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Chatbot Marketing: Is It the Strategy of the Future ?

Adrian Cojocariu — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 11:18:02 +0000

There’s a big hype going on about chatbots. If you’ve heard of them but aren’t quite sure what exactly they are or how they work, you’re in the right place.

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.

What Is a Chatbot and How Does It Work ?
Why Chatbots Are the Future of Digital Marketing
Best Uses of Chatbots
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.

40 Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactics and Techniques in 2024

Cornelia Cozmiuc — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 11:19:33 +0000

Everybody wants to have the possibility of choice, but the paradox is that no one wants to be some random “one” in a crowd of a hundred. With this need of any digital marketer in mind, we’ve thought of giving you the opportunity of being just that marketer who stands out. The new year of H2H (human-to-human) approach is here and we should focusing our attention to build meaningful relationships with audiences in a creative way. After extensive research, we’ve put together a list with the top efficient digital marketing tactics and techniques, backed by some great case studies.

Below you can find the most effective 40 digital marketing tactics and techniques for a kickass start in 2022:

1. Re-optimize Your Content to Gain 70% SEO Visibility Increase

Top positions in Google, Bing or any search engine are a pinnacle of today’s online success. After a lot of research and content experiments, we discovered that there is a strong correlation between content performance and rankings. So a few time ago, we decided to evaluate our content and re-optimize it.

We analyzed the positions and engagement for each article and decided which content needs to be refreshed and re-optimized. We proceeded with the keyword research using the Keyword Tool and Content Optimizer for the whole process:

Firstly, do keyword research: we looked at keyword recommendations, volume, type of query and other relevant keywords for double optimization the same piece.

Secondly, we added the keywords into Rank Tracking before re-optimizing to have an accurate view of where we started and how it improves after the re-optimization.
Third, we started adding the content into the Content optimizer to see the performance score and find out how much we’ll have to optimize. We added the keyword recommendations and check it at the end by clicking on Check Score.

Fourthly, we searched for the page in Google Search Console to make sure it is indexed, do a live test just to be sure everything is ok. We kept tracking of the keyword’s evolution in search engines.

After the keyword optimization was finished we saw a big increase overall for our whole website. Our rankings improved and our traffic increased by almost 70%. Below you can see a printscreen with our search visibility in Google from Site Explorer:

2. Boost traffic by 300% While Using Editorial Calendars

New content appears daily. You must bring something fresh every time. Investing in social media, sales funnel, conversion rate optimization, customer relationships, marketing budgets, web analytics; they are all keywords that pops in your head all the time. Yet, which are the most effective tactics one should use?

Scheduling your blog posts is mandatory, especially if you work with multiples copywriters. Make sure your marketing plan includes an editorial calendar for improving your results. Creating an editorial calendar is easier than you think. There are lots of apps that can help you with that. Meistertask is a task management app you could use to drag and drop tasks for each participant and create an editorial calendar easily. Below you can see a screenshot with an editorial calendar created in Meistertask:

Source: https://www.meistertask.com

Trello gives us another digital marketing technique example you could use to create editorial campaigns. CoSchedule has a Content Marketing Calendar component.

Source: coschedule.com

They used a process that helped them to increase traffic by 299%. Follow the next steps to achieve similar results:

have a broad goal behind your calendar;
set metrics to measure your goal;
find your baseline performance of an average month for that metric;
establish smart objectives for each blog post from your calendar;
find out how many blog posts you’ll need to meet your aspirational goal;

3. Use Content Syndication & Get a Constant Traffic of 250,000 Unique Visitors

Content syndication is the process of publishing your content on third party sites. You need to find authoritative publications. The idea behind is to drive more engagement for your content. Outbrain and Taboola power your content on their marketing channel. Once you republish your article on a big site like those two, you are exposed to a new audience and could reach a higher traffic.

James Clear used this digital marketing tactic and built an email list of more than 100,000 with a constant traffic of 250,000 unique visitors per month on the blog. He republished a blog post on Lifehacker and got almost 99k views as you can see in the next photo. Quick tip: If you have an account on Google Analytics you can easily track your performance and see how many unique visitors you have.

4. Promote Your Business with SlideShare to Drive 20% More Organic Traffic

Slideshare is the largest marketing platform for sharing presentations and it’s best suited for B2B companies. Didit Marketing, an advertising agency from New York, conducted a study showing that SlideShare gets 500% more traffic from business owners than Facebook, Twitter or Youtube.

An important fact you need to keep in mind is that SlideShare received billions of viewers every month and it’s a great way to connect with different specialists and find quality information in a friendly format.

Ana Hoffman, blogger at Traffic Generation Cafe, conducted a study showing how she received from 0 to 243,000 views in 30 days on Slideshare. The fun part is that you don’t need entirely new content to do a presentation, you can work through your old content displayed in a visual form to be easy to read.

20% of the SlideShare visitors come directly from Google. The rest come from social media and other SlideShare presentations. Always keep on eye on your metrics from Google Aalytics to see how are you performing in terms of organic traffic, paid traffic, visitors and so on.

5. Sales Growth with 185% by Offering Highly Qualitative Case Studies

Smart and effective digital tactics are a gold mine. Case studies as well. Not to mention the conversion optimization rates you can get with them. Case studies have a huge potential to grow traffic, sales, and revenue if you offer quality results and show your product brings value. The Content Marketing Institute conducted a research where they saw that 63% of UK marketers believe that case studies are an effective digital marketing tactic. Case studies are the fifth most popular marketing tactic used out of 12, after social media, newsletters, blogs and blog posts.

Neil Patel, one of the top 10 marketers according to Forbes, conducted a study to see the influence of the use of case studies on his own site. He witnessed a growth in his revenue by 185%.

6. Build a Network of Partner Websites to Get Influence on the SERP and Jump up to 30+ Positions

Brand mentions on well-known publications are important and hard to get. They could lift you up in ranking on the search engines for the right keyword phrases and you could improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. Usually, startups collaborate with content marketing specialists or firms because some of them don’t have the budget for a full-time person. Building a network of partner websites for a short period of time is an effective digital marketing technique to bring awareness and traffic to your site. The profile of the website could include publications, edu websites, web directory, blogs, forums, e-commerce and so on.

OutreachMama employed a study to see the results after their partnership with publisher Companies like Forbes and Huffington Post. In only 2 months they received 350 total backlinks from over 100 domains. Besides that, they saw a natural increase in their backlink profile.

www.outreachmama.com

In the second month of the partnership, they saw that they money keywords jumped up to 30 positions in the search engine result page.

7. Rank Higher on Review Sites to Have an Average 18% Uplift in Sales

9 out of 10 people look at online product reviews before they make a purchase decision. According to BrightLocal, 72% of Consumers say positive reviews make them trust a business more. Other 88% say they trust customer reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Source: http://searchengineland.com

Reevoo discovered through an in-house case study that online reviews bring an average 18% uplift in sales. In 2015, US e-commerce sales were about $341.7 billion showing an increase of almost 15% over 2014.

Source: http://images.internetretailer.com

With a continuous growth in e-commerce sale, customer reviews (all reviews, not necessary the ones coming from some ideal customers) are a major factor, an efficient trigger and quite essential tools nowadays for e-commerce websites.

8. Be Part of the 90% of Marketers Who Saw a Significant Increase in ROI by Taking Advantage of Trends for Traffic Generation

Google Trends is a pocket of gold. You’ll find a lot of data to help you to generate content and see what’s trending to stay on top of your competitors. The particularity of this tool is that you’ll find real-time search data or help to gauge consumer search behaviors over time. Below you can see a screenshot from Google Trends with searches for 3 holidays: Halloween, Christmas and Thanksgiving.

You need to keep your eyes open for the marketing trends that will come. The marketing trends that will dominate 2022 include the Internet of Things, virtual and augmented reality, live streaming video, visual storytelling, native advertising, marketing automation, influencer marketing, mobile marketing.

Adopting multiple of these emerging trends is a smart move, and many digital marketers are syndicating content to make the most of the trends. For example, music photographer Matt Walter syndicates his photography podcast to audio platforms such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify, while also covering podcast content in different methods including dedicated live streams and through other visual mediums to maximise digital marketing effectiveness.

In 2016, video content was very popular and still is. Fire Brand proved that following trends can bring growth. The results showed that 90% of marketers have noticed significant increase in Return on Investment (ROI) through video content.

9. Gain a Higher Advantage in Front of Your Competitors with AMP Receiving 40% Organic Traffic from the Whole Site Traffic

AMP is a simpler and easier way to built light-weight web pages with static content that loads faster on mobile devices, due to its technology. The project is based on AMP HTML, new open framework built of existing web technologies.

The pages with an AMP version see a 2% higher CTR, which translates to more clicks, as you can see in the next screenshot.

Source: https://www.2dogsdesign.com

AMP version has 40% of all the traffic for a page. It is an utterly amazing improvement for many sites because the content renders faster. The project comes to the rescue for a large number of publishers.

10. Write on Medium to Get Awareness Through 6.2 Million Pageviews

Medium is a network built out for people from people and offers a new kind of content – publishing, and social media synergy. Every day, there are newly published articles that could get you over 45,000 views.

Publishers can see 3 stats graphs on Medium for 30 days, minutes read, views and visitors. Ali Mese, startup marketer at GrowthSupply.com, created a report with the statistic for his best traffic-generator article. For an article of about 1,000-1,500 words, he received over 4 million pageviews and 144,920 followers on Medium as you can see in the next picture.

Source: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com

For a global audience, it’s best to publish your piece of content on Sunday at 0:00 GMT, because people look forward to reading something new as the week starts. To give it a kick, you should use an A/B emailing test sent at different hours to see which hour has the best open rate.

11. Develop a Facebook Customized Page Tab to Engage 40% of Fans

Investing in social media is a must. Yet, don’t know if you knew that a customized page tab gives you the advantage to offer exclusive information to fans. A personalized page tab can be used to promote registration for upcoming events, to bring fans to your website, to promote an app or a contest, create a content library, feature customers reviews or case studies and so on.

Socially Stacked demonstrated that a customized page for a discount can influence the engagement for that page. In the end, 42% fans liked the page to get a coupon or discount. On the same side, a case study by Wildfire Interactive showed that a Facebook coupon-based page tab received the highest engagement rates beside giveaways, sweepstakes, trivia Contests, Sweepstakes, Contest essays, photo contest, coupons, and video contest as you can see in the next graph.

12. Write Valuable Content on Linkedin Pulse and win up to 1,900 Social Shares in 30 Days

LinkedIn Pulse is a professional self-publishing platform. At first, everyone could write and publish content without any approval. Currently, it is composed of 500 selected experts. According to Kapko, LinkedIn Pulse “lies somewhere between blog and social network”. Authors add a number of 50,000 articles on the platform every week.

Brian Lang, blogger at Small Business Ideas, conducted quite an interesting study on 300 posts featured on LinkedIn Pulse. Most articles from Pulse were about careers (42%), then about business (15%) and self improvement (9.33%) and other (33.67%) which includes technology, sales & marketing, current events, and productivity.

On average, the articles from Pulse got 1,843 social shares, and only 10% had less than 500 social shares, which leaves almost 90% with more than 500 social shares. If you are featured on LinkedIn Pulse, it can bring you a good amount of social exposure. From now on, writing on Linkedin Plan should be a part of your marketing plan.

13. Use Reddit to Grow Your Business & Generate $6,188 in 3 Months

Reddit is a community that has been growing since 2005. Here you can meet people with similar interests. It’s a place where you could follow news in a thread categorized in “hot”, ”new”, ”rising”, ”controversial”, ”top”, ”gilded”, ”wiki” and “promoted”. The nice part is you could follow lots of subreddits depending on the industry you’re interested. There were numerous cases when different stories from Reddit became famous and gained many upvotes.

If you choose to post a link instead of a text you can link to your business and bring visitors to your website. Scott Keyes is an example of best practice in this case. He is a reporter for Think Progress and founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights. He turned an obsession with cheap plane tickets into a $1 million business in under 2 years. In 3 months he managed to make $6,188 only by posting on Reddit. According to what he said, his posting got him 1,000 free subscribers and 250+ premium subscribers.

14. Target the Online Communities and Hit 10.000 Monthly Unique Visitors

Online communities are a great way to grow your online presence and to catch insights. Being apart of an online community has its perks. Being around by people with similar interests and exchanging knowledge is a good way to develop yourself and the company you are working at.

The best online marketing communities you need to join are LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Slack, GrowthHackers and, Inbound.org, ordered in chronological order. A good example of using the last two comes from Grow and Convert. The company was born when Devesh Khanal and Benji Hyam met a few years ago. Since they launched their site, they were active in online marketing communities, Devesh Khanal on GrowthHackers, on the one side, and Benji Hyam on Inbound.org, on the other side.

They set up a goal of bringing 40,000 monthly unique visitors in 30 days. As you can see in the next picture it is not quite like that, but they were able to bring more visitors from online communities than from organic searches. That is a good start!

15. Get Social Influence to Receive Higher Rankings by 15%

There is a lot of fuss around the subject about the importance of social signals in rankings. We already know that investing in social media is an effective digital tactic that can help out with the conversion rate optimization. Moz study says that Google doesn’t use social share counts directly in its algorithm. Neil Patel, on the other hand, claims that there might be a connection between social shares and rankings as you can see in the next screenshot from a Quick Sprout gifographic.

A huge lift of almost 15% in rankings was the result of an increase of 100 Google Plus followers for a business page. Facebook brought a 6,9% increase in ranking from 70 shares and 50 likes. Lastly, 50 Tweets lift rankings with only 2,88%.

16. Design a Smart Automated Reactivation Campaign and Boost Sales by 164%

Each business makes its own format for newsletters, but designing a segmentation for customers that interacted with the site is a guaranteed path to lift the reactivation of inactive subscribers. The ideal customer will open all emails and buy your products every time, but that will happen in a month of Sundays.

The email marketing platform PostUp created an in-house case study for one of their clients to convert inactive subscribers. They built up an automated reactivation campaign and succeeded in boosting email-related sales by 164%. This is a great example of improving the conversion optimization of your inactive subscribers.

Eventful created a new approach to automated reactivation campaign where emails included recommended news based on the previous behavior of the users. Below, you can see an example of an email from them:

Source: https://assets.econsultancy.com

This campaign was a success. The recommendation performer alert produces 15% median open rate, 3% median click rate and the spike was a 400% increase in reactivation rates.

17. Get Personalized Emails to See an Average of a 19% Increase in Sales

Over the years there have been numerous studies showing that email marketing is the most effective digital marketing tactic for lead nurturing in your digital strategy. Personalized emails are more efficient than non-personalized emails and can bring relevant results. Personalized emails are based on a more in-depth research and understanding of customer behavior and marketing trends. Most important of all, it requires you to know your buyer persona to deliver relevant information.

You can see a comparison between segmentation and personalization below:

Source: http://blog.revampcrm.com

Dropbox uses personalized emails. See an example of this kind below:

According to a study from CMO.com, marketers who use personalized email see an average 19% increase in sale. Personalized emails have a 600% conversion rate, but the sad part is that only 30% of brands can use them.

18. Reduce Friction and Increase by 100% Your Email Sign-Up Rate

In marketing, friction means everything that slows down the process of a user to convert. The ideal marketing planning is not to have friction at all, but since that’s almost impossible, it’s best to have less friction so you could convert your leads easily.

The news company Quartz leads a research by reducing friction in email sign-ups. The changes they made to the sign-up process was to simplify it by using only an email address for subscription and moving to double opt-in (the user had to click on a link in the first email they received to activate subscription) to opt-out. When visitors want to subscribe, they go to a new landing page.

The results were quite satisfying; the daily subscriber rate has doubled. You can see a screenshot of their growth below:

Source: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com

Besides that, Quartz increased the number of people who subscribed on the weekend, when the activity was very week.

19. Use Segmentation to Increase Deliverability & Experience 141% Increase in Revenue per Campaign

If you aren’t able to use segmentation to target your audience, you won’t succeed in writing relevant subject lines. You can use segmentation based on interests, location behavior consumption, mobile marketing, keyword phrases, lifestyle or other factors.

There’s plenty of email marketing software on the market to help you segment your database faster and easier by connecting an individual’s social media profiles with their email address. MailChimp is a well-known option, but you may also want to check out the most popular alternatives.

Lyrics discovered that 4 out of 10 marketers who used segmentation experienced a higher open rate, 3 out of 10 marketers saw a lower unsubscribe rate and 2 out of 10 experienced better deliverability and greater revenue. Below, you can see the graph with all the segmentation results from the research.

Source: http://www.emailonacid.com

Another research worth mentioning is the Johnny Cupcakes emailing campaign. within their digital marketing technique they used a segmentation for gender, customers interests, brand preferences and media habits and for the first time ran a product launch campaign with different emails for men and women. See below a screenshot of the email sent to women:

Source: http://content.marketingsherpa.com

After they analyzed the results, they saw an increase of 42% in CTR, of 123% in conversion rate and 141% in revenue per campaign. These are quite some results for such small improvement.

Make sure you use segmentation in your digital marketing strategy.

20. Increase Your Email Open Rate by 33% with a Subject Line That Triggers Curiosity

Your subject lines are everything when you’re thinking about the email open rates. Everything comes from there. The call to action from the subject line must be relevant to your audience. Before you send the message to your list, think you’re sending the message to one person, someone you know. Keep in mind that your message shouldn’t be cold, no matter the industry you’re in.

A study from Informz shows how important a subject line is. 33% of email recipients open email are based on the subject line alone. So you can put your creativity to work or look for specialist advises making sure that your letter is well written, you are concise, you don’t use buzzwords and test.

Make sure you are concise, you don’t use buzzwords and test.

21. Collaborate with Influencers to Write About Your Product to Generate Over $300.000 in 3 Months

To create and maintain an online presence you must be one step ahead of the game and reach people.And influencer marketing can be of a real help in this situation. To create buzz in the online media, you should use influencers to help you to promote your business. A creative campaign with influencers was realized by Neil Patel, online marketing consultant. He spent $57,000 to models who posted a picture on Instagram with the message “Who is Neil Patel” and the hashtag #whoisneilpatel and earned $332,640 in three months.

This is just an example of a picture posted during the campaign:

Another example of influencers comes from people from your field of interest, specialists and experts in your industry. Another example of influencer marketing would be to use specialists from your field of interest, and experts in your industry.

22. Have an Integrated Approach about Paid Promotion on Social Media

Even though paid promotion is a digital marketing tactic used by numerous businesses, not everyone knows how to do it right. Having a large promotional budget is not a guarantee of success. The key is to address the right audience and engage with it.

In the 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report from Content Marketing Institute, you can see that 51% of B2B marketers say social ads are an effective paid advertising method.

47% of B2B marketers consider that promoted posts are also effective, as you can see in the picture above. The results show that more and more marketers consider paid promotion on social media a must. You should focus your attention on your paid social campaigns since those efforts could see high returns, as expressed in the example above. To keep up, digital specialists should look for new ways of investing in social platforms to reach new audiences.

To get yourself ahead of the game you could start taking an interest in mobility marketing if you’re using mobile advertising. Mobility is a way of fulfilling customer’s needs to get tasks done on the move. Let’s take Facebook as an example. Has it ever happened to you to visit a new city and receive notifications in the app with recommendations of places to visit and restaurants where you could eat near you? Connecting with the user on the go through an mobile app is a great way to push them down the funnel.

23. Increase CTR with 64% in PPC Ads with Site-Links Extentions

Site-links extensions are a path to lead visitors to specific pages from your website directly from a PPC ad. They look something like this:

Source: https://lseo.com

PPC Hero did an experiment to see the results after they added site links to their paid search ad. They saw an improvement; their CTR grew up from 1.16% to 1.9%. Only by adding site links, the CTR experiences an increase of 64%. Below, you can see the results before adding the site links and after adding them.

Source: http://www.ppchero.com

The case study also showed that there are situations where the site links have a lower CTR compared with the headline of the ad, but the CPA has a lower value. Even if the site links don’t get clicks near as much as the headlines, they do produce additional CTR and conversions.

24. Use Emotion Triggers in Headline Ads to Get 6x Above Average CTR

Either we are talking about a headline from a blog post, a newspaper, a book, a billboard, a PPC ad or a newsletter, headlines have a decisive impact whether the piece of content gets clicked or not.

Brainstorming for compelling headlines is mandatory. Copyblogger said that on average, 8 out of 10 people read the headline, and the rest 2 out of 10 read the rest.

Larry Kim, founder WordStream, saw that using negative emotional triggers in a PPC ad can score impressive results. By using the hero/villain persona to express anger/revenge, the next ad got 6x above average CTR.

Source: http://blog.ezanga.com

If you use fear, you could see a 125% increase in appointments booked, and 170% increase in call volumes. See the paid search ad used for this experiment below:

Source: http://blog.ezanga.com

Wordstream offers a free version of the tool Adwords Performance Grader to see how your ads are performing. You can use it to make a test before the changes you make in Google AdWords and after, based on the recommendations you receive.

25. See a 32% Return on Investment for a Promoted Twitter Account

Nowadays, everyone knows about Twitter. If you want to run an advertising campaign on Twitter, there are three ways to do it: promoted trends, promoted accounts and promoted tweets.

Hubspot, inbound marketing pioneer, wanted to find a more effective way to:

generate new leads;
engage existing followers;
grow the sales conversion rate;
improve ROI.

The solution was to use the promoted accounts advertising type from Twitter to target B2B decision-marketing users that are interested in marketing subjects. To deliver better results, the campaign included promoted tweets with a specific call to action such as webinar invitations, free e-books. After the campaign had ended, it resulted in 150% increase sales, 46% lower cost-per-read and 32% ROI.

