales and we can get them pretty much ready to buy, but once they are in your hands for a sales call it’s up to You. But, we WILL, get you plenty of leads to close.
What is the Cost of Using a Professional SEO Company ?
When it comes to the cost of SEO for small businesses, not every SEO company charges the same. In fact, there are companies that charge monthly – and others that charge per project. And although there is no carved-in-stone rule here, monthly work may be short sighted for your business goals. After all, top quality SEO for small business websites takes time and every SEO expert would agree with this.
Different SEO companies use different payment structures. It’s important to know how much and when exactly you will need to pay so that you can factor it into your budget.
Because SEO can be done in so many different ways, many consultancies will charge by the project. In fact, according to a Moz survey, 70.1% of SEOs offer project-based pricing. If this is something you’re interested in, you can find someone who offers it. Expect to pay between $1,200 and $7,500+.
At SEOBANK.ca we use this quoting method, where we take in all SEO considerations across 5 to 6 professional SEO tools to see what your campaign needs or if any code changes need to take place and give you a proper quote on exactly what you need because that makes the most sense in fair pricing.
After the initial SEO work is complete and you have a good foundation and visibility online, we work to increase your keyword reach via Month to Month SEO Services, again offering just the services that would make the most impact, our Month to Month Services start at $550 CAN and includes, New Keyword Research, Content Creation, On-Page Optimization, Local SEO, Social Media Marketing and Backlinking.
SEO PRICING MONTH TO MONTH IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.
Another option is to pay by hour, which is a popular option if you’re dealing with technical SEO or need to fix just one small aspect of your website. Expect to pay $76-$200 CAN per hour for a good SEO. We also fall into that range, depending on the service provided.
In the end, we can definitely conclude that SEO services are a great value to any business. However, it is a long-term investment, not a get rich quick scheme. It is much like any other forms of investing. Education about the SEO process can be helpful and you would want to hire someone that you can trust and really know that he is going to lead your business SEO to success online.
That is how we got our name SEOBANK, we see ourselves as Investment Brokers for the biggest asset a company can own. DATA. Shaping content, expanding your reach, gaining leads and ensuring people feel great about your brand online is what we do.
If you are interested in growing your business online with the help and strategic guidance from a trusted SEO Firm that gets results Get in Touch.
Best Backlinking Tools for Business Websites & SEO’s
How to Build and Manage Your Backlinks
A Backlinking Guide for SEO’s & Businesses
Most people wonder what backlinking is until they have to design a website and get it rankes to start receiving traffic, leads and sales. Backlinks can be easily defined as incoming links to a webpage, or one website pointing to another website via a “backlink“.
Simple, so why so much discussion confusion over backlinks in the business and SEO world? Read on…
When a web page is linked to another page, this is what’s called a backlink. Link Building a major factor in the ranking of any web page, in fact, it can be one of the primary reasons that one website … outranks another.
his is what’s called a backlink. Link Building a major factor in the ranking of any web page, in fact, it can be one of the primary reasons that one website … outranks another.
In the past, a page that had a lot of backlinks was ranked higher on major search engines, and this still holds until today. However, Google now knows & understands more about how your links are created and really has cracked down on link schemes or PBNs (private blog networks). Keeping a clean backlinking profile has never mattered more than it does today. So what does that mean, “a clean backlinking profile?”
Coming Clean on Links – A Clean Backlinking Profile
With out getting overly technical backlinking should always have one principle in mind before acquiring a link, and that principle is this, “Would I Want This Backlink if Google, Didn’t Exist?” simply put, is the backlink going to send in traffic from a source that would be willing to actually buy or at the very least be interested in my products or services? If the answer is, No don’t build that link.
In the past and especially in something called Black Hat SEO, web spammers would use link schemes, to sell a lot of useless links to businesses that wouldn’t send any relevant traffic to the site, but would help them rank quickly. Google caught on, updated their search algorithm and now those days are Long Gone. End of Story.
The above quote comes from Eric Ward the author of the “Ultimate Guide to Link Building” and I have personally trained with him on proper backlinking strategy and recommend his material for link building on Amazon.
