Welcome to the digital age, where startups and small businesses thrive on innovation and creativity. But in a world teeming with competition, getting your startup noticed can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack. That’s where Datawave comes in – a beacon of hope for entrepreneurs seeking to navigate the choppy waters of startup marketing and emerge victorious. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into how Datawave serves as the ultimate catalyst for startup success in today’s fiercely competitive landscape.

A Marketing Platform Tailored for Startups

Datawave isn’t just another marketing platform – it’s a lifeline for startups and small businesses aiming to make waves in their respective industries. Founded by Tyler Williams, a visionary serial entrepreneur from Atlanta, Georgia, Datawave was born out of a simple yet profound realization: many promising startups were faltering not due to lack of potential, but due to inadequate marketing strategies.

Driven by a passion to empower budding entrepreneurs, Williams set out to bridge this gap by creating Datawave – a one-stop solution for startups seeking to amplify their visibility and growth. With a user-friendly interface and an arsenal of powerful tools at their disposal, startups can now take charge of their marketing journey like never before.

1. Blogger / Website Outreach

Finding the right blogs and websites to feature your startup can be akin to finding a diamond in the rough. But with Datawave’s Blogger / Website Outreach feature, the process is streamlined and efficient. With access to over 100,000 different blogs and sites, startups can easily identify collaboration opportunities tailored to their niche. From viewing website data like contacts and monthly traffic to exporting data for seamless CRM integration, Datawave equips startups with the tools they need to forge valuable partnerships.

2. Podcast Search & Outreach

In today’s digital landscape, podcasts have emerged as a powerful medium for reaching target audiences. With Datawave’s Podcast Search & Outreach feature, startups can tap into over 450,000 different podcasts, ensuring they reach the ears of their ideal listeners. Whether it’s securing guest spots on relevant podcasts or becoming sponsors of popular shows, Datawave empowers startups to leverage the power of podcasting to amplify their message.

3. Journalist Database Search

Securing media coverage can be a game-changer for startups looking to gain traction in the market. With Datawave’s Journalist Database Search feature, startups gain access to over 150,000 writers and journalists eager to feature compelling stories. By easily identifying journalists covering their niche and creating targeted campaigns, startups can increase their chances of securing valuable media coverage that propels them to new heights.

4. Influencer Outreach

Influencers hold sway over vast audiences, making them invaluable allies for startups seeking to expand their reach. With Datawave’s Influencer Outreach feature, startups can discover over 90,000 influential voices and market leaders within their niche. By curating favorites, exporting data, and directly engaging with influencers, startups can forge meaningful collaborations that drive their marketing efforts forward.

The Tyler Williams Story

Behind every great company lies an inspiring story, and Datawave is no exception. Founded by Tyler Williams, a seasoned entrepreneur with a passion for helping startups thrive, Datawave’s journey is a testament to the power of perseverance and vision. After recognizing the marketing challenges faced by startups firsthand, Williams embarked on a mission to level the playing field and empower entrepreneurs to realize their dreams.

Driven by a deep-seated belief in the transformative power of marketing, Williams set out to create Datawave – a platform that not only streamlines marketing efforts but also serves as a beacon of hope for startups navigating the competitive landscape. His vision? To empower startups to overcome obstacles, defy expectations, and chart a course toward success – one marketing campaign at a time.

Datawave’s Impact on Startup Marketing

In a world where startups face no shortage of challenges, Datawave emerges as a beacon of hope – a catalyst for success in a competitive landscape. By leveraging Datawave’s innovative features and user-friendly interface, startups can amplify their visibility, forge valuable partnerships, and propel their growth to new heights.

From blogger outreach and podcast sponsorship to journalist engagement and influencer collaboration, Datawave equips startups with the tools they need to thrive in today’s dynamic market. With Datawave by their side, startups can navigate the intricacies of marketing with confidence, knowing that they have a trusted ally in their corner.

Your Path to Startup Success

In conclusion, Datawave isn’t just a marketing platform – it’s a game-changer for startups seeking to make their mark in a competitive landscape. With its comprehensive suite of features, intuitive interface, and unwavering commitment to empowering entrepreneurs, Datawave paves the way for startup success like never before. So, what are you waiting for? Embrace the Datawave difference and unlock the full potential of your startup today.

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In the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape, mastering the art of SEO is crucial for standing out. However, understanding whether your efforts are paying off requires more than just a cursory glance at your site’s traffic statistics. This detailed guide explores the critical components of evaluating an SEO strategy’s success, emphasizing the significant impact that partnering with an SEO service provider can have on your results.

 1. Understanding SEO Goals

The first step in any successful SEO campaign is to set clear, measurable goals. These could range from boosting your site’s traffic by a specific percentage, achieving top rankings for certain keywords, or increasing your conversion rate. By establishing these benchmarks early on, you provide yourself with a clear target to aim for. An SEO company excels in mapping out a strategy that aligns with your goals and sets the stage for measurable success, ensuring every effort contributes directly to your objectives.

2. Tracking Organic Traffic

Organic traffic, the lifeblood of your online presence, offers a direct window into the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. An uptick in visitors from search engine results pages (SERPs) indicates your content’s increasing relevance and visibility. However, it’s not just about the quantity of traffic; the quality also matters. A professional SEO service provider leverages sophisticated analytics tools to dissect this traffic, providing insights into which aspects of your SEO strategy are driving the most valuable visitors to your site.

3. Analyzing Keyword Rankings

Keywords act as markers that guide potential customers to your website. Tracking your targeted keywords’ performance on SERPs gives you a clear picture of your visibility to your intended audience. Seeing your keywords climb the rankings is a testament to the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. An SEO Company doesn’t just track these rankings; they analyze the data to identify trends and opportunities for optimization and even uncover new, valuable keywords to target, thereby expanding your reach.

4. Measuring Conversion Rates

While attracting visitors to your site is essential, the ultimate goal is to convert these visitors into customers or subscribers. This is where the conversion rate comes into play, serving as a critical metric for evaluating the success of your SEO strategy. It’s not just about drawing traffic but attracting the right kind of traffic that is genuinely interested in what you offer. A professional SEO analyst focuses on targeted, intent-driven SEO practices that aim to boost not just traffic but traffic that converts, thereby enhancing your site’s overall profitability.

5. Assessing Backlink Quality

The quality of backlinks pointing to your website significantly influences your search engine rankings. High-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative sites boost your SEO and lend credibility to your site. An SEO analyst employs strategic link-building efforts to secure these valuable backlinks, ensuring each link contributes positively to your site’s authority and visibility in search engines.

6. User Engagement Metrics

User engagement metrics, such as average session duration and bounce rate, offer invaluable insights into how visitors interact with your website. Improvements in these metrics suggest that your content is engaging, relevant, and valuable to your audience, indicating a successful SEO strategy. An experienced SEO professional will often conduct detailed analyses of these metrics, implementing content and UX optimizations to enhance user engagement further and retain visitors.

7. Mobile Optimization

Optimizing a website for mobile devices is non-negotiable in today’s mobile-first world. Google’s mobile-first indexing emphasizes the importance of mobile usability in your site’s search rankings. An SEO professional ensures that your site delivers a seamless mobile experience, from fast loading times to intuitive navigation, thereby improving your SEO and catering to most users who access the internet via mobile devices.

8. ROI Analysis

Evaluating your SEO efforts’ return on investment (ROI) is the ultimate measure of success. This analysis compares the cost of your SEO strategy, including the investment in an SEO service, against the revenue generated from the traffic and conversions attributed to SEO. A positive ROI signifies that your SEO strategy is effective and profitable, highlighting the value of ongoing SEO efforts and the expertise of your chosen SEO partner.

Evaluating the success of an SEO strategy encompasses a wide range of factors, from traffic and rankings to user engagement and ROI. Each element provides a piece of the larger puzzle, offering insights into your approach’s strengths and areas for improvement. By partnering with a professional SEO service provider, you can navigate these complexities with greater ease and precision, ensuring your SEO strategy propels your website to new heights of digital success.

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If you are looking for the best ways to promote your business in 2023 and beyond, you are here at the right place. Here are five tips that will help you get your business in front of your target audience and stand out in the market.

Get Your Business Listed

You will want to get the basics right before you start to promote your business. Start with the legal aspects of your business, and depending on the business structure, ask yourself this question: Do I need boi reporting? The best thing that you can do for your business is to get a lawyer on board who can ensure that our business complies with all legal aspects.

Once the basics are in place, getting your business listed on Google is essential. This enables potential clients to easily find your business’s location and allows customers to leave reviews and feedback, boosting your business’s visibility.

Example: A local bakery’s listing on Google Maps allowed new customers to discover its location and read positive reviews, leading to an increase in foot traffic and sales.

Leverage Social Media

Establishing a strong social media presence is crucial for reaching your target audience, attracting potential customers, and engaging with followers. Social media platforms offer a free and effective way to promote your business through various content types such as posts, videos, and infographics.

Example: A clothing boutique leveraged Instagram to showcase its latest collections, engage with followers through interactive posts, and attract a younger audience, resulting in increased brand awareness and online sales.

Integrate Organic SEO Practices

You will want to include organic SEO strategies to promote your business, boost your website’s ranking, and boost organic traffic to your website. So, you will want to focus on boosting your website’s SEO with the use of relevant keywords that are strategically included throughout your website’s content, including blog posts.

This way, you will increase the chances for potential prospects to find your business website. You can also avail the services of a dedicated digital marketing agency to help your business website rank higher on SERPs.

Example: An online gardening store saw increased website traffic and sales after optimizing its content with relevant keywords related to popular gardening trends and products.

Post High-Quality Content

Content is an essential part of SEO, which is why you will want to ensure that your website is up-to-date and comprises informative, relevant, and high-quality content. Content is essential for promoting your business and connecting with your ideal customers.

You can create different types of content, including product-related guides, video tutorials, blogs, and social media posts that will hook your audience’s interest and push them further into the sales funnel. You can leverage content to establish yourself as an expert in your industry, which will help you gain the trust of your target audience and boost ROI.

Example: A tech startup produced in-depth blog posts explaining industry concepts, which positioned the company as an authority in its field and led to increased website traffic and customer inquiries.

Use Paid Ads

Another way to boost your brand visibility and promote your business online is with the help of paid advertising. You will want to think of paid ads in terms of buying online space. Some of the popular methods include PPC ads, also known as pay-per-click ads. You can also opt for promotional social media posts and for the traditional method of promoting your business on television or radio.

Example: A local restaurant used targeted Facebook ads to promote its weekly specials, resulting in increased foot traffic and higher table reservations.

In addition to these strategies, it’s important to measure the effectiveness of each approach and adapt them based on data and feedback. This iterative approach can help fine-tune your promotional efforts for optimal results.

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One of the most important, highly valued and high return activity in the SEO field, keyword research begins by just entering a word in the search query box. Essential to a website’s success, keyword research can prove to be a boon if implemented correctly and can lead your site to higher ranking success.

In this article, we will be quickly covering 3 different ways to go about doing keyword research. So, let’s get started:

1. The Usual Way of Keyword Research

It’s now extremely easy to find out the right targeted keywords for your website using ahref’s free keyword research tool . You can retrieve search volumes, suggestions, and generate combinations quickly.

You can narrow down based on the global results or on the basis of countries. In fact, you can even retrieve the search volume for every keyword in a particular city or country.

Once the results are generated, you will see the full list of keywords along with the related terms, Google & Amazon auto suggestions, Facebook, Quora and Twitter search for that particular keyword as well as the latest Google trends. You can even export these keywords in CSV or XLS format.

There’s also a difficulty checker in the tool which can help you gauge the approximate difficulty for a certain keyword. Apart from that, you can also view a breakdown of the strongest and weakest sites competing for that keyword.

And lastly, you can optimize your keywords better through smarter targeting. There are inbuilt user intent parameters – terms that are commercial, e-commerce related, questions, positive or negative in sentiment.

2. Keyword Research by Finding Out Competitor’s Keywords

Another smarter way to approach keyword research is by finding out the keywords your competitors’ are ranking for. This is made easy using Mondovo’s Competitor Keywords.

To get started, you only need to enter the website URL, select exact page or across the domain, select the country and click on Search.

Once the report is generated, you will see the number of organic keywords the site or a certain page is ranking for.

Using the filters available, you can then filter the keywords based on current position, previous position, search volume, CPC and traffic.

You can also see the AdWords keywords, if any, along with the ad copies.

Using all this data, you can then optimize your own website, your own content, blog articles etc. to rank for some of the most competitive terms and beat your competitors at their own game.

3. Keyword Research Through Search Volume

We all are familiar with Google Keyword Planner wherein we can get search volume data for a set of keywords. However, the problem lies with Keyword Planner showing the data in ranges wherein as a search marketer, the ideal solution would be to have the exact search volume data.

This problem is resolved by the Bulk Search Volume tool. You can now get to find the exact monthly search volume as well as the CPC cost.

Apart from that, you can also get the exact search volume for keywords for any language and in any country. There’s also the difficulty score that can tell you how easy/difficult it is to target a particular keyword. And lastly, you can also get to know the related keywords for a particular keyword entered by you.

So, if you’re running an advertising campaign or if you’re looking for the right set of terms for your website or for a blog article, using the bulk search volume tool is indeed the right choice for you.

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Google is perhaps the biggest source of traffic for most blogs and websites.If you don’t optimize your blog posts for search engines, then you’re missing out on high quality blog visitors. On the other hand, if you over optimize or wrongly optimize your blog posts, then your blog might get penalized and lose even its existing traffic. If you optimize your blog post the right way, then it will improve the search engine rankings as well as drive more blog traffic.

Here are 7 steps to write an seo-friendly blog post.

