Tag: SEO

What is SEO and How It Works?

Posted on by Expert View

The SEO landscape is very dynamic in nature; it is always changing. But if you get the basics right, you can quickly achieve the desired goals for your website. 

The SEO trends change every year, and with Google inclining more and more toward providing the user with the best answers for their queries, it is expected to change much more. It’s not just about the right keyword anymore, SEO now is all about what value you are providing the users with.                         

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is a method of optimizing content so that it can be found easily through search engines and rank higher. In other words, SEO is all about improving your site’s rankings organically. 

Organic vs Paid Search

Organic traffic is a natural way users find and reach your site without being manipulated by paid ads or targeted marketing. Organic traffic is the best, and you should always aim to get more and more of it. 

What is SEO? Difference between Paid and Organic Search
SEO Tips: Paid Vs Organic Search Results

While paid search is the one that appears at the top of search results which a lot of marketing companies are offering today. The small font with ‘Ad’ written in bold letters indicates that the search result is paid. But despite this indication, many users click on the link as it appears on top and also because it easily can blend in with its native and less obtrusive design. 

How to optimize for Google?

Google has approximately 200 factors that it uses to rank your website. There are some who say that it is more than 10,000, but it is unclear right now about how many factors Google uses. 

SEO is not as tough as rocket science, but it is not that easy also. There are approximately 83% of companies that are not using any SEO technique to optimize their website. So there are excellent chances that with a little bit of research, quality content, and a bit of patience, your small business can skyrocket to the top of search engine rankings.

Expert Recommendation: Hire an Best SEO Company that offers professional SEO services.

Factors that impact On-page and Off-page SEO:

On-page SEO

On-page SEO includes optimizing every element present on your website, including the code, textual content, visual components, and other such elements. 

You have the full control of managing all the visual aspects of your website. Focusing on the on-page SEO will ultimately affect your off-page SEO also and can also make it successful. If your link-building with a crappy looking website that isn’t optimized correctly, then it will be an even tougher job.

 

1. Keyword research

To get found online, you need to know what the users have been searching for. While you craft your content, you should focus on what words the users are precisely looking for. When you are working on creating a post, make a list of words that you think the user might be looking for.

For example, if a user is searching for ‘friendly coffee shops near me.’ Then your post should include words such as coffee shops, cafes, coffee bars, and many more. You can even check Google’s ‘searches related to’ section that appears at the bottom of the search page.  

SEO Tips: Google Suggests most searched keywords relevant to a broad topic

The sections will indicate which are the popular keywords and so you don’t need to guess which words are popular and come straight from Google.


2. Meta tags

Meta tags are the invisible line of codes that are seen only by the search engine, and they are present to provide data about the page to the search engines. They make it easier for search engines to determine what the page is about. 

The meta tags are placed in the <head> section of a HTML page. The user can edit everything based on their requirements. If you are using CMS platforms such as WordPress, then using a plugin, it can be easier to edit the canonical tags or meta title tags.

There are also robots meta tags that tell the search engine which pages of your site should be indexed and which should not. A robot meta tag which tells the search engine not to crawl or index a specific page looks something like this,

<meta name =”robots” content=”index”>

 

3. Heading title tags (H1-H6)

Heading tags are used to identify different sections in your textual content. 

H1 tag is the most important heading tag, so the post title will have an H1 tag, so the headings become less important as we move from H1 towards H6. Therefore H6 is the least important and will be placed accordingly. Using proper heading tags has two main advantages:

  • For search engines, the page becomes more natural to read, and content can be thus separated that way.
  • For the user, it becomes easy for them to differentiate headings and subheadings so they can quickly skim through the whole text if in a hurry.

Using proper heading tags makes the optimization more meaningful, and thus it can help you in achieving better rankings.


4. Keyword density

Keyword density gives you the percentage of how many times your keyword appears on the whole text looking on that page. This means if you are using a keyword 10 times in a 1000 word text, then the keyword density is 10%. The formula used is as follow,

Google doesn’t have any specific percentage that you need to match as it suggests you to write content naturally. But the general practice says it is good to keep the keyword density between 1-3%. 