Nowadays, not all backlinks are measured the same and there is a lot of technical aspects that goes into how Google measures each new link built. Things like Domain Authority, When the Link was placed, and how many other links are on that page besides yours to name a few. If you are wondering just how important backlinks are to your SEO campaign, you can read this Ahref’s Blog Post about On-Page SEO Factors and Link Metrics and which one matters most to Google.
Backlinking Factors VS On Page Factors & Their Importance in Google
Google also looks at how relevant that link is to your own business, to ensure that it makes sense in the first place. Otherwise, the link will be quickly removed and discounted, So please don’t go out and spend your money on backlinks that have no real value to your site, say getting 10,000 bookmarks from microsites that have no value in sending in a REAL leads or SALES for your business, because its a total waste of money.
How Digital Agencies Build Backlinking Campaigns for Businesses.
Link Building The Right Way.
Backlinking is mostly used in search engine optimization (SEO) in order to increase the rank or position of a single page of a business website in Google or other search engines.
How you build out your backlinking strategy will make or break your business online as they are a few pitfalls if done incorrectly, namely Google Pengiun. There are different types of backlinks, but before you set them up for your site, you need to make sure that you have a few things in place.
As a Digital Agency we recommend that your on-page SEO is in good order and each page has a specific target in the way of a Keyword that you would like it to rank for, from there you should be able to get some authority links to that page and if you have created content of value, you may even start getting your links for free. If someone else shares or links to your content, that can make your backlinking day much easier.
Considerations for a Proper Link Building Campaign
- Both Natural & Keyword Rich Anchor Text in your Backlinks (More on this later)
- Trusted Sources / Backlinks from High Authority Domains
- Relevant Sources / Backlinks that will bring your not just traffic, but Leads
- Expert Sources / Backlinks that are Shared Socially on a Large Scale
- A Complete Backlinking Goal Schedule & Implementation Plan
- Backlinking Velocity / Increasing the Volume of Backlinks Monthly
- Planned Link Structure or Backlinking Map (Tiered Backlinking)
- Diverse Mix of Backlinks from Different Domains
Backlinking is only successful if you have quality backlinks from quality sites and you have set up some goals, link maps, and strategy. The backlinks should also be a good mix of contextual in-page text links, infographics, blog comments, images, URL and other forms of advertising like Paid Display Ads for example.
Having a good mix of rich media backlinks and keeping your anchor text profile natural is a must, meaning that you are not repeating the same anchor text in your links over and over. It is the equant to on-page keyword stuffing and it will land you into hot water and a poorly ranked website.
As you can see, Backlinking is a time-consuming task, and it can also be costly because most authority domains worked hard to get the rank they built through time and they usually get compensated in the way of selling links to others. Noticed I said through time, as backlinking and SEO is an investment in your business through time and most business owners see results over the 4 – 6 month time period in the way of true lead results.
To combat these two challenges, you must be able to know how you can get ONLY the most relevant backlinks that have real lead traffic and high authority. Businesses today are using backlinking services to get their site ranked quicker and get their share of the leads that comes from being at the Top Of Google. The kind of traffic that converts into direct sales.
Since backlinking is so time-consuming … some 3rd party companies have come up with backlinking management software for SEO professionals in order to streamline the process and really keep track of your link strategy all while avoiding Google Penalties. Awesome!
Link Prospecting Software – Where to Find a Better Backlink
Citation Labs has come up with an online link prospecting tool called, well… Link Prospector. Link Prospector is known to work within two minutes, and it is an in-house automatic prospector. It was designed to enable content marketers and link builders organize and find new link opportunities.
This would help give any content the required “Link Juice” it needs from relative websites all over the internet. You might already be getting some links if you are a pro at content marketing, but most businesses need the help of link prospector, you get the chance to speed up your workflow finishing up with less time than you could have.
With Link Prospector, you just have to enter the key phrases and types of link sources you are looking to build and link prospector will find thousands of results from higher authority websites within a few minutes. After this, you just have to single out your preferred or top prospects and export them easily to CSV.
Link Prospector helps you to take full control of your query parameters giving you finer and better-filtered results to fit your exact needs. It has features like the keyword combiner tool that builds massive query lists fast, and this means you get results faster and the results are more precise. Incorporating them into your workflow becomes easier and faster. With link prospector, exporting and integrating data into other 3rd party tools also becomes easier.