1. Pick a topic
The first step is to pick a topic that is relevant and useful to your readers. If people like your blog post they’ll share your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn and spend more time on your site, without bouncing off quickly. This will send social signals telling search engines that your content is valuable, and rank your blog posts higher.

2. Do keyword research
Once you’ve decided what you want to write about, it’s important to come up with a list of high-traffic keywords that you can target with your blog post. You’ll need to include these keywords at different points of your blog post (described below) when you optimize it.

You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner to get keyword ideas for your topic. Simply type in your blog post topic in Keyword Planner and Google will provide a list of keyword ideas along with their monthly search volume and competition information (low, medium, high).

Pick one high traffic keyword relevant to your topic, as your main target keyword, and 4-5 related long-tail keywords that you’ll include in your post.

3. Write naturally
Before you optimize your blog post, you need to write a great article in the first place. If your content is not good, it won’t rank well, no matter how much you optimize it. So write a blog post naturally, keeping your readers in mind. Will they find it interesting? Will it help your readers? How will they use the information in your post?

This means structuring your content into paragraphs, and using complete sentences.

4. Use headings
Use headings (H1,H2,H3) to break your content into easy-to-understand sections. Headings make it easy for Google to understand the subtopics covered in your blog post and helps improve search engine rankings. Headings also enable readers to quickly scan your post, understand the main points and easily read it.

Generally, the title is displayed in H1 heading, and each subtopic in your post should have its on own sub heading H2. If you need to use H3 sub headings, ensure that they are used after H2.

Use your main target keyword once in your title. Typically, Google shows about 50-60 characters of your Title. So keep your post title within this limit. You can also use your long-tail keywords in some of the sub headings to rank your post for a wide range of keywords and search phrases. However, avoid overusing keywords in headings. Otherwise, you may get penalized for keyword stuffing.

5. Optimize Meta Description
Meta description is the 1-2 lines of text that appears below your blog post title, in search engine results. It helps search engines understand the topic of your blog post, so it’s one of the most factors that affects search rankings.

When you’re adding meta description, you need to provide 1-2 lines of complete and meaningful sentences describing the content of your blog post. Google displays only up to 150 characters of meta description, so ensure that your meta description is within this limit.

Meta description is a great place to include your main target keyword as well as a related long-tail keyword. However, if you try to stuff too many keywords, or use meaningless phrases in it, then Google will simply ignore your description.

Nevertheless, most users look at the title & meta description in search results to decide if they should click the link or not. So ensure that your post title & meta description are not only keyword-rich, but also click worthy.

6. Optimize Images
Images play an important role in SEO – they make your post visually appealing and more likely to be shared. They also make it easier for people to read and understand your post.

Most search engine (including Google) are text-based, and can’t understand images. So you need to add descriptive text, wherever possible, to help search engine understand what your images are about.

When you use an image for your post, ensure that you use descriptive file names. For example, “seo-friendly-blog.jpg” is better than “bsd213.jpg”. If you use multiple images, you can also use long-tail related keywords in their filenames. This will help search engines rank them better.

Similarly, you should also add a keyword-rich ALT tag to your images. ALT tag is basically used to describe your image, and helps search engines understand images better. When you upload your image to WordPress (or other platforms), you’ll see a form with a textbox to enter ALT text. In the above example, you can add something like “how to create seo-friendly blog post” for your image.

7. Add Internal Links
When you write a blog post, ensure that you’re linking to at least 2-3 other articles on your blog. This not only improves SEO score of your blog but boosts the crawlability of those articles.

However, ensure that you’re linking only to relevant articles from your blog. For example, if you’re writing about “how to do SEO” it makes sense to link to posts about “building links” and “doing keyword research”. However, linking to something like “how to install wordpress” is not relevant.

Conclusion
Hopefully, the above tips will help you optimize your blog post to rank better for more keywords and search terms. The trick is to target the right high-traffic keywords, write a super useful & interesting blog post around them, and include those keywords throughout your content. If your blog uses WordPress, then you can use the free Yoast SEO Plugin that allows you to easily optimize your blog post for search engines.

Sreeram Sreenivasan is an entrepreneur & digital marketer who writes for Fedingo Blog about various blogging, marketing & business growth topics.

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As website owners, we all want to create quality content that not only is interesting and engaging to our audiences but often, also serves to promote and ideally sell our affiliates products. Your website can be big business and mean big bucks if you know how to use it.

Ok, so now you might be wondering, is there a way that it is possible to stack the odds in your favor when it comes to ranking on Google? Ranking on search engines is important; when was the last time you visited the second page of a search engine query?

Well, the folks over at Content Refined, a content marketing service seem to think so. Is creating content feeling like a shot in the dark? Are you frustrated with wasting time and money on having articles written that just don’t produce results in terms of ranking in search engines? Below, we share some of Content Refined’s tried and tested strategies on how to increase the chance your content will rank well in Google.

1. Targeted and Relevant Keyword Research, Which Creates Interesting and Engaging Article Titles

Content Refined is a start to finish content marketing service. This means that they will do your keyword research, create titles, write your articles and then edit and publish your articles to optimize them for your website.

Content Refined utilizes a keyword research tool call SECockpit to complete keyword research for their clients. The way Content Refined is different when selecting keywords for your article is that they filter keywords to fit specific sets of data. For Content Refined, that metric is a keyword that is searched at least 500 times per month but has less than a 30% competition score.

The fun doesn’t stop there however. Content Refined will also analyze what other sites are ranking for a given keyword. Even if a keyword is statistically right for use on your site, the team looks at what other sites are ranking for the keyword. This way, they ensure that they aren’t pitting their clients against massive, domain authority sites that they will realistically never be able to outrank.

2. Already Strong Writing Enriched Using MarketMuse To Ensure In-Depth Coverage of A Given Topic

Content Refined only uses native English speaking writers to create their articles. This is a good first step to ensure proper flow and grammar for an article. However, Content Refined goes the extra mile to ensure that not only are the articles interesting with good readability but also that they cover topics in depth. The best way to ensure in-depth coverage of a topic? There is a tool called MarketMuse that Content Refined uses. Users can plug an article title into the program and get back a variety of relevant information about the selected keyword. Not only will MarketMuse produce a list of relevant keywords that should be mentioned or touched upon in the article, but it will also yield the current content score of an article along with the average content scores of competing articles and the overall best content score for a selected keyword from the competition. In addition, MarketMuse will supply its customers with a list of competing articles, so that you can scope out the competition.

Data analysis has shown a moderate to strong correlation between a high MarketMuse score and a good ranking in search engine results.

3. A Statistically Driven Standard That All Articles Ideally Meet

Ideally, Content Refined articles meet a specific benchmark in terms of data and their team believes that articles that fit this criterion are likely to rank on search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

For Content Refined, that standard is a competition score under 30% and a MarketMuse score of over 40. In a real life scenario, this should result in a quality, well-rounded and in-depth article that features an interesting topic with a keyword that isn’t dominated by big, established domain authorities. Content Refined has uncovered that articles that meet this metric have between 80-90% chance of ranking on the first page of a search engine. Combine this with the fact that the service also only uses keywords that are searched at least 500 times a month and you have the opportunity to create some really fantastic, relevant and useful content.

The Content Refined process is based in finding out what people are looking for that isn’t necessarily being extensively or properly covered on the web. The method is to create useful content that is backed up by researched data, instead of using what we call the “spray-and-pray” method, which involves peppering your sites with heaps of articles, some of which may interest your audience and much that may not. The problem with the “spray-and-pray” is that you can end up losing readership if you post too much content that is useless or irrelevant to your audience and “spraying-and-praying” can also end up being very expensive.

To conclude, we all want to make money off our websites; that’s why we have them. However, it can be difficult, time consuming and costly to work out the exact metric for your site. If you are tired of creating content that doesn’t provide predictable results, the tips and tricks of the trade mentioned in this article may be able to help you rank on Google with a higher degree of certainty. Content Refined openly shares their process because they believe knowledge is power and that nobody should be deprived of the ability to create an awesome niche website.

If you don’t have the time to manage all these different tools on top of your singular or multiple websites, you can also take advantage of Content Refined’s start-to-finish content creation process by checking out one of the many available packages here:

The post How to Increase The Chance your Content Will Rank Well in Google appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

When digital marketing was in its infancy, there was no such thing as a bad link. But in recent years, Google’s focus on relevancy and user experience has caused SEO specialists to reconsider their approach. Webmasters who receive “questionable” links to their site are commonly finding themselves penalized by the very search engine that they’re trying to impress. Receiving a manual penalty can be a time-consuming, difficult process at times, so you may want to hire a reputable firm like Coalition Technologies, a leading Los Angeles SEO company.

1. Site Assessment

The first step is going to be to gather a list of all of the websites that link to you. There are many different tools to accomplish this, including Google’s Webmaster Tools. Once you can clearly view exactly where your backlinks are coming from, you should be able to accurately determine which are toxic and which are legitimate. Depending on how many backlinks you have, you may want to organize the list on a clearly labelled spreadsheet. Organization is critical during this step.

2. Link Determination

The next step is to manually classify each link as natural, unnatural, or suspicious. While there are link classification tools that can grade your links, you are better off going through each link manually so you can ensure a thorough job. Some common unnatural links include those that come from spammy directories and from content farms. Suspicious links often stem from blog rolls, footers, or seemingly useless link archive pages. You may want to also consider flagging links from sites that are irrelevant to your niche.

3. Contact Webmasters

Once you have decided which links are natural, unnatural, or suspicious, it is time to take action. You will need to contact the webmasters of any unnatural or suspicious links. You will need to request that all unnatural links are removed, and suspicious links should be — at the very least — tagged as “no follow.” Some website that are loaded with spam may require several contact attempts, so make sure you keep diligent track of who you have contacted and when, as you may need to follow up regularly. Once a webmaster tells you that the link has been removed or changed, make sure to manually verify the removal before you cross them off of the list.

4. Submit Disavow Requests

It is highly likely that you will not hear back from some webmasters, or you may have backlinks appearing on sites that are no longer active. When this occurs, you will need to use Google’s disavow tool to mark links that should be ignored during Google’s assessment. Create a .txt file that contains all of the links in question, and then simply upload it to your Webmaster Tools. If a website is known for using black-hat SEO techniques, or if it is suspicious for any reason, you may want to request that the entire domain is disavowed, instead of just the one page linking to your website.

5. Ask for Reconsideration

Finally, you should send a message to Google via your Webmaster Tools, outlining what actions you have taken to rectify the problem, as well as changes that you have made to your SEO strategies. It may take a month or longer before you hear back, and you may need to submit more than one reconsideration request. The webspam team may need to manually review your website, which may take some time, but don’t give up. Persistence is the key to getting manual penalties removed.

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Local SEO can be very profitable, yet most bloggers and webmasters ignore it. If you are not familiar with the term, it refers to optimizing your website or application to search queries that have a strong local component. For instance, if someone searches for “good dentist”, Google will assume that the person is looking for a good dentist close to his or her location, and will therefore adapt the search results to that constraint.

With the explosion of mobile phones, more and more search queries are getting influenced by local SEO, and that is why you should learn about it. A couple of weeks ago I came across an interesting article on Search Engine Land titled 10 Things I Learned About Local SEO In 2014. Here’s a quotation:

The World Really Is Going Mobile
We all talk about it, but this past Black Friday/Cyber Monday, we saw a 100+% increase in mobile traffic to our local retailer clients. According to one national/local client that has a partnership with Google, Google has told them to expect that 80% of their organic traffic in 2015 will come from mobile search.

The challenge is that, as more searches go mobile, conversion can decline. This is particularly true if your site is not mobile optimized and definitely true if you are selling stuff versus just trying to generate phone calls.

If you have not started your mobile-friendly strategy yet, what are you waiting for?

I liked the article because the tips mentioned are not the usual stuff you’ll find on other guides. Check it out if you have some time, and to explore more the local SEO concept if your online business is affected by it.

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Ever heard the saying “never change a winning team”? What about “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? The concept is pretty much the same, and it applies to many fields and endeavors. A couple of months ago I found it also applies to SEO….

I had a mini website that was receiving a lot of traffic from search engines. When I dug into analytics to analyze the numbers I found that one single page was attracting the bulk of the traffic, as it was ranking in the third position of Google for a popular search term.

I figured that people visiting other pages of that site would be interested in that page too, so I created a section below each page with related links. The goal was to improve the navigation and increase the page views per visitor ratio within the site, and not to increase my search rankings. In fact I didn’t use optimized anchor texts or anything to artificially inflate my rankings.

Yet a couple of weeks later that page moved from the third position to the third page in the search results for the same search term…. and it stayed there ever since.

Could it have been a coincidence? Sure. But there is a chance that the changes I applied to the internal linking structure of the site triggered some red flag with Google, despite being legitimate changes.

I also heard many stories from website owners who re-designed their websites, moving links and sections around, and then found that their rankings had vanished overnight.

Obviously this is not a rule carved in stone. Many times similar tweaks could have a positive effect on search rankings and traffic. The point I wanted to make is that you should perform structural changes on your websites with care, especially if there is a big risk involved (e.g., if you already get a lot of organic traffic).

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Ranking on Google is like finding the perfect pair of jeans – it’s a quest, it’s an art, and when you get it right, it feels fantastic. But how do you shimmy your way up to that coveted top spot? It’s a blend of creativity, strategy, and a deep understanding of the digital landscape. It’s challenging, exciting, and filled with opportunities. SEO is a bit like a game of chess with Google. It’s all about strategy, finesse, and staying one step ahead

I’ll dive into the thrilling world of SEO and how it can catapult your website to the top of Google’s rankings. I’ll uncover the secrets of keywords, backlinks, and all the behind-the-scenes magic that can turn your website from a ghost town into a bustling metropolis. Here are the main factors about your website that search engines like Google consider when they’re ranking your website.

