If you’re the only business in town, you’re always going to show up first. However, if there are hundreds of similar businesses nearby, it can get quite frustrating, especially if you’re new in the game. Incorporating the right Google My Business tips can make all the difference in standing out.

Some people pay marketing agencies a lot of money to get their local business listings to the top of search results. What they don’t realize is that these companies often use unorthodox techniques, which can lead to issues like a hard suspension, causing you to lose everything, including your photos and reviews.

Whether you manage your business profile yourself or hire an agency, it’s important to follow best practices for Google Business Profiles (formerly known as Google My Business) to ensure your listing is safe and compliant. For local search, following Google Businesses guidelines is key to maintaining visibility and a strong online presence. Make sure to review a list of do’s and don’ts to keep your listing secure while avoiding risky practices.

1. Listing Information Dos & Don’ts
2. Reviews, Questions and Answers Dos & Don’ts
3. Photos and Videos Dos & Don’ts
4. NAPW (Name, Address, Phone, Website) Dos & Don’ts

1. Listing Information

The information you provide is the most important thing. It’s often the client’s first contact with your business and most of time time people are looking for basic information, such as your phone number, address/location or opening and closing hours.

Therefore, you should make sure you spend enough time crafting this section.

Dos:

Add accurate profile information: The first step is to have a Google My Business listing, of course. If you don’t have one, head on to https://www.google.com/business/ and claim your Google profile.

Sometimes, the listings might already be there, so make sure to search for your physical locations on Google Maps. If it’s there, you can claim it and start filling out your profile with key information like your name, address, and phone (NAP) to improve your local search rankings.

After creating your business, Google will prompt you to edit crucial information such as Name, Address, Phone number, website, working hours, business category, and more. Accurate NAP and a physical address are essential to building trust with Google and attracting more customers.

Optimize your profile: One of the key criteria for ranking in local search is relevancy, which is determined by how well your business profile is filled out. Ensuring your contact details are correct, including phone calls, will help boost your profile in search engine optimization (SEO) results.

Add main SEO keyword in your title: The title should always contain the name of your business, but it’s also smart to add a targeted keyword related to your services or location for better SEO for Instagram and Google. For instance, a med spa might include “Med Spa in Miami” in its title to attract local business.

For example, if my business were simply called Arcadia LTD and it were in the hotel industry, I would put the title like this: “Arcadia: Hotel & Restaurant in London”

Verify your listing: An unverified listing risks losing edits and changes, and worse yet, someone else could claim it.

Verifying it through the Google My Business dashboard is easy—just look for the verification message, then you’ll be able to edit key sections like business profile optimizations and monitor and respond to google reviews link and google messages.

After you verify it, you should see the representative shield icon near your listing name:

Don’ts:

Keyword Stuffing: Avoid cramming multiple keywords and hashtags in your title, which can lead to hard suspensions. Instead, focus on one specific keyword and leave others for your website or social profiles.

A good example of keyword stuffing which you should avoid is the following: “Arcadia: Hotel, Motel, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Restaurant in London.”

Google doesn’t like that and will often hard suspend pages that do this, so avoid it.

List outdated information: Keep your name, address, and phone current across all locations. Outdated details not only frustrate users but can also harm your search engine optimization efforts and local business growth.

It’s even worse when the brand has multiple locations with outdated information.

Although the phone number is the most common, imagine the frustration felt when Google MyBusiness says that a shop opens at 8 AM only to get there and find out that you have to wait for one more hour.

Google doesn’t want its users to end up having bad experiences from using its site, so that’s why it’s possible to suggest changes. However, do you really want other people to suggest changes on your schedule, or do you want to manage it yourself?

If you’re a marketing professional, prepare an e-mail to ask your clients if they have any unverified listings on Google. If they do, then they (or you) should manage them.

Create fake locations: Only create listings for physical locations. For businesses offering services in different areas, select a service-area option to avoid confusion and comply with community guidelines.

I mentioned above the frustration about a business’s hours being wrong, now imagine someone going there and not finding what they were looking for at all!

If you have a digital store or run a company from home, you can always just select the Service-area option from the edit address section. There you’ll be able to select locations that you serve. Make sure you uncheck the “I also serve customers at my business address” box. This will prevent people from knocking on your door.

For better results, use Google Analytics, social media marketing, and social media tools to track performance and engage with accounts to build brand awareness. Incorporating social listening, customer stories, and seo hashtag strategies will enhance your marketing efforts across multiple platforms, whether you’re posting an update or using bio generator tools for more dynamic profiles.

2. Reviews, Questions and Answers

Reviews are a critical part of your Google My Business profile success. Not only do they impact local search rankings, but they also greatly influence potential customers’ opinions about your business and your online presence.

Dos:

When managing your reviews, do the following things:

Ask clients for reviews: 

When starting out, it can be tough to get reviews, but a good strategy is to ask early customers or friends to leave reviews for your business account. If customers are happy, encourage them to leave positive reviews, perhaps by offering a discount for their next purchase. This helps boost your listing in search rankings and builds trust with your audience.

It’s almost guaranteed for customers to leave a review if their experience is bad. To compensate for that, try to get your happy customers to leave positive reviews. This can be achieved by asking them to do it once they make a purchase in your store or via e-mail, if it’s eCommerce. You can add incentives like discounts for the next purchase in the menu, if they leave a review.

Get renowned local guides to review your place: Local guides reviews have a lot more weight into Google’s and potential customers’ eyes. They are known for visiting and reviewing places and do this on a regular basis. The higher their Google Guide Level, the better.

Getting a high level local guide to review your business can help your listing get a boost.

But how do you find these local guides? Well, the best way is to become a guide yourself. You don’t necessarily have to take this as a business opportunity. I’m sure you often visit places, so just take a couple of pictures and say 2-3 phrases about that location.

Then, you can meet other guides at Local Guides Connect. It’s probably a bad idea to pay them to review you. Some might accept, but others might leave you a negative review instead. However, if you invite them to your restaurant to check it out or tell them about your business when you chat you’re most probably going to get a review.

Try to make some new friends.

Incentivize clients to share photos: Encouraging customers to share photos along with their reviews adds authenticity to your Google My Business listings. Whether it’s a restaurant or retail shop, photos of your products or services can help enhance your Google Business profile and attract more customers.

This is pretty common in restaurants, but nobody says you can’t ask your clients to review the new T-shirt they bought by publishing a photo with them wearing it.

The photos will also add to the MyBusiness photo collection. Keep in mind that people can also publish photos with bad reviews, such as flies in their soup or bad quality products!

Answer questions and reviews: Engage with both positive and negative reviews. Answering questions or replying to reviews shows you’re active and attentive. Google determines local ranking partly based on profile optimizations and user activity.

Ignoring reviews, especially negative ones, can hurt your business. A thoughtful response can help turn a negative review into a returning customer.

Learn from your negative reviews: Negative reviews provide valuable insights into your business’s weaknesses. Take them seriously and use them to improve your services, which can, in turn, enhance your business growth.

Negative reviews can be a great way of learning how customers act and what makes them angry. Try to avoid the same mistakes in the future.

Don’ts:

When managing your reviews, don’t do the following things:

Ignore clients or argue with them: Ignoring reviews, particularly negative ones, can damage your reputation. Always respond politely and offer solutions, such as discounts, to resolve any issues. This shows potential customers that you care about customer service.

Never ignore the negative reviews! Always answer them and try to turn that negative review into a happy customer. You can offer a discount for their purchase.

It’s a small price to pay because this will prove to other potential customers who are researching your business that you are active and care about your customers’ thoughts.

Add fake reviews: Creating fake reviews can lead to penalties, including being dropped in search results or getting banned.

Even worse, customers will likely detect them, leading to a loss of trust and credibility.

This is even more dangerous, as they will most probably leave a review saying all other reviews are fake, which can greatly impact your business!

Also, keep in mind that people are more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one. You can create only so many accounts to keep reviewing your business 5 stars, but if your services aren’t up to the task, you’ll soon get outnumbered by the negative ones anyway.

Add negative reviews to competitors: Leaving negative reviews for competitors is not only unethical but also a waste of time.

Instead, focus on optimizing your Google Business profile, using GMB posts, and improving your service to stand out from the competition.

You can also get into trouble if people find out. You’ll ruin your business’s reputation.

Finally, verify your Google business to make sure your listing is secure, and take advantage of the Google My Business dashboard to monitor reviews, post type updates, and engage with customers. By focusing on profile optimizations and optimizing your Google business, you can boost your visibility, increase engagement, and drive more traffic to your business.

3. Photos and Videos

Photos and videos play a critical role in your business listing. People often want to see where they’re going, especially if it’s a restaurant or hotel. High-quality visuals can also improve local rankings by helping users recognize your business location and giving them a sense of what to expect.

Dos:

Include images in every category: When creating your Google My Business listing, make sure to upload photos in each category: Interior, Exterior, Products, Menu, Team, etc. This business information enhances transparency and can build trust with potential customers.

The “Team” section is particularly important, as it shows you treat your employees well, which often correlates with better customer experiences.

Add videos: Videos are a great asset to your business profile optimizations. Whether it’s a store or a restaurant, you can upload videos of the entrance or the products you’re offering. This not only helps customers find your location but also gives them a preview of what you offer.

Videos also enhance conversion rates because they help potential customers engage more deeply with your business.

If you’re a store, you can always make a video showing the entrance. Maybe it’s a little bit hidden and not really into the view. Help them out. You can also add videos of products, even say a word or two about those products. Invite them to the store. People like to be told what to do!

Optimize Google My Business with post updates that include images or videos regularly. Posting high-definition visuals can help keep your listing fresh and encourage more interaction, improving your local ranking on Google.

Again… it’s easy to get videos done. Everyone has a smartphone these days.

Go crazy with uploads on Google’s servers: When you upload images or videos to your Google My Business account, you don’t have to worry about file size slowing down your site.

Google’s powerful servers will handle the load. So, feel free to upload high-definition images that showcase your business in the best light.

If needed, Google will automatically resize them, helping to optimize your listing for search engines.

Don’ts:

Add fake images: Never upload images that aren’t from your business. This can hurt your credibility and may lead to copyright issues.

If you sell products like Nike shoes, don’t rely on official images from the Nike website. Instead, take your own photos of the products in your store. This keeps your local search results authentic and engaging.

Post pictures of clients without approval: Be careful about posting images of customers without their permission.

Even if someone tags your business, avoid adding those photos without consent. This can lead to potential privacy issues and affect business optimization.

I’ll share a story: there was this guy speeding on a highway. The static camera got him, so he received a ticket at home about 2 weeks later. However, his wife received the ticket first. She didn’t have any problems with the ticket, but with the location of the car. Turns out that the husband had lied about where he was going and, apparently, in the passenger seat a very pretty blonde woman could be spotted. The woman filed for divorce so the man sued the police and won the trial for them ruining his life.

I consider the man ruined his own life, but if you don’t want to take any part in ruined marriages and get yourself in a hell of a lawsuit, you’d better not post any pictures with clients in them without their approval!

In conclusion, optimizing your visual content is key for optimizing your Google business and improving your local search rankings. Regular business profile optimizations using relevant and high-quality images help customers engage more with your business, increasing your chances of showing up higher in Google searches. Be sure to include all relevant contact information, business description, and relevant keywords in your posts to make the most of your Google My Business profile. And of course, always verify your Google account with the verification code to secure your listing and boost your local rankings.

5. NAPW (Name, Address, Phone, Website)

NAPW stands for Name, Address, Phone, and Website. It’s commonly referred to as NAP, but including the website (NAPW) is also important for online visibility.

Dos:

List the information on your website: Ensure the same information in your GMB profile (Name, Address, Phone) is also listed on your website. Including this in your footer is efficient, but be sure to also add your business name, business hours, and other relevant info on your contact page. This consistency is key for Google business profile optimizations and helps attract customers.

You can add those in your footer as they don’t take up much space, but on your contact page you should also add your company’s real name, opening hours and other relevant information.

Build citations: Citations are like backlinks for your Google My Business profile. They help boost local SEO and increase visibility in competitor profiles. To stay ahead of the competition, you can research their citations using tools like BrandMentions.

Make sure your citations are accurate and include your relevant category to ensure Google recognizes your business correctly.

Post on Google: Regularly post on Google through Google Posts to keep your profile active. Whether it’s a promotion, a blog post, or new updates, these posts help you stay relevant and attract new customers.

Use google qa to answer common questions and interact with potential clients directly through your business profile dashboard.

Optimize your business: To further improve visibility, optimize your business by enabling features like enabling messaging, which allows direct communication with potential customers.

This personal touch can improve engagement and enhance your digital marketing strategy.

Don’ts: 

Be inconsistent: If your citations, business hours, or other information vary between your website and Google My Business profile, Google will get confused, negatively impacting your local SEO. Consistency is crucial.

Even if you have multiple locations, include the city name in your GMB title to differentiate listings and ensure accurate local search results.

Avoid irrelevant categories: Ensure your business is categorized correctly. Choosing an irrelevant category can confuse search engines and customers, making it harder to reach your target audience.

By following these tips and tricks, you can optimize your business for local SEO success. Consistent citations, accurate business information, and regular Google posts will not only help you collect customer data but also boost your visibility in search engines.

And don’t forget to verify your business for better rankings!

Conclusion:

Having your business at the top of Google Maps might take some time, which is normal for any new business types. Initially, you’ll get noticed by people searching near your physical address, but as you continue to satisfy your customers, your reach will expand. Google determines local visibility based on factors like conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and google business profile optimizations.

Improving your listing is relatively simple—avoid shortcuts and tricks. Instead, focus on filling out your profile with accurate contact details, adding a complete business description, and selecting a relevant category. Keep your GMB profile updated with correct profile information, including your business name, phone calls, and post updates. Regular google posts and gmb posts will help keep your listing active and engaging. Also, ensure that you verify your Google business and claim your Google listing to avoid issues with ownership or edits.

Engage with customers by monitoring and responding to reviews and google messages. Answering common questions and enabling enabling messaging helps build trust, improving local ranking on Google. Don’t forget to include relevant keywords in your profile for better search engine optimization (SEO), which will enhance your visibility in google searches. Tools like Google Analytics can help you track your marketing efforts and see what attracts customers the most.

If you’re running a business, or managing a client’s Google My Business account, consistency is key. Update your business profile dashboard regularly, optimize your listing with business profile optimizations, and use a variety of post types to keep your profile active. Using a google reviews link in communications also encourages customers to leave feedback, which helps boost your ranking.

Lastly, make sure to optimize your Google My Business profile by ensuring all contact information is accurate and that you’re listed in the correct business category. Use these tips and tricks to help boost your local ranking on Google, and don’t forget to verify your business with the verification code provided by Google. Focus on business optimization and good digital marketing practices, and soon enough, you’ll see results. Have you had any issues or successes with Google My Business? Leave a comment, and maybe we or other readers can help!

The post DO’s and DON’Ts on Google My Business | Tips to Get Your Listing to the Top appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

This article will explain what chatbots are and how they can help you take your digital marketing to the next level. I’m not using “to the next level” as an idiom, because chatbot marketing might just be the next big thing. Incorporating chatbots in marketing can streamline customer interactions and significantly enhance your marketing strategy. It has the potential to revolutionize the marketing world!

Chatbots can improve and benefit your marketing and sales in many ways.  They apply to support requests, e-commerce and even personal or informational websites. You can find some of the best techniques in this article.

In a nutshell, Chatbot Marketing is about promoting products and services using chatbots.

Stick with me and below I’ll show you exactly how you can set up your own chatbot, and how you can put it to good work plus many more. 

1. What Is a Chatbot and How Does It Work ?
2. Why Chatbots Are the Future of Digital Marketing
3. Best Uses of Chatbots
   1. Personal virtual assistant
   2. Get Traffic & Grow Audience
   3. Buld e-mail list
   4. E-commerce & Conversational Commerce
   5. Customer Support
   6. Marketing Automation & Sales
4. Can ChatBot Marketing Improve SEO?

1. What Is a Chatbot and How Does It Work ? 

Chatbots are complex computer software designed to chat with persons and perform different actions, from simple conversation to customer support and e-commerce.

They are becoming increasingly crucial in social media and marketing efforts, helping businesses grow your business and boosting sales.

A chatbot is short for “chat robot”. We think of robots as machines, but ‘robot’ actually means ‘forced labor’.

Source: quickmeme.com

Marketing chatbots go beyond just basic interactions—they can play a pivotal role in lead generation, improving customer experiences, and streamlining customer care. By integrating a marketing chatbot into your social media strategy, businesses can enhance their interaction with customers, answer marketing messaging, and provide live chat services.

Chatbots are not only about imitating real conversations. Modern AI chatbots, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, can learn from customer experiences to deliver more personalized service, which is particularly useful for holiday season promotions or loyalty programs.

These bots can be set up on various platforms, including a WordPress chatbot, allowing marketers to promote products, offer welcome messages, and manage marketing campaigns.

Businesses that set up marketing chatbots can see the benefits of chatbot marketing almost immediately. Whether it’s on landing pages, within shopping experiences, or even as part of a partner program, these chatbots help promote products and improve conversion rates. Moreover, chatbots can be a valuable marketing channel, helping businesses increase engagement on social media and content marketing efforts.

While chatbots aren’t yet perfect—they haven’t truly passed the Turing Test—chatbots for marketers are evolving rapidly. They now play a significant role in digital marketing, allowing businesses to efficiently manage customer interactions and collect customer data. For instance, chatbots can assist customers and seamlessly transfer them to a human agent when necessary, ensuring that the shopping experience is both efficient and enjoyable.

In conclusion, while there is still room for improvement, integrating chatbots into your marketing strategy can enhance customer experiences, increase social media engagement, and ultimately, help your business thrive.

Or, how Hamza puts it…

Here we go…someone had to do this meme in the end…#bots #AI #chatbots pic.twitter.com/w9EBQ7awtT

— Hamza Harkous (@hamzaharkous)

In the next section, you’ll discover why chatbots are becoming more popular and why companies started investing in them.

2. Why Chatbots Are the Future of Digital Marketing

In case you that chatbots are a big trend now,  here is a Google Trend from 2017; the interest started long time ago.  

The term had a big but very short trend somewhere between 2006 and 2007. This happened when the first chatbots appeared on the web.  Although cool at first, since they were not helpful in any way, people lost interest fast.

However, chatbots are becoming more sophisticated today and come in various forms, serving a wide range of purposes. Modern AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are designed to provide more value, such as offering personalized recommendations and quick replies to common questions. These bots are improving customer interaction and customer satisfaction by keeping conversations flowing and guiding users to relevant solutions.

In 2015, Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, introduced an AI-powered chatbot called Melody, a medical assistant designed to help solve the healthcare crisis.

Melody can chat with people at home to assist in diagnosing possible illnesses, showing how aipowered chatbots can make a real difference by improving customer experience in critical sectors.

Today’s chatbots serve a wide variety of purposes, from messenger bots that engage website visitors and potential clients, to tools that enhance brand awareness by delivering news and updates directly to users.

Marketers can now build your own chatbot to fit specific needs, like segmenting traffic or providing personalized recommendations based on user preferences.

These chatbots guide users through processes and offer quick responses to FAQs, improving customer satisfaction and making customer interaction more efficient.

By integrating chatbots into their strategies, businesses can better manage customer interaction while providing personalized recommendations and guiding potential clients through their products or services. Whether you’re using a chatbot to segment traffic or to deliver news and updates, chatbots are a powerful tool for improving customer experiences and increasing engagement.

Abhimanyu Godara, founder of Bottr.me said that chatbots will fix the app clutter, as many apps can be replaced. He also said that soon, everyone will have their own chatbot.

Marketing is shifting from logos to faces, from brands to people. The chatbot talks to you, and the process becomes a lot more interactive, creating engagement.
	Abhimanyu Godara
	CEO at Bottr.me / @abh1manyu

Abhimanyu is definitely right:

You can see the personal brand business model become more and more popular (especially in the digital marketing industry). People like Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel and Brian Dean and many others promote and use this model. Even Richard Branson is using his personal brand to promote his businesses.

Big brands will still be in the game, though. But every business will also have its own chatbot.

Here’s why:

Messaging apps are growing really fast. Faster than social media itself!

Business Insider

If they become the #1 way people talk to each other, businesses will have to find a way to engage with their customers there.

Mobile search is growing, and Google is testing the mobile first indexing. This tells us that people will use the messenger apps even more. Chatbots apply best to people using mobile devices.

One way would be setting up customer support departments. That is not cost effective, and many businesses won’t do it.

The other way, is having chatbots.

Chatbots can make small businesses much more competitive, especially in digital marketing. With the help of artificial intelligence and well-designed chatbot platforms, small teams can manage a significantly higher volume of clients and qualify leads more efficiently.

Even though it might sound crazy, chatbots may eventually challenge traditional apps and websites. An app requires space and needs to be downloaded, while websites take time to load, and many are quite slow. However, messenger chatbots and WhatsApp chatbots work instantly. You type something, and they respond immediately. This is where conversational AIs and AI agents excel, as they bypass the traditional user interface, completely changing how customers engage with your business. People can navigate content using their natural language, creating a seamless customer journey.

By integrating chat plugins with messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, businesses can improve customer interactions and provide faster, more efficient service. Chatbots can also help in real estate, contact sales teams, and even gather valuable customer feedback.

For businesses looking to implement chatbots, chatbot builders are available to help you create a tailored chatbot marketing strategy. Some great chatbot marketing examples include using messenger chatbots to handle customer feedback, answer FAQs, and offer personalized recommendations.