Although today the value for a keyword is becoming less and less important compared to the site quality and site authority. You should focus on using the keyword naturally and not stuff the entire site with it. It will just make your text look like a spam article. 

So the question comes to mind, where should you keep your keyword?

  • In the title of your blog
  • Meta title tag
  • Starting paragraph of the post
  • At the end of the post
  • In the alt-text for images

Keep your text natural and avoid stuffing it with keywords.

 

5. Optimize URL for SEO

A URL indicates to the user what the destination page is all about. In a case when the title tag is not visible, then also the URL might indicate about the topic.

SEO Tips: Optimize URL & Make it easy for users and Search Engines

URL is a minor but essential ranking factor. They do provide authority to the overall domain name but also highlight the keyword that users are searching for. URL themselves do not hold much sway over your website rankings, therefore if you can, naturally add keywords to it; don’t force your keyword in the URL.


6. Optimize images

There is an old saying which goes something like this “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and that applies to your article as well. The easiest way to make a 2000 word post more interesting is to add images that draw the reader’s attention.

As per Google’s vision for the future of search, the images will draw more traffic than just textual posts. So it becomes a must to add images that can bring a lot more traffic to your site. So how can you optimize your images?

Here are a few points to start:

  • Pick images that are smaller in size so your page can load quickly.
  • Use WebP images that preserve the quality and are also smaller in size. You can use squoosh, which can easily convert any photo to WebP format.
  • You can also use the SVG format for icons and logos. CSS and javascript make it easy to resize the images without loss of quality.

It is also essential that your images are responsive. For better results, Google also ranks pages well that have responsive design and works well on all devices. 


7. Page Speed

Pagespeed is the time taken by the page to load for your site. It can also be described as the “time to first byte,” which means how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the server.

If you are using WordPress then Google’s Site Kit plugin, then it provides you with the insights of Google Analytics and Google Search console but also provides you with insights about the page load time of your site. 

PageSpeed is an important factor for your website to rank higher
SEO Tips: PageSpeed is an important factor

Google has officially declared that one of the essential features that it considers for ranking a page is the page speed. So, slow page speed can increase the time taken by the bots to crawl your page, and that can result in negative impressions on your search engine rankings. Here is a list of few points that you can follow to improve your page speed,

  • Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript -You can optimize your code by removing useless codes and comments.
  • Reduce redirects to other URLs -Each time you make the user redirect to another URL, the browser has to request for new HTTP cycle. 
  • Use browser caching -A lot of browsers today stores the cache of a website the user visits so that when it is revisited, it doesn’t need to load again.
  • Optimize images -As I mentioned earlier, the images having big sizes, so in order to reduce the page load time, compress your images, and use image formats that are smaller in size.

 If you are running on WordPress, here is a Step-by-Step Guide to Speed up WordPress.

 

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to the optimization that you can do to improve the rankings of your site in terms of search engine rankings. Simply put, anything happening outside your site that brings traffic to your website such as Social Media Marketing, Bookmarking, Guest blogging, and so on. 

All these tactics of search engine optimization will give the search engines a glimpse of how your website is perceived by other users across the globe and other internet users. What happens off-page is a lot important as compared to what happens on-page. You can produce top quality content, but if you can’t pull traffic or view, then it’s all futile. 

Let’s see some of the methods available out there that can help you optimize off-page SEO,


Whenever we talk about SEO, link building always comes on top. The first thing to know about link building is to build and chase high-quality links. 

What you are doing by making a lot of links is accumulating as many ‘votes’ as you can for your website. This will help you reach a broad audience and bypass your competitors to rank higher.

Link building is essential, but it will give you results only if you do it right. Most beginners try to put their links in places such as forums, link networks, blog directories, article directories, and many such sites. Link building done through this kind of activity is called Black Hat SEO, and there are very high chances that it can work against you. 

Try bringing links from websites that have high DA (Domain Authority) and PA (Page Authority). If your website gets mentioned on sites such as Wikipedia, then it is definitely White Hat SEO and can really boost the ranking for your website.  