Understanding Webpages and Websites

Imagine you’re a detective. Your mission? To understand the purpose of a webpage and the website it belongs to. It’s like piecing together a puzzle. Every page on the internet is created for a purpose, and understanding this purpose is crucial for evaluating its quality.

For instance, a blog post might be designed to inform, an e-commerce page to sell, or a forum to facilitate discussion. Understanding this purpose is like finding the key to a lock. It helps you tailor your content and SEO strategies to align with this purpose, increasing your chances of ranking on Google.

Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Topics

Now, let’s talk about YMYL topics. These are pages that could potentially impact a user’s health, financial stability, or safety. Think of them as the high stakes poker of the internet. They’re held to very high standards because inaccurate or misleading information could harm users.

For example, a webpage giving financial advice or health tips falls under YMYL. If you’re dealing with such topics, you need to ensure your content is accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. This not only protects your users but also enhances your reputation, which can boost your Google ranking.

Page Quality Rating

Page Quality (PQ) rating is like the report card of your webpage. It evaluates how well a page achieves its purpose. This involves understanding the content of the page, the reputation of the website and content creators, and the level of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) demonstrated on the page.

Think of it as a three-legged stool. Each leg – content, reputation, and E-A-T – is crucial for stability. If one leg is weak, the stool wobbles. Similarly, to rank high on Google, you need to ensure all three aspects are strong.

The Dark Side: Lowest Quality Pages

Picture this. You’re browsing the internet, and you stumble upon a page. It’s cluttered with ads, the content is barely readable, and something about it just feels… off. These are what we call the lowest quality pages.

These pages are harmful, misleading, untrustworthy, or offer no value to users. They’re like the villains of the internet. They include pages with deceptive design, obstructed content, or suspected malicious behavior.

If you want to rank on Google, you need to steer clear of these practices. Google’s algorithms are smarter than ever, and they can easily spot such pages and push them down the rankings.

The Heroes: High Quality Pages

On the other side of the spectrum, we have high-quality pages. These are the heroes of the internet. They have high-quality main content, a positive reputation, and a high level of E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

These pages serve their purpose well and provide value to users. They’re like a well-stocked library or a trusted advisor. They offer useful, reliable information and a great user experience.

If you want to rank on Google, strive to create high-quality pages. Focus on creating valuable content, building a positive reputation, and demonstrating your expertise and trustworthiness.

Understanding Search User Needs

Now, let’s talk about the audience – the search users. Understanding their needs is like having a compass in the vast ocean of the internet. It guides your content creation and SEO strategies.

The guidelines discuss the importance of understanding the needs of search users, including their queries and the context of their searches. For instance, a user searching for “best pizza near me” is likely looking for a local pizza place, while a user searching for “how to make pizza” is probably looking for a recipe.

By understanding these needs, you can tailor your content to meet them. This not only enhances user satisfaction but also increases your chances of ranking on Google.

Needs Met Rating Guideline

Imagine you’re a teacher grading a student’s assignment. You’re assessing how well the assignment meets the given criteria. This is similar to the “Needs Met” rating guideline.

This section discusses how to rate the extent to which a page meets a user’s needs. The rating scale ranges from “Fully Meets” to “Fails to Meet”. It’s like a report card for your webpage.

For instance, a page about “how to bake a cake” fully meets a user’s needs if it provides a clear, easy-to-follow recipe. On the other hand, if the page is filled with irrelevant information or lacks clear instructions, it fails to meet the user’s needs.

Understanding this guideline can help you create content that meets your users’ needs, increasing your chances of ranking on Google.

The Magic of Technical and On-Page SEO

Now, let’s talk about the magic behind the scenes – technical and on-page SEO. While the document doesn’t explicitly discuss these areas, the principles it outlines indirectly touch on them.

Creating high-quality, purposeful content is like preparing a delicious meal. It’s the main course that satisfies your users. Ensuring a positive user experience, on the other hand, is like providing excellent service. It makes your users feel valued and comfortable.

These are crucial aspects of on-page SEO. They’re like the secret ingredients that make your webpage stand out in the crowded internet landscape.

For instance, using relevant keywords in your content and headers, optimizing your meta tags, and ensuring your website is mobile-friendly are all part of on-page SEO. They’re like the signposts that guide Google’s algorithms to your webpage.

Similarly, technical SEO involves aspects like website speed, security, and crawlability. It’s like the foundation of your house. It supports all your other SEO efforts.

So, there you have it. The journey to ranking on Google involves understanding user needs, creating high-quality content, and mastering the art of SEO. It’s a journey of continuous learning and adaptation. But with these insights, you’re well-equipped to navigate this journey. Happy ranking!

Here is a table summarizing everything we discussed!
Sure, here’s the table in HTML format:

Note: The ratings are on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Importance refers to the significance of the section in the overall context of the guidelines. SEO Impact refers to the potential effect on search engine rankings. Ease of Implementation refers to how straightforward it is to apply these principles to a website.

This HTML code will create a table with the same content as the one provided earlier.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find my Google ranking?

You can find your Google ranking by using SEO tools like Google Search Console or SEMrush. These tools show your website’s ranking for specific keywords.

What is Google search ranking position?

Google search ranking position refers to the position of your website on the search engine results page (SERP) for a specific keyword.

Is it possible to rank #1 on Google?

Yes, it is possible to rank #1 on Google, but it requires a combination of high-quality content, strong SEO practices, and a well-optimized website.

Why am I ranking low on Google?

Low rankings on Google can be due to various factors, including poor SEO, low-quality content, slow website speed, or a lack of backlinks.

How do I get Google to rank higher?

To rank higher on Google, focus on creating high-quality, relevant content, optimizing your website for SEO, and building high-quality backlinks.

How long does it take to move up Google rankings?

Moving up Google rankings can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months, depending on the competitiveness of your keywords and the quality of your SEO.

Does downtime affect Google ranking?

Yes, frequent and prolonged downtime can negatively impact your Google ranking as it provides a poor user experience.

How to improve your Google rankings without getting penalized?

Improving Google rankings without getting penalized involves following Google’s guidelines, focusing on creating high-quality content, and using white-hat SEO techniques.

Does site speed affect Google ranking?

Yes, site speed is a ranking factor for Google. Faster sites provide a better user experience and are favored by Google’s algorithms.

Does social media affect Google rankings?

While social media itself doesn’t directly affect Google rankings, the traffic and brand awareness it generates can indirectly influence your SEO efforts.

What is a good Site Speed?

A good site speed is under 2 seconds. Faster load times lead to better user experience and higher rankings.

How can I get my website to index faster on Google?

To get your website indexed faster on Google, submit your sitemap through Google Search Console and ensure your website is easily crawlable.

How long do people spend on a website before leaving?

On average, people spend 2-3 minutes on a website before leaving. However, this can vary greatly depending on the website and the user’s intent.

How long does it take for a new website to be indexed by Google?

It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for a new website to be indexed by Google.

How do I know if Google is crawling my website?

You can check if Google is crawling your website by using Google Search Console’s coverage report.

What is Google indexing?

Google indexing is the process of adding webpages into Google search. Once a webpage is indexed, it can be discovered by users in Google search results.

Why is my website not indexed by Google?

Your website may not be indexed by Google due to technical issues, such as a “noindex” tag, crawl errors, or a penalty from Google.

How do I ask Google to crawl my site?

You can ask Google to crawl your site by submitting a sitemap through Google Search Console.

What is the purpose of Google crawl?

The purpose of Google crawl is to discover and index new and updated webpages to include in Google search results.

How do I request a Google index?

You can request a Google index through Google Search Console by submitting a URL inspection request.

How do I get listed on Google search?

To get listed on Google search, ensure your website is crawlable, submit a sitemap to Google Search Console, and create high-quality, SEO-friendly content.

How often does Google crawl?

Google’s crawl frequency varies depending on the website. High-quality, frequently updated websites may be crawled several times a day, while smaller, less active sites might be crawled less frequently.

What is indexing a website?

Indexing a website is the process of adding it into a search engine’s database. Once a website is indexed, its pages can appear in search engine results.

The post Ranking on Google: A Comprehensive Guide For 2024 appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

Bloggers and webmasters know that every single visitor helps to build up traffic, right? If that is the case, you should make sure that Google is correctly indexing your images, and that people searching for related image terms will have a chance to visit your blog.

Here is a quick check that you can perform to find that out. Just head to Google, and click on the “Images” link on the top left corner. That will take you to the Image Search. Now you just need to type on the search bar “site:yourdomain.com“. This query will filter only the results coming from your site.

If your images are getting indexed correctly by Google you should be able to see a whole bunch of them on the search results.

If, on the other hand, your images are not getting indexed by Google you will just see a “Your search did not match any documents” message.

The most common cause for this problem is a flawed robots.txt file (read “Create a robots.txt file” for an introduction to it).

For example, I used to have a “Disallow: /wp-content/” line on my robots.txt file, with the purpose of blocking some internal WordPress files from search bots. It worked, but as a result it also blocked all my images that were located in /wp-content/uploads/. The solution was simple: I just added the following line after that one: “Allow: /wp-content/uploads/”.

So if your images are not getting indexed, check your robots.txt file to make sure it is not blocking the access to them.

There are other causes that might make Google not list your images on its search results, including a low Pagerank, non relevant tags, poor permalink structure, bad image attributes and so on. If you are sure that your images are accessible to search bots, therefore, it could be a good idea to work on their tags and attributes. Here are two articles that you guide you through the steps required:

• 19 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site Using Google Images
• Using Google Image Search to Drive Traffic to Your Site

Even if your images are already indexed, the tips and tricks described in those articles will help you to maximize the incoming traffic from image searches.

The post Check if Your Images Appear on Google Image Search appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

Did you know that there are special tools and techniques that you can use to do advanced keyword research?

If you’re looking to improve your search engine rankings, then it’s important to make sure that you’re targeting the right keywords.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the best tips for doing advanced keyword research. By using these tips, you’ll be able to find valuable keywords that will help you reach your target audience. So don’t miss out – read on to learn more!

In this article, you’ll learn:

• Ranking for more keywords by analyzing top SERPs
• Use question-based search terms
• Expanding PAA
• Competitor sitemap research
• Google Console’s ninja technique
• Top pages keywords via Semrush & Ahrefs
• Google Auto Suggestions method

7 Advanced Keyword Research Tips

The traditional means of conducting keyword research to rank your website will not suffice. You will have to implement unique and less-known approaches to achieve success.

In order to improve your ranking, here are some advanced keyword research tips:

1. Ranking For More Keywords by Analyzing Top SERPs

Do you know? It is possible for one article to rank for more than a thousand keywords.

The majority of people believe that a single page should be optimized for only one keyword, but that is no longer the case.

As an example, Backlinko’s On-Page SEO guide ranks for more than a thousand keywords and receives over ten thousand visitors a month.

Just enter your keyword into Ahrefs Site Explorer and select the keywords that are relevant to your topic and optimize your page.

You should analyze the competitors’ pages that rank for the relevant keywords. In this case, the page “What is On-Page SEO” ranks for the keyword On-Page SEO Definition, which has a search volume of 70 and ranks third.

Here’s how Backlinko displayed the page.

The Semrush tool can also be used for finding keywords ranking for a page, in addition to Ahrefs.

Then, scroll down and click on the “View Details” link to see the “Top Organic Keywords.”

My favorite way to find out which keywords will bring significant traffic is to use this technique.

2. Use Question-Based Search Terms

Essentially, question-based keywords ask questions. For example, if you were creating content about dog breeds, a question-based keyword could be “What are the best dog breeds?”

Using question-based keywords in your content has several benefits:

1. People are more likely to type a question into a search engine than a simple keyword or phrase, so by using question-based keywords. Increasing the number of people who are interested in your content will increase your chances of attracting them.
2. Second, question-based keywords tend to be less competitive than other keywords, which means it will be easier for your content to rank high in the SERPs.
3. Finally, using question-based keywords can help to make your content more engaging and interesting, which is always a good thing.

A good way to find question-oriented keywords is by using AnswerthePublic, which helps you generate such keywords and topics. Using this tool, you can discover what people are looking for online.

By understanding what questions people are asking about your niche, your content will be able to answer those questions and improve your search engine rankings (SERPs).

Just type in the keyword you’re working with, such as “best dog breeds” and it’ll generate multiple questions.

It’ll provide you with a multitude of questions upon which you can write an article. You can also download all of these options by clicking the “Download CSV” button.

So if you’re looking to optimize your site for the search engines, make sure to use plenty of question-based keywords in your content. Your traffic can be significantly affected by it.

3. Expanding People Also Asked

PPA (or People Also Asked ) is a great way to find keywords for your SEO content strategy.

PAA allows you to research questions that people are actually asking about your topic and then provides keyword suggestions based on those questions.

This can be an invaluable tool for finding new keywords to target, as well as identifying potential gaps in your content.

PAA provides infinite loops of keywords relating to the topic, which helps to broaden your keyword research that would otherwise not be possible.

In most cases, you’ll find extremely valuable keywords. For instance, the question in PPA, “What is the easiest dog to own?” receives more than 3000 visitors each month and ranks for more than 2,900 keywords.

You can use a free tool AlsoAsked to get additional keyword research ideas. The mindmap is designed in such a way that users will be able to understand it easily.

4. Competitor Sitemap Research

Sitemaps allow you to find unlimited topic ideas without the need to hit your head against the wall all the time.

The idea is simple. Choose your competitor who has a lower domain authority than yours but gets significant traffic to their site.

For example, let’s say that you run Neilpetal.com and have a domain authority of 89.

And your primary competitor is wpbeginer.com, with a domain authority of 83 — it must be lower than your DA.