Chatbots are not just a tool for large businesses; they can be a game-changer for small businesses looking to streamline customer service, enhance the customer journey, and qualify leads without adding more staff. By incorporating chatbots into their digital marketing strategies, businesses can provide a better user experience, improve efficiency, and stay competitive in today’s fast-paced world.

But don’t get too hyped yet! Chatbots are still far from becoming a standard.

Ilan Kasan, CEO at Exceed.ai said in January 2017 that the chatbot technology is going through the Gartner’ Hype Cycle. Back then, it was standing on the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Right now, it started to fall in the Trough of Disillusionment.

The Gartner Hype Cycle is a timeline of how new technologies appear on the market. This applies to most things in the IT field.

As Ilan said it…

Get ready for the Trough of Disillusion … it’s coming soon. With it, many chatbot companies will vanish. Eventually, as the technology improves and the market understand the best use cases for chatbots, winners will emerge.
	Ilan Kasan
	CEO @ilankasan / exceed.ai

My research kind of proves Ilan’s theory.

I’ve contacted some people who use chatbots directly on their website. So far, their results were either mixed or missing altogether.

The experience is still confusing so even if people are trying it, it’s telling from their messages that they aren’t sure what the chatbot does or how it works.
	Paul O’Brien
	Blogger at seobrien.com / @seobrien

Here’s another response:

I couldn’t get any real value so I stopped using it.

— Harsh Agrawal (@denharsh) June 14

Now that was… Harsh.

On the other hand, on platforms like Facebook Messenger, the read rates can get extremely high. Matthew Barby, Head of SEO at Hubspot tells us about his experience:

It’s still early days and I have a lot more experiments ongoing within Messenger in particular, but I’ve seen read rates of my push messages of over 90% – which is insane!
	Matthew Barby
	Blogger at matthewbarby.com / @matthewbarby

Still, even with all the current problems, setting up a bot can kickstart your site’s growth.

Sujan Patel, a renowned expert in growth hacking and co-founder of Voila Norbert, has been talking about chatbot marketing as a growth technique for a while..

Chatbots can definitely be a growth tactic as it could help increase leads, start conversions/engage with potential customers and get feedback.
	SUJAN PATEL
	Blogger at sujanpatel.com / @sujanpatel

Although people are barely scratching the surface of chatbots potential, it’s still a good idea to get started with them. Learning the technology now can gain you an advantage over the competition in the future. These types of software are prone to becoming popular in the days to come.

Let’s take a look at some of the best use cases for chatbot marketing.

3. Best Uses of Chatbots for Marketing

Chatbots have evolved significantly, and today they can be applied across various industries to enhance user experience and boost business outcomes. Whether you’re focused on lead generation, customer care, or improving conversion rates, chatbots are a key component of a modern digital marketing strategy. Here are some of the best ways to leverage chatbots in 2024:

3.1 Personal AI Assistant

A virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can help you save time by managing customer interactions when you’re unavailable. Well-designed chatbots app or AI assistants can handle common customer queries, respond quickly, and enhance the customer journey by mimicking natural language conversations.

Whether you’re in real estate or managing e-commerce, these assistants boost engagement and streamline processes. Examples like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp chatbots enable real-time communication with potential customers.

Nathan Hague, an awesome Australian marketer, uses one on his personal website. After a few seconds and scrolls on the website, the invitation to chat with it will pop up. The bot is an essential aspect of Nathan’s social strategy.

Clicking on the “Send to messenger” button will take you to Facebook messenger, where the bot takes action.

His bot is very well built and has an awesome vibe. You can see that Nathan did his best to showcase his personality through his bot.

On his page, Nathan uses the bot to let people know he will respond. And he does! (Thanks, man!)

Paul O’Brien took a more complicated approach. He tries to replicate himself altogether, using a bot on his website.

I’m seeking a virtual assistant clone of myself. Have looked into a good number of bots and have yet to find anything that works. Bottr plus Replika might come close.
	Paul O’Brien
	Blogger at seobrien.com / @seobrien

On Paul’s blog, in the bottom right corner, you can notice what looks like a live chat icon. What catches your attention is Paul’s face in the icon.

The bot still has a very long wait until it will be able to replace Paul completely. Still, you can pick from a set of questions and find more about Paul and his work. The answers are usually articles he has written on his blog or other websites. If the bot can’t answer something, it will put you in contact with Paul directly.

Having a personal virtual assistant can help you save time and get people engaged with your content. 

3.2 Get Traffic to Your Site and Grow Your Audience

Using messenger bots as part of your conversational marketing strategy can drive traffic from social media to your landing pages.

Companies like WholeFoods have successfully engaged users by sending personalized recommendations based on preferences, which increases brand awareness and helps to bypass social media algorithms.

Chatbots provided to your audience in their inboxes can achieve read rates of up to 90%, which is significantly higher than traditional methods like email.

On their Facebook bot, they engage with their audience by showing them interesting recipes. Before that, they narrow the posts down by the user’s preference.

Subscribing users to your bot can help you bypass the reach algorithms and all the other clutters on social media. While others will deliver posts in the news feed, you can send them directly into the users inbox. That’s where they chat with their friends, so you know they will see your message.

Remember, by engaging with your fans directly through their inboxes, you can get read rates of up to 90% of your subscribed users.

News publishers have been using this method in their content marketing strategy for a while:

3.3 Build an E-mail List

You can integrate your chatbot with marketing automation tools to qualify leads and collect contact information. For example, chatbot platforms can help you build email lists, offer welcome messages, and even segment users based on behavior.

Nathan Hague suggests set up marketing chatbots to gather customer info and use chat plugins to engage visitors, which is especially useful during peak seasons like the holiday season.

My very strong suggestion though, is to use the Facebook bot more and more instead of email marketing! Remember, you’re renting your presence on Facebook and it can be taken away from you at any time! Keep building your email list in case something ever goes wrong.
	Nathan Hague
	Blogger at nathanhague.com / @australiawow

Still, he says that the upgrade from e-mail open rates of 10%-20% to Facebook messenger open rates of 90% is invaluable.

Try to use Messenger instead of E-mails, but keep building your e-mail list as a backup in case your Facebook profile/page ever gets banned.

3.4 E-commerce & Conversational Commerce

E-commerce is shifting towards conversational marketing, where chatbot builders create bots to simulate an in-store shopping experience. Brands like Kayak and H&M use chatbots to recommend products and allow users to complete purchases seamlessly.

These bots can also help with lead qualification and providing product recommendations based on user preferences, all while boosting sales. After purchases, bots can even follow up with customer feedback to enhance loyalty programs.

Many companies are doing this. Here’s an example from Kayak, the travel search engine:

Some travel bots can even book your flight or your hotel room. Pizza Hut also uses a similar technique for their orders.

With a bot you can also classify prospects. It’s very easy to sort out consumer preferences. This also applies to all fields, from age, gender and location to interests and hobbies.

Fashion brands use this strategy to study new trends and learn about what their clients want.

Here’s an example from American Eagle:

Here’s another one from H&M, on Kik.

After you tell the bot your style, it sends you different outfits you might like. You can save them to favorites, skip them or select a specific product and buy it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t purchase directly through the messaging app. Every time, the bot sent me to a website to make the final purchase. This is probably happening because I don’t live in the USA. Facebook Messenger payments are available in the USA since 2015, so we know it’s possible.

After a purchase is made, you can even set up the bot to follow-up and ask the user for feedback.

3.5 Customer Support

The most common use of AI chatbot technology is in customer care. AI agents can answer common questions instantly, reducing response time and improving customer satisfaction.

For instance, companies like 1-800-Flowers and Twitter use bots to handle initial interactions, before handing off more complex issues to a human agent.

This hybrid approach keeps conversations flowing and minimizes waiting times, while freeing up resources for the sales teams. Whether it’s through WordPress chatbots, messenger chatbot, or chatbots for marketers, integrating support bots can improve efficiency and increase user experience.

Twitter also has a support bot up and running. It’s a great way to learn about Twitter if you’re just starting out.

You can only talk to it by tapping the buttons, so you aren’t really chatting with it. Playing with it, I can say it’s more like a FAQ database and  knowledge base.

Big brands and businesses are already using this technology to reduce waiting time, and are even taking it to the next level. Enterprise chatbots for support might be expensive, but the investment is minimal compared to a whole support staff.

A friend of mine told me about an experience he had when calling a bank to solve an issue. He said that only by the time he ended the call did he realize he was actually talking to a robot.

There are many other ways you can use chatbots to improve your online marketing campaigns, but the ones listed above are the most popular and feasible. You can find many other ideas out there, from consumer analysis to personalized ads.

3.5 Marketing Automation & Sales

Chatbots can manage marketing messaging, engage website visitors, and promote products without the need for human intervention.

They can also be deployed in marketing campaigns to send generated leads directly to sales teams for follow-up. Some chatbot marketing examples include using chatbots to assist in loyalty programs, deliver real-time news and updates, and increase conversions on landing pages.

Bots with machine learning capabilities improve over time by analyzing interactions and offering more accurate product recommendations.

5. Can ChatBot Marketing Improve SEO ?

Having a chatbot-only website sounds cool, but one of the challenges with chatbots is that the content stored in the database is not indexable by search engines, limiting SEO benefits. Chatbots in marketing provide many advantages, but they don’t directly impact SEO in the same way as indexable content.

This is why marketing agency experts, like Sujan Patel, advise sticking to conventional SEO for important content. Make sure your key pieces of content are also posted on your website in a format that can be crawled by search engines.

Chatbots & SEO are two very different things. Make your content indexable and crawlable and stick to conventional SEO wisdom.
	SUJAN PATEL
	Blogger at sujanpatel.com / @sujanpatel

But chatbots directly on your website can bring some SEO advantages. Dwell time and bounce rate are linked to rankings. Improving them can also grow your position in Google.

However, there are still benefits of using chatbots for lead qualification and generated leads that can indirectly support your SEO. For example, chatbots can improve response time, keep customers engaged, and boost social media strategy by increasing customer queries and boosts engagement.

A chatbot that enhances the user experience will likely improve dwell time and reduce bounce rates, both of which are ranking factors for Google.

As Paul O’Brien says, AI customer interactions that encourage users to stay on a site, share it, or return to it can positively impact Google rankings.

SEO has far less to do with content and words than people think. Google ranks sites based on the experience people have with brands. If a bot can enhance that experience in such a way that people are more enthusiastic about a site – they share it, return to it, talk about it, and spend more time there, it will affect positively how the site appears in Google.
	Paul O’Brien
	Blogger at seobrien.com / @seobrien

On the other hand, Paul also tells us that if the bot negatively impacts the website, then the rankings can also drop.

Chatbots can also help you get links, likes and shares.

If you decide to build your own chatbot and integrate it into your partner program, chatbots can engage users throughout their journey, providing benefits of chatbot marketing like answering queries instantly, guiding them to relevant content, and improving overall customer engagement. This is especially valuable for lead qualification, where chatbots provided immediate responses and help convert visitors into leads.

To stand out in chatbot marketing, it’s crucial to be creative and original. Chatbots in marketing can enhance customer queries, offer real-time support, and boost generated leads through personalized interactions.

Incorporating chatbots into your social media strategy and website can provide the benefits of chatbots, such as improving the user experience, speeding up response times, and boosting engagement with potential customers.

In the constantly evolving marketing landscape, especially when targeting millennials, chatbot marketing is a powerful tool. By integrating AI customer interactions and chatbots into your overall marketing efforts, you can not only increase engagement but also encourage customers to engage more deeply with your brand.

Keep in mind, though, that it’s essential to balance this innovation with traditional SEO techniques to ensure your content remains visible and indexed in search engines.

If you liked this article, have any questions or feel I missed some points, please feel free to drop off a comment in the section below. Let’s get the conversation started!

The post Chatbot Marketing: Is It the Strategy of the Future ? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Google doesn’t necessarily favor “fresh” content. Some search queries definitely deserve freshness, while others not so much. However, fresh content can impact SEO through some indirect “freshness” factors.

1. What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?
   1. Freshness & Frequency
2. What the Google Freshness Update Was All About
   1. The First Google Update (Caffeine)
   2. The Second Google Update (Freshness)
   3. Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?
3. Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?
   1. Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)
   2. Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)
   3. Publishing New Content
4. What Actually Affects SEO
   1. CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)
   2. Quantity & Targeted Keywords
   3. Domain Performance

To better understand the concept, we first must detail a little what “fresh content” actually means.

What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

What do you understand by fresh content? Content that has been published today? Content that is regularly updated?

The term “fresh content” represents content that is dynamic in nature (especially in meaning).

Therefore, it’s not as much “new” content in relation to time and when it has actually been created or published, but new in meaning and what the data behind it reflects.

Many people believe that fresh content is content that has been recently published. Sometimes, they even mix up freshness with frequency.

Let’s start with content that has been recently published. If I am publishing a piece on “The History of England”, would you call that fresh content?

Most likely not, because people have been writing about the history of England for probably hundreds of years. It’s nothing new.

The post is new on my site, of course, but common SEO sense says that new content without any backlinks and amplification will have a harder time ranking, especially in very competitive niches, such as history (where Wikipedia probably dominates). You’ll have to make huge link building efforts to dominate the results with a new page and we all know how risky that is! (it usually results in a penalty).

Freshness & Frequency

Now frequency is very similar to freshness and they often intersect, but it’s not always the case. I could post something fresh once per week, or I could post something fresh every day.

Frequency will ensure that your site gets crawled more often (thanks to Caffeine).

That means search engines will use more of their resources on sites that publish more often, because they need them.

If you’ve been publishing once per month for the past year, why would Google check your site daily? It would be a waste of resources.

However, if your site publishes 25 articles each day, then Google has to make sure it checks your site multiple times per day to index those results as soon as possible (thanks to Caffeine) and be able to display them to the users if they request it (thanks to the 2011 update).

One common misconception is that stale websites will be negatively impacted. That’s been proven wrong.

Brian Dean made this pretty clear with his blog. He publishes rarely, so his website is mostly still. However, his content always ranks at the top. I also have a blog in Romanian on which I haven’t posted in over 6 months. 9/10 articles are ranking on the 1st page and 6/10 are ranked in the top 3 positions.

If there’s something that has changed over time, it’s that those rankings have actually increased.

You see, you don’t need to publish too often when you can actually go into the Google Search Console and ask Google to immediately index your web pages by hitting a single button.

What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

This all started back in 2009, but just like many events, it has developed into a big conspiracy over time.

The First Google Update (Caffeine)

If you were in business back in 2009, you’d remember about the Google Caffeine update and how much of a big deal it was. The update is often referred to today as the Freshness Update, because Google used the phrase “fresher results”.

Although the update was announced back in 2009, it took almost a year until it finally rolled up.

The thing is, unfortunately, that many people got it all wrong.

The Google caffeine update has nothing to do with rankings. It’s main focus is indexing. Rankings and indexing are two very different things.

Indexing is when Google takes a first look at your content and adds it to the index. That means it has the potential to be ranked.

Ranking however, is a completely different story, with a much more complex algorithm behind it. This algorithm, which was updated in 2011, was actually older than you might think.

The Second Google Update (Freshness)

Ranking “fresh content” at the top was actually happening way before that. In 2007, Amit Singhal had developed an algorithm that favored freshness for some particular subjects and queries.

Note how I say “some specific queries”. Wait, let me make that bigger.

Google favors fresh content only for some specific queries that deserve freshness, widely known as QDF.

QDF stands for Query Deserves Freshness. If a particular search phrase is a QDF, then Google will show up the most recent results. This happens a lot in particular areas, as Matt Cutts explains in the following video:

In fact, in its official post about the update, Google specifies exactly what types of queries the update will impact:

• Recent events or hot topics: Such as celebrity news or natural disasters (kind of one and the same)
• Regularly recurring events: Conferences such as Brand Minds
• Frequent updates: Anything that keeps having new content added to, such as product reviews or anything in the technology space

I know there have been some speculations that only by changing the date to an article you could make it look fresh and you could abuse the algorithm changes to make Google keep you at the top. However, they are what they are (speculations) and I promise you that for each example you give me of “fresh” content ranking at the top I can find at least 1 example of “old” content ranking at the top.

In fact, I’ll give you some examples right now, from the SEO field. It’s a field that frequently changes and you always have to stay up to date in order to be relevant.

There’s no way a guide from 2015 or 2010 would still be useful, right? Well… Google thinks otherwise:

And here’s another example:

You might argue that “fresher” results rank better than those. Well, you’re right but that doesn’t prove anything, because one can say “fresher results also rank below and they even come from big sites such as Hubspot”.

However…

There are factors that might influence rankings in this situation and we’ll talk about them soon, so keep reading!

But thinking that you’ll rank better just by having a more recent publish date is silly. And I’ll crush it even more soon.

Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

Both Caffeine and the 2011 Freshness Algorithm Update affect mostly news sites. This is the broader category, in which you can include celebrities, general news, politics, technology, you name it.

I’ll give you an example:

Notice a difference from the SEO examples I gave before? No article from 2009 or 2010 here, right? They’re all from 2019, posted hardly one month before me writing this post. The second article doesn’t even list the date, but instead the number of days it was posted ago. It can also be hours sometimes instead of days.

Why do you think this is the case?

Because in this case, a 2009 post would be horrible as a search result. People want to know the latest phones, not the outdated ones from 2009. Google knows the user’s intent so it tries to match the results to fit it.

Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

Do we have an official answer? Sort of. And it’s pretty recent:

No

— ? John ? (@JohnMu) August 18, 2018

I have to say, I’m not quite pleased with the answer, because John has the habit of being very vague in his answers. I mean… I’ve just proven above that Google favors fresh content in certain cases.

Sure, we also have to get the context of his answer. That question about freshness has been asked after John tweeted this:

“As a user, recognizing that old content is just being relabeled as new completely kills any authority that I thought the author / site had. Good content is not lazy content. SEO hacks don’t make a site great. Give your content and users the respect they deserve.”

So, basically, John Mueller, Google’s representative, is trying to tell you that updating the post date every day is a bad digital marketing strategy and it won’t help you rank better.

I have to admit, I miss those days when Google used to be a lot more detailed and explicit in its answers. Why?

Because, as discussed, before, Google does favor fresh content, but in certain areas! And John’s answer should’ve reflected this reality, which also includes QDF.

Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

Queries that Deserve Freshness is a reality! Matt Cutts talked about this before. There are certain search phrases, such as “best android phones” which I’ve shown above as an example, that deserve freshness. Users want to see the latest posts, so here, you might have the upper hand if you keep everything up to date.

Does that mean that you can keep ranking at the top by constantly changing the post date? No.

Does it mean that some articles will outrank other articles because of the date when they were posted? Yes.

But there are a lot of factors that signal freshness. Not just the date. Is the topic growing popular on social media platforms? Are the articles getting any new backlinks? In other words, is it something that’s happening now?

Are those answers contradicting one another? I don’t think so. In the end, Google’s not perfect. It’s just an algorithm. Do you think a human person could determine better what the best result for the masses would be? I highly doubt it.

Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

Will updating old blog posts help you rank better? Probably. But not just by changing the date. Google sees those changes and it accounts for “hacks” like this.

In this article, Search Engine Land stated that Google told them about one of the factors that determine freshness. It’s not the date!

“Google now tells us that one of the freshness factors — the way they determine if content is fresh or not — is the time when they first crawled a page. So if you publish a page, and then change that page, it doesn’t suddenly become “fresh.”

One of the factors that determine freshness is the time when Google first crawled the page.

So no, Google doesn’t care if you keep changing the date.

Does that mean you shouldn’t update your articles? No!

You should always keep your articles up to date. But not just with the date. Also with the content, quality and relevancy!

Has something changed since you’ve first written the article? Go and update it. Make your updates visible. This will allow users to also have a historical view on the events.

As Cyrus Shepard put it in this article:

The age of a web page or domain isn’t the only freshness factor. Search engines can score regularly updated content for freshness differently from content that doesn’t change. In this case, the amount of change on your web page plays a role.
	Cyrus Shepard
	Owner @ Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

So the page’s age (when it was first crawled) is important, not just the publish date in the article, which can be faked. If you’re going to make small, insignificant changes, there are small chances that you will see any effects on the rankings.

If you feel like your post is outdated but you don’t know exactly how to improve it, use our Keyword & Content Optimization Tool.

On the right side, it will give you a list of keywords that you should use in your article in order to make it more relevant. You can view them as topics you should cover when you’re writing SEO content. The ones with dots are the most important ones.

If you want to know exactly what we did to gain 70% more SEO visibility, you can take a look at our content optimization results.

Keep in mind that any changes to your content might also result in negative impacts. Be prepared for this in case it happens. If you have an article that’s already ranking #1, it’s probably a better idea to leave it like that!

Publishing New Content

As mentioned before,  new content lacks authority, distribution and links. It’s unlikely that it will outrank older content.

However, publishing new content does expand the number of keywords your site is targeting and thus it results in more traffic.

It’s just simple math. Will a higher post frequency increase your rankings overall? Probably not, although it can result in more backlinks which leads to higher domain performance over time.

However, a higher post frequency is almost guaranteed to increase traffic. No matter what others say, if you have 1000 followers and they read you once per week, if you make them read you twice per week, you’ve increased your traffic. It’s simple math.

But remember, you also need to post good content. You have to structure it well. You have to account for your audience’s needs. Not just blindly post things there.

Make sure to use the Keyword Tool to maximize your chances of ranking higher on Google when you create new posts.

What Actually Affects SEO

I don’t want you to be upset with me, so I’ll tell you some things that will actually impact your rankings and they’re closely related to freshness.

CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

Click Through Rate is a ranking factor. This has been tested and proven countless times. If users click your headline more and stick with your website, it signals Google that your site is a good result.