 

9. Social Media Marketing

Social Media is the best place to share your content and grow your network. Social media marketing is also a kind of link building. Most links that you get from social media sites are “NoFollow,” but they do bring some value.

Today platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp do the best job today to engage users for more extended periods and serve them with relevant content. Brands saw the opportunity to market themselves on the platforms and promote their products there. 

More shares and likes on social media play a massive role in making your business grow. If any of your posts get a lot of likes and comments, then it can even end up going viral, which means it will reach an even broader audience. Many IT companies on Goodfirms offer you planned social media marketing tactics that can jump your site’s traffic.

But when you are working on open platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, it is essential to monitor the reputation of your brand continuously. Brand mentions on social networks are often counted as links in the eyes of Google. Therefore a trustworthy brand image will give your brand a boost in terms of search engine result pages (SERP).


10. Guest Posting

While making a trustworthy image for your brand, it also essential to give something back to the community every now and then. 

Guest posting can do wonders for your site, but if it is done correctly. There are a lot of sites available out there that let you post your articles on their websites with even “DoFollow” links sometimes. But it can often turn out that those sites are not trustworthy and filled with crappy content.


Final Word

Search algorithms keep on changing from time to time. Therefore knowing how search engine algorithms work and trying to create content that ranks is very important. Despite such changes, some factors like domain authority and matching the search intent are one of top ranking factors and will remain the same in the coming future. 

 

Author:

Greg Wilson 

I am Greg Wilson, a Content Writer working with GoodFirms, a research and review platform for service and software companies. I am passionate about blogging, creative writing, social media, and content marketing. I write blog posts for GoodFirms about SEO softwares, Cloud computing, IoT development, and many more such categories.

The Gem in Plain Sight: Schema Markup for SEO

Posted on by Ananda Kannan S P

Let’s cut the chase and get to the point. It is well-known by now that Google is the leader of the search pack. So, it is basically that they set the standard and others follow. So, if you can get a good organic SEO ranking on Google for the concepts, products or services you wish to sell, then you stand a high chance of making it big by establishing a good reputation in the SEO domain.

One of the fundamentals of search is that a query or text is entered in the search bar. Now again, this can even be a voice command or keystrokes depending on the device in use. But essentially, a user is entering an idea into the search bar and is seeking more information around that concept, idea or service.

So, the challenge, in short, is how do you let a machine know what you mean? Let us take a classic example of the word ‘Déjà vu’. How does a machine differentiate whether a user is searching for the meaning of the word ‘Déjà vu’ or a movie of the same name? Again, there are added complications when some terms also have connotations in a local language. So, if I say ‘Xerox’, do I mean a company or the process of photocopying, which is called ‘Xerox’ in common parlance in certain parts of the world? 

Similarly, events are difficult for a search engine to understand. 

Hence, to attain a good SEO ranking or to deliver good SEO Services, the challenge is in communicating what the data means. It should make Google understand that the search query is not just some words typed in the search bar but that it is referring to a specific concept.

How can this be achieved?

This is where the concept of Schema markup comes in. Schema markup in the simplest of terms is a method to communicate to the search engine that is indexing the web page what the content means. The core concept of a Schema markup and what went behind the founding can be found in http://schema.org/docs/about.html

While no spectacular coding skills are required for Schema markup implementation, a point to note is that 200+ parameters go into determining an SEO rank. Digital marketing experts who work for the best SEO company in Chennai strongly suggest “Schema markup is usually a neglected area in SEO strategies. Once the correct idea is grasped and implemented, then Schema markup can be used effectively to achieve good results in SEO”.

FAQ Schema Example:

<script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Question 1 here","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Your Answer Here"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Question 2 here","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Your Answer Here"}}]}</script>

You can test the above code in your page and modify it accordingly. Then test your web page with Rich Results Test Tool.

Case Study 1

Jobrapido, one of the global leaders in the job search domain with 80+ million registered users and a presence in over 50 countries. Their challenge was to attract more applicants across multiple geographies and increase their reach.

