Search engine optimization is arguably the most effective online organic search marketing strategy currently in existence. It is hardly surprising that now more than ever many business establishments and even individuals are increasingly embracing this technique to achieve both their short term and long term business objectives.

Indeed, according to a Comscore survey that was conducted in May 2014, 18.5 billion people made searches utilizing the top 5 search engines in the US alone. While another related study revealed organic search accrues 85% of SERPs clicks and pay per click (PPC) searches accounted for only 15% of this share.

SEO benefits

SEO can offer a multitude of advantages that most other online marketing techniques would be hard pressed to deliver. This includes enhanced visibility, brand awareness, credibility and traffic generation that when combined lead to exponential revenue generation growth. However, many website owners sadly deem SEO merely as an inevitable expense to their online marketing campaigns, much the same way they would deal with a mundane household expenditure. The truth is in fact very different; this strategy can be an extremely rewarding investment. An investment, which can bring about a substantial ROI in a very cost effective manner. This is self evident when you compare it to pay per click (PPC). When you, for one reason or the other, halt a PPC campaign, you will automatically lose visibility, and relinquish the traffic generated by this online marketing strategy. On the other hand, search engine optimization is an ongoing strategy. It is characterized by a remarkable continuity that lets business entities to solidify their web presence, and drive quality traffic to their sites.Achieving top rankings in the major search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo! culminates in more leads that can be easily converted. Essentially, you should think of search engine marketing as a long term client acquisition funnel that has no bounds. Taking a case study of Google SERPs, it has been proven that the top rated sites account for 36.4% of all clicks. Hence managing to be on position #1 to #3 suggests to users a solid credibility of your firm and the products or services it offers.

How to formulate an efficacious SEO campaign

Despite all this, formulating and ultimately implementing an excellent SEO strategy is not as easy as it may seem at face value. There are numerous pertinent factors that usually come to play in achieving top rankings and maintain them. To begin with, virtually and if you fail to keep abreast of these changes you can easily lose your standing on SERPs. Also, your competition can at any time formulate and implement a superior strategy and topple you from your advantageous position. So, it pays a lot to enlist the services of a professional SEO agency that can handle this critical aspect of this online marketing campaign. These experts can be invaluable in assisting you to lay a firm SEO foundation as well as offering the prerequisite guidance in implementing and managing the very best techniques that concur with you business objectives.

As would be expected, there are numerous facets of this online marketing method that are categorized as either on-page or off-page SEO. This includes impeccable keyword-optimized content creation and submission and link building. A reputable search engine optimization firm will integrate these and other factors, which will enable your site to achieve top rankings. In turn, this will drive more quality traffic to it, enhance your brand awareness, and in extension snowball your online revenue generation. Undoubtedly one of the best attributes of search engine marketing is the fact that its results can be accurately measured by web analytics. To this end virtually all companies that offer these services have devised a wide range of metrics that let them accurately analyze the effectiveness of this online marketing strategy at any time. This enables their clients to easily gauge the viability of the various techniques they implement. While, at the same time, determining better techniques to realize or even exceed the desired ROI in a stress-free manner.

SEO web analytics

Granted, each SEO company has its own web analytic s parameters. Still, most of these metrics can be broadly categorized into 2 groups. Which are reach and action metrics. The first variety are designed to determine just how much traffic a site may be receiving as well as its SERP ranking based on the same. This goes a long way in allowing clients to establish the performance baseline of any SEO strategy. Some of the most critical reach metrics include crawlability (how visible a website is to search engine crawlers) along with branded and unbranded keywords. The last metric enables these experts to identify hot keywords and pinpoint potential problems that may arise from a flawed keyword integration technique.

Action metrics on their part, are designed to ascertain just what actions visitors to a given website perform while there. Most search engines assess sociability and content interactivity to effectively rank the sites that are submitted to them. Bounce rate is an excellent instance of action metrics. Ideally, it tracks the number of visitors that leave a site after viewing just one page. The higher the bounce rate a website registers, the lower its ranking on SERPs will be. When it comes to content interactivity SEOs have the necessary tools to establish the most popular pages and even menu items. More to the point, those that possess the highest conversion rates. Yet another vital action metric is referred to as social visitor flow. This metric allows search engine marketing firms to determine just which social media platform drives the most traffic to their clients’ sites. While monitoring all the actions such visitors perform too.