But what impacts CTR? Well, mostly it’s the position you’re ranking for, but the 3 things that affect CTR are the Title tag, the URL and the Meta Description, because they’re all shown in Google’s search results.

I hope you can see where this is going. How many times have you seen the current year or “Updated 20xx” in a title? Probably often. I mean just take a look at the “best android phones” example! It’s full of it! Why?

Using the current year in your title might positively affect CTR, which can result in higher rankings.

Should you change your title anually to feature the current year? Probably. But make sure your article is still up to date, otherwise Google’s going to catch that and punish you for it. If the article is still up to date, you can leave it like that. If not, you should probably improve it.

You can also reshare and redistribute your content as “new” on you social media platforms. This will help you gain new backlinks and traffic if the article was previously successful.

Quantity & Targeted Keywords

If you post new content frequently, you can expand your search visibility by targeting new keywords. This is almost guaranteed to bring more traffic if you do it right.

We’ve started doing this since November 2016 and the results have been promising. Have our rankings improved overall? Yes. Was it because we published more content but with the same high quality? It certainly had an effect (more backlinks, more shares, more topical authority).

Domain Performance

Closely related to quantity is the performance of your site’s domain. This is dictated by the number of unique domains that link to your website and, very important, also by their quality. 

If you publish more content, target and distribute it properly, then you can increase the number of backlinks to your site, which will result in a better domain performance.

If you want to check your domain performance, you can use the CognitiveSEO Site Explorer.

The domain performance has a positive impact on all your articles, because Google starts to trust your site as being qualitative. Just think about it. If you buy a domain today and write something about SEO (let’s say it’s the same quality), do you think you can outrank cognitiveSEO right away? It’s hardly the case.

Conclusion

Still confused? Here, I’ll summarize everything, just for you:

• Google does favor freshers results, but only in certain cases, such as news sites.

• Freshness factors, like the current year in your title, can impact your CTR, which may result in higher rankings.

• Publishing more new content can also help you gain more links, which leads to more authority.

What do you think about fresh content? Are you in a niche where fresh content is vital? How often do you publish on your site? Have you ever tried changing the date to rank higher? Has it worked? I doubt it has, but prove me wrong in the comments section. 

The post Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO in 2024? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Haven’t you heard?! SEO is dead!

Dead from all the bad jokes about it.

Of course, SEO isn’t actually dead, but there are a few reasons why SEO might not be working for you and your site.

We’ve gathered 14 top of mind reasons why your SEO might not be working for your website.

Let’s go through them and see if something rings a bell.

1. You don’t stick to the basics
2. You don’t really understand what SEO is
3. SEO just doesn’t fit your business/idea
4. Your expectations are too high
5. You’re not patient enough
6. Your budget is too small
7. You’re not focusing on mobile
8. You don’t analyze and you underestimate your competition
9. You’ve skipped keyword research
10. You’re not prioritizing the right things
11. You’re ignoring structure, click depth & internal linking
12. You’re ignoring backlinks
13. You don’t understand your audience
14. You’ve externalized to the wrong SEO agency
15. You’re not monitoring your results

1. You don’t stick to the basics

When people say SEO has some relation with magic, what they actually mean is that it’s very complex.

It would take several very long articles for me to fully explain how it works. 

Yes, it implies user experience, link profile, content strategy, referral traffic or marketing campaigns. And all these SEO efforts might seem very complex.

However, SEO is more simple that you might think, in some ways.

In a nutshell, it’s the multitude of criteria which makes a website the best result for a particular keyword, in the sense that it satisfies the user’s intent.

What you must understand is that Google isn’t trying to rank websites based on some checklist.

Sure, it follows a list of criteria, but it also looks at historical data in the SERP and since Rank  Brain has got involved, machine learning really made things a lot more complicated.

It’s hard for us humans to keep pace with how Google decides what actually makes a web page ‘the best one’. At this point… I’m not sure even the makers themselves have any idea how things work anymore.

So, instead focusing on the latest trends and techniques, try to focus more on the basics. Do them well and do them consistently.

Sure, SEO and digital marketing experts like Neil Patel and Brian Dean always try new techniques and tweaks, but one thing’s for sure: They haven’t stopped posting!

Being consistent is difficult, but it’s also the key to success!

2. You don’t really understand what SEO is

So, we know Google is trying to rank the best page.

But what does that actually mean?

Does it mean the page with the most targeted keywords? The page with the best links? The page with the best content?
Who wins the Google top organic results?

It’s the page that best satisfies the user’s intent. And in some cases, the website alone can’t do it!

Let’s say you want to rank high in the search engines for a very competitive eCommerce keyword. Well… if your offer isn’t good enough, you probably won’t.

If you want to rank for “shoes” but you only have 3 products in your store, you won’t be getting far.

If you want to rank for “cheap” but your prices aren’t cheap, again, you probably won’t have much success with it even if you optimize your website in this direction.

Moreover, many people don’t understand that high rankings within search results also reflect the quality of a business, at least to some extent.

For example, bad reviews on Google My Business can affect your local SEO rankings and your business listing and people don’t leave bad reviews because your SEO campaign sucks.

Sure, you can invest in search marketing and pump links into a website and get it to the top, but if the business itself doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure to properly satisfy clients (quality, shipping, support), the results won’t last for long!

I’ve seen sites pumping bad links and rushing to the top, only to fall ungracefully a short time after because they did not meet their user’s expectations.

3. SEO just doesn’t fit your business/idea

Another thing you should consider is that your business type should match SEO.

Usually, if you want to promote a short-term trending product, such as the fidget spinner, investing big and long term on SEO might not be the right choice!

Furthermore, if you need a quick turnover and you’re just getting started… SEO might not be the right channel for you, and you should look for PPC advertising or social media remarketing instead.

However, it’s not always a matter of SEO vs PPC. Usually, they go well together.

4. Your expectations are too high

The higher the expectations, the bigger the disappointment.

To be satisfied with your results, you’ll need to have realistic goals.

With SEO, you can’t really expect top rankings and huge websites traffic in a month or two, if your domain has just been registered.

You can’t expect to outrank the online presence of a strong competitor with thousands of links, with a tight budget and no scaling even if you apply some good SEO tactics.

In some cases, the entire competition might be way out of your league. That’s when you have to dig in deeper, to find those keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for.

You should still start with SEO as soon as possible, but start small. Look for keywords with lower competition and build your way up before saying that SEO does not work for you. 

5. You’re not patient enough

Sometimes you just need to be more patient.

Most SEOs will tell you upfront that it can take from 6 to 12 months to see the top positions.

Some will claim that they can get you to the #1 spot in the first month. It’s probably false and you should stay away from them.

You should always see progress in the first month.

If it’s a new website, that might be as little as the first pages getting indexed.

So, if you’re not yet in the position you’ve wished for but have increased in rankings compared to the previous month, just give it a little more time. You’re on the right path.

If you want to find out more about why it takes so long to rank in Google and other search engines and what you can do to speed things up, check out this article.

6. Your budget is too small

Actually… you CAN have high expectations. But for the right budget.

If your budget is too small, you might not be able to do everything you want and you might end up saying that SEO does not work for you. 

SEO includes things like: good server, fixing technical SEO issues, keyword research, content marketing, social media, investing in links and many others.

If you want to scale it up quickly and efficiently, the truth is that you will need a substantial investment.

Clients often ask me: “Why is it that SEO takes so long?”

Sure, part of the answer is: “Because Google.”

However, I’m always confident I can speed things up by scaling.

But why does scaling speed up the process, you may ask?

Well… it’s pretty straight forward:

• More content = more keywords covered faster
• More links = faster higher authority
• More monitoring = better / faster tweaking
• More programmers = faster site, more useful features, better UX, etc.

But all those above = more money.

Are you developing the content for 5 categories per month? Pump that to 10. Are you consolidating the site’s structure with 2 monthly blog posts? Up it to blog posts. Are you securing 1-2 links per month? Make that 5 and so on.

Many people get into SEO because they can use time instead of money to drive traffic to their websites and businesses.

However, time can’t scale things up. Only money can. If you want to rank faster, you’ll need to outsource some work.

7. You’re not focusing on Mobile

I know, I know, you’ve been hearing that Mobile SEO is very important and that most traffic is now coming from mobile devices.

The real thing here is that most professionals work from a desktop computer. So, the first contact with any issue, be it web development or SEO related, is on desktop, most of the times.

Often times I find myself fixing a quick issue on the desktop and completely forgetting to check how it looks on mobile devices.

And although I browse websites on mobile (as a user), when a client asks me something or signals an issue, I immediately check it on my computer (the phone is busy at my ear anyway).

In SEO, you always have to keep in mind that Google uses mobile first indexing.

If you’re mostly working from a desktop computer, like me, remember to always right-click in Chrome and hit inspect.

You can select multiple device types to stop any issues.

But sometimes, phones act differently than the desktop Chrome browser does (even when set on mobile view), so it’s always best to check on a physical phone itself.

And don’t forget to check on both Android and iOS.

Test if links work, test if scrolling works, test the entire checkout process, test, test, test.

Ask your friends to test, ask your mom to test ask your cat to test. If the cat can use it, you’re good to go.

In addition to that, consider that CSS hidden content also follows the mobile-first mentality.

Feel comfortable to combine desktop columns into sliders, or compress long paragraphs of text into dropdowns.

For example, on an eCommerce website, you might have a small description before your products, on the category page.

If on mobile devices the text pushes the products too far down, the users won’t be able to quickly see them when they load the page.

You can shorten the mobile description by using a ‘read more’ link which triggers a dropdown with the rest of the content.

8. You don’t analyze and you underestimate your competition

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu

Deep, isn’t it?

Google Analytics and Search Console are very good friends, but they only show you data for your own website.

Sometimes, it’s not enough to only do research about yourself. You have to analyze your competition! Not doing this, might end up in saying that SEO does not work for your website. 

That’s why having an SEO Tools Set like CognitiveSEO is a good idea. You can analyze and monitor your competitors to see how they perform and find gaps.

So, if you want to improve your SEO campaigns, make sure you always perform an SEO Competitor Analysis.

9. You’ve skipped keyword research

New clients often come to me because they are not satisfied with the results they got from their previous SEO partners.

Many times, after a quick analysis, I can spot that the title tags and meta descriptions have not been optimized at all!

That lets me know that keyword research hasn’t been performed.

I’ve seen many ‘SEO pack’ offers around, which are mostly PBNs or different link building tactics. 5 links per month…  10 links per month… and so on.

It baffles me and I don’t agree with it, but I guess it’s about money…

They’re easy to sell and can often offer quick results. But those results might only last a very short time and I can bet on who the contract you’ve signed covers (spoiler alert, it’s not you).

However, while those links might be helpful in certain situations, they probably won’t get you anywhere without the right keyword in the right places.

Make sure you do your keyword research!

10. You’re not prioritizing the right things

It might not be that you’re doing SEO wrong. It might just be that you’re doing the wrong type of SEO or at the wrong time.

Why put so much effort into getting that 100% PageSpeed score if your loading times are already between 1-3 seconds?

Why write more blog content when you haven’t finished optimizing your category pages?

• If you have a small website and no SEO has been performed, start with keyword research and title tags optimization.
• If you have a website with a lot of images, start by compressing your images.
• If you have a huge website with a lot of filters, make sure you prioritize crawlability and indexability by optimizing your faceted navigation.

Sometimes, it might be design (if your website is too outdated for your audience). Other times, it might be UX.

It’s different from website to website.

That’s why an SEO audit is crucial for your website’s success, especially if your website is huge.

But not just any SEO audit will do. You need an SEO Audit that actually looks in-depth at all your issues and then prioritizes them properly.

11. You’re ignoring structure, click depth & internal linking

A website’s structure defines how easily users and search engines will navigate and understand your content.

Make sure you structure your website accordingly.

You should always keep important pages maximum 3 clicks away from your homepage.

If you’re using pagination, make sure all your pages are linked to from the first archive/category page.

Moreover, if you’re not doubling down already on internal links, you should.

Use your blog to always link to important pages, such as product category pages, using relevant and keyword rich anchor texts.

There’s no penalty for using too many internal links. Well… just don’t make everything an internal link and you’ll be fine.

12. You’re ignoring backlinks

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to help most of my clients rank high with very few links if any links at all.

But once in a while, there are projects that even the best SEOs can’t handle without actively pursuing backlinks.

I like to think of myself as being able to do everything without links, but I also what to be as efficient as possible.

Getting backlinks is not bad. They’re just used improperly.

In some cases, your website simply needs more authority. And the fastest way to build it is by having quality backlinks.

If the number of links your competitors have far outweighs yours, you’ll have a hard time outranking them.

Sometimes, it might just mean it takes longer to see results, considering you’re doing everything else right.

Other times, it’s just plain impossible.

Links can help you kickstart that initial progress to help you gain your client’s trust and secure a long-term deal.

The best thing you can do is to build relationships, through content marketing and shareable content, such as case studies or interviews with industry-leading experts.

Don’t just stop at link building. Try to be involved and build a small community. That’s what Google likes.

Sometimes, however… you can just buy the links.

Of course, you don’t want to buy and spammy links that might get your website penalized.

But it’s wise to understand that links are ads and ads are paid for. The internet works based on ads, so own it.

You can always nofollow your paid links (just like Google tells you to do).

Nofollow links can also improve rankings and I’ve seen this with my own eyes on my own clients.

13. You don’t understand your audience

The audience is much more important for SEO than you think. It can make or break your SEO strategies. You might be saying: neh, SEO is not working for me when the actual problem is the way you tackle your audience. 

You might have the best interest and the greatest information in your content marketing strategy. But if you don’t deliver it in the right format or tone of voice, you won’t be getting the best results.

Maybe your audience prefers video content. Then stop spending so much time writing articles. Just use your video scripts as repurposed content on your blog instead.

Make sure you understand your audience well and make decisions based on that.

14. You’ve externalized to the wrong SEO agency

I hate talking about this, but finding a good SEO company or digital marketing agency isn’t an easy task.

Even more… in the pandemic era of 2020-2021, people have rebranded as experts in digital marketing fields. Much to say… they’re not really experts.

So, be very picky when choosing who you work with. Here are some more things to look after when hiring an SEO company.

On the other hand, if you are an SEO company, here’s how to convince your clients to buy your SEO services.

15. You’re not monitoring your results

Correctly monitoring results is a very difficult task. Sometimes, is not that SEO does not work but monitoring results properly does not work. 

That’s because monitoring isn’t just about traffic and conversion rate optimization.

It’s about discovering new opportunities to do things better.

But even so, whether it’s a drop in traffic or a drop in conversions, the sooner you see it, the sooner you’ll be able to fix it.

There are many tricks, such as using Google Search Console to identify secondary keywords for articles that are already ranking pretty well.

Go to the Performance Section, select a page that’s already ranking well and then go back to the Queries section. Activate Positions and CTR and look for those phrases that have a good click through rate. 

You can then start adding that keyword to your content to rank better for it in the search engines. If you want even better results, try out the CognitiveSEO Content Optimization Tool.

Or, you can use a Secondary Dimension (Behaviour > Landing Page) on the Organic Traffic Channel in Google Analytics to figure out which pages converted the best. Then you can mix those with the Google Search Console query data to know (with approximation) which set of keywords bring the most conversions.

Tools such as Google Analytics have a lot of filters that can help you figure out what exactly happened on your website so make sure you use them for better SEO results.

I hope this list of 15 reasons why your SEO doesn’t work helps you figure out what you’ve been doing wrong or at least gives you a new perspective on your SEO campaigns.

Complex SEO strategies and tactics are awesome, but you always have to make sure you stick to the basics first.

Do you think there are other reasons why someone’s SEO strategy might not work? Share them with us in the comments section below.

The post Why SEO Does Not Work for You & Your Website appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Well, as Head of Web SPAM at Google John Mueller said, “in general, no”. But the key words in that answer are “in general”. That’s the usual answer we get from John and, as much as we’d like to say we will dissect it, the truth is that we can only be speculating and interpreting things based on own knowledge and experience.

Let’s jump to it and find out whether web directories are still useful for SEO in 2022.

1. What Are Web Directories Really?
   1. Why Directories Were Created
   2. Why Directories Died
   3. The Web Directory Legacy
2. Do Web Directories Still Work for SEO in 2022?
   1. The Problem With Today’s Directories
   2. Local SEO & Directory Listings
   3. Directories That Are Still Good
   4. Why Do We Still Have Web Directories?
3. Should You Disavow Directory Links?

What Are Web Directories Really?

In order to better understand why directories work or not in 2022 we have to create a background for them. Like an introduction.

Most people probably think of directories as just sites that list other sites. While that’s true, the reality is that they’re much more.

Before modern search engines, such as Google, web directories were THE INTERNET.

Why Web Directories Were Created

In the very early days of the internet, only a few people had websites. Internet connections were uncommon and there wasn’t much profit to be made out of it. Still, different websites emerged, in different niches.

However, you had to actually remember the domain names in order to access those websites, as there was no Google.

But, as the internet grew, more websites started showing up. Soon enough, people couldn’t remember all those names. But some clever guys from Yahoo! had the brilliant idea to store the best website into something they called a web directory.

At first, only a few websites were listed, the most ‘popular’ ones or the ones that they thought were worthy of being listed. This way, you would only have to remember one website (Yahoo!) if you wanted to find all the other good sites.

At first, the sites were listed alphabetically but, as the number grew, they started getting listed under categories and subcategories. This way it was easier for users to find what they needed.

Web directories made money out of selling advertising space or boosting certain results in exchange for a fee.

Why Web Directories Died

Unfortunately, when the number of sites started getting way too high, people soon realized it wasn’t so convenient to browse through all those categories. It would take too much time and, ultimately, the best results were mixed up with the less good ones.

This is how search engines appeared. It was by far more convenient to type in a keyword and get a list of top results than to browse through categories trying to figure out which website is the best.

The search engines worked on algorithms, just as they do now (although not as complex). Depending on the keywords in the title and other factors, some sites would rank better than others.

Yahoo! had its own search engine. However, it is no secret that Google took the lead because of their improved algorithm, but this isn’t the only reason why Google eventually took the lead. Yahoo! was a giant back then, in the days of Yahoo! Mail, News, Answers and Messenger, but a number of bad decisions made them fade out.

The Web Directory Legacy

Even though web directories dropped dramatically in popularity, people still used them. But not for what they were supposed to used them.

As much as people say that web directories are still useful, the truth is that people have been using them merely for link building and online marketing for a long time.

I’m 25 now and I’ve been using a computer since I was 6. My first contact with the internet was in 2002 and I can’t recall ever browsing on a web directory. I remember Yahoo! and Google. I remember ODC ,DC++ and other popular hubs. I remember Floppy disks with drivers. But I don’t remember web directories.

In fact, my first contact with web directories was back in 2013, when I first started learning about SEO. I had probably ended up on similar websites before, but not solely for searching a specific website.

Although the truth was that web directories weren’t of interest to the general public, new web directories kept popping up.

There were of course, useful directories, such as business listings (Yellow Pages), which people visited if they wanted to search for a particular business (name, phone, address, legal details, etc.).

There were also niche directories, which only listed websites in a particular field. Those might have got some organic traffic and potential customers when people searched for things like “list of XYZ websites”.

But the truth is that, most of the time, web directories were only there because links brought better rankings. People found ways to get listed on as many directories as they could, therefore destroying the purpose of a directory. Even paid directories were full of SPAM.

Fees were usually low, ranging from $5 to $20 if you wanted to get a listing on the homepage. However, most of the time that wouldn’t bring much more traffic to your site, since most of the users visiting web directories were SEOs trying to build links.

I’m not afraid to say that I only visited web directories for link building purposes. Everybody was doing it and it worked. It was easy and convenient.

But the question is… do they still work now?

Do Web Directories Still Work for SEO in 2022?

In a local SEO social media group somebody tried to prove a point by showing us a #1 result for a keyword, claiming that he had only built 2 directory links to that page and it’s now #1.

He was trying to attack us “white hats” that always state web directories don’t work when, in fact, he had proof that they do. Only problem was the keyword he was ranking for had virtually 0 searches and the competition was basically inexistent.

Did the web directory links actually helped him to rank better in Google’s search results? Probably… Did he prove any points? Definitely not.

Web Directories probably still have a small impact on your rankings, just like any other site that links to you and passes Page Rank. However, because they’ve been abused as an SEO tactic over the years, Google penalizes people that use web directories. With the rise of Penguin 4.0, many of them are probably ignored.

Or, as John Mueller (the current Head of Web SPAM @ Google) said:

generally no.

— ? John ? (@JohnMu) February 25, 2017

Bu that answer can be interpreted in very many ways. Let’s see first why web directories got such a bad reputation in SEO.

Web Directories’ Main Issues for SEO

I’ve already discussed how web directories don’t really provide much value as users don’t really use them for anything other than SEO.

However, the story doesn’t end there:

Web directories got spammy & tricky: As people always want the quick way, they started automating processes. With more automation, more SPAM came along. These types of things are inconvenient for Google because they waste a lot of resources. Don’t you just hate spam comments? I know I do.

Google eventually figured out that the best way to deal with this was to penalize people that would use directories as a way of improving their rankings. So when important updates such as Penguin started to roll out, web directories had the perfect opportunity to make money.

Although some websites were listed for free, now that Google was penalizing websites for spammy link profiles, some web directories asked for removal fees.

Web directories are not managed anymore: Even if you do find a good web directory, chances are that nobody is going to answer you.

A couple of years ago, I was in the process of building links for someone. Advertorials were too expensive for his budget and all their competitors had the directory links. Without exception. They ranked well, so I thought I’d better try it at least.