Backlinking is important to your business in that it helps improve your site rankings. If your content gets organic links from other sites, that content will rank higher in the search engines. Your main aim should be to create links to individual pages/posts (Deep Links) along with the ones leading to your homepage.
This will significantly increase your organic ranking on the major search engines.
Link Building Management Software
The companies that are offering link management software like SEOJet use proven link maps gathered from many experiments looking at number one ranked sites in Google to help create a natural linking profile for your business and a link structure that you can follow, all while keeping track of your links.
SEOJet provides you with link map management software that will give you tiered link plans to help you dominate the SERPs for all your clients or your main business website.
The software has been proven to increase SEO client retention because it produces incredible results, therefore, increase rankings within a short time. It also uses white hat methods to protect your customers from algorithm changes as it helps to keep your anchor text profile looking natural and clean. As a link builder for many company websites, I would say it solves 4 very important aspects of building my link campaigns.
- Gives Me a Link Map to Follow and Outlines What Pages to Link to First
- Created a Tiered Backling Structure to Ensure, Rank, Power and Authority
- Ensure that I am using the proper anchor text for contextual links
- Keep Track of what pages have links and what to link to next (Major Advantage for SEO Experts)
I have personally am using the software to help manage my day to day link building efforts and Im starting to see what a benefit a tool like this has over trying to keep track of things by other methods. For me that was excel spreadsheets and this is a way better option to get a quick view of all your campaigns quickly.
Can’t I just Buy Backlinks?
As noted, backlinking is time-consuming and most business just don’t have the time to utilize the tools above and build links all day long. Often the tendency is to do a Google Search to buy backlinks and with out a strategy in place and they are really paying to harm their rank.
Getting backlinks for your site or a blog is not as easy as it sounds. The simplest and easiest way of getting backlinks for your blog is writing excellent articles. People will want to link to them naturally. The only way you can do this is by writing a good article through lots of research and practical and factual examples, this too can be a daunting task.
So business owners and even people actively doing SEO and Backlinking for others have only 2 options, build the links themselves with the proper tools or trust a link building service to build them for you. We do use some link building services like TheHoth or FatJoe from time to time and usually use them on a tier 2, link basis. That is, we ourselves at SEOBANK build all the main links to a website first and then start backlinking those backlinks in order to get more juice to them and rank the main website.
The danger here is not in using the services, they build an ok backlink, the problem is that there is no overall strategy or link map in place when ordering the links themselves and if you tip the scales enough, bye bye rankings.
Let me show you what I mean…here is an example of a warning from SEMrush about an e-commerce website business that was randomly sending in mass links to its main page of the website with no anchor text strategy.
Notice it is warning the business owners of a potential Google Penalty? It also states in a very real way, “avoid a lot of time and money wasted” in the future by not buying and sending in toxic links with no thought put into the anchor text or running a clean backlinking profile.
Let’s Hope they listen, well actually they called us and we listened for them and cleaned up the profile, QUICK.
Why did they call us? Well, to be truthful with out the proper SEO tools, they had no idea what was affecting their rank…so they Googled SEO Agencies and found us online. It wasn’t their fault really, they just wanted links, but guess what… the website wasn’t doing so hot in the SERPs and what you don’t know can hurt you. Knoledge is power, especially in the SEO world.
Lets take a look at building out a link structure that not only will work for you, but you can be sucessful utlizing this kind of strategy…
Example of a Tiered Link Map
The above picture comes directly from the link management software SEOjet and we build links much in the same manner here at SEOBANK, again we use the software and you should structure your links in a way that will help you keep your site at the top of the major search engines like Google.
Link Maps, Natural Anchor Texts and keeping a clean link profile are a MUST, and trying to do that with out some type of backling tools is difficult, sure we have the disavow tool inside of Google Search Console, but by that time it might already be too late. The tool is used to remove toxic links from your link profile but Google will notify you after you got hit with a penalty, so the tool at best is damage control.
Getting high-authority backlinks is a major piece of Google’s algorithm because they are a deciding factor that now separates business that truly cares about Building Quality, Rank and Authority and those that don’t.
Recently, Google has started rolling out data refreshers and new updates to identify and penalize low-quality websites that use spammy link building techniques to game the search results.