Conclusion

Thanks to these and many more metrics, these experts are always in an excellent position to prove the effectiveness of the strategies they endorse to their clients. It is consequently very easy to realize the immense benefits SEO can present to all business entities for both the short term and long term basis. You can never go wrong with enlisting professional SEO services in your online marketing efforts.

Competitor Analysis is a process of identifying the strategies, strengths, and weakness of the mover and shaker of your niche. It helps to upgrade your strategy in a good manner and help you win the battle. It is one of the most important aspects of any marketing plan that every entrepreneur should adopt for the better outcomes and for understanding what points they are missing and how much they need to improve. Well, doing it is not as tough as it sounds, thanks to the number of tools available on the internet or intranet. So, if you are new to this, take a look, how to do competitor analysis for improving your strategy like a pro.

• Identify Your Competitors: The first and foremost step of competitor analysis is identifying who your competitors are? You cannot analyze their strategies until or unless you know about them. Therefore, identifying them is a must and important in all possible manner.
• Take A Tour Of Their Website And Analyze Properly: A deep dive into the website of your competitor is a must to understand what they are doing and if you are doing the same, so, at what point they are better at you. A basic inspection will help you in long-term and support you find out a lot that further improves your strategy.
• Spy On Your Competitor’s Keywords: A smart move is important to beat the tough market competition and therefore, you have to determine with which keyword your competitors are ranking high. Also, you should check the keyword density to get the better idea.
• Evaluate Their Backlinks: Backlinks are important for the ranking of your website and you have to analyze your competitor’s site properly to identify from which sources they get links for their website, so, you can get your backlinks from the same.
• Keen Eye On Their Social Media Handling: Social Media is important nowadays, therefore, you should keep a keen eye on their social activities. It helps you understand how active and engaged, they are with the audience and how frequent they share a post and what type. This may help you improve your social media strategy to drive more traffic.

After understanding all the barriers to your entry, make an effective strategy for SEO that delivers outcomes better than before. Learn new things and improve your strategy and not only copy them. Also, you can take SEO Expert help if you don’t have the time or enough knowledge to do this on your own.

The beautifully designed website with plenty of high-quality content isn’t likely to reach its intended audience if you haven’t spent time on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A well planned approach to marketing and promoting a website is certain to help maximize your business efforts. Here are a few reasons why it benefits to use SEO:

Low-cost

The ability to rank a website organically in the search results can be relatively low-cost when compared to other ranking methods such as pay-per-click. Once a website reaches a top position, you have the option to rely on its natural high positive to attract plenty of consistent traffic without needing to allocate on ongoing advertising budget.

Even though the results of SEO aren’t likely to be immediate, the time invested can start to pay back rather quickly. Once the first signs of the increased traffic start to arrive, it should continue to grow at a steady rate. Providing the SEO work was done to a high standard, the site ranking should stay quite stable over the long-term.

Brand credibility

Any website that is ranked high in the organic search results gets to benefit from brand credibility. The reason for this is that most people believe the top listed sites in the search engines are reputable and trustworthy companies. But, the opposite can apply for lower ranked sites which users will be more skeptical about. Also, it further benefits to get a high listing in the search results because more and more people are using an ad blocker to stop the ads appearing.

Competitors

There is a very high chance that your main competitors are involved in SEO. Most small businesses that are starting out realize that SEO has wide-ranging benefits and is very important to take advantage of it. So, if your competitors are actively ranking their website and you aren’t, they will easily get more hits and sales than you. Even if you believe you’re offering the best prices or services, the website that has the top listing is more likely to get the most attention.

Next level

With a proper SEO program in place there is every possibility that you will see a significant boost in daily visitors to your website which can take your business to the next level. This can give an opportunity to expand on the services or products offered and even to upgrade you web server requirements to take account of the higher visitor numbers and sales.

Marketing these days is getting firm. The competition in today’s market is vicious, it’s kind of hard to find new customers. As known, you cannot grow your business without proper website marketing strategies. To bring new customers as well as viewers to your business website and connect with you at the same time, you need to go create proper website marketing strategies.