Reaching new customers with Twitter promoted accounts is an effective digital marketing technique indeed.

26. Set Up Automated Behavioral Triggered Emails to Get 71% Higher Open Rates

For an email to be effective, marketers knew that emails see a better open rate if they follow the behavior of the users on the website.

According to Unbounce, automated behavioral emails are triggered by multiple events:

a user abandoning the products from their cart;
a subscriber becoming inactive;
a subscriber purchasing a product that needs a replenishment.

See an example of this kind below:

Emails that use automated behavioral triggers have 71% higher open rates and 102% higher clicks than non-triggered emails.

This technique delivers value because it’s sent in the moment of utmost relevance and needs to your prospect. 39% of marketers say “automatically sending emails based on triggers” is the most effective technique for having a higher email engagement.

27. Collect Customer Data Through a Transparent and Unique System to Gain Trust of 44% of Customers

Along the years, studies reported a decrease in the visitors’ level of trust in brands and companies. Edelman Trust Barometer showed that 44% of customers express trust in business, which is almost a half of the audience.

When you can demonstrate how the data you gather is kept secure, you’ll see improvements. State of the Data Nation showed that a clear privacy policy (43%) earns consumer trust.

Informatica surveyed 2,000 UK adults and found out that almost 6 out of 10 people are concerned about the use of the personal information they shared with brands. Another interesting result from Informatica shows 7 out of 9 people admitted they were cautious with the information they share with brands.

Thread, U.K. online personal styling service for men and women, has a unique and transparent system of collecting customer data. Now it is available only for men. After you enter the site you select menswear:

They use this system to offer custom product to help your stylist find the best clothes for you, such as which trouser fits you like or how open are you to try more daring clothes or how much you usually spend on clothes and other specific questions.

In the end, you’ll be asked to leave your email address for further actions.

28. Make use of retargeting & Experience a 400% Increase On ROI

The retargeting method is used when you want to convert a user after entering the site. The process is quite easy; the user comes to your site, a cookie is set to their browsers. Afterward, you can track him to show him ads on the website he’s visiting. Based on the activity he had on your site you can deliver specific display ads. Below you can see the most effective types of retargeting:

Source: http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com

Niche Hacks tried retargeting pixel to send visitors back to the email opt-in page. They converted 51,54% of all retargeted visitors into new subscribers, even though the ads were basic, landing page was basic, the stock images were simple. Basically, everything was average. In spite of all of this, they converted quite a large number of people.

American Apparel used Perfect Audience platform on Facebook retargeting and saw a 400% increase in ROI, converted new customers and increased the revenue.

29. Develop a Lead Scoring System to Generate 50% More Sales at Half of Costs

Lead Scoring is a system where every company can rank prospects according to a scale based on the value they represent for that company. Lead scoring can be implemented in numerous marketing automated platforms. For example, you can to assign a value to social media interactions or specific website behavior. Based on the results, you can see which lead must be pushed down the funnel or contacted directly by a sales representative.

By integrating your CRM system with a lead scoring system, you can create advanced sales analytics reports that reveal which channels produce the most lucrative leads, and which bring mostly useless ones. While setting up lead scoring can be a complicated process, it’s definitely worth your time and effort. Once you have lead scoring analytics in place, your sales team can stop wasting their time on prospects who are not likely to convert and focus instead on those who are more likely to buy now.

Studies revealed that companies with well-put lead nurturing system see 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost. Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study showed that 68% of successful marketers say lead scoring is the most effective method to improve the revenue contribution from lead nurturing.

30. Get More Social Exposure Through the Social Media Automation

As the name says it, social media automation means using tools to automate the social marketing process by making your account stay active without manual posting and monitoring. On January 2016, We are Social said that 31% of world’s population (7.395 billion) were active social media users. With such a large audience you can’t stay up all night to make sure you post at the current local time when there is a peak of your audience. The automation appears at a time of need to make things easier.

A unique approach to the automation process on social media platforms happened in 2012 when Barack Obama’s social campaign used the Dashboard.

It was an online registration platform where volunteers could make an account to support Obama’s candidacy. Everybody with an email address could register and see news, political and election events. Through that platform, Obama’s team collected data about the activity of the volunteers such as phone calls, donations, and tasks. Afterward, it was very easy for the team to target only the volunteers that were interested. The results of the automation process were remarkable not to mention that in the end, Obama became president. Great digital marketing technique, isn’t it?

31. Encourage Brand Lovers to Support You Against Trolls

Brand lovers are those who play the role of brand advocates and define the term evangelism marketing. They are highly satisfied customers and identify themselves with the brand. They are an asset because they promote the brand waiting for nothing in return. McKinsey and Company say 70% of purchase experiences are based on how the customer feels. It is bloody important to provide value and customer fulfillment.

Besides the fact that brand lovers will make sure to tell everyone your product is the best, they will support you against trolls. Nowadays, people on social platforms are very critical, and a single wrong comment or tweet can ruin you. Some haters and trolls can make your life a living hell on the social media. But, thank God for brand advocates!

OldNavy, an American retailer, got socially trolled. The company tweeted an upcoming sale with an interracial couple image, and then a group of racist people started posting negative tweets about the brand with hashtags #whitegenocide and #miscegenation. Before the team from Old Navy began to respond, some advocates of the brand started supporting the company by posting their own pictures with interracial couples they have in the family. In times of crisis, it is best to have your brand lovers that can make a powerful statement.

32. Built a Strong Customer Following & Get Free Endorsement

Millennials are a socially conscious generation. Embracing a cause might be just the answer you’re looking for if your brand addresses the Y generations. If they believe in a cause, they are willing to pay more and even a premium price. Knowing they give something for a better cause makes them feel valuable.

The shoe brand TOMS created a campaign based on a cause that brought endorsement from celebrities and famous people. They created a new concept ‘One Day without shoes’, meaning that for each purchased pair of shoes, another pair goes to a child in need. People from all over the Globe started a word of mouth campaign and even walk without shoes the whole day.

Charlize Theron became a strong supporter of the cause, alongside a lot of other celebrities, such as Lenny Kravitz, Chaske Spence and Julia Jones from Twilight, Dawn Olivieri from the Vampire Diaries, plus Cheryl Tiegs, Gillian Zinser, Jason Mraz, Tara Mercurio and Lacey Chabert, Thomas Jane, Matisyahu, Living Things and Tory Burch.

33. Gain Free Media to Get Everyone Talk About You on News and Get 5 Million Views on YouTube

Earned media or free media is a term that describes all the publicity that is not paid but rather gained through promotional efforts. Earned media happens when you make people talk about your brand no matter where it appears. Earned media happens after you make smart and creative ads or involved in successful real marketing actions, created impactful events and so on.

Avon used a digital marketing tactic that generated massive amounts of earned media. “Choose Beautiful” reached over 5 million of views on YouTube and the term received more than a million entries on Google. Hundreds of media outlets covered the video; numerous news websites claimed that “proves beauty is a choice”.

Source: http://delamanoconvenezuela.com

The ad received a lot of free media. Ad Age named it the best advertising campaign of the 21st century. People started to talk about it on Buzzfeed saying “Not everyone is beautiful and that is perfectly okay”. Some of them were encouraging the message “I find it odd that people disapprove of an ad whose whole purpose was to get women to all realize that they were beautiful”.

The psychologist Nancy Etcoff and self-esteem expert Dr. Tara Cousineau, together with Dove, created a toolkit named “Mindful Me” designed to help women manage thoughts and feelings in order to offer them the confidence to feel beautiful.

Send a powerful message to your audience and then expect to gain free media.

34. Create Fascinating Video Content to Attract Native Customers & Increase the Conversion Rate by 80%

Video content started to gain a lot of attention in the past few years. Almost 1 billion unique monthly visitors are on YouTube, 130 million on Vimeo, 100 million on Dailymotion, 45 million on LiveLeak and 42 million on Vine. That is a lot of viewers! Let’s not forget the social video part, 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook, and 82% of Twitter users watch video content on Twitter. In 2013, Instagram introduced videos in addition to photos and more than 5 million videos were shared in the first 24 hours. Video consumption on Instagram has increased by 40% in 2016.

According to Hyperfine Media, 90% of users say that product videos are helping them in the decision process and almost 40% of online consumer trust video ads as you can see in next infographic.

Source: http://www.hyperfinemedia.co.uk

Most recent studies show that a video placed on the landing page can increase conversion rate by 80%. 96% of B2B companies use videos in their marketing campaign, and 73% say this improved their ROI.

35. Use Webinars to Gain 16,394 new leads

Organizing webinars can produce juicy content. They are great to deliver useful content to your readers and engage with them. Practically you can give a presentation to them and then discuss to see their main points. This is a great way to receive hot information, smart insights and see what topics you can debate on the blog in order to push the leads down the funnel.

Basically you need a microphone, a PC/laptop, and you’re set. Then use a service like AnyMeeting or GoToWebinar to connect with your viewers.

Webinars are such and effective digital marketing technique that could bring you 518,399 visitors and 16,394 leads from 77 webinars as KISSmetrics experienced. Neil Patel, founder at KISSmetrics, estimated that those webinars generated $1,638,000.

36. Start Running an Affiliate Program to Monetize Your Website & Get Extra $4500 Monthly Profit

There are upsides and downsides of an affiliate program in your digital strategy. The upside of this marketing technique is that it can generate high revenue and the downside is that it doesn’t work for all kinds of business.

For example, the popular web hosting service Bluehost gets new customers through its affiliates. Shopify uses an affiliate program that rewards its affiliates with $2,400 per sale.

A study from NichePie by Luqman Khan shows how you can generate a monthly profit of $4,500 in 4 months. See the statistics in the next screenshot.

Source: http://nichepie.com

He posted 8 articles and 1 infographic and received 14,206 unique visitors in 4 months.

37. Generate Product Order Increase by 9.8% Through Voucher and Reward Sites

In 2015, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the Online Performance Marketing study showing that 57% of product orders were through voucher and reward sites. Thomas Cook, one of the world’s leading leisure travel, developed a campaign based on the use of voucher codes to encourage users to buy online tickets. They wanted to keep the cost-per-order (CPO) lower than £65. As a result, the orders increased by 9.8% while the CPO decreased, thus keeping it under £65.

38. Map out the Affiliates’ Value to Increase the Long Haul Share by 19%

Thomas Cook Airlines has a long activity in the affiliate marketing area, and this led the company to always improve their marketing strategy. They learned that knowing the values of their affiliates is highly important. One of their affiliate campaigns had the next objectives:

minimize the average cost-per-sale (CPS);
increase the number of long-haul bookings (meaning the bookings for travelers that last a long period of time);

A way to do that was to map out the affiliate’s value. For that, all the bookings from 2014 were analyzed to see the path to conversion for each affiliate. This helped the company to discover the CPS and the contribution brought by each affiliate. The results were quite impressive: they kept the average CPS below 2% of revenue and reduced the cost-per-click by 73% while increasing the long haul share by 19%. On top of that, they sold thousands of seats from routes that weren’t performing well at all.

39. Reach Over 60% Social Engagement and Advocacy for the Brand with Respected Influencers Through an Affiliate Program

The affiliate agency Schaaf-PartnerCentric conducted an in-house study based on REACH (Relations, Exposure, Advocacy, Connection, Hype) program that provides customized outreach and guarantees placement on influencer websites for a boutique fashion retailer. The client has proposed to increase the exposure and advocacy within a short period of time with the help of influencers.

The campaign raised 63% social engagement in the first week after the big launch. Instagram saw the highest engagement, with 92% of the social interactions. Pinterest increased up to 6% social interactions.

40. Implement a Publisher Strategy to See a Monthly Revenue Growth Rate of 177%

Cost Plus World Market is a furniture store that implemented a publisher campaign through an affiliate program. The online retailer has been in the furniture market for almost 30 years now and has had more than 100 brands and thousands of products. They implemented a publisher program with the help of Schaaf-PartnerCentric team. Only after 90 days, the company’s results were highly visible. The monthly traffic increased by 100.7%, the monthly sales increased by 257%, and the monthly revenue grew by 177%.

Conclusion

Creating engaging content with relevant data and juicy tips will always be effective. Let’s face it – we crave creativity. Creativity in all forms: for making your business better, for getting everyone to talk about you, for inspiring others, for earning free advertising, for becoming an asset in your industry. If you follow some of the digital marketing tactics and techniques from the list we’ve created, you should see improvements shortly.

Create a list of the most important digital marketing tactics for you. Chose those that are easy for you to implement, and then take action. Embrace the fact that you need to make changes to deliver higher CTR, higher open rate, revenue growth, higher conversion rate, more unique daily viewers, more leads and so on.

Good luck! Maybe you will be the next case study for an effective digital marketing technique.

The post 40 Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactics and Techniques in 2024 appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Content Marketing Services | The Complete List for a Successful Digital Strategy

Cornelia Cozmiuc — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 10:04:46 +0000

As your online business grows, it becomes obvious how important content marketing is for your business. And even if you’re the one working on your business’ strategy or you hire an agency to help you out, one thing is clear: you need to know the full list of content marketing services your company needs.

Before saying that you don’t need to bother with this because you will hire a specialized digital agency to take care of all this, take this scenario: You get a great offer for a freelance or an agency, saying that they will take care of everything content related for you. That sounds appealing, yet, how can you hire them if you don’t know what they are supposed to deliver? Once you know what a complete list of content marketing services looks like, you’ll be able to set expectations, measure the efforts of the company you hired, and better understand the results.

So, here are the top content marketing services business owners should be aware of:

Content Marketing Strategy
Content Creation
Content Distribution
Constant Content Update
Content Analytics Reporting

Content Marketing Strategy

A good content marketing strategy should respond to the question why.

Why do you want to create content? For whom? Why will your content be different than what already exists?

Content marketing strategy means more than a content strategy. This last one is focused more on content creation, which we are going to talk about later.

First thing first, you need to clarify what do you want to achieve with content marketing: Increased traffic? More leads? Educate customers? Increase online presence?

If you’ve been watching the trends lately, you’ve seen articles piling up about content marketing and how it’s changing the SEO game forever.

It seems that Google is dead set on providing visitors with pages that have the most relevant content to their search and the trend of creating quality content to be more relevant to your target audience seems to become more of a need than a game played only by the cool kids.

More and more SEO professionals are boarding this train and it’s no longer to be believed a hype and a way to reinvent the so-called “dead SEO”.

Once you got the “why” question responded, you can go to the next step within any content marketing strategy, the keyword research. You don’t want to write just for the sake of writing, right?

You want to create good content that will reach your audience. But to do so, you need to know what topics to tackle and what keywords you can create content for. So, check out the next steps, which are foundation stones for all the other content marketing services.

Use Keyword Research Tools

Finding keywords shouldn’t be hard, yet it’s not a walk in the park either. In the modern SEO landscape, a keyword research tool is not just a passing trend but a must.

The Keyword Tool and Content Optimizer is an awesome helper on this matter. It’s like your best buddy you can call in the middle of the night to get you out of trouble. You can find new topic ideas and keywords related to the one you are targeting.

You’ll be able to make an idea of how difficult it is to rank for those particular keywords. It also shows you how relevant other keywords are compared to the current ones.

When you perform the market research, it’s best if the keywords you’re trying to rank for have a high search volume and a low difficulty. High search volume means the phrase is popular and many people are typing it in their browsers. Low content and links difficulty means that it is fairly easy to rank on that keyword without many links or highly competitive content. Combining these three metrics will result in profitable phrases that are easy to rank for.

Why any analysis should start with a keyword research?

Because if you don’t know the keywords you want to target, you can’t possibly know your true SEO competition.
This step will also determine what level of difficulty you wish to perform the analysis at.

For example, let’s assume that we’re performing online marketing in the shoe business and wish to open a web store. Depending on our budget, we can either start targeting very high search volume keywords or lower search volume keywords. Keep it realistic.

It either takes money or time to get there. In fact, it takes time in both cases given you’re working with organic search.

Without a strategy, content is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff.
	ARJUN BASU
	Award-nominated author

The trick with ranking is not to force it. When everybody’s trying to rank for the same keywords, there’s not much room for long-term development. This is where you can improve and find keywords semantically related to your niche, but not necessarily used by your competitors.

Check the Top-of-mind Keywords

Top-of-mind keywords are phrases that pop up in your head right away when you think about a niche. It’s like a brainstorming process. They are also frequently called seed keywords.

You can use the Google search engine to get real-time suggestions. Simply go on Google and start typing your keywords, and new ideas will appear right under the search bar. A highly competitive keyword would be, in this case, “buy shoes online”.

Phrases with the word “buy” in them are called buyer’s keywords or transactional keywords. They are usually the most competitive, as we know from the phrase itself that people are already set to buy the product. Ranking for those keywords practically guarantees that some sales will indeed be made. Where sales are guaranteed, big players come.

A lower competition keyword can be “best shoes for …”.

More niched phrases tend to be less competitive. One reason might be the fact that they are untapped, meaning that not many people actually discovered them. They are called longtail keywords. Review and comparison sites often try to rank here. People are still inclined to buy, but for he moment, they might just be looking to compare products or find ideas.

Look for Seed Keywords to the Keyword Explorer or Google Keyword Planner to Get New Ideas

Use the seed keywords you acquired from the previous step to generate a list of keywords.

You can go classic and use the Google Keyword Planner, though data is limited if you don’t have a paying PPC management account.

You can try multiple keywords here, export the data as CSV, sort the keywords, and add some to your list.

cognitiveSEO’s Keyword Tool can give you tons of keyword opportunities. It works like a content marketing agency that will work on most of your marketing plans, your pieces of content…you got the idea your whole marketing effort in general.

You can check out for questions people are looking for an answer on Google. You can filter the keywords ideas by volume, relevancy and so on, so you can find the best keyword opportunities for you.

Prioritize the Keywords You Want to Rank For

Now comes the more difficult part.

For which of those keywords can you realistically rank in top Google search?

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.

Let’s take as example the keyword this article is talking about: content marketing services.

You can easily see a lot of important metrics, just one click away:

how many links would this article need to be competitive?
what is the monthly search for this keyword and how’s the searching trend for it?
who is ranking in top 10 and how do their content looks like?
how old/fresh is the content already ranking?
what focus keywords did my competitor use within their content?

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 create content for or improve existing content.

Select Top Keywords Based on Relevancy and Search Volume

For the purpose of this analysis example, we’ll just stick to these keywords: “buy shoes online” and “best shoes for”. One is broader and the other is narrower, but both are attractive in terms of relevance and search volume. Let’s assume that we start from the bottom (narrower keywords), but leave room for expansion in the future (broader keywords).

From these two keywords, we can observe that the broader ones tend to return root domains as results, while narrower ones return pages from websites. This is a good indication of what our homepage should be targeting, and what we should target with pages.

The final list should include keywords around your general niche and some current or possible (future) sub-niches. You can group them into separate sheets. This way you’ll be able to select top competitors from multiple sub-niches easier. The more keywords you’re willing to analyze, the better you’ll understand what you’re dealing with in the long run.

You can use the Google Search Console to easily determine the keyword you’re already ranking for. (the below screenshot is taken in June 2020).

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 marketing strategy.

Content Creation

No worries, comparing to the previous section, content creation will feel like a breeze among the content marketing services list.

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 one main keyword and one search intent. Feel free to find out more about search intent here.

A great way to do this is to write content about 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.

Write content that stands out and is share worthy.

While doing so, also make sure to:

Have great Titles, Headlines and Descriptions.
Optimize your titles with keywords for SEO, but also keep them catchy for Social Media.
Use the Open Graph property to set different titles for SEO and Social Media.

Longform content tends to perform better in organic search results. Yet, look at what type of content your competitor have. Is it long, short? What type of content is Google serving within its first page for the type of content you want to rank?

You keep on hearing: write content having readers, but also SEO in mind. But what does this really mean?

We can spend a lot of time on debating that, or we can use a tool that will help us write that exact type of content. As time is so precious these days, I’ll choose the second option.

Open the Content Assistant section from the cognitiveSEO’s content optimizer and hit Start Optimizing.

Once you do so, you’ll get everything you need there:

the keywords you should use in your content
the content score you should reach
keywords ideas to use in your content
the focus keywords that might help your content with ranking
the keywords you shouldn’t use that much to avoid stuffing

Basically, you’ll get all the resources you need to write content that is relevant for your users first of all, but also SEO oriented.

The idea is to think of the recommended keywords as subtopics or areas of interest that you should cover in your content.

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.

Regardless of the tools you’d be using, keep in mind that the best tool you have at your disposal is your own knowledge.

You should keep in mind that writing naturally is the best way to go.

I know: writing original content regularly might not be easy. Moreover optimized content. Even if you’re a marketing expert that wants to improve brand awareness, an account manager or a search engine optimization, writing with SEO in mind is never easy. There are no perfect marketing guides that will drive results in no time. And copywriting implies extra marketing costs, video content creation costs, maybe website design, content promotion and so on. Yet, when creating your monthly reporting, you’ll check the return on investment and you’ll see that those marketing efforts did pay off. That monthly content and those business goals you struggle with, those SEO audits, they all bring great results.

Content Distribution

The journey shouldn’t stop when the article goes live. On the contrary, you should carry on with the process of boosting your content. You need to understand that content distribution isn’t a single technique or a one-time thing. It incorporates an umbrella of multiple unique techniques you need to follow in order to get better results.

We all had that moment when we gave our soul into a post and made it so shiny, with thorough research, relevant visuals but nobody read it.
And then you start wondering what went wrong. What in the name of God happened? Or why did it happen to you? And the questions could go on.