With the introduction of Schema markup, Jobrapido went on to add job posting structured data to the job posting web pages. This leads to a 115% increase in organic traffic and 15% lower bounce rate. While the complete case study can be accessed here, it goes on to show how small changes can have a pertinent impact.

Case Study 2

Eventbrite is an event management and ticketing company that allows users to browse, create and promote events. They were faced with the challenge of helping users find events by using Google search. 

Then they began using structured data on their website. “We had seen some great traction through our SEO efforts,” says Allen Jilo, an Eventbrite product manager. “Around the time Google started to leverage the schema.org markup for events, we noticed that events were showing up in search results in a different way. We were interested in working more closely with Google on scaling that.”

Subsequently, by making small changes to their structured data and following the rules of event documentation they saw 100% increase in year-on-year traffic growth.

Factors to be considered when implementing a Schema markup

Without going into coding and jargon, some key points to be kept in mind when implementing Schema markup are

  • Schema is a standardized and unique vocabulary. It is available in microdata format and thus can be crawled upon and picked by search engines easily. Once this is done, the search engine can comprehend the result and offer a relevant result to users.
  • By implementing this Schema markup, since the indexing and data comprehension by a search engine is facilitated, users can directly see on the search result page more details at a first glance. This is an important point for marketers to note because if the information displayed is useful and informative, the user will click and clicking means there is a greater chance to generate a lead.
  • Even though Schema markup as a concept has been around for a few years, right from the times of a ‘Hummingbird’ update, it has not been implemented widely or understood correctly. Thus, while a Schema implementation cannot be considered the sole reason for good SEO ranking, it does give a good leg up against competition.
  • Markup categories are extensive. Hence, do make a precise choice on the itemscope and itemtype, among others. Even ratings and events can be tagged using Schema, making it a powerful tool for e-commerce websites, among others.
  • A useful tool is Google’s Structured data and markup helper. Utilize the same effectively.
  • Use Schema markup on a consistent basis. It is a general rule that the more the elements marked up by Schema the better.
  • Remember that Schema markup is only for the elements visible to people and not for anything that is hidden.

Since Schema is an industry-wide collaboration, it is not only useful but also stable. However, it is only as useful as the way it is implemented and that requires skill and tact. Correctly done, Schema markup implementation is sure to move the needle and power a marketer ahead of competition.

9 eCommerce Marketing Strategies To Generate Sales

Posted on by Ananda Kannan S P

What is an e-commerce site?

An e-commerce site is a collection of products. To be successful, build a site people want to buy from. Set up your store in a way so you can track your sales and discover where you’re losing sales from the backend. This way you can plug leaks in your conversion funnel. There are many platforms like Woocommerce or Shopify that can help you list products, track sales and understand how people are behaving on your site.

You can also sell on marketplaces. As a seller, many try to go with a marketplace like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart. Amazon is a goldmine for many brands. Amazon offers the perfect spot to get your products in front of a huge, engaged, and profitable audience. But before you set your store up, you need to know several things.

What’s the difference between selling on Amazon and selling on your own site?

Amazon has buyers who want to buy stuff. You don’t have to work to generate buyers.

But if those marketplaces are too overwhelming or too expensive for you, you might want to look towards a marketplace that is more niche. That requires some research on your part.

That means you’ll need to compete with a lot fewer sellers. Wherever you choose to sell products the next strategies can help you sell more.

Ecommerce Marketing Strategies 2020

Strategy 1: Determine the niche

The first step in this process is to identify the niche you want to focus on. Electronics, car sales, and even home improvement—the number of options is endless. Start by thinking about your ideal customer. What are they looking for? What are the types of products they want? Are they interested in DIY or getting ready-made products?

You might be selling a fitness product, for example. Or you might couple selling health supplements with the fitness product after listening to customer feedback. Make sure you’re thinking about it with an angle concerning your business strategy. You might be tempted to sell everything like Amazon does.

Amazon now sells almost everything under the sun with product categories stretching across a dizzying vast number of verticals. But when they started, they sold books. Their presence was so tiny that big bookstores laughed at them. It’s alright for you to start small. Start with a problem you’re facing. Solve it for others. Or you could start with your passions and validate the niche idea with keyword research. Here’s how I researched a sample niche.