Here are few of the marketing strategies to improve your Business

1. INCREASE YOUR POPULARITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

To increase your fanbase, you need to create a business profile over social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. This means, you should not restrict yourself only promoting your business or your brand. Social media also gives customers the connection to ask questions. They can directly get help regarding their trouble, or just have a conversation with you! Social Media directly gives you the platform to widespread your business through different staging. If someone likes or joins your Facebook page, it means mostly the valid customers are joining as the common Friend circle will suggest your page. You can also post interesting contents or simply ask questions. Above all else, it’s important to make sure that fans know how much you value them. After all, where would you be without your customers?

2. USE SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING AND OPTIMIZATION

To bring new customers as well as get shoppers, your sites need to be relevant to search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing helps to bring up your site on a list of search engines results. You need to have strong SEO strategy to get the apt keywords that will enlist your services. This helps you to garner the possibility to be one of the famous brand names.

3. MANAGE A BLOG

Content marketing is another good strategy of marketing to potential customers. To maintain the blog on your business site, you need to keep few things in mind. while posting the content, make sure you are writing something which is related to your business. You need to search for proper keywords and optimize your search engine strategy. The blog means that you can share bits of your information as well as offer advice. This is also another platform where you directly get connected to your customers. You can also make guides or e-book to promote your business. Though it might take a bit of time, it is pretty profitable. After it is properly carried out, content marketing makes your customers interested in your quality. This will help you in holding your customers.

4. UTILIZE E-MAIL MARKETING

E-mail marketing is one of the ways to increase your patrons that seem to last. It is just not about sending e-mails. You need to garner the specific needs of every person. You need to provide a personal approach that convinces your client to collaborate with you. You can send periodic emails on new products or sales which can drive your customers back. You can also manage to get subscribers that will allow them to get updated. Send emails once in a while so that they don’t forget you.

By following the above ways or strategies, you can surely build up a platform for your business. With these concrete website marketing strategies, you can take your business to a new level.

The basic and important thing is for you to produce / write great content / articles, (content that has relevance and value to your target audience) then you can get more people to link to it. You have to earn them. Search engines will then rate your website as one of authority – a go to website for information of a particular field/category. (Backlinks can also be called hyperlinks, incoming links, inbound links, or just links-they all mean the same thing and are also dofollow backlinks)

You can get quality backlinks in the following ways:

1. Article Marketing

• only do article marketing on relevant websites;
• submit your articles to reputable and quality article directories that are well established and have authority in search engines;
• make effective use of anchor text when trying to promote your website through article marketing;

2. Social Media

• Many social bookmarking and social networking sites have a high page rank. This rank will flow to your account.
• You can get a lot of quality backlinks by making use of social bookmarking and social networking sites.

3. Press release

• If properly done, you can get a lot of quality backlinks from press release sites because they are supplying content to a lot of smaller sites. This means more exposure and more quality backlinks for you.
• You should make sure you have a newsworthy and attractive title. This will make more people interested in your press release.

4. Document Sharing Sites

• A great way to get quality backlinks to your site is by submitting your articles and eBooks to document sharing websites.
• You can do this by compiling your blog posts as PDF files and uploading them to file sharing websites (thereby leaving a backlink to your website).

5. Guest blogging

• This method can work to your advantage if you only write meaningful comments of value to the readers. Note that No-follow comments are useless for building backlinks.

7. Find great content and improve on it.

Make it better by – updating on the information; make it a longer – add new information, make it visually stunning – insert relevant interesting / illustrative images – eg. gif images. Then distribute it to the proper channels.

High rankings on SERP, search engine results pages, is what every business with an online presence hopes for. The higher you are ranked the more visible your brand will be relating into high traffic and increased conversions. SEO fortunately helps businesses achieve that and when you pay attention to your strategy; you will definitely pride yourself in the good positive results you get with search engine results.

Getting an SEO expert to help you out with your strategy could be the best starting point as the experts are equipped with the latest trends and tricks to help you get there. But even as you search for an expert in the optimization, it is also helpful to be aware of what trends are working currently and which ones are not. Below are a few of the most effective SEO trends you should embrace to double your traffic and enjoy great returns.