After a few days of efforts, it was pretty clear that it won’t work. Not because Google penalized me or anything, but because the directory sites either had errors on their submission forms or nobody replied/approved my sites.

Since they don’t make as much money as they used to, people have stopped putting effort into managing them.

Web directories are not efficient: Even if you manage to get some business directory listings, they will probably have a very little impact, if not none at all.

Your time is better spent creating content and engaging with your audience. 1-2 links won’t help at all and scaling this is risky and can result in penalties.

Google penalizes you: Of course, the biggest issue with web directories these days is that your website can get penalized if it tries to trick the Google algorithms.

Building links in mass, be it through web directories, blog commenting, article submission, guest posting, you name it, is risky and can get your site in trouble.

Now I’m not saying that you’re going to be penalized if you submit your site to a directory. By all means, if you find an interesting site that also happens to have a list of other interesting sites, go for it!

But it’s a good idea to check their background a little bit. What’s their domain authority? Is their backlink profile spammy? Are they linking to quality websites or a bunch of phishing potholes full of malware?

In other words, does that website bring any value at all to the internet or for any users? Is it in any way relevant to your site? If the answer is no, then you should definitely stay away from it.

Local SEO & Directory Listings

When it comes to local, it’s probably the only field where people actually still visit renowned “directories” to find a good location.

For example, Google My Business is considered to be a web business directory. To some extent, it is. It lists businesses. However, it’s turning more and more into a search engine itself. The rankings are done based on algorithms.

Local Search Listings | Google My Business

People do browse and look for reviews, but most of them just stick with the top businesses (the ones that get listed first by Google My Business on local search and Google Maps) because they are, usually, the best results.

When it comes to local SEO, it does help if your NAP details (name, address, phone) are listed on multiple websites. However, title, distance from the user and reviews probably play a more important role.

The key thing with NAP is consistency. Google might have some issues if you keep having a mixture of different names, phones and addresses all over the place.

However, let’s all be honest that citations here and there aren’t the key to local search SEO success. It’s not that they don’t help (they do, you get brand visibility) but whenever you have a citation, you should accompany it with a backlink.

Local business directories are a great start. For example, you might find sites such as “yourcitynews.xyz” that have a section called “Great Locations in Our City”. If you can list your local business there, that’s great because the relevancy comes from the local orientation of the website itself. Most news will be about your city, which means your business should be there to rank better in that particular city.

If you can’t find a local business directory, you can also find these types of backlink opportunities with BrandMentions. This tool monitors when your name/brand is mentioned on the web. You can then engage with people and build relationships (and also ask for a backlink in case they haven’t made one).

Directories That Are Still Good

Now obviously you’re probably asking “Hey, where can I still find good web directories if all are bad?”

Well… there are some. This isn’t really the purpose of this article, but I’ll only list a few so that you get an idea how modern, useful web directories actually look like.

White Hat SEOs will probably jump and say “How can you recommend profile link building or any sort of web directory link?”

The key word here is RELEVANCY. If the listing is relevant to your site, it is going to help you. 

I don’t want you to take “web directories are bad” for granted and miss an opportunity that might actually be helpful to you.

Many search engine optimization experts react badly to blog commenting or forum posts, because they know it doesn’t work. However, blog comments are still the fuel of blogs. Forums are still popular in industries such as music, automotive, health and even fashion.

Matthew Woodward built an award winning blog and much of his direct and organic traffic was thanks to the posts he made in the BlackHat Forums. Just don’t spam. Be relevant. Be useful.

An example of good directories were the local sites that might have listings. I can’t really give a specific example, but I hope you get the point. If they have an active social media account, post from time to time and bring in some traffic, you can try to list your local business there.

It all comes down to relevancy. Is the listing relevant to your scope/niche? If yes, go for it!

Here I can give a specific example. SoundCloud is a directory for musicians, for example. If you’re a musician, you can get a profile backlink from your SoundCloud profile. Another similar example is last.fm.

Is this spammy? It could be if you just create a profile and leave it like that. But if you’re a musician, maybe it also makes sense to post on your SoundCloud account from time to time, build an audience there and actually send some traffic to your site through that link and maybe even get some potential customers.

Other good local listing sites are Yelp or maybe Yellow Pages. Although Google has heavily bashed them because they’re evil, it’s still a good place to list your business.

Why Do We Still Have Web Directories?

Most businesses, such as Moz or Yahoo, have closed their directories (Dmoz and Yahoo Directory).

The truth is probably that the web is still full of directories because of low maintenance costs (hosting and domain).

Many directories if not all lack moderators (which actually cost money), but still probably make some small amounts of revenue from advertising.

This whole article idea started from us observing these weird anchor texts such as “.2523765 yourdomain.com” in our tool for multiple clients. You might see these anchor texts in your cognitiveSEO dashboard as well.

They’re generated by The Globe network, a sort of directory that crawls and indexes websites by simply linking to them on pages which contain thousands of external links. The network is owned by Ascio Technologies Inc (a domain registrar). Luckily, I’ve looked at their backlink profile and they also have the spammy anchor texts, so at least it’s fair.

Their model is different. They want to sell the entire network of sites for millions of dollars. They present it as some sort of world wide web, the most visited site on the planet (which obviously, it isn’t). I’m not sure how old this thing is or how it started, but there’s a BlackHat Forum thread about the network where you can read more about this.

Should You Disavow Directory Links?

One thing that people rush in to do is disavow links that they think Google might consider spammy or that might get their websites penalized.

This is an entire topic to discuss and I really recommend that you read my article about disavowing links.

However, just to give you a short answer, in general, it’s a good idea not to play with the disavow tool unless you’re sure your site has been penalized and you have isolated the reason to be the link profile, after you’ve checked and excluded everything else.

For example, most of The Globe network, the site I’ve mentioned above, isn’t even indexed in Google, so it doesn’t really make any sense disavowing those links, since Google already doesn’t count those links in any way.

Conclusion

Generally, you should avoid them, but sometimes web directory submissions might be useful, especially when it comes to local businesses and local SEO. Before you submit your links, make sure that the online directory is relevant to your niche and has a good link profile.

What do you think about web directory submissions? Have you ever used them? Do you still use them? Do they still work? Let us know in the comments section (but be careful with the links if you’re a WhiteHat SEO as you might get penalized!)

The post Are Web Directories Still Relevant for SEO in 2024? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

But how does this PageSpeed Insights Tool from Google actually work? And, more importantly, does page speed affect SEO? You’ll find everything you need to know in this article.

The PageSpeed Insights Tool didn’t use to be very good in the past. Most of the information there could be found relatively easy elsewhere and it didn’t quite indicate speed itself. However, Google has recently updated the tool and it’s a lot better. Unfortunately, it’s also a lot harder to understand.

However, this tool has became popular among SEOs through PageSpeed Insights, which is, in fact, powered by Lighthouse, but provides the information in an easy to follow format, on a web page.

1. What Is Google PageSpeed Insights?
   1. Mobile vs. Desktop
   2. What is page speed actually?
2. Does PageSpeed Insights Affect SEO? Is 100/100 Score Essential?
3. PageSpeed Insights Metrics
   1. Field & Lab Data (Performance Metrics)
   2. Opportunities & Diagnostics
4. How Is the PageSpeed Insights Score Calculated?
5. Key Points in Improving the PageSpeed Insights Score
   1. Server response time
   2. Image compression
   3. HTML & CSS Structure
   4. Minification & Script Compression
   5. Cache Policy
   6. Lightweight Theme & Plugins
6. How to Bulk Check the PageSpeed Insights Score
7. Other Tools for Measuring & Improving Site Speed
   1. Pingdom
   2. GT-Metrix
   3. mod_pagespeed
   4. Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

What Is Google PageSpeed Insights?

PageSpeed Insights is an online tool provided by Google which is used to identify web performance issues on sites. Although mostly related to technical SEO issues, the tools also analyze the site from a User Experience and accessibility point of view.

You can access PageSpeed Insights by visiting https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/.

You can enter the URL there and after a few seconds the tool will return a page with some results regarding your website’s performance. At the top, there will be a general score, which is an average of multiple factors. Below you will see detailed information about what actually affects your speed.

However, it isn’t the only PageSpeed tool provided by Google. There also is mod_pagespeed, a server module used to solve these speed issues, and the full fledged Lighthouse (the site analysis tool that powers everything), available in Chrome itself. There are also a number of Chrome Extensions related to Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

We will discuss briefly about all of them throughout this article, but we will focus mainly on PageSpeed Insights as it seems to be the handiest tool most SEOs use when checking a website.

Mobile vs. Desktop

When you insert a page to test it, Google will give two scores: one for the mobile version and one for the desktop version.

Initially, the PageSpeed Tool only gave one score, for the Desktop version. But recently, mobile usage has became more and more popular. As of 2018, more than 50% of search engine users search on mobile devices. As Google moved to a mobile first index, it also made sense for them to test mobile versions for speed first.

However, if you have a responsive design, you might think that these versions are mostly identical.

If so, why do they have different scores?

Mobile: When you use the PageSpeed Insights tool, the first result you’ll get is for mobile speed. This means that your website has been tested on a mobile connection, probably with a 4G connection, as it seems to be the most common speed around the US at least.

https://www.uscellular.com/coverage-map/voice-and-data-maps.html

However, keep in mind that many mobile users around the world still get only 3G signal and, although they have a slower connection speed, they still expect the website to load really fast.

And here’s the problem. It’s not always about your site, it’s more about the connection’s speed. It might seem like your site is slow when, in reality, the connection speed is slow.

Desktop: On desktop, the score is higher because the connection speed is higher. That’s just the thing with light and fiber optics. Unless you live in the UK, of course, and still have cups and string internet.

So the website goes through the same testing, but it’s mostly the connection speed that differs.

That’s why mobile comes first, as mobile devices usually have slower connections. Things might change with 5G but, until then, make sure you focus on improving your site speed for mobile devices.

What exactly is Page Speed?

OK, so we know what the tool does: it gives a score based on how fast it thinks your site is. But what exactly is page speed?

Page Speed is the speed at which an individual page loads on your website. Different pages can have different speeds due to factors such as images and scripts.

But speed is relative. It depends on so many factors such as the website’s performance, the server’s performance, the particular web page you’re on, the connection type, the user’s internet service provider, the internet package, the device’s processing power, the Browser, what the user is doing at that point, how many apps are running and so on.

However, we can only work with what we can work, which is our website and our server. We don’t really have control over the rest.

Just to get things straight, page speed isn’t a score, like PageSpeed Insights presents. It’s a web page’s loading time and it is measured in seconds. That’s what matters.

That’s why Google PageSpeed Insights wasn’t so good in the past. It didn’t quite give you information about how fast your website is actually loading. Just scores.

And that’s why this new version is just so good. It tells you everything you need to know about actual loading speed while also keeping the good stuff from the old version.

There are, of course, different points of interest in the loading time. For example, you may want to run some scripts towards the end because they don’t need to be used initially.

They might take a lot to finish loading, so the total loading time could be higher. But if the site is usable until then, it isn’t such a big problem.

For example, let’s say you want to run an exit intent pop-up script. That script takes a hypothetical 5-10 seconds to load. However, you want to show it to the user only after about 20-30 seconds.

If you start running your script immediately, you might postpone loading other important elements, such as the first thing the user should see: the above the fold content. This would be very bad, especially since you’re not going to use that script until about 20-30 seconds in the future.

So you can postpone loading the script after everything else that is vital loads in order to give the user a better experience.

However, if you have a script that makes the menu work or something vital to the usability of the website, you might not want to load it towards the end. This would ruin the experience as the user would not be able to access that function before everything else is loaded.

Does Page Speed Affect SEO? Is 100/100 Insights Score Essential?

The simple answer is that page speed does affect SEO. Page speed is a direct ranking factor, a fact known even better since Google’s Algorithm Speed Update. However, speed can also affect rankings indirectly, by increasing the bounce rate and reducing dwell time. 

At Google, users come first. Studies by Google show that average 3G loading speed is very slow. They also show that users leave the site after about 3 seconds. This means that their experience is bad and Google doesn’t like ranking sites which provide bad user experience.

What you must remember is that speed is measured in seconds, not in points from 0 to 100. While PageSpeed Insights is a tool that helps you improve speed, the score there doesn’t necessarily mean anything in the real world.

Even so, it is important to improve the Page Speed Score.

Why?

Because with Google we don’t know for sure whether the score there is or is not used as a ranking factor. Does Google use seconds? Does it use the score? Who knows…

However, I’ve seen sites with perfect pagespeed score ranking poorly and websites with a score lower than 50 that rank very well (#youtube).

However, you have to take into account how Google makes these tests. We don’t know where the tests are performed from. Is your server from Romania and Google tests it with a 3G connection in the US? Well then, you can obviously expect low speeds.

But just for the user’s sake, put the loading time first. And don’t use only PageSpeed Insights to test that. Stick to the end and I’ll show you a couple of tools which you can use to test the speed at which your website loads from different locations.

Sometimes, Google contradicts itself!

For example, Google PageSpeed Insights considers the Google Analytics script render blocking, which means you should load it later, in the footer. However, Google Analytics specifies it pretty clearly that the script must be placed in the <head> section of your website, otherwise it won’t work properly and won’t initially be accepted as a valid install.

So you get a small score hit in PageSpeed Insights… by doing what Google says… just to be told that you shouldn’t do it like that… by Google. You get the point.

Also, you can’t cache the script properly unless you store the analytics.js file on your server. That’s obviously something Google Analytics doesn’t recommend. It’s also a hell for maintenance, as every time Google Analytics JavaScript file gets an update, you would have to update it on your site as well.

This, of course, doesn’t happen only with Google tools and scripts but with any 3rd party script you don’t have control over.

In our defense, even YouTube, which is owned by Google and should theoretically set an example, has a pretty slow PageSpeed Insights score, at least at the time of writing this article.

But that doesn’t mean that the site loads slow. You can see that the field data (for which there is plenty of, as it’s YouTube) says the site loads in pretty much 4 seconds, which isn’t actually bad, considering that recently YouTube provides video previews in the thumbnails.

You can also test your site with https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/feature/testmysite/ to get a more simple explanation of how fast your site loads!

Our other business’s website, BrandMentions loads in under 2 seconds on a 4G connection, as you can see above. We would see it as pretty good. Sure, there’s always room for improvement. By Google standards… it’s average.

However, Google seems to consider cognitiveSEO’s website speed slow, even though it loads in a little over 3 seconds, which is still pretty fast considering the amount of 3rd party tools we’re using.

Note that you’ll have to go under 1 second to be considered fast! To do so, you’ll probably need a very simple site with no 3rd party plugins or fancy pop-ups. Not easy if you actually want to do some digital marketing.

So yes, loading speed is important for SEO, but a perfect PageSpeed Insights score is not. As long as your website loads in around 3 seconds, you should be fine with most users.

PageSpeed Insights Metrics

Since so many things can affect site speed, Google breaks everything up in different categories in the PageSpeed Insights Tool, for a better understanding of the issues.

This is helpful as Google also provides some sort of prioritization, showing you what exactly affects speed the most.

Field & Lab Data

These are the new metrics that are actually useful. They are split into two categories: field and lab data.

Field data is what’s important in the real world, as it’s the data extracted by Google from real users, either through Chrome or other data providers.

Sure, it’s an average and if Google doesn’t yet have enough data it will let you know.

Origin Summary shows an average of the site’s speed as a whole. This way you can have an idea on how your page compares to the site and how the site compares to other sites in the Chrome User Experience Report.

Lab data, although still useful, could be considered less important as it is collected from a controlled environment. This means that it’s tested through a single connection and it doesn’t aggregate data from multiple users.

The lab data is what actually generates the Google page speed score.

Due to the fact that Google doesn’t always have field data, it uses the lab data which is performed on the spot to analyze your site.

First Contentful Paint represents the moment when the users sees something on your web page for the first time. If you look at the series of images you can actually spot how it looks:

As you can see, the page has not fully rendered, something has displayed there.

First Meaningful Paint is the second step, let’s say, if we take the results above as an example. It represents the point at which the user can actually understand the first piece of content. For example, some readable text or an image displays, instead of just colors and backgrounds.

Speed Index is a more complex metric. It measures how quickly elements on your website are visibly populated. The faster they start to appear, the better. You’re looking for a lower score here, as it’s also measured in seconds.

First CPU Idle represents the point at which the site has loaded enough of the information for it to be able to handle a user’s first input. For example, if the site has not loaded enough relevant information, the user might tap elements or scroll down but nothing will happen.

Time to Interactive is the next level, the one at which the website is fully interactive. This means that everything has loaded in the device’s memory and is now ready to be used.

Max Potential First Input Delay is the delay a user experiences from the point at which they interact with the browsers to the point at which the browser responds. This is the only performance metric which doesn’t affect the page speed score.

Opportunities & Diagnostics

The opportunities section provides information on what you can improve on your site. It also tells you an estimate of how much each issue affects your load time and how you should prioritize your tasks.

Going through each and everyone of them would be overkill. However, under each metric you’ll have a small arrow which you can use to expand the section.

There you will find information about each and every recommendation and how to fix the issue to improve your site’s speed. You will notice that the elements which cause the biggest issues are, in general, images and 3rd party scripts.

The Passed Audits section is the list of things that you already do well on your web page. Basically, it will show elements from both the Opportunities and Diagnostics sections that fit within Google’s parameters.

The more you have in this list, the better!

How Is the PageSpeed Insights Score Calculated?

Although you might see so many things in the PageSpeed Insights Tool, the score is actually calculated using only the seconds in the Lab Data section. If you read closely, you’ll actually be able to see the message “These metrics don’t directly affect the Performance score.” under Opportunities & Diagnostics.

The metrics in the Lab Data are called performance metrics. There are 6 of them and we’ve presented them above. Each metric gets a score from 0 to 100. Each metric has a different weight in calculating the score.

3 – First contentful paint
1 – First meaningful paint
2 – First cpu idle
5 – Time to interactive
4 – Speed index
0 – Estimated input latency

By order of importance, they are listed as such: Time to Interactive, Speed Index, First Contentful Paint, First CPU Idle, First Meaningful Paint and Estimated Input Latency, which actually has no effect on the score.

The scores are based on Log-normal distribution algorithms so let’s not get too deep down the rabbit hole. If you want to learn more you can read this page.

Google has also put a Sheet file which you can use to see how the score is actually generated. If you know Excel functions, you can reverse engineer how everything works. You can download this file here, but you have to make your own copy (File -> Make your own copy) before you can edit it. There’s also a version for Lighthouse v5.

To put it in simple terms, the First Contentful Paint impacts the score more than the First Meaningful Paint, and so on.

Why? Well, probably because if nothing displays on the screen, the user is more likely to leave your website. If you display… something, you’ll win some time to get the rest of the thing delivered.

The scores are ultimately divided into 3 categories, Slow (0-49), Average (50-89) and Good (90-100). Then an average is generated as a final score for your website.

Generally, if you’re under 50, you do have some issues that need fixing! But again, don’t sweat it if your site loads in about 3 seconds.

Key Points in Improving the PageSpeed Insights Score

Everything up there might be a little big hard to digest. We get it. Most probably, you won’t be able to solve everything! We’ve ruled out that it’s not important to get a 100% score. However, here are the key elements that will noticeably make your site load faster.

Warning: perform a backup of both your files and your database before engaging in these improvements. They can mess up your website and you have to make sure you can return to a previous version!

Server response time

The server is something you can’t really improve yourself. You either have a good one or a bad one. To improve it, you would either have to reduce load on it significantly, or improve its hardware, both of which you don’t have control over, unless you own the physical machine.

So it’s important to have a good server in the first place. But how do you choose a good server?

Well, any hosting company that ranks well on Google should provide decent services. However, it’s up to you to test. Best advice? If you’re mostly focused on local SEO, choose a local server. For example, if most of your audience lives in Italy, choose a server with the datacenter in Italy.

If the datacenter is all the way in the US, the information will have to travel a big distance before reaching your target audience.

You can always test the hosting provider’s own website with PageSpeed Insights and look for their TTFB (Time To First Byte) or Server Response Time. If it’s in the Passed Audits section, you know you have yourself a good hosting provider.

However, it’s better if you know someone that is an actual client of the hosting provider so you can test the speed there.

Realistically, the host’s own website will probably be on a dedicated server, while your site will be on a shared hosting package. This means that you will share the computer’s CPU and internet bandwidth with other websites.

If you can test a real site from a client, that’s great. You might be able to look through the reviews and find clients or ask the support team to provide one.

Image compression

In general, images are the biggest problem with websites. They are big and take up a lot to download. 

There are two types of issues with the images. The first one is the screen size vs. the actual image size in pixels and the second one is the disk size.

Disk Size: The more physical space an image takes on a hard disk or SSD, the more it will take to download. 100 KB will download a lot faster than 1000 KB (1MB). If you have 10 images like that on your blog post, expect your site to load very slow.

You can use WP Smush to optimize your images. It’s a plugin that will compress the images without losing any quality. This means that you can shrink a 1000×1000 pixels image from 200 KB to 150 KB without noticing the difference in quality, therefore making it load 25% faster.

Screen Size: Screen size is the size at which an image is displayed. For example, the image below is being displayed at 300×300 pixels.

To make images load faster, you first have to make sure you’re not using an image bigger than it’s going to be displayed. For example, if you have an HTML section that styled with CSS at 300×300 pixels, but you load an 1000×1000 pixels image in the source, you’re losing load time for that 700×700 pixels.

That’s because the Browser has to download the 1000×1000 pixels image and then shrink it to 300×300 pixels. This takes more time for both the download and the shrinking process. You can fix this by uploading your images with the same width and height that they will be displayed at.