I started with “dog collar”. The competition is fierce.

So I thought of alternatives and thankfully arrived at small dog collars.

Strategy 2: Research audience demographics and device types

Next, determine where your target market resides. Is your target market primarily in the U.S.?

Next, imagine your target market using different types of devices. It could be through a smartphone, a tablet, or even home assistant devices. Does your audience like textual content, podcasts or videos? Almost half the online population watches a video every day.

This is where you want to get super-specific. You want to market your products through apps and devices to people who use different types of devices. If you’re not sure, run competitor sites through Alexa.com. They generate accurate user demographics.

Strategy 3: Sketch a buyer persona

Ultimately with demographic data and device usage data what you’re trying to build is a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is a description of your ideal customer. It tells you who they are, what they are interested in, what problems they face, how they think, and what they would like to see on your site.

Buyer personas are great for driving traffic to your eCommerce store. They are specific to your business. With the above factors, you’ll have a good idea of the broad pointers that make up your customers’ characteristics.

If that isn’t enough, get on the phone with some of your customers to get a deeper idea.

Strategy 4: Create a unique value proposition

You’ll need to do a little market research. The key here is to know what makes your product or service unique. What does your target market need? What do they prefer? What’s the most appealing feature that could appeal to them?

When you’re thinking about your product, you want to find out the type of people who would buy it and how you can possibly appeal to them. This is called market research, and it will help you get to the bottom of this.

If you want to get more specific, you can visit different Facebook pages or websites to see what people are saying. You might be able to find out what’s pre-existing and what’s new. You can also use keyword research, which will allow you to discover how many search for a particular product or keywords around it. Ultimately, the goal is to create a unique value proposition that defines your brand.

One example is Anthony’s Goods.

Anthony got the idea to sell almond flour and other gluten-free products after doctors gave him a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. Once he skipped wheat flour he started feeling better. For Anthony’s special dietary requirements, alternative flours were hard to come by. So Anthony decided to solve his own problem by reaching out to select few who made good gluten-free flour. Next, with this friend Alex, he started the business on Amazon. The first month he sold 10 packets. And a year later the numbers swelled to 500 and a few thousand after. Anthony feels that Amazon has been a life-changing decision.

The platform gives him access to customers. Unlike retail stores, he doesn’t have to fight for shelf space. The playing field is level and no one looks down at you because you’re new. You’re are not made to feel small because you’re a startup. The only caveat? The product should be stellar. And the customer has to know it. Anthony not only sells on Amazon but also on his website. For him, the unique value proposition is quality gluten-free flours and products.

Even the packaging looks organic. If you want to communicate your value proposition effectively you must sport quality eCommerce website design.

Strategy 5: Improve the user experience

With the competition on a massive scale- Amazon, eBay, and Walmart have become the behemoths of eCommerce. When they’re not competing on price, they’re busy competing on user experience. They know how to build a user-friendly interface that keeps customers on the site and turning them into return shoppers.

That means you need to create a very simple e-commerce website that’s easy to navigate and load quickly. It needs to look good, sure, but it needs to do more than that.

A lot of sites change their site design around the time of Christmas or other holidays. This is done to imbue the holiday spirit, improve user experience and generate more sales.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to optimize your site by listening to customer feedback

Strategy 6: Set up an affiliate program

There are lots of affiliate management programs out there, but an affiliate program is one of the best.

Affiliate marketing relies on user-generated content. This content comes from third-parties who stand to receive a commission for each product sold. A website that drives referral traffic and sales to your site will earn a commission from you. That’s how affiliate programs work.

If you haven’t already, take the time to set up your program. Have a dedicated landing page for your affiliate program from DepositPhotos.

Here’s what it will look like.

First, you’ll need to set up the rules. This is where you’ll decide how to set certain conditions and conditions for your program.

You’ll want to set these conditions first so that you can get a good feel for the type of affiliate program terms you’ll be working with.

Strategy 7: Use Pinterest

Pinterest is a highly visual platform. This makes it superior to Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks for eCommerce marketers. You can drive engaged traffic with the platform. How? Just think about it this way. Most e-commerce platforms give their users the option to pin products to boards or add items to the product board. This feature is either built-in or achieved through plugins.