But there is something that you missed. And that “something” could be content distribution and amplification.

Content distribution is a powerful method to reach a wider audience.

Amplifying your content should be mandatory if you want people to know about it and increase your website traffic.

You can look at the distribution process as a way of strengthening the signals of your post. And here are some channels to do so:

Link Building

If, in the past, the traditional ways of building links meant to meaninglessly spread out all over the internet, without thinking of relevance and essence, through the help of web directories, blogrolls, keyword stuffing and others, now we need to think of our target audience.

Things have changed now, but links are still an important ranking signal and they are very helpful when trying to rank high in the search engines.

It’s a harsh reality but link generating through content marketing will surely become harder and harder.

Yet, harder doesn’t mean impossible. Use blog posts, videos, infographics, eBooks and so on. Create resources that are valuable and that will earn links.

Also, don’t forget about internal linking.

If you’re looking for an SEO move that can quickly boost the position of your website, then internal linking is the move you want to make.

A proper internal linking strategy can really boost your ranking power because it does two things:

#1: It helps search engines understand the structure of your website, how different pages interact with one another and which pages are truly important withing the structure of your website.

#2: It helps users navigate the website and it keeps users on the website by providing relevant content through links that can be followed. This ultimately sends search engines another signal that your website is great, because it provides a good user experience.

If you’re interested in some valuable link building lessons, wrote from experience, check out this article.

Social Media

I know it and you know it. The internet has become so fed up with marketing strategies, that people become immune to content in its mediocre form.

Influencers from all marketing channels are no longer impressed so easily, and in order to put your brand “in their mouth” you need to do some wheel greasing.

So that’s why super important to create content that it’s worth sharing; content that “has something to say”, that brings added value.

Invest in social media marketing as much as you can. Get dedicated account managers or marketing manager if possible. There are many social content marketing companies that are offering good services, just make sure to get the right one to grow your business.

There a lot of tips and tricks on how to perform better on social media. You can consult blogs like BrandMentions‘ one for this.

Promote your content as much as possible but on the right social media channels for your niche.

Use paid media and social media advertising (like Twitter or Facebook advertising) if needed. Make use of partner programs, press releases, custom content, go for influencer marketing if needed.
Yet, it is highly important to make yourself visible on social media. Even if this implies some graphic design activities or video production to steal your potential customers’ attention. Here’s a video production tool you can check it out.

Social media management is as important as writing optimized pieces of content when it comes to building your brand.

Community & Relations

When I think of content marketing, a line from the movie Jerry Maguire comes to mind – Help me, help you!

We’ve seen common outreach methods of content marketing like guest blogging being abused in the past, because people misunderstood the idea behind it.

Generating links through content marketing is not about trying to beg for them, it’s about creating relationships with other businesses and people that reside in the online medium.

You can no longer strive for the number one spot in Google’s eyes if you can’t create new pals that are willing to talk about you and share your content or vice versa.

“Link begging” your way out of a situation will do you more harm than good so we don’t recommend that.

There’s one way out of it and that’s creating content that others might find interesting enough to share it with their audience.
Organic Links are a “hard to get” commodity these days and you’ll be happy to find and keep connections with influencers that like and distribute the content that you create.

In order to help yourself, you need to attend to the needs and interests of others first!

When you can’t create engaging content on your side of the street, try going to the place where the discussion is currently happening.

It may sound like a cheesy tactic but I assure you it’s not a laughing matter. You may include comments in your content marketing strategy as you can generate links and help the community at the same time, in real time.

Comments are a great way to:

create meaningful content
connect and engage with your target audience
create links pointing to your site in a natural manner.

Comments can prove to be a blade with two edges and you need to treat it with care.

Try and find the most important forums in your niche and where the discussions are taking place.

Look at what people are asking and what questions they have.

As long as you stay on topic and your comments are not only meant for link building, then you won’t have nothing to worry about.

Above are just a few content distribution ideas. For even more ideas for amplification, check out this article.

Constant Content Update

What if I were to tell you there’s another way, besides tapping into that creative juice barrel?

Nobody expects you to create original and engaging content all the time.

You just can’t create quality content on an assembly line and everybody knows that, and no, you shouldn’t resort to gimmick techniques to win your target audience’s attention.

What you can do is to recycle outdated content that may still be of interest to your target audience.

Some content has been geniously created in the past and widely distributed, but that doesn’t mean you cannot use that already developed interest to your advantage.

Those infographics that were widely distributed and shared, which created a lot of discussions over the internet can be refurbished using the same layout and the same structure but with fresher and more relevant data.

You can also improve old content by adding more information and thus more value for the viewer.

While this might be appealing for those looking for a shortcut method of generating content, it should be part of a balanced diet.

It seems easily exploitable, but if done improperly, you might end up feeding your site with low quality content.

We’ve done an interested experiment some time ago: We’ve updated 40 blog posts with fresh, updated information.

The result? 70% SEO visibility increase. So, it could be a tactic that could work for you to. You can check out the case study here.

Content Analytics Reporting

You know the saying. No job is done until the paperwork is done.

In our case, not literally paper, but reporting the results. This is an equally important part of the content marketing services list.

So, you’ve created a content marketing strategy; you’ve written awesome content or updated the existing one, you’ve highly distributed.

Now, what’s to do?

Check out the result!

But what should you check?

Measuring content marketing and SEO efforts is often easier said than done.

Yet, here are some metrics you should definitely look at.

Organic Search Traffic

Organic search traffic refers to website visits that originated from search engine results and not through ads. Organic search traffic is a highly effective indicator of overall success. When a website’s content includes keywords that frequently match what users are searching for, that website is likely to appear in a larger number of search engine results pages (SERPs) than competing websites.

Using Google Analytics, open the Acquisition menu. From there, select All Traffic, then select Channels.

You’ll now be presented with a view of a website’s sources of traffic, which are sorted by channel.
Select the Organic Search channel for a useful report that displays a site’s organic traffic stats.

This report is a versatile one. It gives SEO practitioners the ability to uncover critical information such as:

Which landing pages are the most effective at attracting traffic
Which keywords are delivering the highest amounts of traffic
Which of the search engines are directing the highest amount of organic traffic to a website
What pages are frequently the biggest exit pages (or the last page a visitor views before leaving the website)
And many other vital stats

Keyword Rankings

Keyword Ranking is how well or how poorly your content ranks in SERPs for a given search term.

Google analytics isn’t as helpful as some SEO practitioners would like it to be as far as tracking keyword rankings.
Its keyword tab (within the campaign tab) often displays the phrase “not provided.”

Instead of Google analytics, consider the rank tracker provided by cognitiveSEO.
One of its advantages is that it allows you to track keywords at a universal level as well as at a local level. It also allows you to analyze the keyword performance of competitors.

So, add your keywords you created content for within the Rank Tracker and constantly check out the evolution.

Social Shares

Social shares can be defined simply as the sharing of your content by social media users.
While it’s generally thought that Google does not take social signals and shares into consideration when ranking SERP results, social shares are still very important to your SEO efforts.

Tracking your social shares is beneficial because of the important impact social media plays in content marketing strategies.

As more people share your content with their followers, the higher the chances that more people will view it and ultimately migrate over to your website.
More visits to your website means a boost in organic search ranking.

Backlink Volume

Useful for measuring the authority and popularity of your website, backlinks (often referred to as inbound links) are links to your website that originate from someone else’s website.
Backlinks to your site can also originate from other pages on your own site.

Measuring this performance indicator will go a long way in helping you rank higher.

By tracking it, you’ll always know where you stand with what some in the SEO industry view as the most important ranking factor used by Google.

When you know whether you’re succeeding with your backlinks, you know how much you need to improve by.

Using Google Analytics, open the Acquisition menu. From there, select All Traffic, then select Referrals.

You can now look at your referral traffic, which is Google’s way of saying “backlinks.”

Also, for a comprehensive backlink analysis tool, cognitiveSEO aggregates backlink data from trusted link databases and analyzes the links on demand for each of their clients.

I know, there are a lot of information from the digital marketing area to deal with.

But even if you’re one the one who’ll be implementing all the content marketing services above, even if you’re hiring marketing agencys, it’s important to know what’s all about.

If you or your marketing team are out of breath after reading this post (or worse yet, discouraged,) don’t be overwhelmed!
Take heart, force a smile, and accept the fact that victory never comes easy. I know, lots of things are involved: technical SEO, marketing budget, web design, content calendars or advertising costs. But it does pay off in the attempt of building brand that is strong and competitive.

Success and competitiveness are for those who are willing to work harder and get their hands dirtier.

The bottom line here is that you can do this, and it will be worth it.

The post Content Marketing Services | The Complete List for a Successful Digital Strategy appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

The Unique SEO Content Strategy to Rank #1 with Zero Links

Adrian Cojocariu — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 09:47:30 +0000

We keep hearing that content is king. Write great content, content here, content there. But how true is that statement? Is there such a thing as an SEO Content Strategy that you can use to rank #1 with zero backlinks?

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.

Can I Really Rank #1 with Zero Links?
Why Is Google Pushing More Weight to the Content Ranking Factor?
Step-by-step SEO Content Strategy to Rank #1 with Zero Links
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:

There can be no external backlinks present. Any single external backlink to the domain discovered will disqualify the site.
The site can have internal links since some claim internal linking shouldn’t count for such claim.
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.

SEO Best Practices → Guide to Skyrocket Your Google Rankings

Adrian Cojocariu — Thu, 07 May 2020 07:15:13 +0000

SEO is hard. But it doesn’t have to be. If you don’t have time for well-defined strategies or plans, it’s crucial to at least follow a series of SEO best practices.

Therefore, let’s see the checklist you need to go through to make sure you’re securing high Google ranks.

Is SEO Still Relevant in 2020?
What Are the Best SEO Practices for 2020
How to Check If You’re Following the Best Practices for SEO

Is SEO Still Relevant in 2020?

Just in case you’re wondering, yes. SEO is still relevant in 2020. If you want to drive huge amounts of traffic to your website long term, with high return on investment, then SEO is the way to go.

Just think about last time you searched for something on the internet. What did you use? Chances are it was Google.

In a way, things are getting more and more complicated, but that’s a good thing.

Why?

Well, because when things get more and more complicated, people simplify them.

And by that, I mean they’re giving up.

They give up all the ‘tactics’ and ‘secret methods’ and they return to the basics.

As SEO gets more and more advanced and Google harder to trick, people start abandoning BlackHat SEO techniques.

I see more and more genuine SEO agencies. I see more and more people talking about real long-term strategies. I see a lot more quality websites.

What Are the Best SEO Practices

In order to simplify the SEO process and get good results in terms of rankings, follow this list of SEO best practices:

1. Optimize for Search Intent

Search intent is the big thing in 2020 and forward.

When a user searches for something, Google has to return relevant results to match their search intent.

Otherwise, their experience will be a bad one.

I’ll give a simple example. If you have an affiliate shoes review website and try to optimize for “buy shoes online” you’ll probably have a hard time ranking for it.

The reason behind it is that people searching that phrase are looking to shop for shoes, which means they want to see offers and eCommerce websites.

So, if users start seeking eCommerce websites, Google will figure that out and display the proper results.

Instead, a better option would be to target something like “best shoes for running”, or other keywords where people look for informational content rather than a store.

You can clearly see the difference in search intent for this keyword, with more informational content showing.

There were also some ads and a featured snippet, but I removed them to show only the vanilla organic search engine results.

Based on the keywords you use, the search engine might interpret your query as having different intents behind it:

informational (if you search for “sunglasses polarized meaning”);
navigational (if you search for the name of a particular brand of sunglasses);
transactional (if you search for “cheap sunglasses” or “buy sunglasses”);

And if you’re wondering which search intent is the most popular, you need to know that more than 80% of the total search intents are informational, 20% being almost equally split between navigational and transactional.

So, before you start writing content, think very well what you’re optimizing it for. You can check out a previous articles of ours on how to optimize for each type of search intent.

2. Perform In-Depth Keyword Research

Keyword research is always the most important step when it comes to SEO.

It’s vital to know what your users search for, otherwise you’re chasing wild geese.

It’s also very useful to know what your competitors are doing, so make sure you research that as well.

You can use the Content Optimizer & Keyword Tool to find relevant keywords.

Then you can use the Ranking Analysis tab to see what types of pages rank well for each keyword you want to target.

This way, you’ll better understand user intent and can properly build your content around this information.

3. Target One Main Topic & Keyword

I don’t want you to understand this the wrong way. You don’t have to target a single keyword.

However, it is important to target one main topic. Again, it all comes down to user intent.

If you think two keyword phrases are very similar, but you’re not sure of the intent, do a Google search.

Does Google show similar search results for both keywords? Or are they different?

For example, “travel tips indonesia” and “travelling to indonesia” might seem very similar, but the intent is very different.

In the first one people want to see traveling destinations from popular blogs while in the second one they want to know if it’s OK to travel there, so .gov official sites make for really relevant

search results.

It might not be the best example but I hope you get the point.

When you do keyword research, always test out what type of results rank for each particular keyword.

If the search results are similar, you can try to combine the keywords. This way, you’ll get more traffic.

However, if the intent is different and the results are different, don’t try to catch two rabbits with one shot.

You’ll end up with none.

4. Use Your Focus Keyword in Titles and Descriptions

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions are a really important for SEO.

For once, Google actively looks for the keyword inside your Title Tags to figure out if your content is relevant or not for their particular search queries.

Second, these titles affect CTR, which means more clicks to your website.

The secret is to make it catchy. You can make it catchy just by adding the keyword in the title.

Studies show that users like to see the keyword inside the title or description. That’s also why Google puts they keywords in bold text all the time.

Don’t forget about the meta description. Try to add keywords there as well, and also a CTA or something to convince the users to click on your result.

Discounts, free shipping and similar things work well for eCommerce websites.

Mastering title creation for SEO is probably one of the most valuable skills an SEO professional can have.

Sure, when it comes to really big sites, you will use patterns and create titles dynamically.

However, when you’re looking to maximize results, you’ll have to manually adjust each and every title.

It’s also a good idea to keep the title catchy, especially for social media. Sometimes, it’s hard to also include the keyword AND make it catchy.

So here’s where Open Graph comes in handy. It allows you to have a title for Google, and another one for social media.

On WordPress, you can use plugins such as Yoast SEO to set up different titles for social media.

5. Write Optimized Content for Your Users & Google

Do it in that order. First your users, then Google.

Writing well optimized content is one of the most important SEO best practices.

The truth is that you still have to make things a little more obvious for Google, sometimes.

For example, the best headline you’re thinking about might just not include that very searched for keyword…

You’ll have to make a compromise and try to add the keyword in those headings, if you want to see better results.

Many times, when people write things just for the sake of SEO, the content feels… robotic.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Since it was written for robots.

When I talk about the cognitiveSEO Content Optimization Tool, I always mention how you should actually use the keywords it provides.

Many people just try to add them in wherever they can.

However, try to think of them as subtopics or important key elements you should talk about.

For example, I have a section about internal links, and multiple sections about technical SEO in this article.

This way, I can ensure those keywords will naturally occur in the article. I’ve just used two of them right now!

But sure, sometimes it makes sense to just replace “Google, Yahoo and Bing” with “Search Engines”.

6. Use Short and Human Friendly URLs

Don’t forget the URLs!

Warning: Don’t change URLs that have already been indexed by Google without doing a proper 301 redirect. This can heavily affect your rankings.

It’s always the best idea to get the URL right from the beginning and stick with it.

URL length isn’t a ranking factor, but there is a correlation between shorter URLs and higher rankings.

Keep URLs short, friend!

Now that doesn’t mean short URLs cause higher rankings. Maybe better optimized pages just have tidier URLs.

The point is that a URL should properly describe what the content is about.

This way, there will be more chances that people click them. Actually, it increases CTR by up to 45%.

Keywords inside the URL also help Google figure out what the content is about.

7. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Friendly

In this day and age, almost everyone browses the web on the phone. More than 50% of the traffic on most websites come from mobile searches.

If your website isn’t properly optimized for mobile usage, you might lose a lot of traffic.

Google uses mobile first indexing, which means it will first look at the mobile version of your website and rank it according to that.

To test if your site is mobile friendly you can use this tool.

If your site isn’t mobile friendly, make sure you follow these steps to make it mobile friendly.

You can also take a look at these best practices from Google.

8. Optimize Your Site’s Loading Speed

Loading speed is very important. Some studies show that you can lose 7% conversion rate for every extra second your site takes up to load.

That can be devastating!

Fixing speed issues includes multiple things such as image size and JavaScript, which we will cover soon.

However, the focus shouldn’t be on fixing issues or checking bullets provided by tools, but speed itself. In seconds.

Another thing that affects your site speed is the server. Make sure you have a good server.

The more traffic you drive to your website, the better the server should be to handle it properly.

9. Improve Your Site’s User Experience

Now this is a general tip, which kind of combines everything, but it’s not limited to only these tips.

Many things make up for a good user experience, from fast loading speed to high quality content.

However, things differ from case to case.

The best way of improving the users’ experience is to ask them about it.

Survey your users with Qualaroo and SurveyMonkey and use tools such as Hotjar to monitor their activity on the website.

You’ll figure out UX issues pretty quick, for example if a mobile button is too small or users can’t seem to figure out what they have to do next in a funnel.

In addition to this, make sure that your website has close to 100% uptime. Sites that go down frequently do poorly in SERPs. An uptime monitor is absolutely critical.

If you run an online store on platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce, there are some really good apps that can help you capture a backup of your stores so that anytime something goes wrong, you can quickly recover the site so that there is no downtime. Here’s a cool guide on how to start an online store in 2020.

10. Organize Your Site Hierarchy & Navigation

Structure is one of those SEO best practices that are often overlooked. It’s really good to get things right from the start.

That’s why you need an SEO before you start creating a website.

While user experience is the driving factor, there’s more to structure than that.

The way your navigation looks usually dictates the click depth to your pages.

And Google favors pages that are not too far down, the same way users do.

If huge digging is required to pull important pages out from your site, then they’ll most likely not get found or be ignored.

Structure your website accordingly to favor important pages.

11. Use the Secure HTTPs Protocol

This tip is short and to the point. Connections should be secure.

Google favors websites with secure connections, especially when sensitive data is sent through them.

So, if you have a contact form, a login page, a payment system, it should run through HTTPS.

Warning: Moving from HTTP to HTTPS can negatively impact rankings if done wrong. Make sure to follow this HTTP to HTTPS migration guide.

12. Optimize Images for SEO

One of the biggest problem with images is related to their size, especially the disk size.

Images are BIG and they take up a long time to load. They make your site slow.

Make sure you follow these rules:

Compress the images with a tool like Smush for WordPress or ShortPixel
Display them at the right size and not just scale them down with CSS
Load images that are outside the user’s view later on, with LazyLoad

However, image optimization doesn’t end here. Make sure you also add a relevant Title Title and Alt Tags to your images.

Images are a great way of adding keywords that can’t be used properly in sentences.

However, don’t just spam the image alt text in there. Try to briefly describe what’s in the image using those keywords.

If you need HD images on your site, you’ll need a really good server or a 3rd party image hosting / CDN.

13. Use Video in Your Content

Not too many people do this.

You can add video to support your content, or you can even fully repurpose content and then interlink it.

For example, if you have a pretty good article, turn it into a video. Same way around.

Then, embed the video into the content and also link back to the post from your video’s description.

However, don’t just copy paste a piece of content from one platform to another, as you might not get the results you want.

Each social media platform requires a different strategy. What works on Facebook might not work on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Let me tick this SEO best practice off the list by sharing this video with you:

14. Perform Regular Site Audits

Auditing your site is very useful for spotting small issues that can become huge ones.

Over time, small changes start to sneak in and sometimes, things might escalate.

But auditing a site takes time. That’s why a tool such as CognitiveSEO is so useful!

It does the job for you and constantly notifies you of issues that arise so that you can spot and fix them before things get too bad.

15. Use Internal Links With Relevant Anchor Texts

Site structure can be constantly consolidated by using internal links.

We know Google penalizes backlinks with exact match anchor texts if done too much, but we don’t know of any penalty for internal links.

Both Google representatives John Mueller and Gary Illyes have confirmed this.

Screenshot from seroundtable.com

Don’t force it, though. One day, there might be a penalty, who knows.

The key is to make them relevant for the users as well.

Also keep in mind that boilerplate content internal links from sections such as the header, footer or sidebars are less valuable than contextual links from the body.

Whenever you’re publishing new content, keep in mind when you can reference old content in relevant cases and link to it.

Your focus is to highlight those pages that you consider to be most important.

If your most important money page has a low number of internal links compared to other pages, Google might not understand its importance.

16. Link to External Pages With Relevant Anchor Text as Well

Recently I’ve had a consulting session with a client that confessed me that an SEO ‘expert’ told her not to link to external pages because she loses Page Rank.

If you’re a real SEO expert, you’re probably laughing with me right now.

While there’s an ounce of truth that eventually you’ll lose Page Rank when linking out too much, there are signs that linking to other relevant websites could help increase your rankings.

If you have something relevant and useful to share with the world and your audience, link away.

It will help you build relationships and the favors will return.

17. Actively Acquire Links to Your Website

Luke 6:38. Give and you shall be given.

If you don’t link to others, why would you expect them to link to you?

However, you’ll also have to work for those backlinks.

There is a saying: “God helps those who help themselves.”

So go that extra mile to promote your content after you publish it. Be it via outreach or social media advertising, make sure it gets to the right people.