Both the link management software and link prospector can help build non-spammy links that provide value to the original content. Link building is done primarily for search engine optimization purposes, but it is also beneficial for several other reasons. Always remember, would I build this link if Google didn’t exist? A link should always be to get more sales, not spammy traffic or to increase your bounce rate. Who wants that?
The link management software like SEOJet, link prospector, and link services like TheHOTH will help you stay out of the danger of a penalty if used correctly.
This means you are thinking out of the box when it comes to backlinking. Converting visitors to clients while at the same time increasing the rankings of a website is the main reason why backlinking is used in SEO. Improving the organic position of the website is the primary focus of backlinking, but it is not the only factor that is used when evaluating the performance of link building. Link building efforts can also be proven to be successful if the rankings of a site are improving and at the same time referral traffic is driving a significant amount of traffic to the website that converts to sales.
This means you should start thinking out of the box when it comes to backlinking. Either you want to hire a professional company to manage your link profile or you take a serious investment in educating yourself to do it right. Paying money to get things wrong is costly.
Converting visitors to clients while at the same time increasing the rankings of a website is the main reason why backlinking is used in SEO. Improving the organic position of the website is the primary focus of backlinking, but it is not the only factor that is used when evaluating the performance of link building.
Link building efforts can also be proven to be more successful if all elements are in line with an overall SEO strategy starting with proper keyword research, flowing down into On-page Optimization, creating great content and getting that great content A BETTER LINK with the right anchor text.
Keyword Research – A SEO Guide for Business Websites
Keyword Research For SEO
What’s It All About and Where do I Start?
Keyword research is starting to become a long lost art. Some know it as the most important part of SEO, and others refer to it as the one-and-only practice that gets you results and it’s obviously in direct proportion of how well you implement a proper keyword strategy for your business.
Keyword research is definitely important and always will be. It is a process that puts you on the start line when it comes to ranking high and prepares you for the race to the top result. But the true core of keyword research is to help you win as many races as possible, or in other words, rank on as many pages as possible by having the right keywords to begin with.
It’s true that there are just so many keywords and so many metrics out there, and all may seem like a tough pill to swallow for the average business owner. However, those metrics and specific keywords are able to give you the right kind of visitors to your website and potentially transform them to your long-term customers.
So in a nutshell, keyword research is an important part for SEO – and one that you must focus on before everything else.
Is Every Keyword The Same?
How Do I Know Which Ones To Target?
If you are asking yourself the questions from above, you should know that there is nothing like keywords that are the same. Sure, there may be similar metrics to a keyword – but in order to understand the real value of each keyword you must understand your website and industry, make some hypotheses, do some tests and repeat the entire process.
Below, we are going in-depth on all the keyword research tactics.
Basic Keyword Research
What most businesses and individuals are fond of is the basic keyword research. Basically, this research focuses on finding relevant keywords without the help of a specific tool. For example, if the business specializes in roofing and it is located in Toronto, the basic keyword research would deliver some obvious keywords such as “roofing contractor Toronto”, “roofing company Toronto”, “roof replacement Toronto” etc. aside from the main keywords that include “roofing”, “roof replacement” etc.
Basically, the aim of the basic keyword research is for you to get going with the idea of including keywords in your content that are relevant to your business. However, a business which aim is the top search engine spot cannot depend on the basic keyword research only.
The most basic (and advanced) program in the world when it comes to keyword research is the Keyword Planner by Google. And although many people have recently labeled it as outdated because of the new products on the market, it is still the gold standard to which many people look up to.
Using the Google Keyword Planner, formerly Google Keyword Tool is simple. You only log in to the page, enter a keyword and change the filters tailored to your needs. You can also set the tool to “Get Keyword Ideas” which is a nice feature to build out your blog post ideas.
Finding The Smart Keywords: How It All Begins
As soon as the basic keyword research phase is over, the process of actual keyword research can start. This is the part where you can actually identify the smart keywords that may work for your business.
A great place to start looking for smart keywords is Google itself, where you search for your relevant keyword (and location) and see the results, check out the competition.
But most importantly….
A thing that only a few people know is that Google shows a dozen of recommended keywords on every single page. Wondering where are they located?
Well, you only head to the bottom of the actual search page and you will see the ‘Searches related to [keyword]’ part. This is where Google packs some of the most relevant keywords tailored to your search, all of which being great additions to your already searched ones. You can search for more keywords, see the related searches for each result and combine the most relevant ones as well.