WordPress does this automatically by creating multiple instances of the image when you upload it. That’s why you’ll see that 300×300 or 150×150 suffix at the end of an image file path. That’s why you can choose sizes (Large, Medium, Thumbnail). Although it’s not perfect, especially if you manually resize the image with click and drag, and it takes up more space on your server on the long run, it does help with load speed.

Deferring the images is another thing that you can do to improve the load time. This means that you can download them later as the user scrolls down on the web page. There will be a brief moment when the images won’t be visible but they will eventually show up, one after another.

This helps the Browsers focus on the important part, the one which the users is viewing at that point.

There are a multitude of plugins that can help you do that. However, many have bugs or only defer images in certain situations, for example if they are created by WordPress or WooCommerce, but not when created or inserted by less popular plugins.

There are certainly plugins for other CMS, such as Joomla or Magento. Just perform a Google search for them. If you’re not on a popular CMS, such as WordPress, deferring images can be done with jQuery, but you’ll most certainly need a developer for it, if you’re not one yourself.

Next gen image formats are recommended by Google. They are very useful, especially when loading a website from a mobile device. However, there’s a reason not many people use them yet.

Next gen image formats are not yet supported by all major browsers. This means that you’ll need to dynamically serve different formats for different browsers.

If you can use a plugin on your CMS that might be easy, but if you’re on a custom platform, you’ll need to develop everything from scratch, which costs a lot. Here’s a list of which browsers support the WebP format.

If you size and optimize your images properly, the savings you’ll get by also converting them to next gen image formats such as JPEG2000 or WebP might not be worth the cost in time and money.

However, if you have the time and budget, by all means, go do it. You can use this tool to check if the browsers your users spend most time on are supported. Search for either WebP or JPEG2000.

HTML & CSS Structure

The HTML structure of your web page dictates the way it loads. Browsers read a page from the top to the bottom and they load the elements the same way. This means that if you want something to load first, you have to put it higher in your page.

Generally, the issues are not with HTML but with CSS. If you write your CSS chaotically, it will result in a slower loading time and a bad user experience.

Let’s take an example. Most websites, if not all, follow this HTML structure: head > body > footer.

If my CSS file styles the footer first, then the footer will receive the styling, although it is before the fold. Meanwhile, the header and body might remain plain.

It’s also a good idea to add your mobile styling first, as mobile devices are the slowest ones. You might need at least a basic CSS training to get the idea of this hierarchy and be able to identify problems with code on your own

The same goes with renderblocking JavaScript. Postpone scripts that are not vital. Add them to the footer so that they will be loaded last.

However, if you have important scripts such as Analytics which should run as soon as possible, then by all means keep them in the header and make sure they fire and run properly, even though this might result in a lower PageSpeed score.

Minification & Script Compression

Minification is a process of making a file smaller by removing unnecessary information from it.

For example, when writing JavaScript and CSS, most, if not all coders, like to use spaces in order to keep their code clean and easy to read. However, those extra spaces add up, especially if you have a long piece of code.

cssminifier.com

Another way of minifying code would be by combining similar elements.

For example, if my head and footer sections were identical, instead of writing them like this:

body {
font-size: 16px;
}
footer {
font-size: 16px;
}

I could write:

body, footer {
font-size: 16px;
}

Compression is the process of shrinking files by replacing recurring sequences of information with a single reference to that particular sequence.

So, for example, if I have the following code: 123 4 123 123 123 4 123 123, I could replace 123 with a 1 and get a compressed version like this one: 1 4 1 1 1 4 1 1. Of course, it’s far more complex than what I’ve presented.

This generally happens on the server side and the most common one is called Gzip compression. The server sends a compressed version. After the browser receives the compressed file, it decompresses it by reversing the process, to read its actual contents.

This works pretty much like WinRAR; we probably all know it, because we’ve been using it for free since forever!

If you’re on a popular CMS, you will definitely find a plugin for both compression and minification. For example, the W3 Total Cache plugin does a lot of things including both of these, if you set it up properly.

Remember that compression is dependent on server setup. If your server does not support Gzip, you won’t be able to compress files. If you have an Apache server, make sure you have mod_deflate installed.

You can ask your server provider if your hosting supports it. 99.9% of the time they will say yes. If it’s not already installed, they should do it free of charge, as it’s something pretty basic.

If you’re not on a popular CMS you can also enable Gzip compression via the .htaccess file (Apache servers) by adding the following code, as long as mod_deflate is installed.

<span class="token operator">&lt;</span>IfModule mod_deflate<span class="token punctuation">.</span>c<span class="token operator">&gt;</span>
  <span class="token shell-comment comment"># Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts</span>
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>rss<span class="token operator">+</span>xml
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>vnd<span class="token punctuation">.</span>ms<span class="token operator">-</span>fontobject
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>x<span class="token operator">-</span>font
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>x<span class="token operator">-</span>font<span class="token operator">-</span>opentype
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>x<span class="token operator">-</span>font<span class="token operator">-</span>otf
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>x<span class="token operator">-</span>font<span class="token operator">-</span>truetype
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>x<span class="token operator">-</span>font<span class="token operator">-</span>ttf
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>x<span class="token operator">-</span>javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>xhtml<span class="token operator">+</span>xml
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> application<span class="token operator">/</span>xml
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> font<span class="token operator">/</span>opentype
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> font<span class="token operator">/</span>otf
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> font<span class="token operator">/</span>ttf
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> image<span class="token operator">/</span>svg<span class="token operator">+</span>xml
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> image<span class="token operator">/</span>x<span class="token operator">-</span>icon
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> text<span class="token operator">/</span>css
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> text<span class="token operator">/</span>html
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> text<span class="token operator">/</span>javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> text<span class="token operator">/</span>plain
  AddOutputFilterByType <span class="token constant">DEFLATE</span> text<span class="token operator">/</span>xml

  <span class="token shell-comment comment"># Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)</span>
  BrowserMatch <span class="token operator">^</span>Mozilla<span class="token operator">/</span><span class="token number">4</span> gzip<span class="token operator">-</span>only<span class="token operator">-</span>text<span class="token operator">/</span>html
  BrowserMatch <span class="token operator">^</span>Mozilla<span class="token operator">/</span><span class="token number">4</span>\<span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token number">0</span><span class="token punctuation">[</span><span class="token number">678</span><span class="token punctuation">]</span> no<span class="token operator">-</span>gzip
  BrowserMatch \<span class="token package">bMSIE</span> <span class="token operator">!</span>no<span class="token operator">-</span>gzip <span class="token operator">!</span>gzip<span class="token operator">-</span>only<span class="token operator">-</span>text<span class="token operator">/</span>html
  Header append Vary User<span class="token operator">-</span>Agent
<span class="token operator">&lt;</span><span class="token operator">/</span>IfModule<span class="token operator">&gt;</span>

Sometimes, you can also combine the scripts. There are plugins that do this, such as Autoptimize, which I’ve presented before. Combining scripts is exactly what it says. Instead of having two files, you combine them into one. This way there’s only one request made to the server, instead of multiple ones.

However, combining scripts can many times causes bugs, so make sure you back up everything before.

Cache Policy

Caching is the process of storing files in a client’s browser in order to be able to quickly access them at a later time.

For example, if a user comes to your website for the first time, your logo will have to be downloaded. However, if you have an effective caching policy, that file will be stored in the user’s browser. When the user accesses your site a second time, it won’t have to download that file again as it will be instantly loaded from their computer.

Dynamic Elements (short cache policy): Dynamic elements are elements on your website that change frequently. For example, you might keep adding new posts in a slider on the Homepage.

In this case, the HTML is the dynamic element, so set a short caching policy if this fits you. 30 minutes might be enough, just in case the user returns to that page in the same session.

In some cases, you might not want to cache those elements at all, if promptitude is what matters for your users, such as on news websites.

Static Resources (long cache policy): Static resources are files that rarely change. These are usually images and CSS or JS files, but they can also be audio files, video files, etc.

You can set a longer cache time for images and CSS files since you know you will not be changing them very frequently. You can even go up to one year, but 3 months is usually enough.

Third Party Tools: You don’t really have control over 3rd party tools, so if you feel like a tool that is hosted elsewhere makes your website run very slow, better find an alternative or give up on it.

A solution would be to host the files on your own server and cache them. However, this might not be very productive and it’s not recommended, as you’ll have to constantly update those files as soon as new versions come out, otherwise the tool or app won’t work properly.

Cache Plugins: There are a lot of plugins that will properly handle the cache protocols required for a good user experience. If you’re on WordPress, one of these plugins is W3 Total Cache. However, if you want to go for a better option, WP Rocket is also pretty popular, but it will set you back a couple hundred bucks.

Just search for cache plugin / extension / module + your platform on Google to find what you need. Look at the reviews to pick the best one.

.htaccess file cache: You can also set a cache control header from your .htaccess file on an Apache server, if you don’t run your website on a popular CMS.

There are multiple ways:

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/html "access 1 hour"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access 1 month"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##

Or you can also use this code:

# One year for image files
<filesMatch ".(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public"
</filesMatch>

# One month for css and js
<filesMatch ".(css|js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2628000, public"
</filesMatch>

The numbers in the max-age attribute are in seconds, so 3600 would mean one hour, 86400 one day and so on.

Resetting the cache: When you make modifications to a web page, you want to reset the cache if an older version has been cached previously. However, you can only reset the cache on your server.

This means that users who have downloaded a previous version of a certain file will still load that old version from their computer when they access the website again. The file will be refreshed after the set amount of time in your caching policy or if the user manually resets their browser cache.

If you have a critical error in your web design or code, you can change the filename of your file. This way you can be sure that the cache for that particular file will be reset.

Sometimes, Chrome’s cache can be difficult to reset. Sometimes, routers and datacenters between the client and the server might also cache files so, if you don’t see the modifications, give it a couple of hours.

Lightweight Theme & Plugins

The more you load your website with plugins, the heavier it gets and the slower it runs.

A website’s theme is the biggest ‘plugin’ the site has. Most themes out there come with heavy 3rd party builders and huge libraries of plugins which all make the site run slower.

For example, slider plugins generally add the slider JS code to all pages, although it will probably be used only on the homepage or a landing page. That’s some heavy code to be loading on every page! Not to mention that nobody likes them and they lower the conversion rate.

So when you’re looking for a theme, try to find one without too much animations, sliders, functions and so on. If you look at the big websites you’ll see that, in general, they’re pretty simple.

A good theme which I recommend is GeneratePress. It’s lightweight and will load very fast. You can enable or disable elements to keep your site as clean as possible.

Combining it with an optimization plugin such as WP Rocket (paid) or a combo of free plugins such as Autoptimize + Fastest Cache will make it blazing fast! You can also use W3 Total Cache, a plugin which does almost everything listed above pretty well.

When you install new plugins, think about how important they are to your website. After you install them, test your score and loading speed. Does the plugin make your site run slower? If yes, is it critical to keep the plugin? Maybe look for a better alternative or remove it completely.

How to Bulk Check the PageSpeed Insights Score

The annoying part about PageSpeed Insights is that it checks only one web page at a time. It would take an eternity to check all the pages on your website, depending on its size.

However, there’s a way of bulk checking the PageSpeed Insights Score. Have you guessed it yet?

It’s the CognitiveSEO Tool Site Audit. Once you set up the technical SEO analysis with the Site Audit, go to your Campaign -> Site Audit -> Performance -> PageSpeed.

Of course, you can do a lot more with the tool, from improving your technical SEO and content to monitoring your rankings and link building efforts.

There’s also a somewhat free alternative which is a Chrome Extension. However, what it will actually do is ask for a list of URLs and then just open them as new tabs in the online PageSpeed Insights tool.

This means that the process is OK for about 10-20 tabs, if you have a medium to high end computer CPU. Anymore than that and the browser could crash or you’ll grow old waiting. It’s still pretty inconvenient.

Other SEO Tools for Measuring & Improving Site Speed

Of course, Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool isn’t the only tool to check and improve page speed. For once, we don’t really know where the tests are being performed from. If your site is hosted on a server in Europe and Google performs its tests from the US, it’s natural that the site will be slower.

However, there are tools which specify where the test is being performed from.

Pingdom

Pingdom Speed Test is a great tool which measures the speed at which your web page loads. Once the test is done, you’ll get some results which are similar to the ones on Google’s tool, at least visually.

What’s interesting about it is that you can select where the test is going to be performed from. Sure, the options are limited, but it’s still better than not even knowing it.

If you focus on local SEO, choose the location closest to your server. If you don’t know where it’s actually hosted, ask your hosting provider and you’ll find out.

It’s also a good idea to make multiple tests from different locations, just in case you have an international audience.

You can find more similar tools to Pingdom.

GT-Metrix

GT Metrix has been one of my favorite speed testing tools out there. Although it tests only from Vancouver, Canada, the insights it gives are very useful.

Quick tip: If you create a free account with them, you won’t have to wait so much for the test to be performed. To reduce load on their servers, they add you in a queue when there are too many requests. However, registered users have priority.

mod_pagespeed

The mod_pagespeed is a server addon from Google. Its purpose is to fix any page speed related issues at a core level, directly on the server side. This means that even if you add unoptimized images, mod_pagespeed will automatically compress, optimize and convert them to next gen image formats.

However, installing mod_pagespeed is definitely more technical than just dealing with everything in WordPress.

If your server already has it or you know what you’re doing go ahead and install it. However, it’s always a better idea to have a fast site in the first place instead of trying to cover things up.

Any way, this mod will increase load on your server as every time you upload an unoptimized image, it will have to use processing power to convert it.

Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

If you want your site to be really fast on mobile searches, you can always implement Google AMP.

Google AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is a special type of HTML, stripped of heavy, slower loading elements.

More than that, AMP pages will preload in Chrome mobile browser as the user scrolls through the search results, resulting in an instant load of the page when the user taps the title.

There are also disadvantages, of course. You’re limited from every direction, although things are getting better and better every day. Also, your site’s design has to suffer and will pretty much look like any other site that uses AMP. Bummer.

The URL isn’t yours either, because Google loads a cached version of your site, on their URLs. However, Google developers have promised to bring native URLs into AMP.

On WordPress and other CMS, you can add AMP to your website through a plugin. For custom websites, you’ll need to get in touch with your developer and give them this link.

Conclusion

Improving your site speed is important for better search rankings. PageSpeed Insights provides a set of best practices and possible improvements, prioritized by their impact on your site’s speed.

While the score itself shouldn’t concern you too much, it’s a good idea to try and get it at least over 50. However, focus on load time, which is measured in seconds. A good website should load in about 3 seconds. A really, really fast one should load in about 1.

Having a good server, compressing images and keeping things clean and simple in your code will benefit you the most when it comes to website speed. While smaller sites will benefit most from a shared server, if you are a larger business, hosting your site on a custom tower servers would be a recommended choice. Allowing the businesses to edit and maintain their site, a private server would offer flexibility and reliability when they need it most.  

What’s your PageSpeed Insights Score? Have you seen better rankings after improving the loading speed of your website? Share your experience with us in the comments section below!

The post How Page Speed Affects SEO & Google Rankings | The 2024 Page Speed Guide appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

That’s why it’s important to have at least an idea of what SEO services are important, which practices are useful and which are harmful.

Many times, SEO companies offer their services in the form of a monthly SEO package. While it’s easy for search engine marketers to manage their work this way, and a lot easier for you to understand what you get for the buck, it’s also a big indication of automatization, which stands, generally, at the base of SEO penalties.

This article will not be a list of companies to pick from, but a guide on which services you should be looking for and how to choose the right company.

So, read this guide till the end to get the insights you need.

1. Why Should Small Businesses Invest in SEO?
2. What SEO Services Do Small Businesses Need?
3. Types of Affordable SEO Services for Small Business
   1. For Technical SEO
   2. For Content Marketing
   3. For Link Building
   4. For Rank Tracking
   5. For Local SEO
   6. For Video SEO
   7. For Ecommerce SEO
4. The Top 5 Must-Have Affordable SEO Services for Small Business
5. How to Pick The Right SEO Company to Work With

Why Should Small Businesses Invest in SEO?

If you’re a small business looking for affordable SEO services, you’ve probably just started out as an entrepreneur.

But why choose SEO as a marketing channel?

The main reason why small businesses should consider SEO as a marketing channel is that you can either invest time or money into it.

That gives you some liberty, in case you don’t have one or the other.

While other channels, such as PPC, can offer faster results, SEO is a long-term game, but can bring in the greatest ROI.

The key here is to start it as early as possible, so you can benefit off it for as long as possible. Postponing it will only allow your competition to get ahead, making your job harder.

If you’re interested in the pros and cons of these two marketing channels, take a look at this article about SEO vs PPC.

But again, if PPC seems like a more viable option for you now, you should still start investing in SEO as soon as possible.

What SEO Services Do Small Businesses Need?

It’s hard to say what SEO services a business needs because it differs from business to business.

Do you have a local store? Or an online one? Are you a blogger or an affiliate or do you offer services, be them physically, such as plumbing, or online, such as consulting?

In general, small businesses lack quality content and promotion.

Quality websites are easy to build these days using templates and content management systems, but quality content isn’t easy to write.

Also, once the website is live and even with quality content on it, it’s still not enough. You need to know how to promote it to show Google that it’s valuable.

Types of Affordable SEO Services for Small Business

We’ll go through multiple categories so that you can have a better idea what affordable seo services for small business you might need, depending on your case.

In the end, you’ll need a bit of everything, so consider this list as a set of priorities.

1. For Technical SEO

The truth about technical SEO is that it is, in general, a one-time fix. While you have to change things from time to time as the internet evolves, if you set things right from the beginning, they will last.

Here are the top Technical SEO issues that small businesses should focus on in their online marketing strategy: 

• URL and Site structure: While you can do this on your own, it’s probably a good idea to ask an SEO consultant for advice. The most difficult site to structure is an eCommerce one. You want to get it right from the beginning to avoid issues in the future. This will save you a lot of money. Find out more about a good website and URL structure.
• Image Compression: Images are probably the biggest problem when it comes to technical SEO and load times. In many cases, it can be done for free with tools such as Smush for WordPress, but similar free plugins are also available for other platforms.
• Caching: If you use caching, your site will load even faster. Again, good caching can be achieved for free with plugins such as W3 Total Cache or Autoptimize. Some hosting providers have LiteSpeed Caching on their server, which also allows you to cache your content properly.
• Structured data: This should be the last thing you focus on as a small business. However, in certain cases it can have a good impact. Just make sure you don’t focus on this technical aspect instead of what’s really important, which is quality content and promotion.

Here are some tools that can help you ensure you won’t be spending much on Technical SEO issues:

WordPress:

The best affordable SEO service for Technical SEO when it comes to small businesses is WordPress.

You need an optimized, mobile friendly website over which you have control and can maximize potential without spending too much.

Web Designers are quite expensive, so WordPress is the way to go. You can find a variety of templates for a nice web design, many even for free.

Sure, there are other SaaS website builders there such as Wix or Squarespace (you’ve probably seen the ads by now), but they are very limited in terms of what you can do for your business’s SEO.

If you want to go with PPC only, SaaS website builders might be a good option, but for search engine optimization, even renowned SEO companies will have a hard time.

Even WordPress has its own SaaS packages, so make sure you compare both the open source version and the SaaS one.

In the open source one, you’ll need your own hosting, while the SaaS one will cover it.

In the long run, if you want to get the most out of it, the open source version is the best option, but it will be more difficult to manage.

GT Metrix:

GT-Metrix is a great service that will tell you about a variety of technical SEO issues your site is facing.

The most important things you want to make sure you fix are large images and caching.

While all these tips are useful, what you should be focusing on is the load speed of the website, in seconds.

PageSpeed Insights: 

Just like GT Metrix, Google offers a similar tool, called PageSpeed Insights.

You can view a variety of technical issues which Google considers you should fix.

The most important one, again, is the speed at which your website loads (First Contentful Paing and Time to interactive)

Xenu Link Sleuth: 

Xenu Lunk Sleuth is a free tool you can use to crawl your website and identify missing title tags or 404 errors.

You can also use this to quickly map titles to URLs if you’re in the process of rewriting your titles in order to improve OnPage SEO.

In the tool itself you can also visualize where a pages is linked from internally within your site.

CognitiveSEO Toolset:

The CognitiveSEO Toolset is an affordable seo services for small business that can help you with more complex issues like website structure. Instead of analyzing everything on a page by page basis like other tools, our tool lets you take advantage of APIs to analyze your entire site at once.

Furthermore, you’ll be able to view the entire structured in an easy to understand manner, inside the dashboard.

2. For Content Marketing

• Keyword research: Keyword Research is crucial if you want to set the basis of your OnPage SEO strategy on content marketing. If you don’t know what people are searching for, you don’t know what to optimize your pages for.
• Copywriting: While good copywriting isn’t cheap, it’s worth investing in it. Good copy sells, and that’s what you need on your website, especially if you’re just starting out. Sure, a content marketing strategy is based on information not sales, but what if you could give out information that sells? That’s where copywriting kicks in.
• Editorial Calendar: Content marketing is a long-term game, so developing a schedule can really help you move things forward with ease. It’s mostly based on keyword research, but you have to map things out into hubs or silos and decide which ones to prioritize and how they can better facilitate and consolidate your site’s structure.

Here are some services and tools which you can use to find keywords and develop a better content strategy.

Google Autosuggest & Keyword Planner:

The Google Autosuggest tool can be really helpful in finding out what people are searching for on the web in real time.

Just start typing in a seed keyword and Google will fill you in on the details.