Essentially, it means you have the possibility of bringing in an additional 3 million visitors to your website.

As you can see, there are two options. Either you write about every topic your competitors cover, or you stick to topics that get a lot of traffic. I will explain how to accomplish the first tactic and for the latter part, please refer to Tip #6.

To begin with, we need to find the sitemap of the competitor. As shown in the screenshot, the sitemap for your competitor can be found by placing sitemap.xml in the root directory of the domain.

There is a 99.99% chance that its location is mentioned in the robots.txt file if it does not work.

After that, you need to install ScreamingFrog. It is an excellent tool for helping with search engine optimization. It can quickly and easily crawl through websites to find any potential issues that could be holding back your site’s ranking.

Moreover, it can be used for a variety of tasks related to website optimization, including checking for broken links, finding duplicate content, and analyzing on-page keyword density.

Next open Screaming Frog and go to Mode > List. You are limited to 500 URLs if you are using the free version. For keyword research, that is sufficient.

The following trick will allow you to crawl more useful URLs because we will disable Screaming Frog, so it does not crawl the CSS, JS, and images.

Make sure to uncheck the “following” feature from the software before you begin:

• Images
• CSS
• JavaScript
• SWF

Now go to “Upload” and paste the URL into the box.

In a matter of seconds, Screaming Frog will crawl the entire list and present the total number of URLs it is capable of crawling.

The scanning process will begin when you hit the scan button.

Once the scanning process is completed, go to Page Titles and export the file.

You will receive an excel file with all the titles and URLs. It’ll help you stay organized and on track.

Congratulations! You have successfully exported the excel file with all the URLs and titles. It is possible for you to write about every topic that your competitor has addressed.

It’s understandable that you may be wondering how you can determine the keywords for each of your posts. Isn’t that the main objective of keyword research?

That’s pretty simple! Go to Domain Overview and paste the URL into the box, and hit the Search button.

After this step, don’t forget to select “Exact URL.” The root domain is the default, which shows the keywords that are being ranked for the main domain instead of the blog post that you are looking for.

Scroll down a little and click on View Details. It will show you all the keywords that the page is ranking for.

Using the filter, you can see the keywords that rank for the top 10 positions so that you can find those that are highly relevant.

5. Google Console’s Ninja Technique

Google Console is a powerful tool that can help you with your keyword research for SEO. You can get insights into how people are searching for things on the internet. This can help you figure out what keywords to target in your SEO campaign.

Additionally, it can also help you track your progress and see how your keywords are performing.

Upon clicking on the Full Report, you will find a number of keywords that are not meaningful and cannot be used in an SEO campaign.

In order to solve this problem, click + and select “Query.”

Use the following filters “Custom (Regex)” and “Matches Regex.”

And use the following regex:

([^” “]*\s){7,}?

The term 7 indicates that the keyword length should consist of seven words. It can be changed to any number you wish.

Below you will find a list of good keywords that are extremely useful for our SEO campaign.

In many cases, this data is useful, such as:

• Get more traffic by including keywords in existing content
• Write a new blog for the keyword if you haven’t already
• Compare the previous month’s traffic to find out why traffic is increasing or decreasing

6. Top Pages Keywords via Semrush & Ahrefs

In conjunction with Tip #4, I described how you could find a competitor with a lower domain authority than your site. It is important to read the tip in its entirety. Otherwise, you may not get the full picture.

Using this method, we will determine which pages and keywords are responsible for the majority of traffic. As a result, we do not need to write about every topic in order to generate the same traffic but to write only about the topics that generate the most traffic.

In the box provided, enter the domain name and select Root Domain as the domain type. On the Traffic Analytics page, you will find information about everything about the site, from the number of visits to the bounce rate.

In order to view the report, you need to scroll down a little bit and click View Report. Thus, you will be able to see all the most popular pages.

Since you have to spend an additional $200 per month to obtain this valuable information, you may not receive all of the data.

No worries, I can save you $200 a month. Go to Backlink Analytics and click on Indexed Pages in order to find out which pages have been indexed.

You’ll see a list of pages with the most backlinks. It is obvious that if a page receives the most backlinks, it will receive the most traffic. Since high-traffic pages tend to get more backlinks, a page’s traffic increases the more backlinks it has.

Be sure to export the data so that you can use it for the whole year.

Ahrefs works the same way, but you don’t have to pay extra for the data. Just put the domain and go to “Top Pages.” Ahrefs will show you all the most popular URLs.

7. Google Auto Suggestions Method

You’ll have a good laugh using this method! In some cases, when you need to find out a lot of keywords and data quickly, Answers the Public is slower than Google Answers, so I tend to use it a lot instead.

There is nothing complicated about this method. Simply type the keyword and press the “Report Inappropriate Predictions” button, and then copy the keywords.

This tool is useful when you are writing an article, and you need to find alternative keywords related to your subject. For example, if you’re writing a blog on the “On-Page SEO Checklist,” you must target the keywords.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, advanced keyword research is a valuable tool for improving search engine rankings.

By using the right tools and techniques, the right keywords can be found on your website.

This will help you attract more visitors and improve your chances of ranking higher in the search results.

The post Advanced Keyword Research Tips: Rank Medium In Google appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

If you have a website or blog, or if you work with anything related to the Internet, you’ll certainly need to know a bit about search engine optimization (SEO). A good way to get started is to familiarize yourself with the most common terms of the trade, and below you’ll find 20 of them. (For those who already know SEO, consider this post as a refresher!).

1. SEM: Stands for Search Engine Marketing, and as the name implies it involves marketing services or products via search engines. SEM is divided into two main pillars: SEO and PPC. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimizing websites to make their pages appear in the organic search results. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the practice of purchasing clicks from search engines. The clicks come from sponsored listings in the search results.

2. Backlink: Also called inlink or simply link, it is an hyperlink on another website pointing back to your own website. Backlinks are important for SEO because they affect directly the PageRank of any web page, influencing its search rankings.

3. PageRank: PageRank is an algorithm that Google uses to estimate the relative important of pages around the web. The basic idea behind the algorithm is the fact that a link from page A to page B can be seen as a vote of trust from page A to page B. The higher the number of links (weighted to their value) to a page, therefore, the higher the probability that such page is important.

4. Linkbait: A linkbait is a piece of web content published on a website or blog with the goal of attracting as many backlinks as possible (in order to improve one’s search rankings). Usually it’s a written piece, but it can also be a video, a picture, a quiz or anything else. A classic example of linkbait are the “Top 10? lists that tend to become popular on social bookmarking sites.

5. Link farm. A link farm is a group of websites where every website links to every other website, with the purpose of artificially increasing the PageRank of all the sites in the farm. This practice was effective in the early days of search engines, but today they are seeing as a spamming technique (and thus can get you penalized).

6. Anchor text: The anchor text of a backlink is the text that is clickable on the web page. Having keyword rich anchor texts help with SEO because Google will associate these keywords with the content of your website. If you have a weight loss blog, for instance, it would help your search rankings if some of your backlinks had “weight loss” as their anchor texts.

7. NoFollow: The nofollow is a link attribute used by website owners to signal to Google that they don’t endorse the website they are linking to. This can happen either when the link is created by the users themselves (e.g., blog comments), or when the link was paid for (e.g., sponsors and advertisers). When Google sees the nofollow attribute it will basically not count that link for the PageRank and search algorithms.

8. Link Sculpting: By using the nofollow attribute strategically webmasters were able to channel the flow of PageRank within their websites, thus increasing the search rankings of desired pages. This practice is no longer effective as Google recently change how it handles the nofollow attribute.

9. Title Tag: The title tag is literally the title of a web page, and it’s one of the most important factors inside Google’s search algorithm. Ideally your title tag should be unique and contain the main keywords of your page. You can see the title tag of any web page on top of the browser while navigating it.

10. Meta Tags: Like the title tag, meta tags are used to give search engines more information regarding the content of your pages. The meta tags are placed inside the HEAD section of your HTML code, and thus are not visible to human visitors.

11. Search Algorithm: Google’s search algorithm is used to find the most relevant web pages for any search query. The algorithm considers over 200 factors (according to Google itself), including the PageRank value, the title tag, the meta tags, the content of the website, the age of the domain and so on.

12. SERP: Stands for Search Engine Results Page. It’s basically the page you’ll get when you search for a specific keyword on Google or on other search engines. The amount of search traffic your website will receive depends on the rankings it will have inside the SERPs.

13. Sandbox: Google basically has a separate index, the sandbox, where it places all newly discovered websites. When websites are on the sandbox, they won’t appear in the search results for normal search queries. Once Google verifies that the website is legitimate, it will move it out of the sandbox and into the main index.

14. Keyword Density: To find the keyword density of any particular page you just need to divide the number of times that keyword is used by the total number of words in the page. Keyword density used to be an important SEO factor, as the early algorithms placed a heavy emphasis on it. This is not the case anymore.

15. Keyword Stuffing: Since keyword density was an important factor on the early search algorithms, webmasters started to game the system by artificially inflating the keyword density inside their websites. This is called keyword stuffing. These days this practice won’t help you, and it can also get you penalized.

16. Cloaking. This technique involves making the same web page show different content to search engines and to human visitors. The purpose is to get the page ranked for specific keywords, and then use the incoming traffic to promote unrelated products or services. This practice is considering spamming and can get you penalized (if not banned) on most search engines.

17. Web Crawler: Also called search bot or spider, it’s a computer program that browses the web on behalf of search engines, trying to discover new links and new pages. This is the first step on the indexation process.

18. Duplicate Content: Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. You should avoid having duplicate content on your website because it can get you penalized.

19. Canonical URL: Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com.

20. Robots.txt: This is nothing more than a file, placed in the root of the domain, that is used to inform search bots about the structure of the website. For instance, via the robots.txt file it’s possible to block specific search robots and to restrict the access to specific folders of section inside the website.

The post 20 SEO Terms You Should Know appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

Most marketers have this wrong assumption about content marketing. Perhaps, you are one of those marketers which think that your job is done after you have published your work. But the truth is; the real work begins before and after you have successfully published your article.

As a marketer, it is also your job to optimize your content. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about the nitty-gritty technical details about the SEO or keywords or the Meta data.

In this content-driven digital world, content optimization is now more about how the quality, the relevance and the connection you can build with your audience through your content.

Content Optimization Influence How Content Is Consumed

How well you optimize your content has an impact on how your content is delivered to your readers. If you optimize it right, you increase the likelihood that your content will reach and consumed by the intended audience.

A study revealed the top three factors that make content effective are relevancy, engagement and storytelling and call to action. With these factors in mind, content personalization is something that is getting more and more valuable in content optimization.

Optimize Content With Personalization

Content personalization involves analyzing accurate audience data to create and deliver relevant content that will stir their curiosity, encourage engagement and compels them to do an action.

According to statistics, about 74% of customers feel frustrated if the website content is not personalized. Nowadays, you have to be real. Not everyone is the same. Your target market may be of the same generation but their buying behavior is not the same. Their purchasing journey varies because of various factors such as location, culture and interests.

So whether you are creating our content for lead generation, for engagement or for brand awareness, it is crucial that you create a personalized content. Create a content that a specific group of audience can understand and related to so you can send you message across.

But amidst the hype of personalization, how marketers can utilize it in content optimization is still a conundrum. So to help, here are some pre and post-publishing steps that will help you start you content personalization strategies.

Understanding Your Audience

Basically, the pre-publishing process is the steps you need to follow before you start creating your content. It is vital to understand who your audience is and how or when they consume your content.

Systematize Your Data Gathering

If you keep on gathering data here and there without any systematic process, you will end up cluttered with various data which seemed to have no use.

A systematic data gathering needs technology to maximize and organize your efforts. Strategically, you may use a CMS which provides effective CRM features and allows you to be connected to data sources, thus, giving you a useful and seamless way of gathering user’s data.

Moreover, a systematic data gathering goes way more than just observing your users behavior. It is more than just surveys and statistics. It involves various factors such as online real-time behavior, social media activities, demographic information, activity on your website and a lot more.

You need to figure out how to align these factors to create a systematic and organize approach in data gathering.

Segment Them With The Right Data

After you have successfully gathered the significant data, you need to segment your list. Group together those with similar attributes. You need to be aware that you have different types of customers. Identify each key factor that makes each of them different with one another. You need these key factors to help you create an experience map needed for the next step.

Creating An Experience Map

Each group of target consumers has a distinct behavior which sets them apart from another. You have to determine and understand what they are to create an experience map.

An experience map is your guide to content creation. Using each distinct features of your audience you can create a map of their specific purchasing journey which increases your chance of transmitting your message successfully through a personalized content. You should be able to take your content to the distinct purchasing journey of your target consumers; from awareness to consideration to decision.

Deliver Gather Results & Automate

The publishing process itself is difficult but getting to the post-publishing process could be another headache. But unless you can deliver to content to the right audience, your published content can only do so much.

Use The Right Automation

In content delivery, using the right automation is the light at the end of the tunnel. It allows you to reach out to your target consumers. With the right content marketing tool, you will efficiently and effectively attract your ideal consumers as they consume your content.

Choosing the right marketing automation is not as complicated as it seems. You just need to find the one that uses the data you gathered in order to reach out to your specified audience. It should create a delivery pattern based on your data to send your content across.

When choosing your automation tool, keep one thing in mind; it should help you deliver the right content to the right audience.

Measure, Analyze And Reinvent

At the end of your campaign, you need to have a solid way of measuring and analyzing your audience response. This is a critical element which is not just about clicks or about page views. This is the stage where you need to track data about how your audience responds with your content base on how you segment them.

You need to measure your content’s performance in each group of audience. You have metrics to track to help you find some loopholes and determine areas of improvement. Then, leverage the data and insights you gathered to figure out your personalization strategy’s weakness and improve them for your next optimization campaign.