In case you can’t find it, here is a preview of the Related Searches category with the (roofing) example we already mentioned above.
Long-Tail Keywords & Their Massive Potential
A great way to step up your game when it comes to keyword research for better SEO is with the introduction of long-tail keywords. Don’t know what long tail keywords are?
Basically, a long-tail keyword is a keyword that has low competition in the search results and low to medium traffic. In other words, these keywords are used to target niche demographics and are more specific, which makes them less competitive. And only because of that, they provide both short-term and long-term benefits.
So, when searchers are looking for something more specific or tailored to their needs, they search for long tail keywords. For example, the keyword “cheap shirt” is a basic keyword which has thousands of views monthly. However, the keyword “red shirt under $100” is a more specific one and one that has a few hundreds of searches per month – and all of them are more specific.
The specificity in these searches is what makes long-tail keywords powerful. On top of that, ranking for a long-tail keyword as the first result is way easier because of the absent competition. Not every business is able to find as many specific keywords – which is why you should and dominate the industry, step by step.
Neil Patel has visualized the value of a long-tail keyword in an interesting graphic, shared below:
LSI Keywords: Another Great Place To ‘Fish’ For Keywords
Latent Semantic Indexing keywords, also known as LSI keywords, are the next group of keywords we’d like to share. These are basically keywords that are related to the primary keywords you are using but are not only synonyms or keywords that are similar to your focus keyword’s meaning.
LSI keywords change with trends and just like Google’s advanced algorithms, they are able to get you true results if used properly. A great example for an LSI keyword is the Oculus Rift one. As you probably know, “Oculus Rift” was a term we all knew of 5 years ago, but nowhere near a VR (virtual reality) device in the making. Today, “Oculus Rift” and “virtual reality” are keywords that go perfectly together because of the recent VR trend and the device named Oculus Rift.
There are many ways to track LSI keywords, however LSIGraph: LSI Keyword Generator keeps it simple. All you need to do is enter your main keyword and you’ll get data on more than 50 latest LSI keywords relevant to it.
Or if you still prefer the ‘old school’, you can go through the suggested search in Google or try any on this list of great free keyword research tools.
Free Keyword Research Tools
- https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
- http://lsigraph.com
- http://keywordtool.io/
- https://ubersuggest.io/
- http://answerthepublic.com/
- https://www.hittail.com
(We are putting together a Defitive guide to Free and Paid Keyword tools and I will place the link here, once created.)
The Semantic Search Done Through Google’s Rank Brain
The meaning of semantic search was something we covered in the part above. Basically, semantic in keywords stands for relevant keywords and ones that blend together.
Google, as a true pioneer in the SEO world, has recently created a new artificial intelligence program and named it “Rank Brain” – which helps people search for keywords based on the advanced artificial intelligence system packed into it.
A great way to explain the value of Rank Brain are the different measurements, trends and statistics for every country. For example, Europe and the US use different measurements and there are different trends in both areas of the world for particular products and services. Google’s Rank Brain and the next-gen search engine technology prioritizes on these trends with the specific location in mind – and never fails to recognize a new pattern.
The use of Google’s Rank Brain can positively affect your SEO campaign, mostly with the relevant keywords that pop in the results. In fact, these are the exact keywords that your potential customers are searching for – now served on a plate for you.
A Final Thought on Your Business Keyword Strategy
In the end, there is a lot when it comes to keyword research, and it seems that it is a practice that is growing. The variety of products, platforms and ways to research for keywords are the best proof for that. But the only thing that matters and will always matter are the relevant keywords you use, and the balance you create in your content.
Why you should improve Your CTRs for PPC and Organic Search Results.
Why should you work on improving CTRs?
PPC marketing, or pay-per-click marketing depends on CTR for a successful campaign, also known as click through rate. When CTRs are high, it means that your campaign’s quality score is improving and your ad will perform better. In the world of online marketing, being visible is fundamental, so improving CTRs are important. But there’s a lot more happening in the world of marketing than you may think. For starters, it matters a lot across all marketing channels, and it works hand in hand with organic search results, social media and email marketing.