Try to build relationships and offer value and the links will come.

You can follow these steps to develop an effective link building campaign.

18. Consistently Add Fresh, High Quality Content

While adding more content doesn’t guarantee you higher rankings or more traffic, one thing is for sure: the more content you have, the higher the chances of you getting more traffic.

It’s actually pretty simple: the more content you add, the more keyword you target. The more keyword you target, the more traffic you get.

However, once you’ve reached that point when you kind of covered everything, things start to stagnate.

For example, here at cognitiveSEO we’ve been focusing on writing new high quality content for the past years. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

If you’re just starting out, targeting lower competition keywords and writing more articles can be an effective strategy until you build some authority.

If you’re already a big brand, a better solution would be to go after high competition, high search volume articles.

Land one of those big ones and you’re set.

But make sure to read our next SEO best practice…

19. Update Your Best Performing Content Once in a While

After a while, we’ve reached a point where most of the SEO topics were already covered in our old articles, one way or another.

Finding new topics has become harder and we’ve noticed we are repeating ourselves in many cases.

So we’ve decided to update old content instead of writing new one.

Updating and improving old content that performed well can really help you with search engine rankings.

One such experiment was on an SEO Copywriting article.

After updating the content and optimizing it better for user intent (first step in this SEO best practices list), rankings and traffic went up.

You can see in the screenshot below an increase in clicks and impressions right after after the optimization was done, in December 2019.

By keeping the content up-to-date, you’re also keeping it relevant.

Don’t just do this for the best content, but also for old content that doesn’t seem to satisfy the user intent.

Are you covering two topics into a single article? Split it in two. Are two or more articles covering the exact same topic but none are ranking? Merge them into one.

20 . Don’t Use Javascript or JS Frameworks Extensively

JavaScript is a God given, just like Ice Cream. But too much of it can lead to some nasty things.

While JS can fix burnt crawl budget and indexation issues in an eCommerce Faceted Navigation scenario, it can also heavily impact the performance of a website if used too much.

Usually, the issue with JavaScript is that plugins load the scripts everywhere even when they are not needed.

A very good example are Slider plugins. Usually, revolution slider is only used on the homepage, yet the script can be found on every WordPress page.

Sliders are known to negatively impact CTR so maybe it’s a good idea to ditch it for good, if you don’t have a solid reason for keeping it.

Combining and Minifying JS files can help, but that usually breaks the code. Deferring it also works, until it doesn’t (ReCaptcha doesn’t really like that).

Sometimes, people render content through JavaScript. This is also a bad idea because Google has a harder time indexing that content.

If you do use JS to generate content, make sure it generates the content as HTML in the source of the web page.

21. Use Hreflang for Multi-Language Websites

Search results have become more and more personalized and geo-targeted.

If you have a multilingual website, correctly implementing the hreflang tag can mean business.

There are websites that use the tag but don’t use it the right way.

The problem with this? It can actually do harm!

Make sure you don’t make these hreflang mistakes when you implement this on your website.

22. Check Your Schema Markup

Or add it if you don’t have Schema already.

However, don’t rush on doing this first. While Schema Markup and Structured Data can be useful, other things such as properly optimizing your Titles are more important.

Once you have those things done, you can take a look at Schema Markup as well.

To test your implementation, you can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

Usually, this works best for eCommerce stores, but can also be used by blogs and informational websites to their advantage.

23. Track Your Results With Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is your best friend.

You can also track things with Google Analytics. However, when it comes to SEO, the Search Console is the proper monitoring tool.

Analytics and Search Console work differently.

Google Analytics tracks the users after they reach your website, while the Search Console tracks them from Google’s side, on the search result pages themselves.

So, for the most accurate results, it’s best if you use the Search Console.

Not only will it show you how your content is performing in Google, but it will also pinpoint a lot of SEO issues your website might have.

How to Check If You’re Following the Best Practices for SEO

The first tip would be to make an SEO checklist of the things mentioned above and check them off.

However, the best way is to create a system of your own and stick to it. Be it yourself or your entire company.

Develop a strategy, create rules and follow them all the time. Have a process. That’s the key to success.

What SEO best practices are you planning to use in 2020 an onward in your strategy? Let me know in the comments section below.

The post SEO Best Practices → Guide to Skyrocket Your Google Rankings appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

SEO Writing for Copywriters → The Ultimate Guide

Cornelia Cozmiuc — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 09:58:39 +0000

SEO writing has become an adventure, a complicated math problem we are all trying to calculate for finding the secret to get results faster. The number of search engine factors have advanced, the Google algorithm updates has increased, the number of businesses that use SEO have increased, the number of SEO agencies have increased and more and more people have become aware of its importance. That’s how the market got pretty cluttered and the competition very high. And we know how important it is for you to stand up in the crowd.

There are some things that are still available in terms of SEO, and also lots of new ones. We’ve put together a guide to find out how to write for SEO in 2020 and beyond. This way, you can make sure you remain at the top of the pile.

What Is SEO Writing?
Why Is Writing for SEO Important?
Basics of SEO Writing
How to Write for SEO? [TL;DR – Best Tips]
Guidelines for SEO Copywriters
How Important Is It to Update Content on My Website?
Should I Delete Underperforming Content from My Site?

We’ve put or hands to work to let you know everything there’s to know about SEO copywriting, from Q to M (keyboard letters arrangement). Leaving the copywriter jokes aside, let’s focus on the how to write for SEO, the basics, and finally the steps to get the Wonderland of first positions on Google.

1. What Is SEO Writing?

Writing for SEO refers to a technique that pleases not only the reader but the search engines as well. The standard type of copywriting relies on storytelling, on descriptive information, on niched content based on the knowledge of the audience. It is also known as copywriting with SEO in mind.

SEO writing is a process of writing that helps websites rank higher in search engines. By combining copywriter’s creativity with processes website content can stand out quicker in the major search engines.

Writing for SEO is a pretty straightforward process. It requires content strategy, well-researched data and discipline. You’ll have to perform keyword research to understand the intent of your audience searches and find out what type of content your audience consumes, spy your audience and find the competitive advantage – the content gap.

SEO copywriting combines three important elements. Similar to the successful trio – the three wise monkeys 🙈🙉🙊 – it creates a synergy between:

Information Gap
Audience
Google (or other search engines)

There are also other approaches on this matter, like Kim, the Marketing Director of Alexa, has another approach to the essence of SEO copywriting:

SEO copywriting is probably more of an art than a science.
	KIM KOSAKA
	Marketing Director of Alexa

2. Why Is Writing for SEO Important?

Writing for SEO is important because it’s a one of the best ways you can make sure your content will reach your readers. Search engine optimization is the ticket to the Wonderland of first places in Google. Otherwise we would write in vain. People wouldn’t find your content, and it wouldn’t serve anybody, nor the users, nor the search engines (which is the way users get to your content).

So, wouldn’t you want to take part in this beautiful adventure and get there?

Creating SEO friendly content is important to help your audience, build organic traffic to your website and keep your loyal clients. SEO keeps the business running. While other ways of distributing content and paid ads bring you clients as long as you keep investing money, SEO is used for long-time strategies that maintain your website visible in search and needs less financial investment. To reach top positions and remain there, you’ll have to do more than writing content.

Your content needs to:

be optimized;
contain the natural language of your visitors;
understand their pain points and offer solutions, answer their questions.

On the last matter, Google offers directions for every query you search and shows possible questions that people also ask.

To implement a long term strategy for SEO content, you’ll have to understand its basics.

3. Basics of SEO Writing

If you got until this point, you need to understand that we won’t provide secret tactics, shortcut tips that will bring you instant top positions, huge volume of organic traffic or thousands of links. Instead, we provide a well-documented strategy that has worked for us and other SEO pros numerous times, but it requires effort. Results are coming, but not effortlessly.

To get great results, you need not only knowledge, means, tools but also an SEO copywriter, a person that needs to have the skills to do things right.

3.1 What Is an SEO Copywriter?

An SEO copywriter writes content that is optimized for a website to rank on top pages of the search engines. If a copywriter writes copy for the sole purpose of communicating a message, develop an idea, describe a situation or an event, an SEO specialist analyzes, examines and tracks results for a website’s content to boost search engine rankings. His main role is to resolve any issues that might block the website from ranking higher.

The copywriter who writes with SEO in mind combines the jobs of those two players. He uses the means and strategies of the SEO specialist to communicate the way copywriters do and reach lots of readers.

SEO copywriters vs. traditional copywriters write content that also tackles the interest and search intent of a person. This drives more visitors to a page compared to traditional way of writing.

An SEO content marketer has the ability to turn a simple article into a piece that is written for the user and it’s beautifully optimized for Google. For that, an SEO copywriter needs to have lots of skills.

3.2 What Skills Should a Content Writer Have?

Since SEO copywriting combines a more complex strategy, all SEO copywriters should know how to write, have a unique voice and a particular writing style. The SEO content writer needs to understand the audience and spy on the competition.

Becoming an SEO writing expert does require more organizing and management skills because they should know what topics to approach, perform keyword research, competitive analysis, take actions and come up with suggestions. That person should also know what topics were discussed on the blog, come up with re-writing ideas or create fresh content if needed. And that doesn’t stop there. That person should take into consideration all the content on the website – product pages, the homepage, the about page and other category pages. An SEO copywriter should evaluate the whole website.

The content marketers need to come up with ideas and techniques, such as content pruning, content amplification, content syndication, content curation and many more. They can also create hybrid techniques to boost the power of content and make it convertible.

It should come as no surprise to you to learn that blog writing and blog management are some of the most important skills a content writer needs to master. A content writer should develop skills for finding new blog content ideas, listen to the readers, ask questions, accept criticism, answer questions and even come up with ideas to repurpose content.

3.3 How Does Content Performance Impact SEO and Rankings?

Based on a research we’ve made on 3,784,369 pieces of content, it turns out that content impacts SEO and rankings. We discovered that a high Content Performance score is correlated with top rankings in Google. Check out the chart below.

As you can see, there’s a direct connection between the Content Performance Score and the keyword positions in Google. Pages with a higher score experienced higher search positions. And the importance of a well-optimized piece of content increased. At the moment, it has become one of the most important ranking factors.

As you can see in the print screen below, in 2017 the content had a big impact on top Google positions, but in 2019 it seems that content’s importance is bigger than ever.

cognitiveSEO’s Content optimization tool offers a Content Performance score based on how well optimized a piece of content is for a targeted keyword. The content tool is really simple to use. You’ll have to add the focus keyword or phrase that you are targeting and then add your piece of content. Below you can see a printscreen from the Content Optimizer. On the left side, you have the content and on the right side you have:

The content performance score which shows you how well a page is optimized from a content point of view, on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the better optimized the content.
The position on which that content might rank given by the content performance metric.
The type of search intent – there are three types of content: informational, navigational and transactional.
The analyzed keywords: displayed in three categories, such as keywords that are already added, keywords you can add once and keywords you should add more than once.
A section on people also ask: extracted from Google search results, as we previously discussed.

The tool is very helpful in optimizing the content for the search engines but also keeping your focus on what users want to find out by looking into “content ideas via questions people ask”.

4. How to Write for SEO [TL;DR – Best Tips]

Now that you’ve understood what does writing for SEO means, it importance, and the influence of content on rankings, it’s time to move forward to the strategy of writing search engine optimization friendly content.

Below you can find some steps to understand how to write for SEO plus some steps to get you going:

For better knowledge of the process, observe the following SEO writing tips:

Elaborate a descriptive terminology and build compelling content by finding topics of interest and the killer questions people ask on specific topics.
Don’t try to build content for topics or noisy environments where there is a saturated niche with way too much content.
Find content gaps by spying your competition in search on certain topics. See what others are writing and come up with better content.
Understand the context of your potential customers’ search and fill in the gaps.
Find out the search intent and deliver appropriate content. For a single keyword, there might be lots of topics. Take, for example, the keyword rock – which can be about music, geology, radio station, and more.
Try as much as possible to find evergreen content topics.
Build various types of content: how-to, video, white papers, lists and more.
Don’t stick to old tricks, but rather look for delivering new content, but also update existing articles.
Make a structure or summary for your content once you decided upon the topic.
Add beautiful visuals to your piece of content.
Make sure you do internal link building within the webpages of your site.
Check your site for duplicate content and other content related problems and fix the issues with an SEO audit tool.
Check user experience and design a fast website, by following Google’s guidelines (using the Google Speed Test Insights and Lighthouse).
Create a mobile-friendly website or use CMS (such as WordPress) that are designed by default to be device friendly.

If you want to go in-depth you can check this big list of copywriting tips that are designed to boost conversion rates.

Before moving to each step and learning how to put into practice those tips, it’s important to understand the role of your audience.

We’ve said it lots of times before, and we’ll continue to say it as long as everybody understands the importance of its meaning:

Content must be written for the user; you should write content for people.

Contextual content is the latest approach in terms of writing for SEO at the moment. It is one of the important changes that took place in the last period. Lots of SEO experts talk about semantic and context-based results.

5. Guidelines for SEO Copywriters

After we’ve got you these preparation steps for gathering all the information and SEO tips that you need to make a great piece, you’ll have to put to work your writing style and skills. Remember the SEO copywriting techniques and write an outstanding article. Here you put your magic into action. The content creation process begins.

Besides the natural language and creative abilities, some SEO technicalities are almost mandatory for success. Writing SEO friendly blog posts can be difficult and time-consuming. However, it’s time well spent, as SEO helps us rank better in the search engines.

Correct grammar, descriptive topic where you reach all the points related, personal opinions, real conclusion and unique content are necessary for creating highly readable web pages.

5.1 Keyword Research for Content & SEO Writers

The first step in SEO content writing should be keyword research. Deploying the topics of interest and the killer questions, we can elaborate a descriptive terminology and build compelling content. Searching for primary or secondary keywords will help us describe the topic at its best for the users and make it optimized for search.

Finding keywords shouldn’t be hard, yet it’s not a walk in the park either. You need to have a starting point and based on the targeted keyword, you can find many derivatives. Some tools can help you find the best examples and generate organic traffic. The Keyword Tool and Content Optimizer is an awesome helper on this matter. It’s like your best buddy you can call in the middle of the night to get you out of trouble. You can find new topics ideas and related keywords to the one you are targeting, as well as the questions that people are asking related to your topic.

We are talking about producing content for SEO, which means valuable, evergreen and quality all-in-one. For that, you need to raise your head up the crowd and don’t get flushed away by all the people that are “writing” and creating worthless content. There are lots of noisy environments with “too much” SEO content.

Without a strategy, content is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff.
	Arjun Basu
	Award-nominated author

You have to become an SEO content writer, not just a simple writer for succeeding at SEO. You need to ask and answer the right questions so that your content helps the users and keeps them on the page.

Valuable content is found at the intersection between your customer’s needs and your business expertise.
	Sonja and Sharon
	Founders of ValuableContent

Source: www.valuablecontent.co.uk

Valuable and quality content breaks the glass and goes beyond the screen. Imagine that your visitors come from all directions and you need to make them feel that they’ve come to the right place. They need trust, so you’ll need to offer the information they need and think: “Wow. This is the place for me. Somebody really understands me.”

5.1.1 Understand the Search Intent of Your Visitors

To get to the previous situation described above, you’ll have to understand the context of your potential customers’ search and fill in the gaps. It’s mandatory to know your potential customers’ needs and interests to understand the search intent afterward.

Google discovered that the conventional keyword search, as we know it, has some limitations and doesn’t offer topical results based on the query search. For a simple keyword, there are lots of related topics and information available online.

Google has developed patents to understand context from knowledge bases for more accurate results. It wants to focus more on topic-related results, so the whole process works based on probabilities. For example, when a user performs a search on Google, the search engine uses a system to return landing pages with topics related to the query by looking at the text on that page.

You may ask how you can take advantage of that and get ideas for contextual keywords. Focus on the user, the user’s search intent and how to steal their heart and convert them.

Let’s take an example. You have a pastry in the US and have a new recipe of cronut. For those who don’t know, a cronut is a croissant-doughnut invented by a pastry from New York City.

We used the Keyword Tool and Content Optimizer for this example. We searched for “cronut” and below you can see the results, starting first with the keyword suggestions:

Based on our example, you can see what people from the US searched for on desktop. Most of the keywords are informational, which means most people want to know and understand what cronuts are. If your target audience already knows about them, then choose directly the keywords that are more relevant and descriptive, such as: “easy cronut recipe from scratch”, “how to make cronuts with puff pastry”. Based on these two keywords, you can perform other searches to find more relevant keywords. Filter the results based on relevancy or volume.

Since we’ve talked about context, then it’s essential to collect as many keywords as possible and select a topic in the second step. When we get to the onpage optimization part, you’ll need focus keywords. Don’t end up with just one keyword, look for a second keyword, similar to the first one.

Since you want to tell the world about your new cronut, there are multiple ways to do so. But first, you need to understand the search intent of your visitor. For that, you’ll have to look into Ranking Analysis. For each type of query, you can see one of the following types of search intent: informational, navigational or transactional. Based on your keyword search, you’ll have to write similar content: informational, navigational or transactional.

It is very important to decide on the keyword before writing the content, to deliver the type of content asked for and needed by the users.

If you go with the navigational type of keyword, then search for the keyword and see the volume and who your competitors are. If you go with the first type of content – informational, then check to see what other people are searching for.

5.1.2 What Type of Content Do People Search in Google?

Before actually starting to so SEO writing, your first step is to understand what type of content users want and Google encourages you to write. SEO and content go hand in hand.Usually, users search for something on search engines because they have a desire, and want to find answers and information.

Finding the reason behind it requires deeper SEO analysis and Google is using context to show better search intent results. And your job is to create the right type of content for your users and for Google to rank it.

We can agree that on a larger scale, there are three types of content:

TOFU content delivers informational content
MOFU content delivers transactional content
BOFU content delivers navigational content

In the screenshot below, you can see what each of these acronyms mean.

What is top of funnel content (TOFU)?

Top of the funnel content is that type of content that offers information and tries to teach the visitors, answers common questions or pain points. At this stage, you don’t try to sell to the visitor because you might risk losing them. At all costs, avoid commercial content for this audience. TOFU content is used mainly for attracting new prospects and build awareness.

What is middle of funnel content (MOFU)?

Middle of the funnel content lays between quality content that keeps the users informed and their understanding and need of your services or products. It is a key piece in your content marketing strategy. You can deliver MOFU content through case studies, personalized white paper that includes your business solutions, product reviews and best practices, discounts, webinars, events, surveys and so on.

What is bottom of funnel content (BOFU)?

Bottom of the funnel content is at the purchase level, where you have brand loyalty and users see in you their loved brand. It comes after TOFU content and MOFU content as validation for delivering valuable content that responded to your clients’ needs. It is the type of content where you nurture and convert your lead magnets into customers. With the right data, you can increase your conversion rate. BOFU content can have different forms, such as live demos, customer stories and personal reviews from clients, comparison products, new product or features launch and so on.

Your audience can be divided into all three stages of the buying funnel: top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU) and bottom of funnel (BOFU). For each stage, there are specific triggers that pull the visitor down the funnel. And for that, you need to create content that will convert them.

Source: www.aweber.com

The perfect content needs to deliver information based on the stage of the content marketing funnel where your audience is. For that, you need to know what type of content works best for all those three stages.

5.1.3 Find (Evergreen) Content Topics That Pass the Test of Time

The second step in the research phase is finding topics that keep pulling people to your website. Usually, the articles that are evergreen have information that doesn’t alter in time. It is the type of content that solves a problem a lot of people is struggling with.

In the example above, I was talking about cronuts. For some, it might be an old story, but for others a new discovery. It is unique comparing to other types of deserts; it has two things into one. That type of product/topic might be what makes it last. When it first appeared in NYE, people stood in line for this hybrid. Nobody knew how it tasted, but everybody was intrigued. So the mystery draws attention and uniqueness keeps it alive. Word of mouth was a good trigger. The lesson here is that you need a topic that will engage the community.

You can draw attention to a dull product from a boring niche. You just need a creative idea.

There really is no such thing as a boring subject. Just boring, unimaginative writers.
	BEN HURT

You can create a recipe with steps and tips because, according to the research, there were lots of people who want to find out how to make a cronut. The basic recipe won’t change, but there will be variations to it. So people will go to basic before trying something new for the first time.

There are some other tricks you could use to take advantage of content immortality:

appeal to the historical evolution of a certain product/topic/service and so on;
create how-to guides or helpful documents;
make a list of frequently asked questions;
share best practices;
write strategies;
elaborate case studies, studies results and examples;
best of niche blogs, influencers, experts – for outreach;
explain the history of your business or your success story;
create correlations with other industries, find inspiring ideas.

I got my inspiration after I read an interesting blog post on the furniture store Furniture of Dalton’s blog, entitled Sofa Story: A Brief History of Ten Iconic Forms. And after reading it, I thought that article might be a very good example of how content evolved. And the Sofa Story can be correlated to content evolution, with a more visual effect.

In the early days, sofas were hard, harsh supports made out of stone, wood, steel and lots of other material without any cushion. Over time, they gained popularity, and some types of sofas started to become a little too tawdry, with lots of cushions until they made their way to a more contemporary soft seating in a range of styles.

Roman sofa made of Terracotta (form the second half 4th BC) displayed at Louvre

Grecian couch (from 1825) displayed at High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Modern sofa you can find in stores nowadays

If we were to compare it to content, it pretty easy to see the similarities; content started small, then there was the keyword stuffing era, and afterward, it got more accurate and harmonious.