Moreover, at the bottom of any results page you’ll see a list of related keywords which you can use.

Furthermore, if you’re already using Google Adwords, why not use the keywords you’ve found there for organic search as well?

Reddit:

Reddit is a great source for finding new hot topics in your domain. You just have to look at subreddits relevant to your niche.

Sometimes, it might not be easy to find them but try to think outside the box. Once you’re close, start following that thread.

Don’t just rush on adding links to your website, or you’ll get banned quick enough. First, you’ll have to build your profile by answering threads and even starting popular ones.

If you’re a consultant, you can start by answering threads to some extent, then offering individuals to help them further in Private Messages.

There you can determine if you’re a good fit and offer your services.

Eventually, once you’ve gained enough karma, you can start answering people partially and adding a link to your blog where you expand on the topic, for those interested in finding out more.

CognitiveSEO:

The CognitiveSEO Content Assistant is a great tool that can help you quickly improve Google rankings, only by changing your content a little bit.

You can try it for free here.

First, type in what  keyword you want to optimize for, then go to the Content Assistant section and the tool will provide you with a list of keywords you should use in your content to improve your site’s rank in Google.

It’s that simple!

Of course, take it with a grain of salt. You don’t have to force a keyword in if it doesn’t fit. You can change it a little so that it makes sense. Think of the important keywords there as topics of subjects you need to address in your page.

3. For Link Building

Link building is probably the hardest thing to do these days. Everyone is aware of it, nobody wants to link to you (without money) and even Google is on it, penalizing you for it.

Use the Link Reclamation Tool

Building white-hat links of high value and in accordance with Google’s guidelines have been a pain point for years now.

The broken pages and link reclamation technique might be familiar to you as they are quite old school strategies.

We documented this technique a lot, so find out way more about the link reclamation technique, when and how to use it to deliver maximum results.

Analyze Your Competitor’s Links

More often than not, your competitors, especially the ones ranking high in search results, are doing some things very well.

Why not use what they are doing to improve your own SEO rankings?

The CognitiveSEO Backlink Analysis tool can identify what backlinks your competitors are using to rank high. Even more than that, you can use the Unnatural Link detection to filter bad links and focus only on the best ones.

You can also use it for competitive analysis, to see where you are positioned compared to your competitors. This can help you identify websites ranking to multiple competitors, indicating that it might be easier to obtain.

Blog Commenting:

Many SEO experts consider this to be a spammy method, but in fact, it isn’t. It can be. However, I’m not recommending spam in any way.

I’m talking about identifying websites and blogs talking about related topics to your small business and engaging with them, just as you would do on Social Media.

You’ll often see companies offer services such as blog commenting in their ‘affordable’ SEO packages, but be wary, as more often than not, it’s spam.

The goal here is to build connections with other websites or bloggers in the field. Then maybe you can land a deal with them to promote your website.

Guest Posting:

By engaging with relevant bloggers through blog commenting, you might get to know a blogger well enough to ask them for a guest post.

Guest Posting is when you write an article for another website, under your name. Usually, you’ll be able to link back to your website.

Expanding this is now considered a dangerous practice, but doing it in moderation won’t affect your site in any way.

Outreach: 

Guest posts or simply links can also be obtained through direct outreach.

However, you have to build some sort of connection first. Being genuine is the best way and I’ve had the most success with it.

Always start by giving something and not expecting something in return. Once you’ve got a reply, you can push a request, but don’t be demanding.

Many people sell links on their websites for hundreds of dollars. So when they give you one for free, you should really appreciate it.

Check out these outreach examples to boost your response rate.

Blogging (with a twist):

Last but not least, content marketing can be really useful for search engine optimization in the long run. However, it won’t be enough to write articles in order to get links.

You’ll have to write articles that people want to share and that’s not easy.

You can do it the tricky way, by identifying an influencer and writing about something you know they’ll share, or following another strategy such as writing case studies or funny things.

Either way, even if blogging and content marketing won’t help you get links in the end, it’s still a good way of consolidating and optimizing your website’s structure.

4. For Rank Tracking

Measuring an SEO strategy is crucial for determining the success of an SEO campaign. Whether you work with an SEO firm or not, it’s a good idea to monitor the results on your own.

Here are some methods you can use to effectively track your rankings and results:

Google itself: The oldest method in the basket. Just open Google and type your keyword. Make sure you do it in Incognito mode, to get rid of personalized search results.

Google Search Console: The Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google which will monitor where your site’s getting traffic from, as well as the average positions for the keywords that brought the traffic.

CognitiveSEO Rank Tracker: If you’re looking for something a little bit more advanced, take a look at our rank tracker. Not only will it show your SEO rankings, but it can also notify you of drops and will provide a graph for each particular keyword. Using our tool you’ll also be able to monitor your competitor’s rankings, if that interests you.

5. For Local SEO

When it comes to local SEO, you can actually completely dominate the entire page of Google with multiple positions.

Here are the most affordable things you can focus on to improve rankings:

Google MyBusiness:

Google MyBusiness is the most important SEO service you should focus on as a small local business.

Setting up a GMB listing isn’t particularly difficult. Just make sure you use your keywords in the name and description and fill in all the information correctly.

However, ranking Google MyBusiness listings high isn’t as easy, but it can be achieved by implementing a set of practices in your company, such as asking for reviews or getting in the local newspaper.

Social Media Accounts & Posting:

In local search results, Facebook pages can actually rank pretty high for particular keywords.

Make sure you use that to your advantage by optimizing the title and description on Facebook to also include the keyword you’re trying to target.

Also, posting regularly on Facebook can help you bring some traffic to your website. Just remember the 80 20 rule, in which you only try to sell them 20% of the time.

If your posts are only promotional, people won’t engage with them and the reach of all your posts will be reduced over time. You have to attract engagement and also engage with your audience yourself.

You might think that small local businesses can’t go viral, but the The White Moose Café would prove you wrong.

Citations & Accurate NAP: 

Citations are like backlinks, but they only mention your brand’s name and don’t necessarily contain a link back to your site.

NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone and you want to make sure these are consistent across the web.

Therefore, using a different phone or address or different opening hours across different platforms such as Google and Facebook might look confusing to Google, just as it would to your clients.

In a way, you’re bringing all these channels and platforms together to form a stronger union that will rank better overall.

You can also purchase advertising in local media, if they are affordable. If you’re in a small town, that works, but in big cities such as New York… though luck!

Local Adjacent Niches Partnerships:

A great way of getting some traction with local SEO is to partner up with other local businesses in your proximity.

The businesses can promote each other locally in their own store, as well as online on their websites.

They don’t have to be competitors, but at least somehow related or relevant to your niche.

So if you sell hunting rifles, it’s probably not a good idea to try to partner up with a vegan restaurant.

For example, if you sell luxury watches, why not partner up with the luxury suits store across the road? Everybody wins!

6. For Video SEO

Video SEO can help you grow your business. More and more people prefer video content over traditional, written one.

It’s hard to pinpoint an affordable seo services for small business for video, as you can’t really optimize videos the same way you optimize blog posts. Once you’ve published it… it’s done.

Sure, you can still change titles and descriptions to better optimize them but, as a whole, you have to get things right from the start.

Here are a few tips you can follow to rank better with video or complement your content marketing strategy with a video SEO as well.

• Keyword Research: Just as with regular SEO, you want to know what people are searching for before you create a video. Sometimes, it’s hard to match a topic or new idea you have to a keyword, but try your best to do it. This way you’ll get the best out of both worlds.
• Optimized titles & descriptions: Use the identified keywords in your title and description. Don’t cheap out on the description, even if not many people will read it. Populate it with complementary info such as links to sources.
• Short Product Presentation Clips: If you sell products online, make sure you have video presentations of them. People are busy, so short and to the point ones will be best. These days, you can do everything with a phone. There is a multitude of video editing software for both Android and Apple.
• Consistency: While posting a few clips here and there might work if they rank high for your target keyword, if you want to have real success with video, you’ll have to do it on a regular basis.
• Interlinking between videos: Let’s face it: most video content happens on YouTube. And YouTube wants its users to stay on YouTube. So have multiple videos related to one another. Send people from one video to another so that they spend more time on YouTube and YouTube will reward you.
• Repurpose content: If you’ve already been blogging for a while, you can use those topics to create video content. Then, simple interlink the video and blog post. You can do this vice-versa, if you’ve been focusing your time on video content instead.

7. For Ecommerce SEO

eCommerce SEO services are the hardest to find at affordable prices. If you have a small eCommerce SEO business, consider spending your own time in learning SEO, as services might be expensive and the cheap ones will most probably not be very effective.

Site Structure: Structure is the most important thing for eCommerce websites, because of filters and faceted navigation. So make sure you get it right from the beginning. It might be expensive for big sites, but it’s very effective and it will save you a lot of time and money in the future.

You can use the CognitiveSEO Site Audit Tool to analyze your site and ensure a proper structure. From URLs, 301 redirects and canonicals to internal linking, the tool has everything covered.

Well optimized titles: Very often, people ignore the basics. They focus on ‘secret’ strategies and completely forget that their titles aren’t optimized. Of course, this assuming that you’ve done your keyword research already.

Blogging: eCommerce sites lack quality content. Most products have short descriptions and the structure itself is only built as a silo between categories and products. However, you can consolidate that structure with interesting articles. They will also ease your job into bringing natural backlinks to your website.

Copywriting: Many eCommerce store owners ignore copywriting. However, each product page is, in fact, a landing page. And landing pages need copy. You need copy to sell. Most copywriters are also good at writing for SEO as well, which will also benefit your site.

Structured Data: While structured data is the last thing you should think about (keywords, titles, content, speed are more important), it’s very relevant for eCommerce websites, as they can help enhance Google results for products.

The Top 5 Must-Have Affordable SEO Services for Small Business

If it was to draw the line at the most important ones, in general, for all types of websites and businesses, it would be this:

1. Keyword Research: You can’t have an effective SEO strategy without proper keyword research.
2. Well optimized titles: People ignore the basics more often than you’d think. Make sure your titles are properly optimized.
3. Google MyBusiness: GMB is a very effective tool and it’s also free. Spend some time optimizing it and it will bring good results.
4. Copywriting & Blogging: Content is still very important, and copywriting can greatly help you increase sales, which is your goal in the end, isn’t it?
5. Social Media Posts: Social media can help you promote your website easily, even without paying for it. With a little bit of talent and some knowledge, you can generate decent traffic.

However, in some cases, many better others apply. The best thing you can do is get in touch with an independent SEO consultant to get some tips.

How to Pick The Right SEO Company to Work With

If you’re looking for affordable SEO services, that’s an indication you’re already looking to invest money, so you’re probably looking for an SEO firm.

While I can’t provide a list of companies (there are too many factors to take into consideration, such as language, location, type of website and others) I can provide some tips on how to how to find a good one.

To be honest, the secret here isn’t finding the best service at the lowest price, but to avoid bad/destructive cheap services. 
Here are some questions you can ask SEO companies to avoid being tricked. 

Cheapness and quality is a rare combination, so if you’re on the hunt for it, you have to be very well prepared with knowledge.

There are many reasons cheap services can be bad: spinned content, cheap links or PBNs, for example.

If an SEO company offers affordable SEO packages on a monthly basis, be suspicious.

It’s not that companies that offer packages aren’t good, but it’s a good indication they are automating everything, which leads to patterns, which can lead to penalties.

You should talk to one of the SEO experts in the company before signing.

If you just purchase the package and receive the “SEO audit” via e-mail a few days later, be sure that it was automated.

They should be asking questions about your business. How else would they know how to properly promote you if they don’t know anything about you?

First, ask them if their strategies are what most search engine marketers would call ‘white hat’ or safe.

If the answer is no… I think you know what to do.

If the answer is yes, then you should also follow up with these important questions:

• Do you use Spam?
• Do you use PBNs?
• Do you use automation tools? If yes, which ones?

If the answers to those questions are yes, you might want to avoid the company. Some automation tools, such as ones for e-mail newsletters or for scheduling posts are fine, but others such as scraping content or spinning it are not.

Additionally, you should ask the SEO firm:

• How long have you been working in the field?
• Can you give me some examples of websites you’ve optimized before? What strategies have you used on them?
• Will a real person perform an audit or at least analyze it?
• Who will write the content on my website?
• How will we measure the performance of the SEO campaign?
• Can you tell me what exactly my money will go to? Will you execute all the work or do you outsource?

If you get a competent and clear answer to these questions, it’s a good indication that who you’ll work with knows what they’re doing and are well-intended.

Ultimately, it’s up to you who you sign with but, hopefully, by now you have a better understanding of how to choose good affordable SEO services for your small business.

What affordable SEO services for small business do you think are the best? Let us know in the comments section.

The post Affordable SEO Services for Small Business – The 2024 List appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

However, when it comes to SEO, a mistake might pass by unnoticed. You might not have any idea that you’re doing something wrong. Now, there are thousands of horrible mistakes that you could be making, like not adding keywords in titles or engaging in low quality link building.

But here are some more subtle, modern mistakes that SEO might make these days.

In order to find out people’s most common modern SEO mistakes, I decided to ask a number of renowned SEO experts the following question:

Can you think of one major SEO mistake that is holding people’s websites back today?

Some of them were kind enough to take some of their time and share the wisdom with us, so keep reading because there’s top quality information lying ahead in this list of 10 SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020 and later on!

1. You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks
2. You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages
3. You Have Duplicate Content Issues
4. You Target out of Reach Keywords
5. You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have
6. You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories
7. You Don’t Consider User Search Intent While Writing Content
8. You Don’t Optimize for the Right Keywords & Use Improper Meta Description
9. You Over-Complicate Things
10. You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

1. You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks

Broken pages are really one major issue for websites, especially if they have backlinks pointing to them through those web pages. Ignoring broken pages can be a big mistake.

John Doherty, Founder & CEO at Credo, a portal for connecting digital marketing experts with businesses, knows this and marks it as one of the biggest mistakes people make, as well as one of his team’s top priorities when optimizing websites:

One major SEO mistake that I see holding back websites these days is not fixing their site’s broken pages that have backlinks pointing to them. I work with a lot of very large (100,000+ page) websites, and the first thing I do when we begin our engagement is look at their 404s/410s and which ones of those have inbound external links. We then map out the 1:1 redirects and redirect those. This always shows a good gain in organic search traffic, and then we build on that momentum from there.
	John Doherty
	CEO at Credo / @dohertyjf

In the answer, John mentions a few things:

Broken pages: First, we have the broken pages. Broken web pages are bad for the internet and, thus, bad for your website.

Why you ask?

Well, to understand why we first have to understand what a broken page actually is. A broken page is simply a page that doesn’t exist. You see, it’s not actually the broken page that matters, but the link that’s pointing to it.

A page doesn’t really exist until another page links to it.

When Google crawls a website, it always starts from the root domain. It crawls https://www.yoursite.com and then looks for links.

Let’s assume that the first link the crawler finds is under the About Us anchor text and it links to https://www.yoursite.com/about-us/ but the page returns a 404 response code, because there’s no resource on the server at that address.

When Google’s crawler finds 404 pages, it wastes time and resources and it doesn’t like it.

In theory, there is an infinity of 404 pages, as you could type anything after the root domain, but a 404 page doesn’t really take form until some other page that exists links to it.

Now broken pages can occur due to two factors:

1. You delete a page that has been linked to (broken link due to broken page)
2. Someone misspells a URL (broken page due to broken link)

Both the linking website as well as the linked website containing the 404 have to suffer. If you have too many broken links on your site, Google will be upset because you’re constantly wasting its resources.

Backlinks: The second point John makes is regarding the backlinks pointing to the broken pages. As previously mentioned, some may occur due to people misspelling a URL, which isn’t your fault.

However, if you have 10 websites that link to one of your pages and you delete that page because you think it’s no longer relevant, then you’re losing the equity that those 10 backlinks were providing. Bad for SEO!

The cognitiveSEO Site Explorer is great for finding out backlinks that point to broken pages on your website:

You can also have internal broken links, as well as external broken links pointing from your website to 404 pages on other sites and you should also fix those! Soon, on the 12 of December 2018, cognitiveSEO will launch its OnPage module which you’ll be able to use to determine if you have any broken internal links so make sure you check it out!. Here’s for the first time a quick preview to it. 

Big websites: After that, we see that John mentions something about big websites. Why? Pretty simple. It’s easier to mess things up on a big website. On a small website, you might have one or two 404s but they will be easy to spot and very easy to fix.

They might have some backlinks each, but not much is lost. However, when you have hundreds of thousands of pages, that link equity scales up pretty quickly.

Redirects: Lastly, there are the redirects. John tells us that to fix the issue, he always does the proper redirects. By using a 301 redirect from the broken link/page to another page that is relevant, we can pass the link equity from the wasted backlinks.

For maximum effect, don’t just redirect to the homepage or some page you want to rank if it’s not relevant. Instead, link to the most relevant page and then use internal links on relevant anchor texts surrounded by relevant content sections to pass the equity to more important pages.

This is the type of SEO fix that might bring invisible results ‘overnight’. Thanks, John, for this wonderful input!

2. You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages

Another issue that is generally related to bigger websites is the ‘thin content’ issue.

One very common mistake sites make is that they publish way too many poor quality pages on their site. As a result, Google sees the site has a lot of “thin content” and lowers the site’s rankings across the board.
	ERIC ENGE
	CEO at Stone Temple / @stonetemple

Although not always the case, when you have a small website, it’s pretty easy to come up with some decent pages. However, when you have a site with thousands of pages, the effort required to have qualitative content on all of them is a lot bigger.

Thin content pages are pages that have no added value to what’s already on the web. Google doesn’t really have a reason to index the site so you’ll either end up in the omitted results or get this message in your Search Console:

The message above is a manual action, which means that you’ll have to submit a review request and someone hired by Google will actually take a look at your website to determine if you’ve fixed the issue. This might take a long time, so be careful! However, it’s possible that the algorithm ‘penalizes’ your website without any warnings, by simply not ranking it. 

Matt Cutts, the former Head of Spam at Google puts it like this:

The thing is, thin content doesn’t always mean the site requires text. Why am I saying this? Well, Matt Cutts mentions doorway pages as an example but doesn’t really give an alternative to them. What if you do have a website that offers the same service in 1,000 cities? Should you write ‘unique’ content for each page?

The truth is there’s no alternative to doorway pages. They’re either thin content or they have unique qualitative content. However, there’s much more than content when it comes to ranking. So if you have a car rental service, it’s not necessary to add filler content to every page, but you have to do other things well. Structure it very well, make sure your design is user-oriented and maybe consider having a blog to add relevant content to your website.

I talk more about this in this article about doorway pages alternatives.

However, although it does take a lot of time to add original content to every page, it might be worth the shot if you really want to stand out. Google has absolutely no reason to include you in the search results if the info you’re providing is already there, exactly in the same manner.

Again, the CognitiveSEO OnPage Tool which will be launched on December 12, 2018 can help you identify pages with thin content.

Thin content is a very big issue these days, especially for bigger eCommerce websites and should be treated as such. Thanks, Eric for this great addition to our list of mistakes!

You see, Google has a singular focus on delivering the most relevant and highest quality results to its users. Devesh Sharma, founder of DesignBombs explains how damaging are low-quality pages for your site. 

The days of churning out low-quality content that adds little-to-no value to Google’s users, in the hopes of ranking high, are long gone. In fact, low-quality content may even get your site penalized. Today, if you wish to rank with the help of content, it must be of the highest possible quality – comprehensive, well-researched, original, and engaging – so that the user completes their search journey satisfied.
	Devesh Sharma
	Founder DesignBombs / @devesh

Their strategy was quality and they’ve always focused on creating detailed, high-quality content on their blog. The results are rewarding and show how valuable high-quality content is.

3. You Have Duplicate Content Issues

Very closely related to thin content pages are duplicate pages, which are even worse. Andy Drinkwater (I know, that’s his real name! Pretty cool, right?) from iQ SEO knows this very well:

Probably the one that is the most prevalent through the audits that I conduct, is the duplication of pages. This tends to often be done because site owners might have read (or believe) that multiple pages targeting the same or similar phrases, is a good thing. Page duplication/keyword cannibalisation leads to Google seeing a site that is trying too hard with its SEO and is often heavily over-optimized (not something that they want site owners doing).
	ANDY DRINKWATER
	Founder at iQ SEO / @iqseo

Duplicate pages can occur due to many factors. For example, one client of mine had a badly implemented translation plugin, which created duplicates of the main language for the pages that did not have any translations. Bad for SEO.

I have to admit, however, that I’m kind of surprised that any said people would do this voluntarily to themselves. Although… I did have one client that asked me why his competitors ranks with two pages for the same keyword. On his own, he might just have duplicated his pages, who knows?

Either way, duplicate content is bad. Not only that you’re not providing anything of value and you’ll get into Google’s omitted results, but you’re wasting Google’s resources and that might eventually affect your entire website.

I swear I did not cherry-pick these answers, but again, Andy’s input fits perfectly with our soon to release OnPage module. You’ll be able to use the tool to easily identify which pages are 100% exact copies of others and even which pages only have similar content.

Duplicate content is definitely an issue affecting many websites. Thanks, Andy, for sharing this with us!

4. You Target out of Reach Keywords

It’s good to have big dreams, but sometimes, too big dreams can overwhelm and demoralize you. If you want to be able to lift those 250 pounds, you first have to be able to lift 50.

Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media tells us that people should set realistic keywords:

By far, the most common SEO mistake is to target phrases that are beyond reach. Even now a lot of marketers don’t understand competition. They target key phrases even when they have no chance of ranking. There are a lot of mistakes you can make in SEO and a million reason why a page doesn’t rank. But this is the big one.
	Andy Crestodina
	Co-Founder at Orbit Media / @crestodina

Often times, competition is hard to explain to clients because authority and page rank are often times misunderstood or far too complex subjects. Thus, Andy has come up with a little system to better and more easily explain how people should target their keywords.

Because it’s difficult to explain links and authority, I’ve started using a short-hand way to validate possible target phrases:

• If you have a newer, smaller or non-famous website, target five-word phrases.
• If you’re relevant in your niche, but not a well-known brand, target four-word phrases.
• If you’re a serious player with a popular site, go ahead and target those three-word phrases.

Here’s a chart that helps make that recommendation…

Source: Orbit Media

I feel the need to point out that although there’s always been a correlation between lower search volume and higher word count, that’s not always the case. Many of you probably consider long tail keywords to be keywords with more words in the phrase but the term ‘long tail’ actually comes from the search graph:

So, theoretically, you can find high search volume, high word count keywords and also low search volume, low word count keywords. Some of these two or three keyword phrases might even have very low competition.

More on the true meaning of long tail keywords can be read here.

However, as Andy stated above, it’s pretty difficult to understand what ‘low competition’ really is in terms of SEO so, since there’s a correlation between low search volume and high word count, there’s a big chance you won’t go wrong with it.

When you’re first starting out, it’s always better to start targeting lower competition keywords and build your way up. Thanks, Andy, for the input and also for the very useful chart!

5. You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

Since we’ve just talked about what keywords you want to rank for, why not talk a little about keywords you’re already ranking for? Cyrus Shepard, ex Mozzer and current founder of Zyppy knows the value of ranking keywords data very well:

I regularly see websites make the mistake of only optimizing for the traffic they want, and ignoring the traffic they have. Lots of sites perform an “SEO optimization” when they create content: choosing keywords, writing titles, structuring headlines, etc. Sadly, a lot of folks stop there. After you publish and receive a few months of traffic, Google freely gives you a ton of data on how your content fits into the larger search ecosystem. This includes the exact queries people use to find you, which is also an indication of what Google thinks you deserve to rank for. By performing a “secondary optimization” around this real-world data, you take guessing out of the equation and take advantage of more targeted opportunities, hopefully leading to more traffic.
	Cyrus Shepard
	Founder at Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

You know… you probably have no idea what keywords you’re actually ranking for. You’re probably thinking “I already rank for them, why should I care?”

Well… the truth is that you might get some traffic from keywords you already rank for, but not all of it. If you’re getting 5 searches from a keyword that has 100 monthly searches, you’re probably not on 1st position because the average CTR for 1st position is around 30%.

It’s either you’re number 5 or below or you have really bad CTR and won’t last long in the top spots. If you’re on position 5+, then there’s still room for improvement.

You can monitor the keywords you’re already ranking for in your website analytics or by using Google Tag Manager on your website and adding Google Analytics to it. There’s a good amount of info in the Search Console as well.

You can also use the CognitiveSEO Content Optimization Tool to easily identify terms which you should add to your content to make it more relevant for specific keywords:

Cyrus talks more about this here. Make sure you give it a good read! Cyrus, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us!

6. You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories

If your SEO moves rely on unconfirmed theories, then it’s pretty much likely that you won’t be ranking high very quickly. 

Josh Bachynski, science freak and renowned Google stalker, is very fond of this. He recommends that people should take a more scientific approach when it comes to search engine ranking factors because, in the end, it’s an algorithm:

The biggest mistake people are making in SEO these days is in not using scientific methods to determine their theories about ranking factors and instead just wild guesses which of course are not as good and eventually will be completely off and they won’t be able to rank and have no idea why.
	Josh Bachynski
	Vlogger on YouTube / @joshbachynski

The point Josh is trying to make is that you should always test your SEO methods before you actually implement them and you should test them the right way.

One good example here we can give is the content pruning technique. We tried it and it apparently worked. Our organic search rankings started to rise. However, the test was not isolated, so therefore it wasn’t really scientific. We don’t really know if the organic search traffic increase was due to the content pruning or other factors because this happened over a longer period of time.

This can be said about other tests, as well. Most of the time people approach search engine optimization from multiple angles at the same time and it really is difficult to attribute growth to only one factor. You can read more about the content pruning technique here.

He also tells you not to trust Google a lot. I tend to agree. Here’s one example: “social media isn’t a ranking factor”. Take it as is and you will completely ignore building a social media marketing strategy. However, if you also take into account that social media can bring your website some backlinks, then you might reconsider things. Sure, blindly posting on Facebook daily while getting 0 likes is a waste of time, but get some engagement going and you’ll definitely see how it can boost you up.

You can check Josh’s YouTube for more on his scientific approach on things and how he determines his ranking factors. It’s also kind of funny to watch how he keeps poking Google officials with a stick.

7. You Don’t Consider User Search Intent While Writing Content

Shane Barker, CEO at Shane Barker Consulting, considers that one big SEO mistake is never thinking on user search intent.

One of the biggest mistake I have seen marketers make is to not consider user search intent while writing content. You can find hot industry topics and write good content, but it will all be in vain if it’s not targeted at the right people and is not useful to them.
	Shane Barker
	CEO at Shane Barker Consulting/ @shane_barker

So, when you do your keyword research or conduct your next SEO audit, check the user intent and the kind of content they expect when they search for a particular keyword. This will help you write quality content that is useful to your readers and optimize your existing content. This, in turn, will improve your search rankings.

8. You Don’t Optimize for the Right Keywords & Use Improper Meta Description

When we’re thinking at on-site SEO, the very basic elements means keyword research and content optimization.

When we’re doing keyword research we must make a good strategy: select relevant keyword based on their type of keywords (branded, informational, commercial), with high volume, then look at the competitors and see what approach do they follow and the structure of their content.

Afterwards think on making a structure for your content, that beats the competition. And write similar content to the type of keyword. For example if you have a branded keyword, write branded content. Apply the same strategy for informational and commercial keywords.

Make sure to proper optimize your images, metadescription, URL and follow the user intent to share all the valuable information in your post.

It is important to chose the right keywords. Lots of people make the mistake of choosing an irrelevant keyword for what they’re tying to write, or don’t even bother to optimize the content.

Jitendra Vaswani, founder of BloggersIdeas.com says that the big SEO mistake that most marketer do is improper meta description usage and incorrect keywor optimization.

Many times I have seen SEO experts never focus on right keywords for their website, they have generic Keywords which never gives them any customer, these keywords only bring free visitors. Focusing on keywords which can bring targeted leads is where your website will start having higher conversion rates. Also using of improper meta description hurt your ranking on search engines, so why no optimize with proper keywords & user intent.
	Jitendra Vaswani
	Founder of BloggersIdeas.com / @JitendraBlogger

9. You Over-Complicate Things

On a completely different note, many people over-complicate things when it comes to search engine optimization. This is mostly true, especially for beginners or startups that want high organic search rankings in a record amount of time.

Although what Josh says is true, that you should test your theories and choose your techniques wisely, most of the times it’s just better to stick to the basics.

Kevin Gibbons, CEO at Re:Signal knows this very well and points it out in his answer:

The biggest mistake I find people making in SEO is that they over-complicate things. SEO can be very simple. Start with what’s the goal and find the easiest way to hit your target. If you start with identifying the real opportunity, you won’t go far wrong – but quite often people are doing what they think is best, without understanding what question they are answering. e.g. we just need more links… that might be correct, but first identify why – as it might not be the real problem to solve.
	Kevin Gibbons
	Founder & CEO at Re:Signal / @kevgibbo

Kevin makes a really good point. I’ve recently had a client that told me about her previous local SEO expert and his work. I was shocked! Over 100 backlinks built in the past 6 months (that’s a lot for the Romanian market), while the title of the homepage was still only the brand name, written in capital letters. Literally, no page on the website was targeting any keywords with the title! Unforgivable!

Thanks, Kevin for the answer and the awesome presentation you gave at the 2018 WeContent Content Marketers’ Conference in Bucharest, Romania.

On the same note we have Aleyda Solis, international SEO speaker and consultant with astonishing results:

From SEOs: Overlooking the SEO pillars while trying to chase specific algorithm updates. I see many putting so much effort trying to identify the factors behind some of the latest updates that might have affected them while overlooking that at the end is about addressing the principles and fundamentals that will help them grow in the long-run: From relevance, organization and format of information to better addressing the targeted queries to user satisfaction, … It’s normal to have the need to keep updated and trying to identify potential causes that could potentially affect our SEO processes, but at the same time we should avoid getting obsessed with them and falling into the “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation.
	Aleyda Solis
	CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

SEO is an ever-changing domain and you have to constantly keep an eye for major updates such as the mobile-first index update. However, these updates follow a real issue, which is that most websites aren’t mobile friendly and most users now use mobile devices to perform their searches.

But constantly running after the next update, shifting your strategy 180 degrees or abandoning the essentials to pursue some rather unsure things won’t do any good.

Although it’s good to stay up to date with things (and you should), it would be a better idea if the foundation of your strategy were based on the basics of SEO, the long-lasting ones.

Aleyda was kind enough to give us two answers so keep reading:

10. You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

Big words of wisdom here from Aleyda. I kept this one for the end because it’s so true and many SEO specialists will resonate with it. Most of the time, it’s not even the SEOs that make the biggest SEO mistakes, but the clients themselves:

From other specialists (developers, designers, copywriters) as well as business owners: Implementing certain actions thinking that SEO “can wait” to be included later on in the process, without taking into consideration than doing it so might mean to having to “re-do” the whole project sometimes just because there wasn’t a timely validation in the first place, that can help to save so much in the long-run.
	Aleyda Solis
	CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

SEO can often be postponed because it seems like other things are more important. Many people build their website with “I’ll start SEO later” in mind, just to wake up to the reality that their website is built completely wrong and major changes are required in order to make it SEO friendly.

Business owners would rather hire PPC experts than content marketers. They only ask an SEO consultant on their opinion after most of the development for the website has been done.

For example, this study found out that ‘load more’ buttons convert better than pagination when it comes to eCommerce. Read it and you might immediately want to switch to ‘load more’ buttons or build your website that way from the beginning. However, you might completely ignore the fact that you’ll basically remove hundreds of pages from your site and hide their content under some JS that there’s no guarantee Google will ever see. Good for conversion, but bad for SEO.

If you want to see good results with SEO and also minimize costs, you should start with SEO as soon as you start developing your website. Otherwise, things will only be harder and they will take more time.

Thanks, Aleyda, for sharing your experience with us!

Conclusion

If you’re an SEO or a digital marketing professional and you’re making any of these mistakes, take action immediately to fix them, as they affect your websites dramatically! Hopefully, this list of common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020 and onward will be useful to you and your team.

What SEO mistakes have you done so far? Share it with us in the comments section so that we may all learn from it!

The post 10 Major SEO Mistakes You Might Make in 2024 How to Deal With Them – Backed by SEO Experts appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Do PBNs still work in 2022? Are there any risks? Well, the short answers are yes and yes. So should you build one? That’s up to you. However, this article has to purpose to help you make an educated decision. This won’t be a guide on how to build one; however, if you’ve thought about building a PBN for your websites, then make sure you’re giving this a good read.

1. What Is a PBN?
2. Do PBNs Still Work?
   1. How Google tricked everyone and was always one step ahead
   2. The fine line between PBN and owning multiple sites
3. PBN Advantages & Disadvantages
   1. Advantages
   2. Disadvantages
4. Should You Build a PBN in 2022?

Disclaimer: Just to get things straight from the start, we do NOT recommend building a PBN. They are risky and against Google’s terms of service. They also cost both time and money which you could be investing in safer and more efficient, evergreen tactics.

What Is a PBN?

PBN stands for Private Blog Network. Long story short, it’s a group of websites that a webmaster owns for the sole purpose of boosting the rank of other websites.

These networks fall into the BlackHat SEO link building tactics category. Obviously, at first, they didn’t. But after people started abusing them, Google took action. Before 2014, PBNs were the stuff. The hype was high and everyone started building them. Everyone wanted to get in for the ride.

That was until Google completely destroyed a few PBN services and some popular marketing bloggers’ PBNs. Here’s just one example of a single PBN service out of many that have fallen:

The truth is that PBNs are nothing more than Web 2.0s on steroids. Instead of using subdomains from WordPress.com and Blogger, you use expired domains that already have authority built to them. If you purchase the right expired domains and build the network properly, you can get yourself a nice asset.

In order to avoid getting caught by Google, BlackHat SEOs have to constantly hide their traces. What a tiresome struggle… This list of traces can contain:

Whois Info: If you have 10 domains that all link to one another and are all registered publicly under the same name, everyone is going to know it’s a PBN. Now most of the time the details aren’t public and you can also purchase Whois protection for extra fees (sometimes offered for free) but I’ve heard stories of Google having access to Whois info anyway.

IP Address & Hosting: If more websites are on the same IP, they’re definitely connected in some way. That’s why shared hosting accounts are dangerous. If someone spams that IP address, you’re also on the list. You can purchase dedicated IPs for each domain to fix this. (Not only for PBN sites. Do this for all your sites. It helps keep things safe.)

Company name and contact details: Some countries legally require you to post this information if you monetize your site in any way (you do, since it’s part of your marketing strategy, so if someone reports you, you risk getting fined).

Design, Code, Formatting, Content: Many times, people simply duplicate these websites by copy pasting and changing some basic aspects, like colors and logo. However, the platforms and themes they use are always the same.

Analytics Accounts: Have 10 sites under the same Analytics Account? Good luck evading Google.

Script IDs: If you have different tools that require tracking, you’ll need separate subscriptions for each and every one of them, otherwise anyone could figure out the connection between two sites.

Now these are the most basic ones and they are often publicly available. However, some people say (including me) that Google might be looking at other things as well:

E-mail accounts: Register anything under the same e-mail, especially if it’s a Gmail and you’ll end up linking everything to it. One mistake and you can compromise it.

Location: Have you logged into the same e-mail account or worked on all your PBN sites under the same IP at home? Good job, you just told Google you own them. You need proxies and proxies to keep things clean.

Doesn’t this sound sort of like a hacker or criminal hiding his !@% from the police? I actually never understood why Google doesn’t try to make these things illegal. I mean… if you’re spamming the internet and accessing the website with bots without the owner’s permission… If you’re constantly pretending to be someone else… Shouldn’t this kind of stuff be fined? I guess they either can’t or they just want people to keep doing them.

Now call me paranoid, but we use so many services from Google, such as Chrome, Analytics, MyBusiness and Gmail. They’re all owned by Google. Am I saying that Google is reading your e-mail to figure out if you have a PBN or if you’re buying links? No. But… Maybe?

Your Gmail account is probably connected to your smartphone. You have the internet connection on everywhere these days, so Google knows your location. You and another webmaster appear at the same location and 2 hours before your websites start linking to each other? Just saying…

Those are just speculations but think of it: If you wanted not to be caught owning two different hosting accounts, would you register under the same e-mail? Most definitely not. I’m not saying that someone from Google is reading your private e-mails and spying through your webcam. I’m just saying that there is a possibility that some sort of algorithm is out there, tracing administrative relationships between websites.

Do PBNs Still Work?

You’re probably wondering if PBNs still work. How much has Google evolved and how good is it at catching these schemes in 2021?

Well, despite what many people think after 2014, PBNs still work and they will work as long as backlinks are a ranking factor, something that won’t change very soon.

How Google tricked everyone and was always one step ahead

When PBNs started to become popular, I’m sure that both parties were somewhat terrified. The webmasters of getting caught and Google of people discovering the ultimate BlackHat SEO technique.

However, Google was also one step ahead. I’ll explain:

You see, as mentioned before, Google cares about backlinks. Link building is still a very important ranking factor. They’ve tried removing the links from the algorithm, but apparently, the search engine results are worse:

A PBN can’t really be detected if it’s done properly. There’s simply no way of finding out, or at least being sure. Everybody links to other websites. People know each other, they talk and they give links. If you banned solely on patterns, innocent people doing White Hat SEO might get hurt. You might as well ban everyone, right?

So what did Google do? How did they catch the ones that were truly thinking of building a PBN as a BlackHat way of ranking their money sites high? Well… they didn’t.

Instead, Google targeted a few popular PBN services and some popular marketing bloggers that were using them and blogging about them.

Today we took action on a large guest blog network. A reminder about the spam risks of guest blogging: http://t.co/rc9O82fjfn

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 19, 2014

But how? How could Google possibly identify an entire network of private websites, built by professionals and experts in the BlackHat SEO industry? Well… it’s an easy answer. They bought the service. It’s that simple.

I mean… everyone could. Even Matt Cutts. Just order the service and know exactly what PBN sites are used. Worst part? Many people and local business owners had to suffer. Their websites got penalized and they did not even know how, because their SEO companies acted as intermediaries and bought the PBN service instead. It happens all the time: “Guaranteed #1 position.” and also guaranteed “It wasn’t me boss” in case of penalty.

How did Google get to the marketing bloggers? I have no idea, but I’m sure they were targeted. Don’t you think it’s kind of strange that immediately after, many popular marketing and SEO bloggers got their PBNs penalized, while hundreds of other unknown players kept saying that they worked? Had it been just a Google update and no manual verification, it could’ve been a disaster.

After getting penalized, both Spencer Haws and Pat Flynn (two very popular niche site builders and bloggers, you should check them out) turned 180 degrees, writing about how much time and money they put into their PBNs just to lose everything in one second. And then the almighty phrase started showing up everywhere: “PBNs are DEAD!” No… they’re not. They’re just very risky. However, people stopped jumping head first into it.

The fine line between PBN and owning multiple sites

I collaborated with a pretty big nutrition and fitness company. It was really hard work as I did all the content and promotion (although I had nothing to do with bodybuilding). Anyway, I did a lot of research before writing anything and managed to pull up great quality content that increased the organic traffic of the website by 30% in under 6 months.

Bragging aside, one thing that was really difficult about that particular project was that there were simply no websites to get links from. Why? Because almost all the websites were owned by 3-4 companies that were direct competitors. At least that’s what my boss told me, but I tend to believe him since he’d been in the market for over 10 years.

I started doing some research to find link opportunities and found out that these websites were all linking to one another.

See where I’m going with this?

While the fact that I had nowhere to get links from was frustrating, the fact that I discovered a PBN was fascinating.

There was just only one issue:

This wasn’t really a PBN. Nobody was getting penalized. I even reported this to John Mueller but my request was completely ignored. Why? Well… probably because the websites were completely legitimate businesses, with their own phone numbers, teams and services. You could very well order products from them and they would send them to you under their name.

And that’s when I started thinking that the PBN issue is much bigger than it seems. Is that really a PBN? Not sure… Can Google detect it and consider it a PBN? Probably. Should it penalize it? I don’t think so.

I believe that multiple websites from the same company can create a network that dominates the first pages of Google. On multiple positions.

I did a little research just to prove that this is the case for various markets and countries. While looking into the motorcycle niche, after only 2-3 searches, I bumped into this motorcycle news website (motorcyclenews.com) that ranks very well for some keywords.

I then used SpyOnWeb.com to determine if any other websites are linked to it via IP or some code. Turns out that many are. The relationship has been established through the Google Adsense account.

Then, I used cognitiveSEO’s site explorer to take a quick look at what websites are linking to it:

I only searched some websites that are in the same niche, like performancebikes.co.uk, ride.co.uk, classicbike.co.uk and mcnsport.co.uk. They all link to motorcyclenews.com. These are only 4 sites, but there could be others that are not so easily correlated.

Could this be considered a PBN? Maybe. But they’re all legitimate, authority sites that sell bikes or offer some sort of service. All of them generate organic traffic, offer interesting and good quality content and some even have physical, printed magazines.

Is that unethical anymore? Should it be against Google’s TOS?

Imagine that you build a very successful coffee shop. How do you expand? Do you make the same shop bigger and bigger until it eats up the whole city? No, you open a new one in another city and another city and so on. But do you make cheaper, worse coffee and just recommend people to your main shop in the primary city if they want to drink the good one? Of course not. You serve them the best you can if you want them to stay. And when they visit the initial city, they’ll know where to go.

It’s the same with these websites. Sure, you can’t call them all Starbucks, but you can build new ones all the time when you want to expand and they’ll all survive and thrive as long as they all provide quality to the users. And not even interlinking or using the same IP will be able to get them penalized.

Google’s only request is to provide quality to the users, so that they keep coming to Google to search and find YOU, because that’s how Google survives. If bad websites rank at the top because of some PBN scheme, people won’t like Google anymore.

Most PBNs are websites that lack design, personality and usefulness. They just fill the web and use Google’s resources (for crawling, indexing and other things).

However, if these websites are good, I don’t think anyone will have a problem. You can’t even call them a private blog network, at least not in the BlackHat SEO way of saying. In my opinion, it’s perfectly White Hat to have multiple high quality websites.

However, you can still get penalized…

PBN Advantages & Disadvantages

Although PBNs do have advantages, in our opinion, the disadvantages overweight them so we do not recommend that you build a PBN.

However, we will outline them, just to make sure you’ll get a good overview of things. 

Advantages:

More efficient with ranking: From all the BlackHat SEO techniques, PBNs are probably the most efficient. The better the expired domain names you purchase, the faster you’ll see the results.

Harder to get caught: Also, it will take some time until you get caught, if you get caught. You’ll have to be always looking over your shoulder and erase your every trace. It’s not an easy lifestyle, but it’s safer than blasting links with GSA Search Engine Ranker.

Easy in theory: Buy expired domains at a domain auction, build websites and put content on them, cover up all traces, link to money site. The part with covering up all traces is a little bit more difficult, but you’ll get the hang of it. That is if Google doesn’t hang you first.