Important Tip: Always Be Human

As a marketer, perhaps you came across this advice several times already. But how well do you understand this step? Being human is more than just profiling your audience. It is about giving your audience a genuine human interaction and content personalization is all about being human.
You need to significantly provide customers with answers to their questions through your content. If you put consumers at the center of your optimization campaign, you will know what they looking for and give them what they want.

Understand that personalization is a consumer-centered strategy which helps you humanize your brand. In personalization, you don’t just talk with your audience; you also have to listen to them. It enhances a two-way communication between consumers and brands. This way, brands can fully understand them and create a compelling and personalized content that help people in their goals.

Gone are the days when your target market is treated in general. It may have worked years ago but as the demand for your market changes so does you marketing approach.

Nearly 100% of consumers surveyed said that they have been discouraged from completing a transaction because of incomplete or incorrect content. Your content no matter how well you craft it would be useless if it does not reflect the needs and wants of your target market. With these in mind, it is safe to say that accurate and personalize content is more important than ever.

Personalization when done right can boost your optimization campaign. There is no doubt about that. The only reason why some marketers fail is that they don’t really understand how content personalization works. But with these tips put into work, hopefully, you can create a personalized content for your next content optimization campaign.

The post How Can Personalization Help In Content Optimization appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

If you want to conquer the search results, it’s crucial to master the art of on page SEO factors. From technical intricacies to content optimization, understanding and implementing these critical elements are paramount to your website’s success.

As the years fly by, it’s common to see folks fixated on off-page techniques like link building and technical wizardry. But here’s the real scoop: if you neglect on-page SEO, your off-page efforts may fall flat. Savvy SEO experts understand the undeniable importance of on-page optimization and consistently prioritize it. With search engine algorithms evolving incessantly, staying up to date with on-page SEO factors is non-negotiable.

While you can’t control every aspect of search engine algorithms, there’s one thing you have complete control over: your own website. That’s right, by optimizing your on-page SEO factors, you can take charge and maximize your chances of ranking higher.

In this article, we’re diving deep into the significance of on-page SEO factors and unveiling the ten game-changing elements you must master today.!

What Is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is also called on-site SEO, which is the practice of optimizing one’s webpage. It has the goal to improve the website’s rankings on search engines, earning them organic traffic for more views, potential sales, and more benefits.

There are actually many ways one can optimize their on-page SEO, from publishing the quality content down to updating HTML tags, headlines, images, and the like. But the main focus is ensuring that your entire website has the expertise and trustworthiness both search engines and users will appreciate.

On-page SEO takes account a lot of factors of your webpage to improve its visibility in search engine results. If you don’t want to get technical you can always hire someone to perform an SEO audit for you.

The Importance of On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is crucial to do because it will help search engines like Google comprehend what your website and its content is all about. It will identify whether the content posted is relevant to all searchers’ queries, which is what can make or break your rankings.

And because search engines are becoming even more sophisticated by the year, experts ow focus on semantics and relevance of their content for search engine results pages. This is because search engines are constantly upgrading their algorithm and smartening up their bots!

Today, we can see that Google is now better with its complex algorithms, specifically in these points:

Understanding the users look into when typing!

Delivering the most accurate search results which help meet user’s intent, from shopping, navigational, to informational content

As this continues to develop and upgrade, it’s essential to adapt to all these. How can you do so? Make sure that, your website and content, as well as its elements, are well-optimized according to all the best practices today!

Furthermore, you shouldn’t ignore on-page SEO! After all, it’s what you have full control of and can make or break your results. That’s why it’s best to put even more effort than you usually do, which can help boost your traffic and search presence.

Ten On-Page SEO Factors You Should Apply Today

Now that you’re familiar with on-page SEO, what can you do to optimize your website around it? Here are ten factors to look into

1. E-A-T Content

E-A-T is a great way to organize your thoughts and content to make it more effective. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, which are the three main aspects Google raters and users would use to assess the entire webpage.

Google and other search engines always make sure that the highest-quality content is on top. With that being said, you have to make sure that you post higher-quality content compared to your competitors.

So when designing your webpage and writing content, try to follow the E-A-T order and put it into your SEO strategy.

2. Title Tags

A title tag is an HTML tag which is located in the webpage’s head sections. These are what provide the context of what that particular content or webpage is about. Furthermore, it’s features on the search engine results pages, seen as a clickable link. You also see it on the browser window which distinguishes the basics of what your webpage is about.

While it has little impact on one’s organic rankings, having duplications, leaving it missing or poorly written can negatively impact the SEO results.

3. Meta Description

You’re probably already familiar with the wonders of meta descriptions, existing even during the early years of SEO. These descriptions or meta tags can give you the opportunity t talk about what your content and webpage is in a short text. It’s displayed below the title of your page in search engine results pages.

While meta descriptions don’t directly impact one’s SEO rankings, it has the indirect attributes that help in raising traffic. By optimizing your meta descriptions, it can improve your click-through-rates and the way people see your page on the search results.

4. Content Headlines

If you want your content to perform well on search engines (obviously you do), then you need to write the interesting headline! While it does seem like such a basic task, taking your time to create a compelling headline can really make a huge difference between clocks and impressions.

That’s why you need to be strategic when writing headlines. It should spark interests so it can stand out among all the other results on the search engine, having people click yours over the others!

5. Header Tags

Header tags are the HTML elements that identify your content’s headings and subheadings within the content. It differs from paragraph text and though not that huge of a difference for rankings, it helps for your overall SEO and the users.

It makes content easier to read for users to enjoy the content. This encourages them to share the content because of how informative and enticing it is to view. Furthermore, it gives a chance to provide the keyword-rich content, which helps search engines identify your content and what it’s all about.

6. SEO Writing

SEO writing is advantageous for both search engines and your readers. And no, it isn’t just about filing in your content with main keywords then filling out the blanks right after. You DON’T produce content just for the sake of it.

Your goal should be to inform people and encourage them to share what you have to offer, based on the compelling and interesting content you have to offer. Of course, this means your content has to be backed up with authoritative content, relevant information, and trusted sources.

7. Keyword Cannibalization

People say that the more pages you own which targets keywords, the better your webpage can rank at. That’s actually NOT true at all! When you target a specific keyword among a lot of areas on your webpage, it shows keyword cannibalization, which can adversely impact your SEO.

It ends up with you competing with yourself and having bots think your page is all spam with the overuse of keywords. With that being said, look into your webpage for any keyword cannibalization instances and solve it all immediately!

8. Doing Content Audit

A lot of webpage owners are more focused on creating and posting new content that they don’t bother checking their existing content. This is a huge mistake to avoid doing, as auditing your previous content can help in many ways!

It helps evaluate if your existing content accomplishes goals and gains ROI, identifies if your contents’ information is accurate and up to date, as well as helps you see what content works best for you and the webpage. Overall, content auditing helps with your strategies and should be done regularly.

9. Image Optimization

It’s best to add images to have your webpages look appealing to viewers. However, images aren’t created equal, with some slowing down your business if you add it wrongly.

That’s why you should optimize all your webpage’s images as well, as it can help with ranking opportunities, load quicker, and offer a better user experience that helps keep your conversion rates high. Make sure you add titles and alt text, too!

10. User Engagement

Your SEO’s on-page elements are just a part of the battle. You also have to win your viewers’ hearts with better user experience, from the webpage itself down to the content. Increase your user engagement to have them interact, stay, and visit again by focusing on site speed, better content, and other ways to improve the design to impress your viewers.

When it comes to optimizing your website, you have to make sure that you have the knowledge and dedication to do so. Not only should you focus on one aspect of SEO, but in all, especially with on-page SEO. Through updating your website and following the right tips, you can begin reaching goals for your website now.

I hope that this article on the ten on-page SEO factors you should consider today helped you out! So don’t wait any longer and begin taking action on optimizing your website with your team or with SEO companies like Joel House now.

If you have any questions or want to share your tips and experiences on website optimization, then comment below. Your thoughts are much appreciated!

The post On Page SEO Factors: The Only Thing You Control That Can Skyrocket Your Website’s Traffic appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

If you are new to SEO Google just released a video with some basics mistakes you should avoid and six tips you should apply on your website if you want better rankings. If you have been working with SEO for some time you won’t find anything new here, but it might be a refresher and remind you about the factors that Google considers to be important. You can watch the video below:

If you are in a hurry here are the 6 tips:

1. Do something cool: Make sure your site stands out from the competition.
2. Include relevant words in your copy: Try to put yourself in the shoes of searchers.
3. Be smart about your tags and site architecture.
4. Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools to get notified by Google if anything is wrong.
5. Attract buzz: Natural links, +1s, likes, follows… all these can help.
6. Stay fresh and relevant: Keep content up-to-date on your site to keep receiving organic traffic.

The post 6 SEO Tips from Google Itself appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. If you want to ask a question, just write a comment below.

Idrees asks:

Should I use an HTML sitemap on my blog, or an XML one? Or both? Chris Pearson says that XHTML sitemaps aren’t recommended anymore because these pages end up having 100 links or way more, and Google has said that this is a poor practice to be avoided if at all possible.

He himself used to have both the HTML sitemap and the XML sitemap. Now he has taken away the former from his site. Pro Blog Design uses the HTML sitemap but has it broken to pages using the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator.

I notice you use only the HTML sitemap and have more than 1000 links in it. Has this impacted your rankings? Which sitemap would you recommend? And if it is one or the other, which plugin would you recommend to generate the sitemap?

Interesting question.

First of all let’s clarify the difference between the two types of sitemaps for those who don’t know it. An HTML sitemap is a page within your site that links to all the other important pages on your site. “Archives” page is nothing more than an HTML sitemap.

An XML sitemap does pretty much the same thing, but instead of using HTML (which a browser can interpret like any other page) it uses XML, which is a markup language to encode documents. This means that the XML sitemap will only be useful/make sense to search bots, while the HTML sitemap will also be visible/useful to human visitors.

In my opinion most websites should have an HTML sitemap. Why? For two main reasons: it helps search engines crawl and understand your site, and it helps human visitors browse your site more efficiently.

Why do I say “most” and not “all” websites? Because some specific types might not need it. Very small sites or online stores, for example, might not need an HTML sitemap because finding the single pages there is straight forward. For content based websites like blogs, however, the HTML sitemap is really helpful.

Now if you are worried about having too many links on a single page, you could use a sectioned HTML sitemap, where the initial page links to all the months, and then inside each month’s page you’ll have links to the single posts.

However, I believe this structure is less functional than having all the posts in a single page, like I do. Try to find a specific post on those sectioned sitemaps and you’ll see how much time you’ll waste going back and forth the pages until you find what you are looking for. On my archives, on the other hand, you just need to browse around until you find the right post.

Google does recommend webmasters to keep fewer than 100 links per page (including sitemap pages), but I believe this is not a strict policy. In other words, as long as your page with over 100 links exists to help your visitors, Google should be fine with it. This is the case with my archives. In fact you can see that it has a PR 5, and if you search on Google for “daily blog tips archives” it will appear on the first result, meaning that Google is fine with it.

I use the Clean Archives WordPress plugin to create that page automatically.

What about XML sitemaps? In my opinion using such a sitemap is not necessary, but it might be useful in some situations. Why don’t I think it is necessary? Because if you craft your website with an efficient structure (i.e., with a flat hierarchy of pages, a clear navigation and sound permalinks) Google should have no problems crawling and indexing all your pages correctly.

You can test this by using the “site:domain.com” operator on Google. It will reveal how many pages Google currently indexes from your site. Daily Blog Tips, for example, has around 1,700 pages indexed by Google. I have 1,425 posts published. If you then add the secondary pages (e.g., pages subsequent to the homepage, category and archive pages) this number should get close to 1,700, so yeah Google is indexing all my pages right now.

Now in what situations I think one should use an XML sitemap? Exactly when one is having crawling or indexation problems. If Google was only indexing part of my pages, say 500 out of 1,700, then I would consider using an XML sitemap. Similarly if my newest posts were taking too long to get indexed by Google (if at all) I would also add an XML sitemap to try to solve the problem.

Summing up: I believe most sites should use an HTML sitemap, because they are useful both for search engines and for human visitors (and if you don’t want to have a page with more than 100 links just break your sitemap in sub-sections). As for XML sitemaps, I believe they are useful if you are having crawling or indexation problems. Obviously adding an XML sitemap to a healthy site won’t do any harm, but I am not sure how much good it will do either.

The post Should I Use an HTML or a XML Sitemap on My Site? appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

I was browsing through my RSS feeds a couple of minutes ago and I came across an interesting post from the Google Webmaster Blog, titled Google’s SEO Report Card.,

The report was created to help Google’s engineers and employees better optimize their product pages for search engines. So yeah, even Google practices SEO!

You’ll find that the report touches on many on-page and on-site SEO factors, including title tags, meta tags, heading tags, canonical URLs, image tags and link anchors.

The most useful part, however, are the examples that are included on each point. You’ll be able to understand what is right and what is wrong on each SEO factor.

Here is the direct download link for the PDF (hoping Google won’t mind…).

The post Download Google’s SEO Report Card appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

I love rankings, what can I say. After I published the “Top 25 Blogs About Blogging” list I thought that someone would replicate it for the SEO sphere. But no one did, so here we go again.

This list was made using pretty much the same algorithm (only small modifications were made, mainly due to the fact that SEO blogs are more popular). Once again the list should be useful because it is based on objective factors. There are many “Top SEO Blogs” lists around the web, but most of them are based on the preferences of the author.

The Top 25 SEO Blogs list, instead, ranks the blogs according to their Google Pagerank, Alexa rank, number of Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. Each factor has a score from 0 to 10, and the maximum score for each blog is 40. Details about the algorithm can be found below the table.