You’ll have to study the competition and see what their focus is, to outrank them. Competition might be very high in some niches. The Keyword Explorer is here to guide you. For a specific query, the ones that we’ve discovered above, we can see the type of query we pursue – and easily get more insights on the user intent.

In our example, we have an informational query. Looking at the competitors, we can see what SEO pages are ranking. Skimming through the first ten pages, we find lots of cooking blogs, a video tutorial for a magazine (that ranks twice – once with the video from Youtube, and secondly with the article published on-site).

In this case, we see what our competitors are and get inspired by them. Since you are a business, you can write your pieces of content using more unconventional methods. Remember how important visuals are in this industry. Numbered, highlighted or bulleted steps make the recipe appear simpler and easier to make.

5.1.4 Double-Check for Duplicate Content on Your Site

Even though there’s no duplicate content penalty caused by content duplicate issues, it is quite damaging for your site. If Google finds duplicate content, it might not feature your piece of content in the search results. Google throws your content into something often called Google Omitted Results.

If you SPAM the web all the time, it might even consider not indexing your site anymore. And since nobody would want that, learn how to avoid having duplicate content on your site.

As a general rule of thumb, Google tries to display only 1 version of the same content.

Unfortunately, Google Search Console no longer allows you to see your duplicate content issues. Some time ago, this was possible, but Google “let go” of this old feature.

One way to detect duplicate content is to use the cognitiveSEO Site Audit Tool. The tool has a special section for that, where it automatically identifies any duplicate content issues. Therefore, you can quickly take a look at your duplicate pages, duplicate titles, descriptions, etc. More than that, the tool has a section that identifies near-duplicate pages and tells you the level of similarity between them.

5.2 Make a Summary List with All the Information Gathered

Once you’ve collected your focus keywords and the words and phrases recommended by the tool for your SEO article, you can make a list. A simple document is enough. My method is pretty simple and you can use it in your own writing process.

First, I write a topic or title (that will be modified when I finish the article).
Then, I add my focus keywords.
I have a section named ideas or a structure of the article, where I use bullet points for all sorts of information that I want to discuss. Here you can add all the ideas that you have and that you’ve discovered by looking at your competitors because our goal is to create the best piece of content there is out there. Use quotes with the source attached, save URLs, images and more.
Conclusion/final note – left in blank. This will be added only after I finish the article and I can sum up a final idea based on my findings.

Now you can start working on crafting the content template for your article. Would you follow a basic look or try to make it more attractive?

5.3. Craft a Content Template Having User Experience in Mind

Every article that you write needs to have a creative content template, a natural flow. If we go further with our example, the web content needs clean visuals – images, videos, gifs, and a very important step is to create a cover photo that approaches and has the title written on it. It is easier to share it on Facebook, Pinterest and more. If you can, create a longer picture – similar to an infographic picturing the final look of the desert, if we follow our example, and then the ingredients and steps you have to perform.

Make it simple and easy to follow. Here’s an example:

The way you structure your article is synced with the design of the website. That means the design of your website can make it easier or not to perform some magic tricks with your content. If you’re using an open-source content management system and not a customizable HTML website, such as WordPress, then it is easier to implement a layout.

Remember that Google likes bullets, numbers, structured data and very straightforward answers. This will help you win Google’s answer boxes as well, and you’ll get to be ranked on position zero on Google.

The way information is displayed has high importance. For a recipe, you need to have the first section with ingredients that need to be separated from the main body of the article. And visuals have a higher significance. Below you can see a good example you could inspire from.

Source: lifeloveandsugar.com

The trick of this page is that Print button which makes it easier for people to have it in physical format. Somebody really knows the audience and their behavior. When you cook, you make a lot of mess and a printed format of the recipe is a very good way to make the content more useful. Lindsay, the blogger of this website, got an extra point for this little feature because her content breaks the virtual space. UX is well applied to this recipe page.

User experience – the holy light that brightens the page and triggers the appreciation of the user. Depending on the type of content, there are some things you shouldn’t miss in order to keep the user and don’t scare them. Beside site speed and optimized images, you should also have sharing buttons (if possible for images have the Pin icon – if visuals have high importance, like in our example for pastries, desserts, and everything related to cooking, in general).

Some other elements that you should keep in mind are:

adaptable screen resolution;
simple font with reasonable size and line spacing;
separate sections of images and text, not overlapping content without white space;
user location integration for local personalization;

There’s an explanatory image of what UX means, created by Stephen P. Anderson, an internationally recognized speaker.

UX also means knowing your user and their behavior, so you can anticipate and give more freedom to use and read your content. Just like the example above, the print button is a great integration for recipe pages.

5.4 Include Tags in Title and Body

In SEO writing, besides content, the title also matters. And for that, there are lots of studies to back up.

Adding the keyword closer to the beginning of the title will give you high advantages. Firstly, because you can increase your click-through rate, as the user would like to click on titles that contain what they are looking for online. Secondly, this way you can avoid that the title to be changed by Google and have a different title shown in SERP. Google does this now. Depending on the search made by the user and what is found relevant on your page, the search result for your webpage as you know it can be altered by Google and you can get a different title and meta description.

Google is smart to understand what your page is about, but it is important you give it some hints.

If you offer good hints, then it will figure it out easier and reward your webpage with better SEO rankings.

The second thing to mention on this topic is the effect of keywords in the title. In one of our researches, we could see if adding the keyword in the title influence rankings. By evaluating titles analyzed in the research, we used 3 levels of similarity (low, medium and high) to spark some light into the discovery and extract data from the first 20 search engine ranking positions.

If we take a look at the chart results, we can’t really talk about a high correlation since the differences are pretty subtle. But we can surely get out some insights. For example, mainly the instances with a high similarity can be found for 1st ranking website. The red line is slightly bigger than the rest of the rankings. Moreover, there’s an overall decreasing trend form the 1st position until the 20th position. Which can mean only one thing:

Adding the keyword in the title can make a clear difference between ranking 1st or 2nd.

Another good intake is to try optimizing the title for multiple keywords, if possible. But don’t include keywords just for the sake of it.

Since we are talking about writing for SEO, you need to include tags to let search engines know how your piece is structured. Title tag has a high influence on your piece of content because it will be displayed as the big blue link in search engine results:

Title tags and headlines are really important because that’s the first thing the user sees. To create compelling titles, follow headline formulas and check out your competition. If you look at your competition, you can see how you can create better headlines and standout.

You need to have a relevant, engaging and attractive title to make the user click on it and stay on page. Also, don’t make a promise from the title that you can’t fulfill in the body content. There might be cases when Google rewrites your title tag with information from meta description and page content if Google doesn’t like the one you added. Chances are this won’t be as good as the one you’ve created, so you must ensure that your own title tag is completely relevant, descriptive, has the right length and the focus keyword phrases included.

There are some copywriting techniques you could follow for generating clickthrough rates:

Create actionable titles, asking the user’s question: What’s in it for me?
Use the brand leverage. For well-known brands, it is in their best interest to use the brand name in the title.
Don’t use title case.
Create unique title tags.
The body tag shouldn’t miss. You need to highlight that part and explain to the search engines where the main part of your content is. Where other tags are incorporated, such as heading tags (H1, H2, H3, ..H6), image alt descriptions. There are some other HTML elements that you should integrate for better optimization: URLs and meta descriptions.

5.5 Write In-Depth and Relevant Pieces of Content

Now that you know what type of content you should write, it’s time to actually start writing for SEO and most importantly for your users’ needs.

Google likes in-depth and relevant content.

Content creation is very important, as you already know. The key here is to always add high-quality content on your website. This will improve dwell time by keeping your visitors engaged.

Studies say longer posts are more often associated with better ranks. In one of our researches, it turned out that the top-ranking articles have around 2000 words.

Below you can see the results for the blog posts that have 1001-5000 number of words, amongst other categories.

As you can see the number of ranks decreases when the positions drop. The first 5 positions can be set apart from the rest of the pages. It seems that overall a higher number of words are correlated with higher ranks. That is suggested not only by the chart but also by the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, which indicates a very strong negative correlation (-0.9). The negative correlation means that, in general, longer posts are more often associated with better ranks.

5.6 Animate Your Text by Adding Images, Audio, Video Content

Video content can boost your content and increase your conversion rates. If we follow our previous example regarding cronuts, for the query “cronuts with puff pastry,” we have a website that ranks first with the video and then with a webpage where the video was embedded. If you take a look at the print screen below, you can see it ranks in Google both on the first (for video content) and eleventh positions.

SEO fact: Videos have a 41% higher click through rate than text.

In this case, the video tutorial can push the webpage higher in search engine rankings. Visual content appeals to emotion, creates intimacy, and engages the visitors. A Blue Corona study states that:

80% of consumers believe demonstration videos are helpful when making purchases.

If you decide to add video content to your webpage, my recommendation would be to use Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo to upload the video and then embed it into your page. This way, you’ll have it on two supports that can bring twice as many visitors.

5.7 Make Use of the Power of Internal Linking

Internal links provide extra value for a webpage and it is a powerful SEO copywriting tip. Here are the two main advantages:

Internal linking helps search engines understand your content.
It helps the users stay longer on the website and navigate to the topics of interest.

The best way to use internal links is when you are writing about something and want to bring extra explanations, and link to a page where you previously talked about that. For example, now, as I am explaining the internal linking power, I’ve linked to a page where we previously tackled the topic more in-depth.

A bad internal linking is a sign of bad architecture and you might risk misleading and confusing the user. Make sure you point to valuable, live and accurate pages and link to the proper anchor texts.

The process isn’t so hard. You should know the website pretty well, or at least search to find the proper article. And the more internal links you have, the more value Google will give it. You all know the saying, too much of anything isn’t good for anyone; it applies in this situation as well. Make sure you don’t overuse the method because too many links will drop the value on the page. There’s a limitation of 10-15 links for every 1,000 words written.

5.8 Make Your Content Mobile Friendly

It wasn’t long ago when Google rolled out the Mobile-first index. At that moment, things took a different turn. Basically, Google might show different search engine results on desktop compared to mobile. Now, Google’s system for crawling, indexing, and ranking for the desktop version of the website is different than Google’s system for those processes on mobile. Websites are bound to make the shift to a more mobile-focused index.

Google mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. Content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet collected this way or desktop content. Moreover, if you only have desktop content, you will continue to be represented in our index.
	Google

When talking about mobile-friendliness, here are some ways to rank in mobile search results:

Create a responsive website and dynamic serving website;
Serve structured data for the desktop and mobile version;
Use the robots.txt testing tool to verify the mobile site;
Add your mobile site in Search Console;
Verify the crawl rate.

Source: developers.google.com

Mobile accounts for half of all global web pages served and we are on an ascending evolution regarding mobile searches. According to Statista, in 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones, up from 50.3 percent in the previous year. Even if the mobile searches have experienced continuous growth, that doesn’t mean the desktop search decreased, but rather more people are using multiples devices to different actions and want to be always informed.

As of February 2017, mobile accounts for 65.1 percent of all web traffic in Asia and for 59.5 percent of all web traffic in Africa.

5.9 Create Google Friendly URLs

Some time ago, we performed an in-depth study on 34k Keywords to study the influence of titles and URLs in SERP. When we analyzed the URLs length to see which is the best format correlated with higher rankings, we saw that the more concise the URLs, the greater the chance to have higher rankings. Below you can see the chart with the extracted data:

As long as the title length is between 50-60 characters and the URL length is between 90-105, you’re safe. Having a concise URL length carries more benefits than having a long and not so easy to read or remember URL. If the URL and title contain the focus keyword, that is surely an advantage. But we’ll discuss this further on.

Of course, having a concise URL is helpful in all sorts of ways beyond the search results hierarchy. For instance, even if most casual users don’t bother remembering full URLs nowadays, it can still count as an advantage if you make it easy on the brain. Think about EMDs, for instance: instinctively, you are more likely to go with the URL that most resembles your thought process (“I need to find an electrical bicycle…. oh, looks: a site named just that”). The extra effort you can put into it is making sure that not only the homepage, but pretty much any page on your website has its URL fit in a neat number of characters (that, if too large to be easily remembered, can at least be short enough to be easily recognized).

5.10 Spread the Word

Content amplification is a powerful method to reach a wider audience and multiply your links by hundreds. Amplifying your content should be mandatory if you want people to know about it and increase your website traffic.

After you finish writing your article, the process shouldn’t stop. You have to create awareness around it and push it to other people who might be interested. We are not talking about traditional social media marketing or emailing. That’s not amplification. You can look at the amplification process as a way to strengthen the signals of your post.

Reach new audiences through native advertising;
Use storytelling to receive a social boost;
Build a solid community around your brand;
Use content syndication on Medium or similar websites to build your blog audience;
Collaborate with influencers to earn links;
Post on StumbleUpon and absorb targeted traffic;
Integrate promotion messages or buttons on your webpage.

6. How Important Is It to Update Content on My Website?

Updating existing content is highly important for Google due to its algorithm updates.

It’s 2019 and Google has a lot of Freshness Updates that focuses on providing the user with “fresher, more recent search results”. 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.

SEO writing does’t mean just publishing new content, but also updating existing content. Updating a piece of content and adding new information can expand the number of keywords that page is targeting and thus result in more traffic. If you have a longer piece of content, you can try optimizing for multiple keywords and expand your traffic, your audience.

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

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

There are some things that will impact your rankings and they’re closely related to freshness:

CTR, which is a ranking factor.
Posting new content frequently might help you expand your search visibility by targeting new keywords.
The performance of your site’s domain, which is dictated by the number of unique domains that link to your website and by their quality.

7. Should I Delete Underperforming Content from My Site?

Mainly, you could delete content that is performing badly. There are lots of reasons why a piece of content doesn’t perform well. Maybe it is low quality or maybe you’ve applied some black hat strategies for it. Maybe you just tackled a topic that is of no interest for the user or, on the contrary, it is a highly competitive niche and you don’t have that 10x content and therefore, you can’t attract the user.

On the other side, deleting content might be tricky because you don’t know if you’ll ever need that content again or weather it will be relevant at some point. A better option would be to deindex it by adding a rel=“noindex” to those pages. You removed them from SERP, but you can still see them in the admin page. Deindexing is safer and easier. Or you can “noindex, follow” which will tell the robot to noindex, but the user can still access if they know the link through the follow tag.

Before deciding and taking such a drastic measure, you’ll have to perform a content audit, see how your content ranks, see if the information is still valuable and not outdated. We did a major clean-up on the cognitiveSEO blog by following the next content strategy:

We identified low-performance articles by looking mainly at the ranking position, bounce rate, engagement, search traffic.
We decided on the content that needs to be pruned: we had to choose if we leave it as it is, redirect or do a quality review (deindex or delete).
The quality review also included link building for some articles, re-optimization for getting the best content there is for that topic on the web and improving the content performance score.

We even talked with lots of SEO experts that experience content pruning and most of them saw a high increase in organic traffic after they cleaned their website. You can check the case studies and our content pruning story here.

Below you can see the search visibility for the cognitiveSEO website after the content pruning strategy. Of course, meanwhile we kept on writing well optimized articles for both users and search engines, therefore there is not a direct correlation between the growth and content pruning, but most likely, it helped.

There are 3 actions you can take, based on the type of content you have:

Deindex content that performs poorly and yet serves a purpose to your users. Therefore, it won’t show up in search results, yet users will still be able to access it.
Delete content that brings no valuable information to the user and is performing badly.
Redirect the URL if you decide to delete specific pages or repurpose them. It is crucial to redirect the traffic and users to relevant and valuable content, so you don’t have broken pages and lose a lot of links. In this manner, you can repurpose the deleted pages.

To answer the question: Should I delete underperforming content from my site? A better answer would be: repurpose it instead of deleting it. Repurposing content is a highly appreciated white hat strategy. Adding fresh content to make it the best there is, re-optimizing the content for multiple keywords might help your website’s rankings and increase its value.

We’ve compressed our guideline by talking about the crucial elements that cannot miss from your SEO writing process in 2020 and beyond. Keep in mind some of the SEO friendly content pillars like contextuality, mobile-friendliness, HTML tags, evergreen roots, user experience principles, video correlation. Writing for search engine optimization purposes can be difficult and can become a hard-handed job. Yet, you can save any limping piece of content you might have with the strategies explained above. Every well-invested action will bring you results so best of luck in writing high-performing pieces of content. While it’s true that 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.

The post SEO Writing for Copywriters → The Ultimate Guide appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

HTTP to HTTPS Migration Guide | Do SSL Certificates Affect SEO?

Adrian Cojocariu — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 09:58:31 +0000

Not long ago, Google has released version 68 of the Chrome Web Browser. In this version, websites that don’t run on HTTPS will be marked as Not Secure. This might lead to the following question: does Google value websites with SSL certificates more? Will they rank better? Is it worth to make the switch?

In this article (Updated 2020) you’ll find out whether SSL certificates matter for SEO or not. You’ll also learn exactly how to migrate your website from HTTP to HTTPS without suffering any ranking drops. Yes, you heard that right. If you’re not careful, you can mess up your search engine rankings!

Warning: Switching a website from HTTP to HTTPS the wrong way can heavily mess up your search rankings! There are many things that must be taken into consideration. A simple backup of the website will not help! That’s because you’re playing with the URLs which Google has already indexed. Changing those without a proper 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS on the entire website will cause Google to think the old, indexed URLs have vanished. The HTTP to HTTPS migration guide at the end of the article will help, but if you’re not sure what you’re doing, please contact an SEO professional who can assist you with the migration. We can not be held responsible if things go wrong!

SSL Certificates, HTTPS & Their Importance
How Does HTTPS Affect SEO?
How to Switch from HTTP to HTTPS

SSL Certificates, HTTPS & Their Importance

I’ll try to keep it short. Cryptography isn’t something easy to digest, but without having a general idea of how it works and what problems it solves, we can’t really understand its importance. If you have any specific questions, ask them in the comments section and I’ll do my best to reply.

What is HTTPS?

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (it’s actually Hypertext Transfer Protocol, but that should be only HTP, right?). What you need to know is that it’s a protocol that web servers, data centers and browsers use to transfer information across the web.

The S at the ending of HTTPS just stands for Secure.

The security comes through the use of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Sometimes, it might also be referred to as TLS (Transport Layer Security). It’s a method of securing the data which need to be transported.

The method through which the data are secured is called Cryptography. By encrypting a message, only the ones that know the decryption key will be able to read it. For example, if we both decided upfront that A = 1, B = 2, C =3 and so on, I could send you the message 8 5 12 12 15 and you would read it as Hello. This is called symmetric cryptography.

The issue with symmetric cryptography is the fact that both parties must know the encryption / decryption key upfront in order to properly communicate, so at least one secret meeting must be arranged prior to messaging. Pretty difficult to do when you want to chat with someone across the Globe.

So, to overcome this issue, we can use asymmetric cryptography. This type of cryptography uses 2 keys. A private one and a public one. They can both decipher each other. This means that any message encrypted with the public key can be read using the private key and vice versa.

If I want to make sure nobody publishes information under my name, I can use asymmetric cryptography. I generate both a private key and a public key. The public key I send out for everyone to know. If I publish something online and encrypt it with my private key, you could only decipher it with my public key. This way people will know the work is original. If you want to send me a private message, then you would just have to encrypt it using the public key. Only I will be able to read it.

This comes in handy in these modern days when communication happens over very big distances. People can now share information securely without both parties needing to know each other’s keys.

What is SSL & What are SSL Certificates?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. Let’s say it’s related to the S in HTTPS. However, we usually hear about SSL in relation to Certificates. So what are SSL Certificates?

Well, SSL certificates are only used to confirm the identity of a website. These certificates are emitted and signed by certificate authorities with their private keys. Before getting a certificate from them, you must somehow confirm your identity and prove you are the organization and website owner.

I could emit a public key out there saying that I’m Adrian, but how would you actually know it’s me? That’s why we have Secure Sockets Layer Certificates.

There are different types of SSL Certificates, but the most common ones are Domain Verified Certificates. These certificates can even be obtained for free these days (keep reading and I’ll tell you how). The verification process is pretty simple and very similar to the Google Search Console one. You upload an HTML file to your server, proving you’re the entity.

Of course, when you want to prove you’re a person or an entire company, you need to provide some sort of proof. For this, there are other types of SSL certificates, such as Organization Validated (OV) or Extended Validation (EV) certificates. They are more expensive and require further verification, such as company documents or IDs. The verification process might take a while. There are all sorts of SSL brands too, such as RapidSSL, Symantec, GeoTrust or Comodo SSL Certificate.

Before the new Chrome updates (in which they stopped displaying HTTP and HTTPS as well as the WWW prefix), certificates with Extended Validation used to look like this:

source: DigiCert

However, today you’ll have to click the lock icon to see if a website has a regular SSL Certificate or an entity validated one.

Considering the above mentioned, there isn’t much of a difference between free, regular SSL certificates and premium ones, at least not anymore. Very few users will check the certificate, if any (as long as the lock is green). However, if your business relies on security and trust, then you should consider purchasing a premium SSL Certificate. This will ensure no errors will happen.

Web Browsers come packed up with a bunch of public keys from certificate authorities. They check if the certificates have been signed with the proper private keys, therefore confirming that their identity has been verified by a trusted authority and not by some random certificate generator. If the certificate is expired or not valid, a red warning will show up.

This will definitely turn the user down, so make sure that if you run through HTTPS, your certificate is valid and working properly!

It’s better to run through HTTP than to run through HTTPS with an expired SSL certificate!

After the identity of the website has been confirmed by the browser, the web server and the client then establish a secure communication channel. Asymmetric cryptography is used to send a symmetric key which only the server and the client know. Then, the communication channel is secure and any attempt to read the information which is passed between the server and client will require the decryption key.