Buyable Pins are pinned to the top of the board. And a visitor clicking on it gets a link to purchase the product. That way, users don’t have to go on a product research spree. Again, when using buyable pins, make it easy for your followers. Include a description and the price of the product in your description. This means users don’t have to dig around to get more information and can make the decision right there. Show the price of the product whenever possible. Without a description and price, you will still get link clicks but a description supplemented with pricing takes users close to the conversion. This makes things easy for your customers. I know from experience that Buyable Pins are great for e-commerce stores.

Strategy 8: Grow your brand with user-generated content

User-generated content is one of the best ways to display the products of your site.

You may not have the biggest social following, but there’s no reason why you can’t use social proof to your advantage. Social proof is a way to show your customers how many other people are buying from your eCommerce store. You can use social proof in a variety of ways, including:

  • Testimonials
  • Reviews from customers
  • Customer logos

Here’s an example. They not only include testimonials but user counts as well.

A simple way to do this is to include a video testimonial on your product page. The idea is that people will read about the customer and see that others have bought the product as well. You can also include a product video to add to your product page.

With UGC content, you can add it to email campaigns to showcase social proof. Successful brands tie in social proof with their promotions email campaigns, on their websites and other places. This gets them more mileage for their social proof.

Each of these places is an opportunity to feature the product in a better spotlight. You can showcase videos that feature customers or showcase videos with the product in the context of how it’s used.

Customers showcasing proof of the product they’re using and the warning is a great example of social proof for your brand. Rent the Runway is an excellent example.

Rent the Runway lets customers rent out fashionable dresses that models wore on fashion runways. The brand found that a majority of customers had a great experience with these rented dresses and they captured these moments by uploading them to social media channels like Facebook. All in all, there were 12000 such photos. The startup then collected all these pictures, posting them to a single destination called Our Runway. This was user-generated content that provided social proof to this new concept of renting haute couture dresses. The marketing move was nothing short of genius. People who viewed these photos were 200% more likely to rent the clothes than those who didn’t. The platform established itself as a product for everyday women who want to wear amazing new styles. These pictures are more useful for customers who want to feel the product.

The message is loud and clear. The apparel is for everyday people. The campaign allowed the brand to use the tons of user-generated content it already had. It’s ideal for eCommerce companies that sell physical products that customers can show in context. The company can sell the product and convey its benefits to the consumer and elevate the overall brand experience

Another example is GoPro that selects a “Photo of the Day” from the vast number of submissions its customers send them.

This encourages its customers to participate more and create more UGC for the brand. Cadbury is doing the same thing with its Madbury campaign that invites casual browsers on social media to try their hand at chocolate making.

At the end of the contest– a winner is chosen who’s recipe will turn into a new Cadbury bar. This provides people the incentive to participate in large numbers.

9. SEO for eCommerce

You can drive organic traffic to your store with the help of search engine optimization. If done right, the rewards are enormous. When starting with SEO take care that you don’t go for keywords that are too competitive. You’ll break the bank trying to rank for the said keyword. And there’s every possibility that you won’t rank for it either. That’s why keyword research is so important. Use it to find keywords that offer you the best shot at ranking well. That means selecting easy to rank keywords with low keyword difficulty scores.

Use Amazon for Keyword research

When running an eCommerce store, rather than using keyword research tools right off the bat, use Amazon to discover suggestions and matching queries and then feed those selections to keyword research tools. Next up is backlink building. It doesn’t matter how good your content is. You won’t get far without quality backlinks. You could try landing guest posts on niche relevant blogs or technology blogs that are somehow relevant to what you write about. If you’re doubtful hire an expert for SEO services.

There are several eCommerce sites I know of that ranked purely on the back of the guest posts they did. Plus great on-page SEO optimization.

Concluding thoughts

Build a brand that people want to buy from. Right now, more and more people are buying items online than from stores. And you need to be there at all the right places at the right time. And this is how you can be.

DMCA.com Protection Status