#1	Search Engine Land	7	10	9	10	36
#2	SEOBook	6	10	10	10	36
#3	SEO Moz	5	10	10	10	35
#4	Matt Cutts	7	10	8	10	35
#5	Search Engine Watch	7	10	10	7	34
#6	Search Engine Roundtable	7	10	8	8	33
#7	Search Engine Journal	7	8	9	8	32
#8	Online Marketing Blog	6	7	7	10	30
#9	Pronet Advertising	7	7	5	10	29
#10	Marketing Pilgrim	7	8	6	8	29
#11	SEO Chat	6	10	4	6	26
#12	Search Engine Guide	7	8	4	6	25
#13	SEO Blackhat	6	8	6	5	25
#14	Stuntdubl	6	6	6	6	24
#15	Graywolf’s SEO	6	7	4	7	24
#16	SEO by the SEA	6	4	5	5	20
#17	Link Building Blog	5	5	5	4	19
#18	Jim Boykin	5	6	4	4	19
#19	SEOpedia	6	5	4	4	19
#20	DaveN	6	5	4	4	19
#21	Bruce Clay	5	7	3	3	18
#22	Blue Hat SEO	4	6	3	4	17
#23	Tropical SEO	5	5	3	4	17
#24	SEO Refugee	5	6	1	3	15
#25	Small Business SEM	5	4	3	3	15

Blogs considered: the list considers only blogs that have a high percentage of SEO-related content. Topics might range from SEO news coverage to general SEO discussion and link building.

Google Pagerank (0 to 10): the actual Pagerank was used on the algorithm.

Alexa Rank (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on the Alexa Rank (i.e., 100k and up, 80k-100k, 60k-80k, 40k-60k) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Bloglines Subscribers (0 to 10): Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., 1-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-300) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Technorati Authority (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on Technorati’s Authority rank (i.e., 1-125, 125-250, 500-750,750-1000) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Top 25 Series

• Top 25 Blogs About Blogging
• Top 25 SEO Blogs
• Top 25 Web Design Blogs
• Top 25 Celebrity Blogs

The post Top 25 SEO Blogs appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

In the modern business world, it is extremely important to have a website. According to Blue Corona, 70-80% of customers will first research your business online before buying from you.

If you don’t have a website, now is the time to get one designed. Find a suitable hosting provider, a trustworthy website builder and get it live. However, just because you have built it, it doesn’t mean that people will come. Competition and although not welcome and is expected in the business world, meaning that you are going to fight for attention with others.

You need to make sure that you do what it takes to get your website in front of people. This means you need to know how to drive traffic to your website.

This is important because those people coming to your website are leads. And leads can be converted into customers, which means more revenue for your business. So if you are looking for tips on how to increase website traffic, keep on reading. We have collected 11 of the best tips.

1. Take Advantage of Social media

When it comes to increasing traffic to your website, social media cannot be overlooked. Social media platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. Businesses over the world have found them to be effective for gaining followers and directing them back to their main website. This is because social media is easy and free to use and has billions of users from all over the world.

2. Start Blogging

Writing blog posts might seem like a waste of time, but it is the best way to establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Every day, people are searching for useful content online.

And by providing them with what they are looking for, they will see you as credible and trustworthy. At the end of your blog post, you can include a call to action that directs them to your main site to increase website traffic.

3. Utilize On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On-page SEO is the best way to get your website to rank highly on search engines. Ranking highly is important because it makes your site appear at the top of search engine results.

This means more people see you’re website and will visit it. There are many on-page SEO tips and trick that you can use to increase your ranking. The most popular include writing long-form content, making sure the content is relevant to what people are searching for and including meta descriptions as well as appropriate keywords.

4. Use Long-Tail Keywords to Optimize Content

When writing a blog post, you will most likely use short-tail keywords since they are searched for the most. But this only makes them harder to rank compared to long-tail keywords. Sometimes people like to get specific with their search queries, and this is where long-tail keywords come in handy. So if you’re thinking about how to drive traffic to your website, consider including them in your content.

5. Use Internal Links

One of the most tried and true SEO tricks is linking internally. When you are crafting your content, be on the lookout for internal linking opportunities (you can also create them). These will not only boost your search engine rankings, meaning more traffic, they will also enrich the user experience. In the end, this also means more traffic to your website.

6. Start Backlinking

When speaking about how to drive traffic to your website, backlinking cannot be skipped. This is when another website links to yours.

Backlinks tell search engines that your website is popular, which makes them rank it highly. So speak to industry influencers and complementary businesses to link back to your website.

7. Make Sure Your Website is Optimized for Mobile Devices

Mobile phone usage is on the rise across the globe. According to Statista, mobile devices were responsible for 52.2% of web traffic in 2018.

With that in mind, it makes sense to make your website mobile-friendly to accommodate these users. People don’t want to deal with the hassles that come with viewing a desktop site on a mobile device. This involves a lot of tedious pinching and zooming, which can make them leave your website due to frustration.

8. Use Email Marketing

The rumors of the death of email marketing have been exaggerated; it remains one of the most effective marketing techniques. According to a survey by HubSpot, 59% of people said that emails influence their decision to make a purchase.

However, the success of email marketing depends on a number of factors. These include posting at the right times and making sure the content is relevant.

9. Start Guest Blogging

If you have a blog and wondering how to drive traffic to your blog, consider guest blogging on high authority sites. Just like your own blog, this is about making yourself appear authoritative to establish credibility and trust in your brand.

Just be mindful of the rules of the site you’re guest blogging on. You can ruin a good opportunity if you result to using tactics that are deemed spammy.

10. Give Your Audience Something Free

We all love free stuff and that is a fact. This presents a great opportunity for you to increase website traffic.

Create a contest that requires people to submit their email addresses (this is a huge help for your email marketing efforts). Then tell them to share the link with family and friends to earn more points to win the competition. This link can direct them to your website where they might decide to see what else is on offer.

11. Engage with Your Audience

If you use social media or blog – post to reach your audience, make sure you pay attention to the comments. When you see that people have sparked a conversation in the comments section, join in.

For instance, when you comment on your Facebook posts, people might view your Facebook profile to interact with you more. Here, they will most likely find the link to your website, sending more traffic towards it.

There’s No Single Approach to Driving Traffic

If you don’t have a website these days, your business might as well be non-existent. And when you do have one, you need to know how to drive traffic to your website.

More traffic means more revenue for your business. Utilize social media, get comfortable with SEO tricks, and always put your audience first.

The post How to Drive Traffic to Your Website: 11 Useful Tips appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

It is a Google’s world, and as webmasters we live and die by our search rankings, right? One of the factors that both influences search rankings and that most people seem to care about is the Google PageRank. More specifically, we want as much PageRank as possible!

Now aiming to increase the PageRank of your pages is fine, the problem is when misconceptions around the PageRank algorithm affect the way webmasters behave.

One of these misconceptions is to assume that when you link to external websites you will be losing PageRank from the page where the link is placed. I call this the “bucket view” of the PageRank algorithm.

That is, people mentally compare web pages to buckets, and backlinks to streams of water. The more streams of water you have, the more water your bucket will have, and thus the higher your PageRank. However, under this analogy external links on your page represent little holes in your bucket, so every external link will leak some water and end up reducing your PageRank. Put 100 external links on your page and all the water will be gone!

This analogy is somewhat logical, but it is NOT how the Google PageRank algorithm works.

The PageRank of a page is only affected by the number and quality of its incoming links, and not by the outgoing ones (you understand this by taking a look at the equation used, but I won’t get into that because it is beyond our purpose here). Obviously if you link to 1,000 sites or to bad neighbors from your page it might get flagged as spammy and be de-indexed, but that has nothing to do with its PageRank, which would remain intact.

If you have an internal page with a PageRank of 5 (keep in mind the real PageRank values are not integers but rather floating points), placing 10 external links on that page would in no way affect its PageRank. The only thing that would happen is that each of those linked pages would receive a link juice of 0.5 (the value of each link is equal to the PageRank of the page where they come from divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page).

Now the reality is a bit more complex and we would need to take into consideration other details to make a complete analysis. For example, you will still lose some PageRank if you link to external websites because if you had not linked there the link equity of that page would flow back to your homepage and be distributed equally across your website. This is the so called PageRank leak, but it is not as significant as most people believe.

Despite these nuances, therefore, the moral of the story remains: linking out is not supposed to directly reduce the PageRank on your pages. In fact there are plenty of pages that contain dozens of links and yet rank in the first positions of Google’s result pages for competitive keywords.

If you ever refrained from linking to an external site because you feared you would lose PageRank (I have been there too), forget that. Linking away to relevant and valuable pages is good for everyone.

The post Linking Out Will NOT Reduce The Google PageRank of Your Pages appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

This post is part of the weekly Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Rick Regan asks:

I have a two-part question about how Google indexes sites:

1) Is Google supposed to index an entire site at once or does it do so incrementally? My blog (on my own domain) appears to be getting indexed incrementally, to the point where it’s taken a month to index all 30+ of my pages. Most of those pages were present before I manually submitted my URL to Google. I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong or not doing something I should be doing. Does this have anything to do with my blog being new, or having no external links pointing to it?

2) Does Google eventually drop noindex and 404 pages? I have archive pages that got indexed but I have since added to them the “noindex” tag. I also deleted an empty category that Google now gets a 404 on. Will Google eventually remove those pages as it re-crawls my site?

I will answer to each question individually.

1) Most of the times Google will index a new website gradually, yes. That is at least what I have observed with most of my websites. The speed at which Google will index all your internal pages will depend on different factors though.

If you get some very trusted and relevant backlinks, and on top of that you also have a very efficient internal link structure, all your internal pages will get indexed fast. If, on the other hand, you have very few backlinks and a poor link structure, it might take a while before you get to see all your pages indexed.

Keep in mind that using the manual URL submission to Google will have a small impact upon the speed and breadth of your indexation. In fact many people recommend that if you want to get a site indexed fast you should NOT use that feature, and rather focus on getting some trusted backlinks to your site.

2) Yes, eventually Google will fix those issues. New sites don’t get crawled very often, so that is certainly the reason. As soon as Google finds out about the “noindex” tag, for example, it will remove those pages from their index.

The post When and How Will Google Index My Website? appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

When it comes to your blog’s position within search engine results, there’s far more than just sheer luck at play.

Search Engine Optimisation is a skill that any content creator – professional or amateur – should develop in order to make their content as discoverable as possible. It involves making certain tweaks to your blog and its content in order to improve their position and visibility online.

While SEO and content marketing experts have developed specialist tools to launch your posts as far up the ranks as possible, there’s also a great deal of groundwork that you can do yourself for free. Here, I’ll provide a few useful tips to help you improve your blog content SEO.

1. Carefully Curate Your Posts

One of the most vital parts of SEO is to make sure that every piece of content you put out is worthwhile. It doesn’t matter how much technical optimisation you undertake if you’re not posting things that are unique, useful, accurate, relevant and up to date.

Don’t stray from your blog’s theme – however tempting it is to comment on developments in the world beyond your usual subject matter.

You should keep an eye on what’s going viral within your blog’s specialist field. Trending topics are far more likely to achieve hits – and providing a distinctive, expert angle on those topics will help you to stand out from other bloggers, so make sure that you research thoroughly!

1. Improve Both Readability and Accessibility

That’s the subject matter of your posts optimised – but what about your approach to the main body of text?

All the information you include in each post needs to be totally relevant and very concise. Try to avoid “filler language” wherever possible – that’s the fluff that bulks up your word count but doesn’t actually include any relevant information that moves the piece along.

Paragraphs should be no longer than three lines long. Remember, an online audience is more likely to be “scanning” your post for vital nuggets of information than studying it in great depth, so the readability of your content is vitally important.

Include headings and applicable, visually pleasing images and infographics where possible to break up the text and keep things interesting. Make sure you have permission to use all pictures before you add them!

Accessibility to your blog and across all your posts is a vital SEO step. Always link internally to content you’ve created in the past that is relevant to your current post’s subject matter. This improves access to more of your work for both audience members and search engines.

You should also link to your blog content regularly on your social media platforms, as this will increase traffic and inbound links – making you more discoverable still.

Before you post anything, however, you should first ensure that you are not duplicating content that already exists across your blog. If there are too many similar topics, keywords or repeated chunks of text, you may be penalized by search engines and sent way down the ranks.

1. Keep on Top of Trending Keywords

This area is perhaps one of the most famous elements of SEO and it’s also surprisingly easy to achieve.

There are a number of very useful free tools available that will help you discover exactly which keywords are the most popular within online searches. Again, it’s very important that all these search terms are completely relevant to the subject of your content.

Tools you may consider using include Ahrefs, SEM Rush and Google Adwords. But there are plenty more available. You might even use tools such as Answer The Public, Google search suggestions and Google Trends to pick out important keywords. Some will allow you to focus on particular countries – and even regions – meaning you can target a more local audience if required.

There are two main types of keyword phrases – short tail and long tail.

Short tail search terms are between one and three words long, and will help you to access a wide audience that is seeking out information falling roughly into the same field as your content. For example, “SEO tips” might be a high-performing short tail phrase for this page.

Long tail keyword phrases help you to zone in on a more specific audience by providing more detail of the subject matter. For example, “blog content SEO for beginners” will allow you to attract those who are looking for more specific types of information.

Long tail keywords are particularly valuable to those who are interested in content marketing for their blog, as they will help to draw in audiences that are far more likely to convert into sales leads.

Use keywords everywhere – in headings, subheadings, meta-descriptions and tags as well as in the main body of your content.