So why is this so important? Why are people so crazy about HTTPS?

Well, when your users browse your website, they often send information, through contact forms for example. Without encryption, that information can be intercepted by what people call “Man in the middle.” Although contact forms only contain names and e-mails, things get worse when we’re talking credit card information or bank accounts and passwords.

By using an SSL Certificate, webmasters can improve the security of their websites and better protect their users’ information.

How Does HTTPS Affect SEO?

Now that we better understand what HTTP is, we can take a glimpse at its importance. There are multiple ways in which SSL Certificates and HTTPS can impact search engine optimization and Google rankings. Some of them are strictly algorithmic, while others can be less direct, but very meaningful as well. Let’s start with what we know for sure:

HTTPS as a ranking factor

First, you have to know that, theoretically, SSL Certificates do affect SEO. This is actually an official Google statement from 2014. They are considered a ranking factor, out wide in the open.

Why? Well, there are many reasons, but the main one is definitely security. If Google provides its users with better security, it provides better value and the users will be pleased. The fact that internet credit card fraud is on the rise definitely pushed Google into this direction.

Google has tested its search results with HTTPS as a ranking signal and has seen positive feedback. This could also mean that webmasters that take security seriously might generally present better websites. They care about the users.

Although this impact is fairly small, affecting less than 1% of websites, many webmasters have adopted HTTPS. Not long ago, less than 10% of websites were secured with an SSL certificate. Now, more than half of all websites are probably secure.

Why didn’t Google do this earlier? Well, to be honest, I think it’s because it would’ve been a little bit unfair. Back in the day, SSL Certificates were not so easy to obtain and some of them were quite expensive. Today, however, almost anyone can secure their website with a free one. This means that money won’t really have a say in this.

Quick Tip: Basic SSL Certificates can be obtained for free. If you’re just starting out, don’t spend unnecessary money. Keep reading to find out how to get one!

This HTTPS SSL Certificates update is one of the weaker ranking signals in Google’s algorithm. Let’s say that… adding HTTPS won’t get you an SEO ranking boost, but not adding it might affect your Google rankings over time.

Why?

Well, it’s because internet users will trust it less and they will leave it quicker. Your conversions will drop. These are all ranking signals that the site isn’t doing well, which Google translates into “I should rank this unsecure site lower and reward a website with a secure connection instead.”

The truth is that a modern, dynamic website can’t work well without HTTPS.

User’s trust

Another way in which SSL Certificates could affect SEO is related to the user experience. Some internet users might have no clue what’s happening, but others prefer to browse websites that are secure. This is where an Extended Validation SSL might come in handy. Here’s the difference between a regular, Domain Validated SSL Certificate and a more expensive Extended Validation SSL Certificate.

Regular Domain Validated SSL Certificate (easily obtained for free)

Extended Validation SSL Certificate (more expensive)

Starting with Chrome Version 68 (24th July 2018), the browser now shows the warning Not Secure when you access a website through HTTP. Users will now definitely ask themselves more questions when seeing that message instead of just the Information icon.

Screenshot from the Chromium Blog

Who knows, in the future you’ll probably going to see a red warning, just like the one with invalid SSL certificates. That day has not come yet, but it’s probably not far!

GDPR issues

It’s obvious that people are more and more interested in the safety and privacy of their personal information, especially when it comes to websites. Just imagine a breach into Facebook’s servers! You would know EVERYTHING about EVERYONE. Now I know, Facebook is already selling that data to whoever pays good, and you’ve accepted all the terms at signup. But when it comes to security, websites like Facebook are pretty solid.

Still, maybe a picture of what you’ve eaten this morning isn’t so concerning if it gets hijacked and stolen, but your credit card information when you’re making payments on ecommerce websites is!

As of May 25th 2018, GDPR has had a huge impact on websites. GDPR specifies that any personal data should be handled securely. This forces webmasters that have even the smallest contact form to switch their website from HTTP to HTTPS to ensure the security of their users’ personal data.

So, not only can it benefit your SEO rankings if you switch to HTTPS, but it might also get you a fat fine if you don’t. Although usually you will see some ranking boosts, if you mess up your redirects and don’t implement HTTPS correctly, your entire site can drop from the search engine results. Make sure you know what you’re doing before you start.

Does HTTPS Affect Website Performance?

Ok, now we know how HTTPS affects websites from a search results perspective. But how does it affect a website technically? Will it affect its performance? Will the site be slower?

Well… theoretically… yes. You can expect a delay of about 0.1 seconds compared to regular, unsecured HTTP requests. However, it really depends on your server’s performance. Most servers today are fast enough to handle SSL Certificates and HTTPS. You won’t notice the difference.

Using services such as CloudFlare (3rd Party SSL implementation) will probably result in a slower PageSpeed Insights score, but it can be fixed with plugins such as WP Rocket.

However, the small hit in loading time and virtual points generated by some tool is far from outweighing the benefits of having a secure site connection.

How to Switch from HTTP to HTTPS

Switching from HTTP to HTTPS can be a hassle, especially if you’re not running on a popular CMS, like WordPress. However, you can take a look at the following guide to make sure you don’t make some of the biggest mistakes.

Acquire & Install an SSL Certificate

The first step is to acquire an SSL Certificate and install it. You might already have one, even if your website isn’t already running on it. Some hosting providers also offer free SSL Certificates. To find out, just go to https://yourdomain.com instead of the regular HTTP. If you see a red warning, you probably don’t have one (or it has expired). Then, just click the Information icon:

If the popup says Certificate: Valid then you have an SSL Certificate. Click it to see more details about it, such as for how long it is valid. If you don’t see the word Certificate there, then you probably don’t have one.

You can get an SSL Certificate anywhere. Just search Google for SSL Certificate and you’ll find plenty of providers. Search for the best deal and also look at user reviews. You should also be able to purchase certificates directly via the cPanel on your server, if you’re looking for an EV Certificate, for instance.

However, for most people, a Free SSL Certificate is most likely the best way to go. A really easy way to do that is by using CloudFlare. Instead of using your server, CloudFlare uses its own servers to secure your connection.

To activate CloudFlare, you’ll have to create an account and register a website. Setup is usually automatic, but they have step by step instructions as well. After that you’ll have to login to your Domain Registrar and add CloudFlare’s nameservers instead of your server’s.

This way, the traffic will first pass through CloudFlare’s firewalls, which will secure the connection and will ensure hackers stay out.

One downside (at least for the free version) is that when their servers are under heavy load, your site might load slower. You can fix this with WP Rocket, though. You have a special section for CloudFlare settings there. I’ve been using it on websites for years, and I can say the free version is awesome and the websites are fast.

If CloudFlare isn’t the thing for you, you can also try Comodo or Let’s Encrypt via Zero SSL. We’ll go with the Zero SSL example.

First you’ll need a signing request from your server’s cPanel. If you don’t know how to get one, ask your hosting provider. You’ll find that under the SSL section. Just add the details for your website and a request will be generated. You can download it as a file.

Then you have to upload it to Zero SSL. The website provides step by step instructions.

You’ll have to provide some sort of verification, most of the time by uploading a file on your web servers (just like with Google Analytics or Google Search Console). They usually provide step by step guides on how to verify your identity. There’s more than one method, so pick the one that’s easiest for you.

Once you get the certificates, you’ll have to install them in your cPanel in the SSL Certificates section (Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificates). The process is pretty simple. Just scroll down and add the certificate.

After installing the certificate, you should be able to access your website via HTTPS.

Add HTTPS Version to Search Console

The next step is to go to your Google Search Console and add the HTTPS version of your website. You can also set the preferred version, but I highly recommend that you let Google choose for now and only do this after you’ve successfully implemented the HTTPS.

You should also make sure that the Google Analytics or any other web analytics software you’re using are also able to track HTTPS from now on.

Set up 301 redirects

Warning: This is the crucial step. If you don’t redirect properly, your SEO rankings will drop! Why? Because Google will have to deindex the old HTTP site and index the HTTPS one, without having any idea that they’re actually connected. Also, users that land on HTTP versions (from old backlinks for example) will never get to see the HTTPS version.

To redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, you can either use a plugin or do it via the server. If you’re running on Apache Web Server, you can set the redirects via the .htaccess file. However, it’s a little technical and, depending on other functionalities, conflicts may occur.

If you’re running on WordPress, you’re lucky! You can use the Really Simple SSL plugin and it will do everything for you (set up 301s, change main domain to HTTPS and change all the links from the database to HTTPS).

Really Simple SSL WP Plugin

So make sure that all HTTP versions will properly redirect to their HTTPS counterparts. Take into account www, non-www, slashed vs non-slashed and parameters.

Here you should also change the main URL of your website to HTTPS. This is usually done in some sort of configuration file. In WordPress, it can be changed in the General Settings area. The Really Simple SSL plugin will do this for you, anyway.

Note that some platforms might not fix all the URLs. It is mandatory that each URL properly 301 redirects to its new HTTPS counterpart. So http://www.domain.com becomes https://www.domain.com and http://www.domain.com/page-1 becomes https://www.domain.com/page-1.

You should make sure that all other variants of your website redirect to a single one, with HTTPS, be it WWW or non-WWW. This is called a Preferred Domain Version. It’s best if the redirects don’t happen in chain. So instead of having http://domain.com > http://www.domain.com > https://www.domain.com it should be http://domain.com > https://www.domain.com and http://www.domain.com > https://www.domain.com.

You can check that quickly with the CognitiveSEO Site Audit. Go do Indexability, then Preferred Domain.

Change All Internal Links

Even if you change your main URL to HTTPS, some static content might stay unsecured. You have to make sure you fix this, otherwise some issues may occur.

Canonical Tags: Canonical tags are often forgotten. If you’re running through HTTPS and your canonical tag points to the HTTP version, Google will think that it has to index HTTP. The problem is that if HTTP 301 redirects to HTTPS then Google will get into a loop and it won’t be very pleased.

To find out if your canonical tags are properly set up to HTTPS, press CTRL + U while on your website in Google Chrome to view the site’s source, then search for canonical with CTRL + F.

Hreflang: Same thing as with canonical tags, the hreflang tags should point to the correct HTTPS counterpart, even though 301 redirects are in place. Make sure you check that in the source of the site.

Internal links: If don’t change the links from HTTP to HTTPS, you’ll get a mixed content warning (we’ll discuss this in more detail below).

Most of the times, this won’t happen when you’re using a popular Content Management System, but it can often happen on custom platforms and the effects can be devastating. Make sure everything is in order.

Other things that should be taken into account are XML sitemaps, external tools and e-mail systems (that might’ve run through unsecured channels).

Fix Mixed Content Issues

Many times, after implementing SSL on your website, you will get an exclamation mark instead of a green lock, or might even get the red lock. This error is caused by Mixed Content.

Mixed content actually means that some resources on your website load through HTTPS, but others load through HTTP. When you click the lock icon in the browsers, you should see a message as follow:

Your connection to www.xyz.xyz is encrypted with 256-bit encryption. However, this page includes other resources which are not secure. These resources can be viewed by others while in transit, and can be modified by an attacker to change the behavior of the page.

If you have mixed content, the green lock and secure message won’t appear, even if you have a valid SSL certificate installed.

Update: Starting from December 2019, Google will block mixed content pages, meaning they will show up as unsecure!

To fix this issue, you must identify the resources on your website that are loaded through HTTP and force them to load through HTTPS.

Evil SEO Cactus Mixing Some Content

There are multiple causes that can generate mixed content warnings:

Static links in pages:

Maybe you’ve written an article an linked to a page of yours through an absolute URL. Absolute URLs look like this http://www.cognitiveseo.com/pricing.php while relative ones are just /pricing.php. Relative URLs change automatically, but absolute ones don’t.

You might have also linked to an external site’s image. Since the resource loads through HTTP, it isn’t secured.

Unfortunately, these links won’t change unless you update them manually, as they might not be linked to the platform’s URL generation. In WordPress’ case for example, they don’t change.

You can always try a plugin that fixes mixed content such as SSL Insecure Content Fixer. However, they do not always work.

Another good way of trying to fix everything quick is to download your Database and edit it with a tool such as Notepad++. Then you can find and replace every HTTP instance with HTTPS (start with your own domain first and then expand to external ones).

Warning: Make sure to have a backup of your original database, before any replacing is done.

Mixed content from CSS files:

Sometimes, web design elements such as CSS files can also contain static resources (images) that load through HTTP. Those are a little harder to identify because they can’t be found within the source code of the page (unless the CSS is generated in-line).

Old themes often create this mixed content issue, due to the fact that once upon a time, using HTTP was fine.

A good way of identifying hidden mixed content is to use Google Chrome’s Inspect Tool. Hit CTRL + Shift + I on your keyboard (or hit right Click > Inspect) while browsing a page with mixed content issues. Then you have to go to the Network section. If you press F5, you’ll see all the resources loading.

There you can identify which resource is loaded through HTTP and causes an error. Under the Initiator column you can find the file that is responsible, such as the CSS file. Proceed to edit the CSS file from your server and replace HTTP with HTTPS. Note that if this fix isn’t patched into the Theme itself, updating your theme will overwrite the modified CSS file with the one with problems.

However, this method is time consuming and you won’t be able to analyze every page! You can use the CognitiveSEO Site Audit to speed up the process.

If you’re looking to quickly identify all the mixed content issues on your website you can always check out the CognitiveSEO Site Audit‘s Mixed Content section.

Once you fix things, make sure to recrawl the pages in the tool to see if you’ve missed anything.

Make Sure Everything Works Properly

Switching to HTTPS can often cause issues with plugins, APIs and other functions within the website. Make sure you browse your website properly for a couple of hours and test every segment of it. Access every page to see if it loads and test if the contact forms, online orders and filtering/search features are working properly.

You can also now set HTTP as your preferred version in Google Search Console. WWW vs. non-WWW is irrelevant, but non-WWW tends to be shorter, so there will be more space for the URL when it shows up in Google. However, if you’ve been running on WWW so far, it’s a good idea to keep the WWW even with HTTPS.

Resubmit Disavow File & Change Your Backlinks

Many forget that they have to resubmit the disavow files. If you have ever suffered from a negative SEO attack you must download the disavow file from the HTTP version in Google Search Console and upload it into the HTTPS version. Although the 301 redirects are in place, it’s really important not to forget this step!

A final step would be to change as many of your old backlinks as possible from HTTP to HTTPS. Even with the 301 redirects in place, a small percentage of the link equity might be lost. Start with your social media profiles and backlinks you know you can change for sure in very little time.

It’s not worth it to spend countless hours and e-mail everyone to switch your URL from HTTP to HTTPS, but if you have some way of managing it faster, it’s worth a shot. Gather a list of your contacts on social media and blast them a message asking them to replace the HTTP backlinks with the new HTTPS ones.

Conclusion

Merging from HTTP to HTTPS can help you improve your search rankings. We can’t really go as far as to say it boosts rankings, but even if it doesn’t have any effect on your website right away, you’ll definitely see an improvement over time thanks to a better user experience.

To be honest, the only downside of implementing HTTPS on your website is the fact that it’s a little bit of a tricky process. However, once you get over it and implement it correctly, nothing bad can happen. Your site is safer, your information is safer and your user’s information is safer and that peace of mind is priceless.

What’s your experience with HTTPS and SSL Certificates? Have you encountered problems when merging your domain from one version to another? Have your rankings increased/decreased? Which SSL Certificate provider are you using? I’m curious. Let’s talk about it in the comments section!

The post HTTP to HTTPS Migration Guide | Do SSL Certificates Affect SEO? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Is Google Blocking Your Site Due to Mixed Content? Identify & Fix Mixed Content Issues

Cornelia Cozmiuc — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 09:41:17 +0000

Google has recently announced that Chrome will block mixed content on web pages beginning December 2019. Starting with the Chrome 79 version, Google will gradually move to blocking all mixed content by default. Therefore, if your website has mixed content, it will be blocked and your users won’t be able to access it.

Everything from what mixed content is to how to identify/fix it can be found in the following lines.

The Google Security Team reports that Chrome users now spend more than 90% of their browsing time on HTTPS on both desktop and mobile. The plan to begin blocking mixed content is targeted at addressing insecure holes in SSL implementations of sites that have already made the switch to HTTPS. Here’s everything you need to know about it:

What Is Mixed Content?
Why Is Google Blocking Mixed Content?
How Do You Detect Mixed Content?
How Do You Fix Mixed Content Issue?
Does Mixed Content Affect SEO?

What Is Mixed Content?

Mixed content occurs when a secure web page (a page loaded through HTTPS) contains resources like scripts, videos, images, etc. that are served through an insecure protocol (HTTP).

As you probably guessed it from the name, it’s called mixed content because both HTTP and HTTPS contents are loaded to display the same page, and the initial request was secure over HTTPS.

In the following lines we’ll let you know why HTTPS is a must. You already know, but as repetition is the mother of learning, we want to highlight that that Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and is used for secure communication over a computer network.

The main motivation for HTTPS is the authentication of the website being accessed and the protection of the privacy and integrity of the exchanged data while in transit.

Therefore, managing security risks is the key. Furthermore, you need to know that in HTTPS the communication protocol is encrypted using Secure Sockets Layers (SSL). And, to better understand the concept of mixed content resources or insecure content and why the “s” from the HTTPS makes such a big difference, let’s briefly go through SSL certificates.

What Are SSL Certificates?

SSL certificates are only used to confirm the identity of a website. These certificates are emitted and signed by certificate authorities with their private keys. Before getting a certificate from them, you must somehow confirm your identity and prove that you are the organization and website owner. Web browsers come packed up with a bunch of public keys from certificate authorities. They check if the certificates have been signed with the proper private keys, therefore confirming that their identity has been verified by a trusted authority and not by some random certificate generator. If the certificate is expired or not valid, a red warning will show up. These warning messages will definitely turn the user down.

By using an SSL Certificate, webmasters can improve the security of their websites and better protect their users’ information.

You can protect unlimited subdomains of your base domain with cheap wildcard SSL Certificate. Taking one step further, you need to know that there are two types of mixed content: active and passive.

Active mixed content – the mixed active content is the type of content that is the most harmful. In this case, an attacker can take full control of your page or website and change anything about the page. They can steal passwords, login credentials, user cookies or redirect users to other sites, etc.

Passive mixed content – when it comes to passive content, an attacker can intercept an HTTP request (resources loading via http) for videos or images on your site and replace those images with whatever they want. They can also replace your product pictures or place ads for a totally different product.

Why Is Google Blocking Mixed Content?

Although Google confirmed in 2014 that it considers HTTPS a ranking factor, all the buzz started when Google released version 68 of the Chrome Web Browser in July 2018. In this version, websites that don’t run on HTTPS are marked as Not Secure.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the browser advises the user of that site not to disclose any passwords or credit cards.

The browser is advising potential customers not to perform any transaction on your site.

And that’s the last thing you want your user to see.

Yet, why mixing rum and cola makes a great cocktail but mixing HTTP and HTTPs is a big no-no?

There are many situations that can cause mixed content issues and many reasons why mixed content is harmful, lots of them highlighted by Google itself. Let’s focus on just a few important ones:

Mixed content degrades the security and user experience of your HTTPS site.

Whether you like Google’s rules or not, you have to agree with this one: web security is more important than ever. And offering your users the comfort of security is not just a whim but a must.

Imagine that you’re navigating to your bank’s website. If it’s an HTTPS connection, your browser authenticates the website, thus preventing an attacker from impersonating your bank and stealing your login credentials. Also, when transferring money using your bank’s website, this prevents an attacker from changing the destination account number while your request is in transit.

One of the big advantages of HTTPS is that it lets the browser check that it has opened the correct website and hasn’t been redirected to a malicious site.

Mixed content is confusing.

If a web page is using HTTPS, then all its resources should be pulled in via HTTPS as well. You’re somehow viewing a web page that’s both secure and not secure. It is like you bought a very good bicycle lock but you’re not using it every single time, just randomly, and at the end of the day you are surprised to see that your bike was stolen.

Let’s say that you’re on a secure web page and you stay assured that everything is OK as the webpage is on HTTPS. Yet, if that page has some insecure images (or other HTTP resources) and let’s say you’re on a public Wi-Fi network, you can get into lots of problems, from getting your keystrokes monitored to tracking cookies.

Mixed content weakens HTTPS.

You might have heard before about the man-in-the-middle attack (MITM). In computer security, a man-in-the-middle attack is a type of attack where the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communications between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other. One example is when the attacker makes independent connections with the victims and relays messages between them to make them believe they are talking directly to each other over a private connection, when in fact the entire conversation is controlled by the attacker. It’s like eavesdropping, just that the stakes are much higher than the latest gossip from the office.

Therefore, requesting subresources using the insecure HTTP protocol weakens the security of the entire page, as these requests are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

Running your site over HTTPS is not an option; it is a must. Not only is it more secure (everything is encrypted), but it also builds trust, is an SEO ranking factor, and provides more accurate referral data. Not to mention that the most important web browsers are blocking pages that are not considered secure.

These are just some of the many reasons why Google decided to block mixed content. This new update will break a big number of website and many, many businesses will lose big time.

Yet, there is hope: you can quickly detect if you have mixed content and you can also fix it. Keep on reading to find out how can you still make your site accessible to your users.

How Do You Detect Mixed Content?

The easiest possible way to see whether you have any mixed content error on your site is to run a Site Audit within cognitiveSEO. It is the easiest, safest and stress-free option you could take and it doesn’t imply any programming skills or developer guides to fix mixed content warnings. I mean, you find out if you have mixed content (+ many other issues ) on your site, with just a few clicks.