Extra profit: You can also profit off PBNs by selling links to other websites. As long as they’re not direct competitors, it doesn’t really matter. However, keep in mind that this exposes you to risks. Someone could compromise your network.

Full control: This one is the best one. I have to admit…. don’t you just like it when you’re in control? No more “Here’s my nice content, will you link to it?”

Disadvantages:

High cost: At first it might sound cheap. Some shared hosting, a couple of IPs, some domain names and some content. Couple of hundred bucks? Well… make that double. Then multiply it by 50. If you really want to do this the right way, you’ll need good hosting, tons of IPs, proxies and tools. Sure, you could only be spending $1.000 on your network if you’re in a low competition market, but will the investment be worth? For high competitiveness you need to buy expired domains that have a high authority and you need a lot of them, at least 10-25. You also need to make sure they aren’t spammed. They can go for thousands of dollars each and we haven’t discussed the content yet. You think 500 word spinned articles will do the job? Think again, or the Panda’s gonna catch you.

Takes a long time: Although when you start linking the results are seen rather fast, the whole setup process is time consuming. You start with one site, then expand, but each takes time.

Difficult to manage: You’ll also have to constantly take care of your network. Excluding the content that you need to keep posting, each site comes with its own problems like SPAM, hackers, bills… and remember you have to do them all under a different name, IP and probably device as well, just to make sure.

Can get caught: The worst part is obviously that you always have the risk of getting caught. Is it worth investing all this time and money for it?

Should You Build a PBN in 2021?

This really depends on who you are as a person. Do you like taking risks? Do you care about Google’s TOS? Some people see Google as this evil entity that controls the internet and would love to profit off it.

You see, the truth is that great websites on Google, that always rank at the top, don’t need to build PBNs.

Webmasters that provide great content, that network and connect, that promote their content, products and services properly don’t need to use any kind of schemes to get to the top.

They will always be there or at least they will get there at some point, because the users dictate this.

So should you build a PBN? Probably not. We consider it to be wiser to spend all that money and time to develop one website first. Then you can expand to another website and another one and have your little legit network of high quality websites.

Spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on simply buying expired domains and filling them with content you don’t really care about instead of spending it into user experience, quality content creation, promotion and better services doesn’t seem very wise.

At the end of the day, it’s a mix of time, skill and luck that decidess whether you’ll get caught with a PBN or not. You might get caught after the first 2 weeks. You might never be caught and even your grand grandchildren will use your PBNs to profit. However…

If you’re in for the long run SEO game, you’d better stay away from PBNs and focus on evergreen White Hat SEO techniques.

Search Engines are always evolving and getting better at detecting tricks every day. Why not focus on playing fair and actually improve the skills that truly matter? Why waste your time with learning how to hide when you can learn how to create better experiences?

Whatever side you’re on, we’re curious about your experience with private blog networks. Have you ever owned one? Have you ever tried a PBN service? Have you got penalized? Do you still own one and does it still work? Let us know in the comments. 

The post Do Private Blog Networks (PBNs) Still Work in 2024? Should You Build One? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Like most answers in SEO, this one is also ‘it depends’.

Keep reading and I’ll explain exactly why.

While you might not be able to get to position one without any backlinks for a highly competitive keyword, you’ll definitely be able to increase your rankings in Google just by optimizing your content and having in place a great SEO content strategy. 

By the end of this blog post, you’ll have a better understanding of how Google treats links and content and you’ll get the SEO Content Strategy that might help rank #1 on Google with zero backlinks.

1. Can I Really Rank #1 with Zero Links?
2. Why Is Google Pushing More Weight to the Content Ranking Factor?
3. Step-by-step SEO Content Strategy to Rank #1 with Zero Links
   1. Identify Your Primary Audience and Their Pain Points
   2. Perform an In-depth Keyword Research & Audit
   3. Make a List of the Keywords You Can Realistically Dominate
   4. Analyze the Search Intent of Your Keywords
   5. Optimize Landing Pages / Per Keyword & Per Search Intent
   6. Write Content That Stands Out and Is Share Worthy
   7. Launch & Share Your Content with Key Influencers
   8. Monitor How Your Content Is Performing
   9. Update Your Content Once in a While
4. Conclusion

1. Can I Really Rank #1 with Zero Links?

Not long ago we performed a lot of searches for pharma, gambling and skincare keywords, in a nutshell on highly competitive keywords and niches. 

Our bet was to figure out if there are pages within these niches ranking based on high quality content only. 

As you can see in the screenshot below taken from cognitiveSEO’s Content Optimizer, you can see that there are many pages with no or just a few links but highly optimized content, that rank really well. 

Of course, we cannot answer to this question with a simple yes or no, yet, with Google giving so much weight to content lately, we might say that a good SEO content strategy can help you out big time.

Of course, it depends based on what you mean by rankings and it depends on what you mean by links.

For example, someone might claim they rank without any links, but what are they ranking for?

Are they ranking for a high competition, high search volume keyword, or a long tail, low competition and low search volume one?

Some time ago, Steven Kang started a contest in the SEO Signals Facebook Group, with a prize pool of $1000, to whoever could find or pinpoint a website that ranked #1 on Google with no backlinks.

However, the rules for this contest were very specific:

1. There can be no external backlinks present. Any single external backlink to the domain discovered will disqualify the site.
2. The site can have internal links since some claim internal linking shouldn’t count for such claim.
3. The site must be written in English.

One year after, the contest is still available. Nobody has won it yet.

By the looks of it… it seems that it’s difficult to rank on Google without backlinks.

However, in one case a website was eliminated and it had backlinks only from Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

While those are indeed backlinks, almost every website has them and they don’t pass as much value as a contextual link from a high quality, relevant website.

Other contestants have said that the contest is not fair, as they did not buy or build the links, but they simply came naturally, just as Google wants.

However… they’re still links, aren’t they?

The contest therefore excludes all links, not only purchased, built or bought ones. Considering this, Social Media is also excluded and probably any other form of online promotion.

So when it comes to ranking with zero links… Are you talking about links to that specific web page, or links to the entire domain?

Are you talking about a made-up keyword with no search volume whatsoever, or about a profitable, competitive, highly searched for keyword with a great market value?

If you’re trying to rank for a very competitive keyword, where the top-ranking domains have thousands of backlinks pointing to them… tough luck!

The truth is that beside a solid SEO content strategy, links still matter and if your competition is building, buying or obtaining backlinks naturally, you’ll have a difficult time ranking #1 with zero backlinks.

But if the competition doesn’t have many backlinks either, it is possible to outrank them, even without links, in some cases.

There are many examples of websites which outrank their competition with fewer backlinks.

For example, we’re outranking Moz for the keyword “does meta description affect seo” although we only have 23 referring domains, while Moz’s page has over 1500.

For another similar phrase, “does meta description matter”, another website is ranking very well, with only 1 referring domain.

However, in both cases the results are an answer box. If you remember, some time ago you could have the answer box position and another spot. 

Luckily, when Google changed this and only let you keep one or the other, they let us have the answer box.

These are pretty specific keywords and for the most competitive phrase, “meta description”, Moz still dominates the top spot.

Ranking with just a few backlinks to a web page is possible, if you have the right content.

But it’s probably necessary to have at least some backlinks pointing to your domain.

The internet doesn’t really work well without links. Search engines use links to crawl the entire web.

It’s also true that without any backlinks pointing to your domain, Google will have a hard time crawling and indexing your site.

However, keep in mind that backlinks on their own won’t do very much if the content doesn’t satisfy the users. They can even do harm.

After the Penguin updates, it was pretty clear Google was set to fight back against link spam.

Maybe the top spot isn’t achievable with absolutely zero links, but you don’t need the top spot to increase your search traffic.

You can greatly improve rankings in Google simply by optimizing your content even for competitive, high search volume keywords.

Many other SEOs and content marketers have improved their rankings following this OnPage SEO technique.

If you stick around, I’ll show you exactly how you can do it, too.

But first, let’s see why Google is pushing away from backlinks and more towards content.

2. Why Is Google Pushing More Weight to the Content Ranking Factor?

Back in 2017, during our numerous tests, we found a big correlation between the Content Performance score we had developed and rankings.

We repeated the test after 2 years, in 2019 and it seemed that content is even more important now.

The algorithm we use is complex, using a mix of AI technologies and things such as LSI and Flesch–Kincaid to determine what makes a piece of content rank high.

Attempts to remove backlinks from the algorithms have been made before.

Why? Mostly because of spam. As long as backlinks are a ranking signal, people will try to abuse them.

In 2013, Yandex, the Russian search engine, removed backlinks from their algorithm in an attempt to stop link spam.

Although it only took effect in the Moscow local search results and only for commercial queries, the change was short lived, as they brought links back only a year after.

Officials at Yandex stated that the change was “quite successful technologically”, but people still bought links and spammed the web regardless, so they decided to bring them back.

However, they brought them back with a substantial change: The links would not only be a positive ranking signal, but also a negative one, just like with Google’s Penguin update.

Could it be that the officials at Yandex are not willing to admit their failure? Maybe, who knows.

But if it was a success, couldn’t they just use spammy links as a negative signal only? Without using other links as a positive one?

Google has also tested rankings without backlinks in their algorithm.

However, they came to the conclusion that the results look much better when backlinks are a ranking signal.

Unfortunately, there are other issues with backlinks other than buying them.

Take a look at Negative SEO, for example. Google claims they can spot and ignore these types of links with Penguin 4.0, but is it really possible?

I’m not convinced. I’ve seen many cases in which websites have a drop in traffic immediately after an unnatural spike in backlinks clearly built by others.

You’d think that people engaging in Negative SEO will try to mimic link building… but that might also result in positive results for the target.

So, these attacks are usually very obvious. Pure spam. And Google still penalized the site.

So, it’s obvious they have a hard time dealing with all this link trading and spam.

This, combined with the constant effort from SEOs to obtain backlinks in unnatural ways, has pushed Google into wanting to back away from backlinks.

Backlinks are something you don’t have much control over. Yet, an SEO content strategy you can control.

With algorithm updates such as Penguin (which penalizes spammy links) and Panda (which penalizes spammy content), Google shows us it’s putting more weight on content.

But although search engines don’t like them, it seems like links are still going to stick around for a while, as Matt Cutts states in the video above.

However, with AI software that can also write content like humans getting better and better every day…

It’s hard to tell where this will go.

We might have the same issue as with links, with AI written websites constantly trying to compete to the top.

It would be a battle of the algorithms… one in which users won’t have a say.

We could bring the law into the equation, but that would spark a whole new lot of bigger and more complex issues.

However, I could see how in the future, the law would require you to specify that the content is written by a robot and not by a human.

While AI written content can be used for good, it can also be used for harm, from the relatively harmless blackhat SEOs to the highly harmful fake news outlets.

We’ve known for a long time that content was an important ranking factor, but now we also wanted to know why.

Google was moving away from backlinks (our tool and marketing strategy was mostly built around backlinks) so investing in this was in our own interest.

So let’s take a look at how exactly you can improve your rankings in Google without any link building, only by optimizing your content.

3. The Step-by-Step SEO Content Strategy to Rank #1 with No Links

OK. Now you know that it’s possible to rank without links in some situations and also why Google puts more and more weight on the content side of SEO.

You also know that backlinks are something you don’t have complete control over.

But how exactly do you rank without links? What step-by-step SEO content strategy can you apply to succeed?

Here are the steps you need to follow to have a chance on ranking without links.

3.1. Identify your Primary Audience and Their Pain Points

The first think you should do before writing anything is identifying your target audience.

You can start with what’s top of mind and build from there.

Who would be interested in your content and how can you make your content appeal to them?

Who are your clients? How old are they? Who are their friends? Where do they hang? How do they talk?

It’s easier to do this when you already have some clients or readers. Just look at your best clients and readers so far.

Who’s buying from you? Who’s reviewing on products? Who’s commenting on your blog and social media profiles?

If you’re just starting out and have no idea… then consider doing a market research.

I know it sounds complex, but you can start by simply creating a Google Form and sharing it on a couple of Facebook Groups, asking for help.

Sure, it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

Don’t focus on features with your product but on benefits. Don’t think in terms of needs but in terms of wants. Want is stronger than need.

And don’t seek answers from your research but feelings and emotions which you can then use to convince them to buy.

That’s what you want to ultimately address and that’s what will get you sales / engagement.

This step is probably more useful for products and commercial keywords and less for informational queries.

However, you can still address things such as the tone of voice for your audience.

You can also try to create a persona of your ideal customer / reader and try to write as if you were speaking directly to that person.

3.2. Perform an In-depth Keyword Research & Audit

The really important step when trying to optimize content is always keyword research.

What are you targeting now?

You can use the Google Search Console to easily determine the keyword you’re already ranking for.

Can you improve this existing content? Or should you target new keywords? These are questions you should ask yourself when putting together your SEO content strategy. 

You can also use the CognitiveSEO Keyword Explorer to identify new topics you can target.

Once you’re done, map out these keywords into an excel file and sort them out by relevance and importance.

3.3. Make a List of the Keywords You Can Realistically Dominate

Now comes the more difficult part.

For which of those keywords can you realistically rank better?

After you’ve determined a list of keywords you’ll go after, you have to take a look at two things:

Content Performance and Domain Performance.

You can use the Ranking Analysis section of the Content Optimizer Tool.

While the Content Performance is something that we have control over and will improve in a future step, backlinks aren’t something we have that much control over.

So you want to see websites with as few referring domains as possible compared to your site (which you can check with the Site Explorer).

Of course, if you see a lower content score and/or word count, those are also good indicators that it will be easier to improve your content.

3.4. Analyze the Search Intent of Your Keywords

Search intent and user experience are very important. It’s the key metric in 2020 and onward.

If you don’t match the search intent well, users will have a bad experience on your website.

One of the best examples of search intent is transactional vs. informational.

Given the keyword “men’s running shoes”, eCommerce websites will tend to rank better.

However, for a keyword such as “best running shoes for men”, reviews and buyer’s guides will tend to rank better.

People are simply looking for different types of content on each of those keywords.

What you ultimately want to figure out is what your user is looking for when searching for a particular query and accessing your website.

For this blog post I know that there are two possible intents that are very closely related to one another: “can you rank with zero backlinks” & “how to do it”. My article simply appeals to those needs.

Knowing my audience in general, I know that I want to provide proof for the first group, and step-by-step tutorials for the second.

A good way of analyzing search intent is to look at what’s already ranking well.

You know they’re already doing something well, since they’re ranking.

If you can spot some gaps you can fill, such as questions asked in the comments that remain unanswered in the content itself, that’s even better.

Did you know?

 

The Content Optimizer & Keyword Tool from cognitiveSEO automatically classifies the search intent for you. 

You just need to type in the keyword you are interested in optimizing for, and the tool does most of the job for you. The tool performs keyword research, it will tell you what is the user search intent, how popular is that keyword, how difficult it is to rank on it, and cream of the crop: what it takes to rank on that keyword, meaning, what are the exact keywords and links that boosted that page in the top of the search results. 

 

3.5. Optimize Landing Pages / Per Keyword & Per Search Intent

On with the actual optimization. Don’t worry, it’s probably the easiest step.

First, consider that it’s always best to consider landing page optimization for a single main keyword and a single search intent per page.

You can sometimes combine very similar keywords, but try as much as possible to stick to the same search intent.

Remember, if the search engine results are similar for these keywords, they probably have a similar search intent as well.

You should keep in mind that writing naturally is the best way to go.

Open the Content Assistant section and hit Start Optimizing.

It’s easier to work on something you’ve already written, but you can also start from scratch. However, you’ll have to write at least a title for the tool to work.

You can also import a URL if your content is already live.

Then, just click Check Score, the tool will analyze your content, tell you the score and recommend you some keyword ideas.

The idea is to add those keywords into your blog post. However, don’t just throw them in, or else you’ll end up with a Keyword Stuffing warning.

The keywords with dots on their left are the most important ones. You should be using them multiple times throughout your content.

The idea is to think of these keywords as subtopics or areas of interest that you should cover in your content.

If a keyword that the tool recommends doesn’t seem to fit or has grammar mistakes in it, don’t force it in.

You don’t need a 100% score. The tool will pinpoint how much you need to reach.

However, you can also try doing it in phases. First, optimize for a few points above the average, then update your content after a few weeks to the recommended score.

3.6. Write Content That Stands Out and Is Share Worthy

A great way to do this is to write content about complex questions that are very often asked in your industry, or case studies.

For example, this article about meta descriptions affect SEO or not has been linked to multiple times by other SEO blogs trying to make a quick point without getting into too much detail.

Also, make sure you have great Titles, Headlines and Descriptions.

Optimize your titles with keywords for SEO, but also keep them catchy for Social Media.

You can use the Open Graph property to set different titles for SEO and Social Media

Long content tends to perform better in organic search results.

When people search for something, you already know they are interested in it. That’s why SEM has such a high conversion rate and people spend time reading in depth articles.

You can look at the top ranking search results for your keyword in the Ranking Analysis section of our Content Optimizer Tool.

For this particular keyword, you can see that the top ranking content is between 2500 and 5000 words on average, although we can even see articles with only 1800 words in top 10.

Usually, it’s a good idea to go for at least the top 10 average plus a few hundred words, just to be sure. But it’s not really about quantity, it’s about quality.

However, you’ll probably not be able to fit all the depth required for this particular topic in just 200 words, at least compared to the competitors.

Nevertheless, take this content length thing with a grain of salt. While long form content performs better in search, shorter content might perform better on social media.

On Social Media, people are browsing different things and not really looking for a particular topic, so they might prefer things straight and to the point.

3.7. Launch & Share Your Content with Key Influencers

Once you’ve written and published your content, it’s time to promote it. This should be an important part of your SEO content strategy.

We made a study a few years ago on weather social signals influence rankings and it seems that a strong presence on social networks is correlated with better rankings.

Once you have your content live, it’s time to share it with the appropriate influencers.

Who are these influencers? Well, people who have a following which matches your target audience.

If they don’t hear about your content… they can’t share it or talk about it.

It’s also a good idea that the influencers themselves are interested or resonate in the topic and the way you present it.

One of the even more advanced SEO strategies is to plan your content ahead.

And by this I don’t mean having an editorial calendar, but actually targeting influencers beforehand, analyzing them and writing something that you already know they will be willing to share.

You’ll have to be persuasive and it’s also a good idea to build trust with them beforehand, by sharing their content and commenting on it or engaging with them.

I know it sounds evil and manipulative and you can be if your sole interest is only to get what you want, but being genuine and truly offering value in exchange usually works best.

I can recall the easiest response I have ever got. It was from a person named Reiner, which reminded me of a character in the anime show Attack on Titan.

Luckily, he did see the anime, so we how now had a personal connection and he was willing to give me a hand.

Another easy-to-implement technique is to ask for quotes from experts in your industry or take interviews.

Two examples are my article about SEO mistakes and my colleague Andreea’s article about SEO tips from 22 experts.

While we offered a lot of value, it’s true that we also used the guests’ reputation to leverage our content’s reach.

Of course, it’s not guaranteed to work, but most of them will gladly share the content on their social profiles or blogs.

To find influencers, you can use a tool such as Brand Mentions.

You can spy on your competitors and see which influencers have mentioned their content.

Then, engage with them and try to build relationships.

3.8. Monitor How Your Content Is Performing

You should make sure you’re able to track your progress if you want to know how successful your modifications were.

The Google Search Console is a great way of monitoring organic search traffic and positions.

However, the data there might sometimes be a little confusing and hard to filter.

You might also be interested in a third party tool, such as our Rank Tracker.

Moreover, not all traffic comes from Google, so you might also want a tool such as Google Analytics to monitor other traffic sources.

You can also try a tool such as Brand Mentions to monitor mentions about your brand and content on Social Media and the internet.

To precisely monitor the effectiveness of this OnPage SEO technique, make sure you don’t make any other major changes to the website.

3.9. Update Your Content Once in a While

Google loves fresh content. That’s why updating it from time to time should be part of your SEO content strategy.

Our method works really well for old content as well, so don’t just focus on new content.

We’ve improved many of our old blog posts using the Content Optimizer Tool.

In fact, we did it on a mass scale, with pretty good results.

Although some of the articles did lose a couple of rankings instead of gaining them, the overall process was a success, both in terms of rankings and traffic.

One of the articles we’ve constantly updated over the time is our Google Easter Eggs article, which is one of our top performing piece of content, although not directly related to SEO. 

It’s a good idea to check the content’s score from time to time to see if it’s still in good shape.

The Content Performance score is relative. This means that as other articles improve, your score might drop over time.

However, even if the score is still really good, don’t try to trick Google by simply changing the date to make your content look fresh.

It’s best if you actually review the content and make a few improvements / modifications.

Conclusion

To get high ranks, the focus shouldn’t be on backlinks, but on a solid SEO content strategy. Get your content under the right people’s eyes, and you’ll see the links pouring in.

Applying this SEO content strategy can help you easily rank without going through the hassle of obtaining links. Attack the content creation and promotion from the right angle and backlinks will come naturally.

The truth is, you don’t need backlinks for every article. You just need a handful of articles that bring in the links to grow the authority of your domain.

Then you can use those links to pass that authority to all your articles, making it easier to rank everywhere.

So, let us know in the comments section below: Do you consider it’s possible to rank a page without any backlinks? Have you every managed to rank one on a decent search volume keyword? Do you know any content marketers at all able to rank websites on Google without backlinks? What other marketing strategy have you used to rank your content except building links?

The post The Unique SEO Content Strategy to Rank #1 with Zero Links appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.