Whatever you do, be sure to insert those keywords in a way that is natural and easy to read. Stuffing a piece with jarring phrases that do not work together in a grammatical sense feels lazy and salesy and is often off-putting for an audience.

Before you create new posts that are properly keyword optimised, it’s definitely worth making the effort to re-optimise blog content from past pieces too – that way your whole blog will perform consistently.

So – to get off to a flying start when it comes to blog content SEO – remember to:

1. Curate your posts, ensuring that they are relevant, unique and likely to draw an audience by keeping an eye on trends
2. Hone the readability and accessibility of all content (remembering to regularly include internal links and do away with duplicate content)
3. Keyword optimise in a natural, engaging way wherever possible

If you complete these steps, it’s highly likely that you’ll quickly see a difference in your blog’s search engine ranking.

This article was written by Tino Triste, Search Strategy Director at Tecmark.

The post 3 Ways to Optimise Blog Content so it Ranks Well on Google appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

Finding your keywords

The first step is to determine which keywords you’ll be targeting with your content. You’ll want all of these to be relevant to the overall theme of your blog as well. As an example, the blog I Contribute to, the Klood Digital Blog, targets a number of keywords related to digital marketing and sales. To find keywords for my blogs there, I begin by thinking about subtopics within digital marketing that I’d be interested in writing about, such as keyword research or Google Analytics.

Getting the numbers

The next step is to get some hard numbers on those keywords. There are a range of different tools you can use to do this – let’s look at a few I personally use, and see how they could help you identify the right keywords.

Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a browser add-on for Google Chrome and Firefox which shows you details about predicted search volume from Google AdWords, estimated cost-per-click and a prediction of the level of competition in a variety of places online, including in Google searches. This tool is great for quickly assessing the volume of a keyword you may be interested in writing about.

Moz Keyword Explorer
Moz’s Keyword Explorer is a great tool for going into more detail when researching keywords. This tool allows you to get the search volume for a keyword, see similar suggested keywords and analyse what the search engine results look like for a keyword. This tool is excellent for choosing the keywords you’d like to use and to see if there are any opportunities you might be missing out on with the keyword suggestions.

With a free Moz account, you can get ten searches a month, which I’d recommend using to find keyword suggestions, and build up a list of keywords you could use for blogs.

Answer The Public
Answer The Public is a tool that can help you understand the motivation behind what users are searching for, by showing some of the questions and queries people have asked around that keyword. This is very useful when you want to create content that answers questions on a topic, but you aren’t sure which is mentioned the most. In addition, Keywords Everywhere combines with the results of this tool to show you the search volumes for these results, allowing you to quickly identify the keywords to target.

Including Keywords In Your Blog

Once you’ve got your keywords, you’ll want to ensure you use them in the right way. This can be done simply by following a quick on-page SEO checklist. Make sure to include your keyword in the following places:

The Page Title
The H1
The Main Content
The Meta Description
In Image Alt Tags

The first three places are the most critical – but if you’ve chosen your keyword wisely, you should be able to include it in all these places without issue. Be careful not to overuse your keyword, or to force it in too often using it naturally throughout the text is your best bet.

By following these tips, you can quickly and easily find the right keywords, and use them correctly in your blog content. This should help you get you blog content in front of searchers, and get more readers and subscribers!

The post Choosing The Right Keywords For Your Blog appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

In reality this change happened over one year ago, but only recently it surfaced. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Web Spam team, talked about it in the latest SMX event, and soon afterward the whole SEO sphere was commenting. He also wrote a post explaining the whole issue, titled PageRank Sculpting.

Here is a quote from that post that summarizes the change:

So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.

In other words, the usage of the nofollow attribute will still stop the page that is being linked to from receiving PageRank and anchor text value, but the PageRank that is being “saved” with the nofollow links won’t flow to the other links present in the linking page.

According to Matt Cutts, the change was implemented to discourage website owners who were using a technique called PageRank sculpting, which is the process of using the nofollow attribute internally to change the PageRank flow among different pages. The objective is to give more PageRank value to some pages (the ones that sell something, for example) at the expense of less important pages (the Privacy Policy or Terms of Service, for example).

If Google wants to discourage PageRank sculpting, I am fine with that. The problem that I see with the change is that it might affect other types of websites negatively, blogs above all.

Why?

Because now all the links on your comment section are reducing the PageRank that would otherwise flow to your internal pages.

Here is a numerical example to let you understand it. Suppose that you write a super cool post explaining “Why Obama really won the U.S. presidential election.” The post gets some exposure on social media, and it ends up receiving 200 backlinks from other sites and blogs. Let’s assume that, on average, each backlink was carrying 5 points of PageRank, so the total points of PageRank for that post would be 1,000.

Now let’s suppose that you have 20 navigational links on your layout (e.g., the main menu, the categories and a section with popular posts). This means that each of those internal links would carry 50 points of PageRank to other internal pages on your site, which is good.

The problem comes when people start commenting on the post. Let’s say that, given the popularity of the article, it ends up with 150 comments. Each of those comments carries a link to the site of the comment author. Despite being nofollowed, they would still be counted on the PageRank distribution of that page. Now we have 170 outgoing links, so each link receives only 5.9 points of PageRank. Each of your internal links will only pass 5.9 points of PageRank now, and the total points of PageRank that will remain inside your website are 118.

In other words, before Google changed how it handles the nofollow attribute you would have gained 1,000 points of PageRank with that post. With the change, this number is reduced to 118.

And that is just what would happen in one post. What if we consider a blog with 1,000 posts and tens of thousands of comments? Such a blog could be losing a huge amount of PageRank.

Google might do something to fix this problem, but we still got to hear about it.

Is there any solution? Yes, you can either close your comments completely (but I wouldn’t recommend that), or use an iframe or Javascript to host your comments, so that the links to the comment authors won’t be inside your pages. Andy Beard wrote a post on the topic titled Disqus — Why 95% Of Bloggers Should Switch.

If changing to an iframe or Javascript based solution could give a huge PageRank boost to my blog, I will seriously consider it. For the moment, though, I will wait a couple of weeks to see how the debate around the nofollow changes will evolve. I will keep you guys updated if anything new emerges.

The post Google Changed How It Handles Nofollow (And How It Might Affect Blogs) appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

High search engine rankings are something that every blogger craves for. Even in this world of social media, nothing can beat the quality of organic traffic. It is much targeted and the visitors have a definite requirement in mind, which makes it easy to convert such traffic.

That is why it is so important to optimize your blogs from a search engine perspective.

But wait!

There are around 200 factors controlling the search engine rankings in Google. Are you paying full attention to them?

I am sure that know about basic on-page SEO and linkbuilding. There are plenty of tools to help you in linkbuilding (I use Ahrefs regularly).

But is that all? Aren?t you missing out on a lot of other factors?

I think so.

In fact, there are plenty of factors that we overlook. While it is not possible to control all 200 factors, there are some that we are simply unaware of. As a result of this lack of knowledge, we miss out on some easy to apply tactics that can be of great help to a blog?s SEO.

In this post, I am going to explain (and reinforce) some of these lesser known ideas and tell you how to derive full SEO benefit using these tactics.

Ready?

Write attractive headlines to get higher click through rates

Idea: Higher click through rates in SERPs (Search engine result pages) provide boost to your rankings. The reverse is also true.

How a particular result performs in the SERPs has an important effect on its subsequent rankings. Suppose you are ranking in #1 for your target keyword. But still, people are not clicking on your link. This sends a wrong message to the search engines. The algorithm will interpret that your blog is not relevant enough.

As a result, your rankings will go down. On the other hand, if your blog is ranked low, but still, more people are clicking on it, then the algorithm will attach more value to you blog and your rankings will rise.

So you must improve your click through rates. The easiest way to get more clicks is to write attractive headlines. In fact, most people read the headlines only. Your headline should persuades the user in clicking it (to reach your blog post).

Use power words, use numbers, stir controversies, make claims: these are a few of the many things you can do to make your links more clickable. Next time, make sure you write an attractive title rather than a bland one.

Also write a meaningful meta description. This description often appears in the SERPs and will potentially play a role in attracting the user. Doing these things will boost your CTR, and in turn, your rankings.

You can check the CTRs from Google Analytics. Start writing clickable headlines and monitor the change. Find out which type of headlines work best in your niche.

Use images links to improve SERPs

Idea: Alt tags of images provide keyword benefits and also add to backlink diversity

Everyone knows about text links. Anchor text used in the text links affect the rankings for that keyword as well as related ones.

But did you ever consider that image links can also boost your rankings for your chosen keywords?

Yes they can. Images use alt tags, which tells the search engine bots about the content of that image. When you use an image to link to a particular post, the alt tag of that image will serve as the keyword.

So, start building image backlinks. Images are a nice way to interlink your posts. Moreover, image based links add diversity to your backlinks repertoire.

One easy way to get image based backlinks is to offer a free infographic for others to use on their blogs. Simply ask them to provide an image backlink (through the infographic) to your original post.

Link out to trustworthy blogs

Idea: High quality articles are supposed to link to high quality sources

Backlinks are, in essence, a form of voting. If your blog is good, it is expected to get lots of votes.

At the same time, a good blog is expected to vote for other good blogs! That is why outbound links are so important. By linking out to useful and credible sources, you not only ensure the satisfaction of your readers, but also the favor of the search engines.

Do not link out to crappy, low quality resources. Provide backlinks to high quality and helpful resources only. It is easy to do and will raise your blog?s value in the eyes of the search engine.

Maintain healthy dofollow to nofollow ratio

Idea: Excess nofollow backlinks suggest that your blog is not trustworthy.

A nofollow tag is basically used to indicate that a certain backlink is not towards a trusted source. As such, getting too many nofollow backlinks can be a bad thing. In the initial days of a blog, nofollow backlinks will be predominant. Most of your links will be from nofollow blog comments.

But as a blog ages, it is expected to gain more dofollow links. You can easily check the number of dofollow and nofollow backlinks using Ahref. At the time of writing, my blog is few months old and has 20% dofollow backlinks. A couple of months back it was only 5%. On the other hand, an established blog like Problogger has 91% dofollow backlinks.

My suggestion is to avoid getting excessive nofollow backlinks. Major culprits are forum profile backlinks, nofollowed footer and blogroll links, and crappy Web 2.0 backlinks. Do not acquire such links as they do no good.

Some bloggers cannot resist the urge of buying thousands of cheap automated backlinks. Avoid this at all cost. Such backlinks provide zero value. They unnecessarily inflate the nofollow backlinks count, which can only harm your rankings.

Instead, concentrate on getting dofollow backlinks. Writing guest posts (like this one) is one great way to do it.

Stretch your contents longer

Idea: High quality contents are usually comprehensive in nature

Various studies have shown that longer contents rank better in Google. You may argue that you can provide high quality content in a concise manner, but the algorithms won?t listen. So, it is a good idea to write longer posts.

Unique content (the post and comments) to repeat content (header, sidebar and footer text) ratio should be high. Try to write in depth content. If you feel that you are ending up adding fluff to your content, there are alternatives.

One great way to ensure more unique content is to get more comments on you blog posts. Comments not only increase content length but they also introduce new long tail keywords, which can further help in getting organic traffic.

These are the simple tips that I urge every blogger to follow. These tips are very easy to follow. But sadly, these are often overlooked due to the hype around things. Be smart.

Try out these tips and see your rankings improve.

If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, feel free to leave a comment.

The post 5 SEO Secrets for Bloggers appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

I used to help people buy and sell blogs, and as I result I get at least a couple of emails weekly from bloggers asking if I can help them to sell their blogs. If I believe the sale is feasible (i.e., the blog is quality one and already makes good money) I do help. Most of the times, however, selling the blogs would be too hard to be worth anyone’s time.

The most clear example of this are people who email me asking if I can help to sell their Blogspot blogs (i.e., a blog they created on Google’s Blogger service). Selling such a blog is almost impossible. Why? First of all because the person is not the real owner of the blog. He owns the content, but the blog is property of Google. In fact if you read Blogger’s Terms of Service you’ll find this sentence in the very first paragraph:

Google also reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the Service with or without notice at any time and without any liability to you.

This means that your blog could be shut down any day, and it would be hard to find a buyer willing to bear this risk.

Second, you would also be violating another clause of the ToS:

7. No Resale of the Service. Unless expressly authorized in writing by Google, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes (a) any portion of the Service, (b) use of the Service, or (c) access to the Service.

You could try to sell it secretly, but if Google finds out they would probably shut down the account/blog, which again scares most buyers off.

Want some empirical evidence? Check the last 1,000 sites/blogs that were sold on Flippa. I just did. None of them was using Blogger’s platform. All of them had their own domain names.

Truth be told I have seen a couple of Blogspot blogs being sold in the past, but they were generating a lot of revenue with AdSense (e.g., close to $1,000 monthly), so the buyers were willing to take the risk. Other than these exceptions I have never seen a Blogspot blog sell for a decent price.

Does this mean you are screwed if you have a Blogspot blog? Not at all. You’ll just need to solve the situation before you try to sell it.

Remember, while Google owns the platform itself, you own all the content you write there. Here is the quote from the ToS:

Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.

So you’ll just need to get your content out of Blogger and hosted on your own website before you can sell it. Here is a quick step-by-step guide for doing that:

1. Buy a domain name
2. Get a company to host it
3. Install WordPress on your domain
4. Use the “Import” feature on WordPress and import all the posts from your Blogspot blog
5. Redirect your blogspot blog to your new domain (here is a guide for that)

A second alternative is to point your Blogger account to a custom domain. This is not ideal, however, because your content would still be hosted on Blogger. If you want to try this just go to Dashboard > Settings> Publishing, click on “Switch to: Custom Domain”.