Just start an analysis of your site and the tool will automatically identify the mixed content issue. There is a section dedicated to this exact matter where you can see the not secure pages of any website and its insecure origins. No headaches, reliable and super simple to identify.

It couldn’t get much easier than this. Simply check the reported pages and start fixing them.

How Do You Fix Mixed Content Issue?

Once you find the insecure content, the resources being served over HTTP vs. HTTPS, you can start changing the URLs, by simply append HTTPS at the beginning.

Fixing the issue is often as simple as adding an “s” to links – http:// to https://.

Yet, before you do that, be sure that the HTTP resource is available over an HTTPS connection. To check this, simply copy – paste the HTTP URL into a new web browser, and change HTTP to HTTPS. If the resource (URL, image, video, etc.) is available over HTTPs, then you can start changing HTTP to HTTPS in your source code.

Mixed content is an issue that can be so easily identified and solved, but if ignored it can cause big problems, like your website being blocked by Google.

Once you solved the issue, go back to the Site Audit to make sure you didn’t miss any insecure content resource. The tool re-crawls your website periodically to spot any new changes, although you can always check particular issues only to see if they have been solved.

Does Mixed Content Affect SEO?

As we stated above, Google made it pretty clear that it values secure content and it considers it a ranking factor. It’s listed on their blog, out wide in the open.

The main reason is definitely security. If Google provides its users with better security, it provides better value and the users will be pleased. The fact that internet credit card fraud is on the rise definitely pushed Google into this direction.

Google has tested its results with HTTPS as a ranking signal and has seen positive results. It could also mean that webmasters who take security seriously might generally present better websites as they care about the users.

While there is no doubt that mixed content affects SEO (especially with the latest announcement from Google), before search engine optimization one has to think about user trust and user experience.

If you have mixed content, most of the modern browsers (like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc) will display warnings about this type of content to indicate to the user that the page contains insecure resources. Due to the mixed content warning and insecure resources loading, most likely the user will leave your site, will mark you as a deceiving site and will browse websites that offer similar services and are secure. All your digital marketing and content strategies efforts will go down the drain with chrome blocking your http content.

So, the answer is yes, mixed content certainly impacts SEO, but more than that, it impacts your users’ trust and that’s something you can’t afford to lose.

We know it’s unlikely but yet, if you haven’t done it already and you want to switch from HTTP to HTTPS, check out this article for everything you need to know about it.

The post Is Google Blocking Your Site Due to Mixed Content? Identify & Fix Mixed Content Issues appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

How to Outrun Competitors That Have Spammy Link Profiles But Rank Better Than You

Adrian Cojocariu — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 09:04:01 +0000

Outranking your competition can be very difficult, especially if your website is rather new. What’s even more frustrating is when you can’t outrank competitors which have spammy backlink profiles. Why doesn’t Google penalize them? Why does it rank you lower than them in the Google search results, even though you play the game by the book?

Google’s algorithm has evolved a lot over the years. The main purpose of the improvements was to be able to better distinguish natural links from artificially generated links. Unfortunately, although big advancements have been made, top ranking websites with clean link profiles aren’t always the case.

It probably happened to you (or to someone you know) to run a business in compliance with all Google’s guidelines when it comes to link building but, at the end of the day, to be dethroned by other sites from the industry with spammy link profiles. So, why is this happening? Let’s find out!

Why Do Sites With Spammy Link Profiles Still Rank Well?
Why You Should NOT Build Spammy Links as Well
Google Penguin 4.0 Update & the Disavow Tool
How to Submit a Spam Report
How to Outrank Competitors That Have Spammy Link Profiles

If you think I’m going to say that you can still improve your rankings using BlackHat SEO link building tactics in 2019, you’re wrong. But while some complain about their websites being penalized, others have a completely different issue:

“My competitors have spammy links but still rank better than me.”

Then, almost every time, the following question follows:

“What should I do in this case?”

There’s even an old Reddit thread about this:

If you’ve been struggling with this issue for a while, then you’ve landed on the right page.

The short answer to this question is that a spammy link profile doesn’t necessarily mean a website shouldn’t rank well. You see, Google’s (and other search engines) main purpose is to return the best search results for the users, not the search results with the best link profile. There are hundreds of other factors that are taken into consideration by Google when it ranks a website, and although links are still one of the top 3 most important ones, they aren’t everything.

Google has shown signs of steering away from links. Although links can’t completely be removed from the equation (at least not very soon), other factors, like user interaction, for example, have shown a lot of prominence recently.

If the top competitors have spammy backlinks but are still ranking good, well, my friend, then the truth is you’ve gotten yourself into a very competitive niche.

However, there’s still hope. But it’s not going to be easy, nor is it going to be cheap (is anything easy and cheap in digital marketing?). Before we dig into the tips and tricks, let’s better understand what Google has done against link spam over the years, and why.

Why Do Sites With Spammy Link Profiles Still Rank Well?

Ok, so if Google tries so hard to get spammers down, how come some webmasters with such obvious shady link profiles are still ranking well with their websites?

John Mueller from Google tells us that we don’t really know if they got away with it or not.

However, this often sounds unfair, as those websites clearly have spammy link profiles, but are ranking very well.

There could be a thousand reasons why this is happening, but I’ll try to provide some clearance with what I think is happening.

They Built Those Links Long Time Ago

Back in 2012, the BlackHat industry was thriving. ScrapeBox, GSA, Comment Spamming, Private Blog Networks, you name it. It worked. And people got hooked.

BlackHat SEO services were expensive because they could also be very profitable. Even big brands got into them as well.

The ones who suffered most were innocent business owners that had no idea about this. They just signed contracts with SEO agencies to get their websites higher on Google.

As the word spread, more and more shady things started to happen. It wasn’t a time when search engines provided the best results. And Google didn’t like that, so it took action against it.

Many of them lost their rankings forever. Some eventually recovered, through complex actions of improvement and link disavowing.

But some got away with it, and they’re probably still ranking today. Since the algorithm is now supposed to be real-time and to ignore spammy links, this kind of makes sense.

It doesn’t mean they are bad websites or that they still use BlackHat SEO strategies. It could just be that they got away with it. They were lucky.

They Didn’t Build Those Links (Negative SEO Attack)

Sometimes, instead of working on their own websites, people prefer to ‘work’ other websites out, by trying to attract Google penalties to them. These techniques are called Negative SEO Attacks.

In theory, the process is pretty simple: do BlackHat SEO to another website until Google gives it a penalty. When they drop, you replace the spot.

Example showing a negative SEO attack happening on Jellyfish’s website

When you look at a website and see a lot of spammy links, you might say they’re cheating. But although you can analyze a site’s link profile, you have no idea if they disavowed those links or not.

The Google Disavow tool is really useful, but it’s also one of the smartest moves Google made for improving their algorithm.

Because they feared the penalty, many webmasters started submitting their spammy links through the disavow tool.

Sure, it could help you not get penalized, but yet again, it could do nothing. Some even lose rankings after they start disavowing links.

What the disavow tool might actually do is that it feeds Google thousands of patterns of spammy links. So Google gets smarter and smarter every day. Smart, eh?

Negative SEO attack patterns are anyway different from shady link building patterns. You might think that’s not the case, but the truth is when people are doing black-hat SEO for themselves, they’re very cautious and try to stay under the radar. On the other side, when they’re framing someone else, they’re too obvious.

That’s the big downside of negative search engine optimization. If you make it obvious, Google will know it’s a negative SEO attack, but if you don’t make it obvious enough, who knows, your competitor might never get caught and the spam might actually help him rank.

So although you can see your competitor’s backlinks are reall spammy, you can’t know for sure how Google sees the situation.

They’re Still the Best Site Out There

As I said, a spammy link profile doesn’t mean a site shouldn’t be first on Google. This usually happens when all the other sites also have a spammy link profile.

Google can’t penalize all the websites if they’re all breaking the rules because it wouldn’t have any search results left to return.

If the top website has been there for years, providing value and good services to its customers, Google will reward it by keeping it there, even though maybe it knows they’re breaking the rules.

Google Hasn’t Caught Them… Yet

Asking why Google doesn’t penalize all the spammers is like asking why doesn’t the police bust all drug dealers. It’s just too many of them, and it’s impossible for Google to catch them all right away. But it probably will, eventually…

Spamming is still profitable because it works. If you manage to spam under the radar, you might cash in some quick profits. But the frustration of constantly being on the run isn’t a nice feeling.

If you haven’t done it yet, go ahead and read The Confessions of a Google Spammer on InBound. Once Google finds you, it’s over. And they have to start all over again from scratch.

Although I want to say that Google will eventually catch everyone… the reality of life is that sometimes bad guys win.

One Example to Prove Them All

At first, I tried looking for a lot of examples, but without much success. I tried searching the wedding niche, the flowers niche, but time and time the top ranking websites were actually legit in terms of link building.

But then I thought to myself… why not payday loans?

I mean… if there’s a niche there that’s been spammy as hell since forever, it’s definitely this one. Google even has an algorithmic update named after it. And lucky me, I hit the Jackpot (although I couldn’t personally access all the websites; but this could be due to my location).

So I took a couple of sites from the top and one from the second page (United States/British) and used cognitiveSEO to classify the anchor texts and run the Unnatural Link Detection Tool.

The results were promising. The big majority of the links are definitely unnatural.

Snippet from the Unnatural Link Detection tool showing a top ranking website (speedycash.com)

Another website from a lower set of results shows similar patterns:

Snippet from the Unnatural Link Detection tool showing a competing website from the second page (cashone.com)

However, I can easily back up my points made earlier in the article with this example.

Point no. 1: The sites have been in business for a long time.

You can easily check when websites were registered. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they were in business since that date, but it’s a decent indicator.

These websites were registered over 15 years ago. If the company was doing business back then as well, it’s probably a very legit business with a lot of experience.

Screenshot taken from bulkseotools.com

Point no. 2: The links were made a long time ago.

By checking the link velocity section, we can quickly spot that these websites built links some time ago, but aren’t doing it right now.

Cashone.com’s link velocity; screenshot taken from the cognitiveSEO tool

Mypaydaylonan.com’s link velocity; screenshot taken from the cognitiveSEO tool

The top website seems to be actively building links, but the spike just before 2012 is definitely a lot bigger than the ones happening right now.

Speedycash.com’s link velocity; screenshot taken from the cognitiveSEO tool

Point no. 3: These websites are still offering good services.

Although they still look spammy design-wise, one of the websites has over 2,000 reviews on TrustPilot, showing an average grade of 9.1. They could be fake reviews, of course, but yet again, they could not be. I think TrustPilot are doing their best to keep things real.

Sure, I didn’t analyze one thousand sites, but I hope I made my point. Chances are that most websites in this niche have a significant amount of unnatural links in their link profiles.

Why You Should NOT Build Spammy Links as Well

I know it’s tempting. I know how you feel. You’ve probably tried everything and they still rank better. But unless you’re trying to go for a hit and run niche site, no. It’s too risky.

Old sites that did BlackHat stuff in the past might still be ranking well in the Google search results, but new sites doing shady stuff attract a lot more attention. You might get penalized right from the start, losing your chance to ever rank for that keyword.

Although building a million spammy links might look easy, it’s not. It takes a lot of effort and the learning curve is quite steep. It’s also not cheap. You’ll need advanced tools and thousands of proxies to cover your ass up.

If you want to beat a BlackHat site the WhiteHat way, then it’s not going to be easy. But the advantage is that you don’t risk anything, and what you build, you build on the long-term.

Your time is far way spent on other things, such as quality content, improving user experience and relationship building. Instead of pointing our fingers at someone else, we should be taking a look at our own actions, and see how we could improve those.

Google Penguin 4.0 Update & the Disavow Tool

If you’ve heard about the Penguin Update, then you probably know it’s triggered by spammy links. Although it’s not the only algorithm that penalizes websites with spammy link profiles, it’s definitely the one that took the most spammers down. If you’re planning on some shady link building, then you should look out for flappy walks and orange beaks.

The problem with the first three Penguin algorithm updates was that although they got better, they were still pretty slow. Google used to gather information over a longer period of time (about 2-3 months) and then roll out a patch that would suddenly impact thousands of websites that broke the rules.

As of the latest version, Google’s spammy link tracking is now happening in real time. With the Penguin 4.0 update, Google ignores spammy links or penalizes single pages instead of penalizing entire websites.

This doesn’t mean that websites can’t be penalized anymore. Plenty of users still admit having suffered from Google penalties that affected their entire websites.

Some experts, such as Rand Fishkin, speculate that Google used this slow mass penalty process to create a fear factor that will determine webmasters to submit their spammy link profiles through the Disavow Tool.

This tool, launched in 2012, some months after the first Penguin update, enabled users to submit links that they wanted to be ignored by Google. People thought that if they submitted their links sooner, they could avoid a possible Google penalty. Google then supposedly fed the Disavow Tool database to the algorithm and used this to create a real-time version of Penguin, one that better understands link spamming patterns.

The Disavow Tool also somewhat protects webmasters against negative SEO attacks. If someone built some spammy links to your site you could start disavowing them. However, Google had previously stated that the Disavow Tool isn’t a replacement for removing links and that no reconsideration action will be taken unless users also try to remove some of those links.

Good ol’ Google! Never fails to surprise you with its tricks, right?

However, the truth is that using the disavow tool can help you recover from a Google penalty. If you’re ever in that situation, it’s worth a try.

How to Submit a Spam Report

Although you can do this, I wouldn’t recommend rushing in. It’s not exactly the same, submitting a spam report does resemble a negative SEO attack because while you could try to outrank your competitor by gaining positions yourself, you’re trying to pull him down instead.

Think about the things I mentioned earlier:

What if your competitor just hired a company to do search engine optimization and he has no idea, although he’d probably be against it if he knew?

In addition, if you have some shady links yourself, or share some of the backlinks with your competitor, submitting a spam report might attract Google’s attention to your website as well. You’ll see why in a minute.

Instead of blowing into some other person’s candles, try to make your own candle burn brighter. The truth is, if you had started doing SEO 5 years ago, you’d be ranking now.

However, if you see a website that tries to steal information from clients and or is involved in any illegal activities ranking on top, then you should definitely submit a spam report, as soon as possible.

In theory, Google employees should manually review these websites and decide if to apply a penalty or not. Any phishing or malware attempts will surely be banned.

There are more types of spam reports. Some of the more… dangerous ones, let’s say, anyone can file. This includes Malware, Phishing or Copyright related issues.

The rest of them, on the other side, will require a search console account (former Webmaster Tools). This means that Google will know exactly who is filing the report. If you ever did some shady things yourself, you should keep this in mind.

Of course, you could just set up a fake account to set a report, but Google will probably ignore those, otherwise an account wouldn’t be required in the first place.

How to Outrank Competitors With Spammy Link Profiles

Even though things aren’t in your favor, you should not give up. There are still things you can do to outrank these types of competitors.

Actually, the journey is one of the things that makes SEO so interesting: figuring out those things you haven’t thought of before; making a move that provides results; doing it without cheating.

Outranking a BlackHat SEO feels like gaining more money and power than the Godfather by selling lollipops.

Focus More on OnPage and Technical SEO Factors

I know this might only sound motivational, but you should shift your focus from links to on-page factors. When people say they’ve tried everything, I still have a feeling they were only talking about link building.

That’s what usually happens when spammy link envy kicks in: you forget about all the other things, like making your website faster, securing the connection with an SSL and improving the overall user experience.

Here’s what you should be asking yourself:

Am I really offering the users a good experience?

One of the hardest things entrepreneurs have to do is jump into their customers’ minds. It’s hard to really see their frustrations and come up with good solutions to solve them. You might’ve heard the phrase “Customers don’t know what they want.” Well, that’s true and it’s exactly the issue! They don’t know what they want so they won’t buy. At least, not until you offer a good solution to the problem.

If you really want to understand the buyer, just go buy something. You’ll instantly shift into the buyer’s mindset. And that’s exactly what you should analyze for your site if you really want to find solutions and make more sales.

What’s your conversion rate? Is it satisfying? Where do your users click most of the time? Is it easy for them to understand what’s clickable and what’s not? Are you offering a live support chat? Are they wasting time looking for something? Maybe you should bring it more to the front.

Am I really trying to solve their problems?

Many websites out there don’t try to solve a problem. They’re just in because they heard you can make some money online. As long as you’re not focused at all on solving a user’s problem, you can’t really improve your website.

Is the content really answering their questions? Does it resonate with who they are? Figure it out before you put another word on your pages.

Is my website better than theirs?

The website must be prettier, faster and easier to use.

However, I’m not talking only about design and website performance . There are a lot of other variables which actually come from outside the website:

Is your brand known at all compared to your competitor’s? Could you really handle all the orders without an issue? How’s your social media engagement compared to theirs?

Really step up your content game

Everyone knows that content is King. But an inconsistent King can quickly lose his throne.

Consistency has proven itself time after time in the content marketing and SEO industry. We’ve experienced this ourselves here, at cognitiveSEO. That being said, get yourself an editorial schedule ready, and stick to it.

It doesn’t really matter how much you post. Obviously, the more, the better. But what really matters is that you post on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

Remember that with quantity, you risk losing quality. To be able to post more often and keep the quality of your content, you’ll have to expand your writing department.

Think of innovating things in your niche. Analyze your competitors’ content and try to find the content gaps. Set personas for your targeted audience and really dig into it.

One thing I often recommend to websites, especially if it’s an eCommerce site, is to start blog posting. This can help a lot with building the authority of the domain, as articles and blog posts get shares and backlinks much easier than products. You’ll need a good content marketer for that. Some niches have a hard time coming up with interesting content.

Here are some next level tips on how to expand your content strategy, even in a really boring niche. It’s not a short video, but it’s worth watching.

The secret here is finding those questions and objections your clients have that your competitors don’t answer, and answer them! Any gap in the niche that the competition hasn’t filled yet is a great opportunity for you to improve your website.

Another great thing to do is update your content regularly with new information. You always learn new things about different topics. If you think you have new information you can add to an existing article, never hesitate to do it!

A great way to improve your content marketing strategies is using the cognitiveSEO Keyword Tool & Content Assistant. This set of SEO tools works by analyzing all the pages that rank for that keyword and providing keywords that you should add in order to make your article more relevant.

Don’t just bulk keywords in. Think of them as topics you haven’t covered before. Add them to relevant places and always keep the end user in mind. If it doesn’t make any sense for the reader, don’t add the keyword at all.

We’ve optimized our own content recently and the results were promising, providing a 70% increase in SEO visibility.

Look for other keywords to target

Keyword research is really important if you want to do well in SEO. Sometimes, if you can’t outrank your competitors on Google, you can try to target keywords that are less competitive.

Maybe the ones you are targeting right now are not the most relevant for your website and users. Maybe the keyword difficulty is too high for your website’s authority.

You can try targeting some longtail keywords instead. As you grow, your site will get stronger and will be able to target more competitive keywords.

Many times, people get stuck trying to rank for that one great keyword. Sure, high search volume keywords are nice, but there are other keywords out there.

Your spammy competitor can’t be ranking on all of them.

Don’t waste too much time trying to rank on a single keyword, or you’ll end up overoptimizing and doing yourself harm. You’ll also waste a lot of time and lose opportunities to rank hundreds of other keywords.

The cognitiveSEO Keyword Tool can provide you with some new keyword ideas that you can start targeting. The ones with more stars are more relevant to your primary searched keyword.

Snippet from the cognitiveSEO Keyword Tool

Another interesting trick you can do is to use the Site Explorer to find the Top 10-20 ranking keywords for a website. Not so useful if you use it on your own site, but if used on a competitor’s website, you can get new insights you probably haven’t thought of before.

Snippet from cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer showing a website’s top ranking keywords

Another good way is to simply use the basic Google Keyword Planner. However, to get more accurate keyword statistics, you’ll need to spend some money on advertising, using Google Adwords.

Speaking of Google AdWords…

Invest in Advertising

If you’re not moving, you’re staying put. That’s exactly what you’re doing if you’re obsessing over a competitor’s backlink profile.

If you can’t outrank them and get enough traffic from SEO strategies alone, then you might need to invest in advertising. You can advertise either with Google Ads or on Social Media.

And did you know that there are ads that help you rank better on Google? Yes, it’s called buying links.

You can buy links without breaking any of Google’s guidelines by simply nofollowing the links. The secret is to make them site-wide and make it obvious it’s an ad.

Countless examples prove that nofollow links still provide SEO value. The best thing about it? You can actually use your target keywords in the anchor text!

If you think it works for you, you might even try using some press releases. Just make sure they are from reputable news sites.

Make sure you also strengthen your brand if you have enough budget to advertise. Maybe place an image ad as well using your brand logo near the link. Smart ads also have the chance of getting viral, especially in the video field.

Invest in it the white-hat way, and nofollow those links!

Improve your social media campaign

Although social media has been going down as a referral source (and Google has been climbing), it’s still a good idea to invest your time into building a social following. People spend a lot more time on social media than they spend on Google, and you need to be there.

Your competitors might spend a lot of time building shady links, but they might suck at social media. We don’t know for sure if social signals are a direct Google ranking factor or not, but they can have an impact on organic traffic, which can lead up to more natural links (a real ranking factor).

Maybe your competitor isn’t doing anything interesting on Facebook. You could, for example, bring something new by building yourself a chatbot. Chatbot marketing works well because the open rates for the messages are really high (up to 90%).

Get inspired from your competitor’s good links

The only time you should spend on analyzing the competitor’s links is if you want to spot opportunities for yourself.