Click Through Rate has an Outstanding impact on overall ranking…
There’s no secret that Google’s algorithms, as far as search engine optimization is concerned, are complex. CTR helps marketers provide a very detailed and well-structured answer to a user question, querry or Google search. Basically, when people click on a website and they begin reading articles on certain pages, Google can evaluate that website’s level of success based on how long people remain on that website as well as CTR percentage (impressions/clicks). It is important to assess not only your keywords, but your meta descriptions properly because if you’re careless, someone else will get that Click Through Traffic even though you may have better rank. People who spend time crafting a better meta description with a good call-to-action or compelling story to the end user gets more clicks.
In order to overcome the competition, you have to spend the proper time reviewing and correcting any descriptions that need re-writing or worse, completely missing. But then again, it’s not about writing longer descriptions, stuffed with keywords…its about getting character limits right and getting people to click on the search result. There are many Free Snippet Optimizer Tools to help you get a look at what your page would look like in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) before you implement a change. Google cares way more about the value and quality of a certain page or post, and not so much about how many times you’ve added the keyword that defines your target for that page, that type of SEO got left behind after many Google Updates, like Panda. Many of today’s SEO strategists believe that getting SERP autonomy via CTR is the future of online website optimization. In fact Rand Fishkin from MOZ did a CTR experiment where he asked his fan base on twitter to click on a certian link and in three short hours that page went from #7 in Google to the #1 position. That is a pretty big ranking factor in anyone’s book. Also have a look at this infographic from Search Engine Watch, the #1 position in Google, receives 36.4% of traffic more than the second, third, fourth and fifth positions combined! That’s is quite the stakeholders share! Get optimizing and get to the TOP!
The great power of engagement metrics
When Google assess the quality of a web page, it looks for 3 key elements: relevance, trust, and authority level. But then again, don’t look at things the wrong way. Google doesn’t just look at the keywords of your pages or posts; it assess your entire website with over 200+ ranking factors and it time it does this it may use a certain algorithm path to rank the page or site. CTR optimization is an essential engagement metric that marketers should use to improve traffic and ranking. The data gathered helps the search engine make a decision, and maybe place your website on Page 1 or 10. It all depends on how reliable your website is to the readers. Quality content prevails, so you have to focus on engaging your audience with content that they can actually use. You can easily find your average website CTR in Google Search Console and even break Click-Through-Rates down page per page. This way you know what pages/posts to work on first…
Start Thinking More about On-Page Optimization
The way you format and structure your posts and pages is just as vital as improving CTRs. If the goal is to compel an audience and convince them to read your articles and click on your links, you have to choose your subheadings very carefully. Font size, headline, paragraph formatting, and infographics can help create a pleasant visual effect. Readers love well-crafted articles that offer useful information and external links to some more information that they might want to know more about. Offer helpful tools and suggestions to make pages valuable for your readers.
Website Traffic depends on high CTR
Low CTR levels are damaging to your website’s reputation, rank and traffic. If people are not clicking your links, then you’re doing something wrong and you need to change up your strategy. When inserting hyperlinks, make sure they lead to high-authority websites, with either a do follow or no follow link if you want to keep authority link juice for your own website. Also use target_blank for links, this way, your readers will remain engaged even if they are redirected to a new page. Steer clear of mediocre subheadings that don’t grab attention or don’t persuade readers to take action or read on. Focus on preserving engagement and include headlines that are catchy and to the point.
CTR is influential
CTR can have a great influence on the traffic quality of your website. A compelling marketing campaign must appeal directly to the reader and be geared towards your ideal client. If you provide them with information that they are looking to read, they’ll be more willing to try out your products and services. However, if you can’t raise awareness, or even get them (on page) then it’s a clear sign that your meta descriptions are not influential enough. Boosting search volume and CTR can be done in several different ways.
Target visitors who have already clicked your website using re-marketing lists. You can also go back and optimize your top landing pages for click through rates. Or go with a subscription management system that uses social media to instill trust and reliability to drive even more traffic to your company website. Even though many online businesses don’t know how to advertise with social media, it doesn’t mean the platforms are useless. On the contrary; they have a lot of potential and they can help boost overall CTR. But you need a seamless campaign that integrates conventional SEO with social media optimization to make that happen. We at SEO BANK are big believers in not only a strategic approach to online marketing but one that includes all channels for traffic for the best strategy possible.