The post Want To Sell Your Blogspot Blog? appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Guest posting is one of the most effective ways to promote your blog, meet new audience and build valuable contacts. Therefore most A-list bloggers guest post and that’s why if you are a blogger, you should too.

If used correctly, guest posting can also be great for your SEO, as explained by the guys at JumpFactor.

This post will help you to start: it lists some useful, yet lesser-known Google search tips that will let you find valuable guest posting opportunities in your niche.

1. Make sure you use ALL synonyms

Various bloggers use different words to invite guest authors. Some directly ask to “submit a (guest) post”, others offer to become their author or write for them. Even the most straightforward invitation can be expressed in different words: you can be asked to submit, suggest or send a post for example. Here’s more or less complete list of phrases bloggers use to invite people to guest post:

• “Submit a guest post” / “Submit post” / “Submit blog post”
• “Add blog post”
• “Submit an article”
• “Suggest a guest post”
• “Send a guest post”
• “Write for us”;
• “Become an author”;
• “Guest bloggers wanted”
• “Contribute to our site”;
• “Become a contributor”;
• “Become guest writer”
• “(Write for our) guest column”.

Now, you may have noticed that all the phases are used in the quotation marks – this is to force Google to search for the exact match because otherwise you will get too general results randomly mentioning “post”, “contribute” and “guest”.

If you add some words that describe the topic of your blog, you will end up getting tightly relevant results:

2. Take advantage of wildcard (*) operator

In the previous step I have mentioned using quotation marks for better search results targeting. But some guest invitations can be slightly different. For example, a blogger may write “Become our contributor” instead of “Become contributor” or “Send us your post” instead of “Send your post” but these blogs will be filtered out because we were using quotation marks and thus instructed Google to search for exact match.

So how can we include all those slightly different results without sacrificing on relevancy?

This can be done with help of Google’s Wildcard operator (*) which in search results get substituted by one or more words. So if we, for example, search for “submit * guest post” search results will include:

• “submit a guest post”
• “submit your own guest post”
• “submit your guest post”
• “submit one guest post”, etc

3. Use OR and ~ operators to better describe your niche

More often than not it is hard to describe your blog topic with one (or two) words. For example, your blog may be about money, saving, frugality, shopping, etc. The more words you use, the lesser results you will get, because Google will do its best to show you only those pages that have all of those words listed.

To get broader but relevant results, we should instruct Google to search for any of the words – for that we can use OR operator between the words: “money OR saving OR frugality OR shopping” because, essentially we are interested in guest blogging on sites covering any of these topics.

To go even further in this direction, we can use ~ operator before a word that may have many synonyms and related words and thus instruct Google to look for all those synonyms. For example, “~money” search will include words like “currency”, “finance”, “financial”, etc.

So what do we have in the end after we combine all the tips? Here we go:

The post 3 Smart Google Search Tips to Hunt for Guest Post Opportunities appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

This post is part of the weekly Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Whibbly asks:

Does PageRank only depend on number of inbound links ?

The first thing that you need to keep in mind is that there are two PageRanks. The nominal one, which is the one that shows on your Google toolbar, and which gets updated once every three months or so, and the real one, which gets updated constantly and is used inside Googles search algorithm.

The first one is used just to provide an indication for webmasters, while the second will have a direct influence on your search rankings.

Now back to your question, does PageRank only depend on the number of inbound links, also called backlinks?

The answer is no.

The number of backlinks certainly plays a role, but Google also evaluates carefully the quality and relevancy of those links.

By quality I mean the overall trust that the site that linked to you has. A link from the Stanford university would have more quality than one from your sister’s blog. Another way to call quality is authority.

By relevancy I mean the proximity of the content on the website that is linking to you, to your own content. If you have a blog about cats, a link from your sister’s blog that talks exclusively about cats too would be more relevant than a link from the Quantum Physics department of the Stanford university (unless they were talking about Schrödinger’s Cat, but that is a joke only physics lovers will get…).

Let’s consider a example to understand this better. Suppose you just launched two blogs, A and B. Both blogs talk about technology. On the first blog you decide to purchase 30 backlinks from very small and unrelated sites (most of which don’t even have PageRank to begin with). On the second blog, on the other hand, you just publish one quality article, and that article gets linked from the homepage of TechCrunch.

If you wait three months and don’t change anything else on the blogs, it is very likely that the the first one would end up with no PageRank at all, while the second one would probably end up with a PR1.

Some other interesting facts about PageRank:

• many people think that PageRank uses a logarithic scale, meaning that increasing your PR gets tougher as you go (i.e. moving from PR5 to PR6 is more difficult than moving from PR2 to PR3)
• real PageRank is not counted from 0 to 10, this is just a scale used for the nominal one
• PageRank is only one of the factors used in Google’s search algorithm, so a high PR does not equate to high search rankings automatically
• Your internal and external links can affect your PageRank
• Content and update frequency have no impact on PageRank

The post Is PageRank Based Only on The Number of Backlinks? appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

I was expecting it to happen early in January 2009, but the Mountain View folks were faster. The nominal PageRanks started changing yesterday, and by today you should already be seeing the updated values.

I am pretty happy with the new numbers. Daily Blog Tips remained a PR6, while Daily Writing Tips went up from PR5 to PR6, and TechCult went up to PR5.

How about you, did your PageRank increase?

The post Google Just Updated the Nominal PageRank appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

Keep in mind there is nothing confirmed, but several people started to notice changes both in PageRank and backlinks count numbers.

One of my sites apparently gained PR as well. DailyBits went from a PR2 to a PR4.

I tried to check on Google’s data centers but most of them are behaving strangely (reporting a PR0 even for established websites). One tool that appears to be working is this one.

No one was expecting such an early PageRank update in 2008. The last one, as you probably can remember, happened late in October and it created a lot of buzz due to a new policy that Google decided to adopt towards websites that were selling text links without the nofollow tag.

Have you noticed any changes?

The post Google PR Update: Here We Go Again! appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

If things keep at this pace I might rename this blog to Daily Google Tips. Over the last two weeks we have been talking about Google every other day. This time it is the PageRank buzz again.

Both Problogger and Copyblogger, two of the most popular blogs on the niche, announced that their PR dropped from 6 to 4. Previously other authority blogs confirmed that they lost PR, but the suspect was towards paid links. Given that Problogger and Copyblogger are not selling links, it might be just a readjustment on the PR scale.

Some people are arguing that since the PR drop is not generalized, it must be a slap from Google due to practices that conflict with its guidelines. Andy Beard suggested that the sites that got penalized were either selling links or exchanging them inside large blog networks. This is a feasible explanation given that most of the Weblogs, Inc blogs (Engadget above all) were penalized, and they do not sell paid links either.

Here is a list that I gathered with big blogs that supposedly lost PR on this issue:

• Statcounter (from 10 to 6)
• Engadget (from 7 to 5)
• AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
• Problogger (from 6 to 4)
• Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
• AdesBlog (from 7 to 5)
• Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
• Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
• Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
• Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
• Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
• JohnTP (from 6 to 4)
• Coolest Gadgets (from 5 to 3)
• CyberNet News (from 6 to 4)

Update: It looks like mainstream websites that were selling links were also penalized:

• Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
• Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
• Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
• Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
• SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
• Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
• New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
• Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

Update 2: After reading through the avalanche of posts on the subject, it appears that this is not a PageRank update but rather a distribution of penalties (either automatic or manual). The theory that the penalized blogs were either selling links or part of a network that used a cross-linking strategy seems to hold.

The post Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm? appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

The WebConfs website has a very useful list of “Best and Worst Practices for Designing a High Traffic Website.” Basically they collected all the major factors that might affect the search optimization of your site, attributing a score to them. The score ranges from -3, which is very bad for your site, to +3, which is very good. Below you will find a summary of the most important factors:

One of the easiest things but very important SEO tasks you’ll need to do each time you publish a post, is to give the page a good dose of one page optimizations. This WordPress onpage SEO checklist explains in simple terms what needs to be do to fully optimize each WordPress post.

Keywords

• Keyword in title tag (+3)
• Keyword in URL (+3)
• Keyword density in document (+3)
• Keyword in H1 and H2 headings (+3)
• Keyword in the beginning of document (+2)
• Keyword in ALT tags (+2)
• Keyword in Meta tags (+1)
• Keyword stuffing (-3)

Links

• Anchor text of inbound links (+3)
• Origin of inbound links (+3)
• Links from similar sites (+3)
• Links from .edu and .gov sites (+3)
• Anchor text of internal links (+2)
• Many outgoing links (-1)
• Outbound links to bad neighbors (-3)
• Cross-linking (-3)

Meta Tags

• Description Meta Tag (+1)
• Keywords Meta Tag (+1)
• Refresh Meta Tag (-1)

Content

• Unique content (+3)
• Frequent updates (+3)
• Age of content (+2)
• Poor coding or design (-2)
• Invisible text (-3)
• Doorway pages (-3)
• Duplicate content (-3)

Other factors

• Site accessibility (+3)
• Sitemap (+2)
• Site size (+2)
• Site age (+2)
• Top-level domain (+1)
• URL length (0)
• Hosting downtime (-1)
• Flash (-2)
• Misused Redirects (-3)

The post SEO Checklist appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

Sometime ago I wrote the article “Gather .edu and .gov backlinks” where I argued that, despite the lack of official documentation, most SEO experts agree that .edu and .gov backlinks do carry a higher value for search engines.

If you are looking to increase your search engine juice, therefore, it could be a good idea to collect some of those backlinks. On the article I described a simple search query that could be used to find blogs with .edu or .gov extensions:

site:.edu inurl:blog “keyword″

The only problem with that query is that it will return all the .edu blogs with the specified keyword, including the ones where comments are closed or where you must be logged in order to post a comment.

Using a couple of Google operators we can exclude those blogs from the results, making the whole process much more efficient.

site:.edu inurl:blog “comment” -”you must be logged in” -”posting closed” -”comment closed” “keyword”

Bear in mind that you should not post meaningless comments just for the sake of getting a backlink. Always try to add value and contribute to the discussion, otherwise you will just be polluting the blogosphere.

The post Gather .edu and .gov backlinks (enhanced) appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

Ping services allow you to automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated.

If you’re a blogger, you know the importance of visibility. You want your content to reach as many people as possible, and that’s where ping services come into play. But what exactly are these services? Well, ping services are tools that notify search engines and blog directories every time you update your blog. This increases your chances of being discovered and drives more traffic to your site.

The bigger your ping list the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources, so check out the list below and include it on your blog. In WordPress, there’s a built-in functionality to automatically notify update services whenever you publish a new post. This is done by pinging a list of services that you specify in your WordPress settings.

Here’s how to do it:

1. From your WordPress dashboard, go to “Settings” and then “Writing.”
2. Scroll down to the section labeled “Update Services.”
3. In the text box, you can add the URLs of the ping services you want to notify whenever you publish a new post.

One of the most popular and trusted ping services out there is Ping-O-Matic. It’s like a one-stop-shop for your pinging needs, allowing you to notify a variety of services, including blog directories, search engines, and social media platforms, that your blog has been updated.

But Ping-O-Matic is just the tip of the iceberg. There are numerous other ping services available, each with its own set of pros and cons. To help you navigate this landscape, I’ve put together a handy table comparing some of the top ping services out there:

Ping services can be a valuable tool for bloggers. They can help increase your blog’s visibility, improve its search engine ranking, and drive more traffic to your site. However, not all ping services are created equal. It’s important to choose a service that fits your specific needs and goals.

Now it’s your turn. Try out some of these ping services and see how they can boost your blog’s performance. And if you found this article helpful, don’t forget to share it with your network. I’d also love to hear about your experiences with ping services, so feel free to leave a comment below.

Updated Ping List for 2024

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.feedsubmitter.com
http://blo.gs/ping.php
http://www.pingerati.net
http://www.pingmyblog.com
http://geourl.org/ping
http://ipings.com
http://www.weblogalot.com/ping
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Please note that this is a comprehensive list and some of these services might not be necessary for your blog. It’s always a good idea to research each service to understand what it does and whether it’s relevant to your blog’s audience. Excessive pinging can be considered spam by some services, so use this list judiciously.

Original List of Ping Services

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

The post List of Ping Services for 2024 appeared first on DailyBlogTips.com.

It is widely accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that Google has never admitted it (sometimes it even neglected) most SEO and online marketing experts would confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking juice. There are several ways to collect those links, below I will explain two of them, depending on whether your blog has relevant content to educational and governmental websites or not.

Blogs with relevant content

The first step to get some .edu and .gov backlinks pointing to your website is to locate sites related to your topic ending with those extensions. Using the Google operator site:.edu and site:.gov combined with the keywords of your blog should enable you to find an extensive list of such sites.

site:.edu "keyword 1"

site:.gov "keyword 1"

Once you have a list of sites explore them and select the ones you think would have a higher probability of sharing some external links with your blog. Finally contact the webmaster of those sites and point them to the content on your blog that could be relevant and valuable to those sites. It is always a good idea to link first to the sites before asking the backlink.

Blogs without relevant content

If your blog does not have content that could be relevant or valuable to educational and governmental websites your should look for types of sites that allow users to create a backlink without interacting with the webmaster, and the most common types of those sites are blogs and online forums.

Again you can use the Google operators to generate a list of such sites. Notice that the site:.edu argument limits the search results to sites with a .edu extension while the inurl:blog attribute ensures that results will have the word blog on the URL structure.

site:.edu inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.edu inurl:forum "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:forum "keyword 1"

Finally track down the sites with discussions relevant to the topic of your blog and join the conversation, leaving a backlink to your site either through the comment section or on inside a forum thread. Bear in mind that you should not spam those sites for the sake of getting as many backlinks as possible. Make sure that you are adding useful information and not just polluting the online environment.

Update: Check out the “Enhanced” version of those search queries.

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