Spending too much time on a competitor’s backlinks profile is a waste. You could instead spend that valuable time to figure out new issues on your website and fix those.

The reality is that not all the links on a spammy profile are bad.

Links usually cause higher rankings, but it can also be the other way around. As websites start ranking, they get more organic traffic which can lead to more links being created, as people discover and share your content around. And those are strong, natural links.

If a site has been ranking #1 for a long time, I bet there are some natural links in their profile as well.

You can dig for those natural links and try to replicate them. This, of course, if you have a better website. Nobody will link to you if they don’t find the website and the info on it useful.

You can use the cognitiveSEO’s Unnatural Link Detection Tool to spot this kind of opportunities. Just run the backlink analysis, identify the good links and try to build them or earn them by contacting the owners.

Access the natural link navigator by clicking on the green bar

Steal your competitor’s natural links

However, no matter how many online learning platforms that speak about building links you’d attend, keep in mind that your primary focus shouldn’t be on link building. Stealing your competitor’s links is a great link building strategy, but earning them naturally is an even better one. If you start improving all the things mentioned above, links will start coming on their own.

Conclusion

Outranking your competition isn’t an easy job, but it’s often something that needs to be done in the digital marketing world. Shifting your focus from building links to improving other things about your website (such as OnPage SEO and the conversion rate) can make the process less frustrating and a lot more effective.

Make your website better by adding more relevant content and by analyzing and improving the overall user experience. Try to gain a little traction from other sources of traffic, such as Google Ads or Social Media. Work on your conversion rate optimization and keep your customers happy.

Try to fill any gaps you can spot in the niche that your competition isn’t yet taking advantage of, and most of all, try to have a better site than they do, not just a better ranking one.

As Rand Fishkin once said, “F@%# Link Building!” Start link earning.

The post How to Outrun Competitors That Have Spammy Link Profiles But Rank Better Than You appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

eCommerce Faceted Navigation | How It Affects SEO & Google Search Results

Adrian Cojocariu — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 07:34:04 +0000

eCommerce navigation or faceted navigation in SEO. There are phrases the Gods of SEO themselves squint at when they hear them. Why? Because it involves duplicate content and very big sites. And we all know how difficult that is to fix.

The subject is hard to master and it comes with a lot of confusion on the side. Faceted search or filtered search? What is the difference between facets and filters? Which pages should I index? These are all questions webmasters ask themselves. So prepare for a ‘headachy’ journey as we’ll try to explain a couple of things in this article, such as the difference between filters and facets, which pages you should and shouldn’t index and best practices for different scenarios.

Hopefully, by the end of this article you’ll have understood everything you need to know about how to set up facets for eCommerce websites and how to manage your URL parameters for best SEO results and Google rankings.

Beware: This article is about very advanced stuff and it will twist your brain a little. It can also twist your rankings, in a good way or in a bad way, depending on whether you implement modifications the right way. The best implementation depends on the website and it differs from one case to another. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s better to ask for an expert’s opinion!

Faceted Search vs. Filtered Search: What Is the Difference Between Search and Filters?
Faceted Search Problems & Challenges
How Google Handles URL Parameters & How It Affects SEO
Which URL Parameters to Index & Which Ones to Not
How to Fix Faceted Search Issues & Have a Good Navigation Structure

1. Faceted Search vs. Filtered Search:
What Is the Difference Between Search and Filters?

It took me myself a long time to figure out this difference. Why? Because I didn’t know what facet means. And I’m not talking about its meaning in eComm, I’m talking about its meaning in general.

So let’s start with that:

A facet is one side of a many-sided thing. Like a gem or a dice. We can also say it’s a particular aspect or feature of something.

Ok, so what does that have to do with filters and search?

Well, in eCommerce, the products of a website are usually split into categories. Sometimes, that’s enough to be able to browse it. However, in cases where there are very many products, it might not be enough.

In order to be able to browse the website efficiently, you’ll have to be able to sort those products according to different attributes. You know, like size, color, weight, etc.

To see only results that match certain criteria, you have to apply something which is known as a filter. A filter can include items that only contain the specified attribute, or it can exclude items that don’t.

Ok, so what does that have to do with facets?

Well, when you apply a filter, you can call each result page returned a facet of the category you’re currently browsing.

There are many websites that try to explain the difference between filters and facets. One explanation is that facets are unique pages and they are extensions to the category pages, while filters are just used to refine item listings.

While that’s true, one thing they seem to get wrong is that facets should be indexed and filters should not be indexed.

In the articles I’ve found (not going to give the names, though) the writers used the following example:

Dresses
- Going out
- Evening
- View all
Filter by
- Shipping
- Size
- Price
Brand
- Brand A
- Brand B
- Brand C

The writers argued that Dresses and Brands are Facets, therefore they should be indexed, while Shipping, Size and Price are filters and should not be indexed.

My counterargument is: What if a lady searches for “evening dresses size M under 400$”?

Now this might be far fetched, but it can very well be the case! The best example I personally know is in the used car industry. People search a lot for things like “used cars under xxx”.

In the following example you can clearly see that Google auto-suggests these types of results:

So we can clearly see that people search for these keywords. Let’s do a search for “used cars under 10000” and see what results we get:

Hmm… interesting. It seems like Google is returning an answer box for this result. This is cool! I can click on More items to get to Carmax.com.

I’ve highlighted the URL above to show which site is ranking in the answer box. Carmax is also ranking #1 so it has multiple positions on Google.

But wait! Is that a URL parameter? Could it be a filter for price? It sure looks like it. Let’s check out the site.

It’s seems they consider it a filter! Had Carmax taken the advice above and used a noindex tag on their price filters, they wouldn’t be ranking #1 right now and we would not have landed on their page.

Good thing they didn’t do that. Actually, Carmax does a pretty good job at telling Google which pages it actually wants indexed and which it doesn’t. We’ll use it more as an example.

So the difference between filters & facets is that facets are a result of filtering products. You use filters and they generate facets.

While the definition of facets in search is “sorting by multiple dimensions simultaneously”, which actually means using multiple filters, I like to define facets as the pages that result from filtering a search.

In my opinion, it’s not about having one filter or multiple filters. I can have a single filter: it will still create a facet. This way, it’s very easy to differentiate between them.

For example, I can apply a single sorting filter, by price, which will create a facet. The problem, however, is that the facet isn’t unique! And that’s when Google has a problem with it.

2. Faceted Search Problems & Challenges

Faceted navigation and search are great. They help you find exactly what you need pretty easily. In the following video you can see how you can take advantage of faceted search to filter out exactly the books you might want to read, from over hundreds of thousands of results to only 7.

Ideally, the site shouldn’t create these types of pages at all. Sure, we might think it’s mostly bad for search engines but useful for users.

However, search engines try to favor the user. If you think about it, how good would a user’s experience be if you kept showing them the same products every time they apply a new filter?

Or how good is it for them if no products are shown? For example, if you don’t have any products Size M, should you show that size as being available?

The problem with faceted navigation search is that it can cause duplicate content issues. And with facets, the number of pages grows exponentially.

Hypothetically, let’s say you have two filters in a book store:

Fiction
Historical

If we were to combine them, you’d probably say that there are 3 possible options:

Only Fiction
Only Historical
Both Historical & Fiction

However, there is a 4th option: it’s Both Fiction & Historical.

So if you have 5 attributes (color, size, weight…), each containing about 5-10 variables (red, green, M, S, 10kg, 20kg…) you would have to multiply the variables to get the total amount of possible facets that can be generated.

If we have 15 colors, 10 sizes we already have 150 possible combinations. Add another 3 types of material and we end up with 450 combinations. Sort that by 8 different brands and we already have 3,600 products which is exactly the number of seconds there are in an hour… the Illuminati must be on me.

How fast facets can create duplicate content.

You get the point, too many filters, too many facets, too many URLs with duplicate content.

But aren’t those pages the same? I mean… both 1+2 and 2+1 equal 3, right? Well, while users might find those pages as being the same, search engines don’t! Why? Because of URLs.

3. How Google Handles URL Parameters & How It Affects SEO

Depending on which order the users choose to select the filters of a facet, some platforms generate different URLs for the same content. This is usually done using parameters.

Google treats URLs with parameters as separate pages, not an extension of the root URL, unless a canonical tag is specified.

So, in Google’s eyes, domain.com/books?filter=historical&fiction and domain.com/books?filter=fiction&historical are separate pages with duplicate content.

This is an issue because one of the pages doesn’t provide any extra value to the user.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content because it doesn’t provide much value to the users.

If you already have a page covering a set of products, why would you have a second page covering the exact same set? Why would Google want to display the exact same thing from the exact same website twice?

Sure, that happens, but Google is always trying to fix it. For example, Mihai Aperghis from Vertify notified John of some issues that kept appearing in the search results in Romania. After not much time, Dan Sullivan announced that they’re working on a diversity change. Sure, these two things might be unrelated, but it sure seems like a big coincidence.

There are ways to fix that. For example, you can use a canonical tag from one version to another to tell Google which is the original version that should be indexed and ranked. But Google sees canonical tags as recommendations, not as absolute rules, so it might ignore them!

However, there is another issue that content duplication creates, which won’t be fixed by adding canonical tags: Burning through Crawl Budget.

How facets can burn through & create a wasting of Crawl Budget.

When Google crawls your site, it allocates a certain budget for how many pages it will crawl, depending on certain factors, such as how popular your site is, how much traffic it gets how big it is and how relevant it is.

If you’re wasting that budget on pages that will anyway perform poorly because they don’t provide any value, important pages that are unique and relevant might not get crawled, losing the chance to rank higher.

That’s why it’s important to address these issues and make sure you don’t index irrelevant pages. But which parameters and facets should you index and which should you not? How do you deal with these problems? And why do some sites, like Amazon, index everything and do so well?

4. Which URL Parameters to Index & Which Ones to Not

Deciding which pages you should let Google index and which pages you shouldn’t is important for best SEO performance.

If you’re thinking about indexing ‘facets’ but not indexing ‘filters’ think again. Indexation has nothing to do with those things, but with search intent, volume and product supply.

World renowned SEO expert Aleyda Solis explains this very well in the following video of her SEO lessons series Crawling Mondays:

If your site has many pages, then you should only let Google index the ones that either:

Have enough demand: These pages should actively target a specific keyword or set of keywords that has a search demand. If users don’t search for it or never reach that page through organic search (you don’t see any impressions or clicks for it in Google Search Console) then maybe it’s a better idea not to index them.
Have enough supply: These pages should not result in empty pages. If you only have 1-2 products or none at all in the facet while other facets provide 10-20 results, then maybe it’s a better idea not to index it.
Are unique in the most part: These pages should not be very similar. Sure, there will be similarities, but if applying a second or third filter only results in a 5-10% difference, then maybe it’s better to not index those pages. This usually is also related to supply. Not enough products might lead to duplicate results.

That’s exactly why Amazon is doing so well, even though they are indexing all their pages. It’s because they have such a big supply of products that most of their facets have enough uniqueness to not be considered duplicate.

Sure, some are probably identical but, for example, even after filtering by 7-8 different dimensions I still get about 7 results, which is great.

Amazon is also a very popular site with high amounts of traffic going to it each day, which means Google will allocate more crawl budget for it that it will allocate for a smaller eCommerce site.

But for smaller sites, this might not always be the case. So you want to follow the best practices for best results. Of course, strategies can be different from one ecommerce site to another.

5. How to Fix Faceted Search Issues & Have a Good Navigation Structure

Fixing a complex duplicate content issue might require both time and budget. It’s not easy to manage hundreds of thousands of pages so you can always look for tools or e-commerce agencies to help you out.

Here are Google’s official tips on faceted navigation pages. However, Google gives more specific examples on how things should look, but not on how to implement them.

There’s a very big difference between the effects of 301 redirects, canonical tags, noindexing and disallowing pages entirely in Robots.txt.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you exactly how to implement things, because this can differ from one case to another. However, I can outline the best practices and give you a hint on how implementation could be done.

But the first thing you have to do is create a spreadsheet of your categories, subcategories and filters. Then you should do an extensive keyword research and map keyword clusters to the categories and filters.

Did You Know

To have a general idea of which facets you should index and which not, you need to perform an in-depth keyword research. You can use tools like the CognitiveSEO Keyword Tool or even the Google Search Console to find keywords. Along with other keyword ideas, the tool will give you great keyword insights, such as the volume of the search, their relevancy, the cost per click, etc.

The quickest solution would be to not have any filters at all. Just use category pages with enough demand & supply. If you don’t have many products, not having filters might work for you. Simply create categories for the keywords that users search for and add products in multiple categories.

A nicely implemented example comes from FilmJackets, a site that sells leather jackets.

It only took me a couple of scrolls on a desktop to see all the jackets, although on a mobile device that might be harder. Anyway, the site’s design is visually oriented, which makes me want to see all the jackets to see which design I like.

However, if they had had a lot more products and a bigger variety (such as multiple materials), filters might have been useful. The user is also led to believe that the store has all the sizes and colors in stock, as that type of filtering is made on the product page, right before placing the order.

But overall, the user experience with the current amount of products should be good. It’s a simple solution for a smaller eCommerce website and it is elegantly implemented on this website.

If you’re a big site, then you have multiple options of dealing with the problem, depending on your platform’s possibilities. Serge Stefoglo from Distilled.net did a great post on Moz showcasing the effects of different methods that deal with/fix duplicate content.

So, the best fix seems like a JavaScript setup. But what does that mean? And how can it be implemented? Well, this is up to your development team.

Eric Enge from StoneTemple tells us how Ajax and jQuery work together to fix faceted navigation duplicate content issues.

Carmax, our previous example, uses a similar JavaScript technique to generate its filtered pages. It’s not identical but it uses JavaScript to direct users to the facets. This means that Google won’t see those links when crawling the pages, so they can’t burn through crawl budget.

However, this can lead to another problem. Faceted pages can’t be found by search engines anymore! That’s because the JS doesn’t generate tags in the HTML anymore, so Google’s crawler might have a hard time getting to the important pages.

When using AJAX and JavaScript for your facets, you have to make sure your important links can be easily crawled by Search Engines.

Carmax does this flawlessly, by stating its most important facets near the Homepage, at just 1 click away on their cars page. There are also some footer links to different locations on category or facet pages.

With this implementation, Google won’t have to crawl millions of possible combinations and it will still find the most important facets the site wants indexed. The same result can be obtained with a sitemap, but it’s better if you have a direct crawl path to them.

But what if someone links to those pages? Can they still get indexed? Yes. As long as they don’t have a noindex meta tag or are blocked in robots.txt, they can. But that’s not an issue because you can use canonical tags!

Pages can still get indexed if other websites link to them. Using canonical tags can help prevent duplicate content issues.

Carmax also takes advantage of canonical tags. For example, the page /cars?location=norcross+ga&price=10000 is canonicalized to /cars?price=10000&location=norcross+ga.

Ideally, the links should always be generated in the same order. For example, if I choose the order to be price, location, size, then even if the user selects location first and then price and size, the URL will still be generated in the initial order.

If you have a lot of pages, you want to focus on fixing the crawl budget issue. On the other side, if you have a lot of backlinks pointing to different filters of your pages, then you want to also pass link equity from external websites.

Start with canonical tags. These should be set up regardless if you then decide to index those pages or not.

Most pages should have a self referencing canonical, but if these pages are duplicate, then a canonical version is required.

Noindex and canonical tags will still be wasting your crawl budget, so if you can’t do a JavaScript implementation, you might want to block the pages from being crawled in robots.txt.

However, also take into account that using Robots.txt will dilute link equity, so make sure those pages don’t have internal links nor backlinks pointing to them.

A good way of doing this is by adding an extra parameter (noindex=1) to facets with more than 1 or 2 filters. Then you can add the following line:

Disallow: /*noindex=1

This way, any URL which contains the noindex=1 string will be blocked from crawling.

So for example, search by size will be:

site.com/category?size=m

Search by color will be:

site.com/category?color=black

Search by size and color will be:

site.com/category?size=m&color=black&noindex=1

However, keep in mind the supply and demand rule, if there are searches for “black category size m” then maybe you should not block those pages!

If your pages are already indexed and you want them to not get indexed and not burn crawl budget, you’ll first have to set up a noindex meta tag on the page and then add the pages to robots.txt.

Since robots.txt block crawling altogether, there’s no way for the search engine crawler to see the noindex meta tag!

So first, make sure you let the search engine find those pages to see the noindex meta tag, and after they’re removed from the index, you can add them to the robots.txt file to prevent them from burning the crawl budget.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now have a better idea on which pages in your faceted search navigation menu you should index and which ones you should not.

You can use a JavaScript setup to prevent the links from being created as long as you ensure the most important ones which have demand and supply can be found by search engines.

You can also use robots.txt to disallow crawlers from accessing those URLs, saving up crawl budget. However, keep in mind that if you have or get backlinks to those pages, they won’t help your site anymore!

What’s your experience with faceted navigation search? Do you use JavaScript or do you use a mix of canonical tags, noindex meta tags and robots.txt? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post eCommerce Faceted Navigation | How It Affects SEO & Google Search Results appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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Chatbot Marketing: Is It the Strategy of the Future ?

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

2. Why Chatbots Are the Future of Digital Marketing

3. Best Uses of Chatbots for Marketing

3.1 Personal AI Assistant

3.2 Get Traffic to Your Site and Grow Your Audience

3.3 Build an E-mail List

3.4 E-commerce & Conversational Commerce

3.5 Customer Support

3.5 Marketing Automation & Sales

5. Can ChatBot Marketing Improve SEO ?

40 Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactics and Techniques in 2024

I. Content Marketing

II. Search Marketing

III. Social Media Marketing

IV. Email Marketing

V. PPC & Paid Advertising

VI. Marketing Automation

VII. Online PR

VIII. Affiliate Marketing

1. Re-optimize Your Content to Gain 70% SEO Visibility Increase

2. Boost traffic by 300% While Using Editorial Calendars

3. Use Content Syndication & Get a Constant Traffic of 250,000 Unique Visitors

4. Promote Your Business with SlideShare to Drive 20% More Organic Traffic

5. Sales Growth with 185% by Offering Highly Qualitative Case Studies

6. Build a Network of Partner Websites to Get Influence on the SERP and Jump up to 30+ Positions

7. Rank Higher on Review Sites to Have an Average 18% Uplift in Sales

8. Be Part of the 90% of Marketers Who Saw a Significant Increase in ROI by Taking Advantage of Trends for Traffic Generation

9. Gain a Higher Advantage in Front of Your Competitors with AMP Receiving 40% Organic Traffic from the Whole Site Traffic

10. Write on Medium to Get Awareness Through 6.2 Million Pageviews

11. Develop a Facebook Customized Page Tab to Engage 40% of Fans

12. Write Valuable Content on Linkedin Pulse and win up to 1,900 Social Shares in 30 Days

13. Use Reddit to Grow Your Business & Generate $6,188 in 3 Months

14. Target the Online Communities and Hit 10.000 Monthly Unique Visitors

15. Get Social Influence to Receive Higher Rankings by 15%

16. Design a Smart Automated Reactivation Campaign and Boost Sales by 164%

17. Get Personalized Emails to See an Average of a 19% Increase in Sales

18. Reduce Friction and Increase by 100% Your Email Sign-Up Rate

19. Use Segmentation to Increase Deliverability & Experience 141% Increase in Revenue per Campaign

20. Increase Your Email Open Rate by 33% with a Subject Line That Triggers Curiosity

21. Collaborate with Influencers to Write About Your Product to Generate Over $300.000 in 3 Months

22. Have an Integrated Approach about Paid Promotion on Social Media

23. Increase CTR with 64% in PPC Ads with Site-Links Extentions

24. Use Emotion Triggers in Headline Ads to Get 6x Above Average CTR

25. See a 32% Return on Investment for a Promoted Twitter Account

26. Set Up Automated Behavioral Triggered Emails to Get 71% Higher Open Rates

27. Collect Customer Data Through a Transparent and Unique System to Gain Trust of 44% of Customers

28. Make use of retargeting & Experience a 400% Increase On ROI

29. Develop a Lead Scoring System to Generate 50% More Sales at Half of Costs

30. Get More Social Exposure Through the Social Media Automation

31. Encourage Brand Lovers to Support You Against Trolls

32. Built a Strong Customer Following & Get Free Endorsement

33. Gain Free Media to Get Everyone Talk About You on News and Get 5 Million Views on YouTube

34. Create Fascinating Video Content to Attract Native Customers & Increase the Conversion Rate by 80%

35. Use Webinars to Gain 16,394 new leads

36. Start Running an Affiliate Program to Monetize Your Website & Get Extra $4500 Monthly Profit

37. Generate Product Order Increase by 9.8% Through Voucher and Reward Sites

38. Map out the Affiliates’ Value to Increase the Long Haul Share by 19%

39. Reach Over 60% Social Engagement and Advocacy for the Brand with Respected Influencers Through an Affiliate Program

40. Implement a Publisher Strategy to See a Monthly Revenue Growth Rate of 177%

Conclusion

Content Marketing Services | The Complete List for a Successful Digital Strategy

Content Marketing Strategy

Use Keyword Research Tools

Check the Top-of-mind Keywords

Look for Seed Keywords to the Keyword Explorer or Google Keyword Planner to Get New Ideas

Prioritize the Keywords You Want to Rank For

Select Top Keywords Based on Relevancy and Search Volume

Content Creation

Content Distribution

Link Building

Social Media

Community & Relations

Constant Content Update

Content Analytics Reporting

Organic Search Traffic

Keyword Rankings

Social Shares

Backlink Volume