Videos for SEO

The videos are very entertaining and you therefore cannot go wrong with a high quality, informative video in your SEO strategy. Videos have a way of grabbing attention and when they are engaging enough, they will earn you very valuable traffic besides doubling it. All you have to do is ensure that it is easy for search engines to find the content and index it successfully so it is displayed when specific keywords are entered.

Mobile optimization

Audiences are no longer limited to one place and this cannot be ignored. If your website is not mobile friendly then you are losing out on lots of potential. A huge number of searches are done from mobile devices today. With a mobile friendly website, you can be sure to enjoy a huge boost on searches from the mobile devices. For this to work, you need to ensure that everything on your website including the colors and the fonts, graphics and the videos are mobile optimized. You will be surprised at just how rewarding this approach can be in doubling your traffic and increasing your ranks.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps have taken over online digital media by a huge percent. A huge percent of internet users are actually spending more time using these apps and by exploring their advantages, you will be able to make SEO improvements. The apps make searches easier and hence more and more people prefer the native mobile apps over websites. In a mobile app, you can prominently feature your brand and include all proper links to enjoy better rankings. Mobile app optimization should also be given priority in SEO optimization for the trend to work successfully.

Voice search function

Voice searches are more convenient and many people today have embraced them, especially when trying to multitask. It is much easier to voice search than type in keywords making the searches very popular. You can use this to improve your traffic, but you need to be very careful in ensuring the content you have is searchable. Long-tail keywords are a much better choice for this trend over conventional ones.

According to Google Search Console, “Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”

Technically a duplicate content, may or may not be penalized, but can still sometimes impact search engine rankings. When there are multiple pieces of, so called “appreciably similar” content (according to Google) in more than one location on the Internet, search engines will have difficulty to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query.

Why does duplicate content matter to search engines? Well it is because it can bring about three main issues for search engines:

1. They don’t know which version to include or exclude from their indices.
2. They don’t know whether to direct the link metrics ( trust, authority, anchor text, etc) to one page, or keep it separated between multiple versions.
3. They don’t know which version to rank for query results.

When duplicate content is present, website owners will be affected negatively by traffic losses and rankings. These losses are often due to a couple of problems:

1. To provide the best search query experience, search engines will rarely show multiple versions of the same content, and thus are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the best result. This dilutes the visibility of each of the duplicates.
2. Link equity can be further diluted because other sites have to choose between the duplicates as well. instead of all inbound links pointing to one piece of content, they link to multiple pieces, spreading the link equity among the duplicates. Because inbound links are a ranking factor, this can then impact the search visibility of a piece of content.

The eventual result is that a piece of content will not achieve the desired search visibility it otherwise would.

Regarding scraped or copied content, this refers to content scrapers (websites with software tools) that steal your content for their own blogs. Content referred here, includes not only blog posts or editorial content, but also product information pages. Scrapers republishing your blog content on their own sites may be a more familiar source of duplicate content, but there’s a common problem for e-commerce sites, as well, the description / information of their products. If many different websites sell the same items, and they all use the manufacturer’s descriptions of those items, identical content winds up in multiple locations across the web. Such duplicate content are not penalized.

How to fix duplicate content issues? This all comes down to the same central idea: specifying which of the duplicates is the “correct” one.

Whenever content on a site can be found at multiple URLs, it should be canonicalized for search engines. Let’s go over the three main ways to do this: Using a 301 redirect to the correct URL, the rel=canonical attribute, or using the parameter handling tool in Google Search Console.

301 redirect: In many cases, the best way to combat duplicate content is to set up a 301 redirect from the “duplicate” page to the original content page.

When multiple pages with the potential to rank well are combined into a single page, they not only stop competing with one another; they also create a stronger relevancy and popularity signal overall. This will positively impact the “correct” page’s ability to rank well.

Rel=”canonical”: Another option for dealing with duplicate content is to use the rel=canonical attribute. This tells search engines that a given page should be treated as though it were a copy of a specified URL, and all of the links, content metrics, and “ranking power” that search engines apply to this page should actually be credited to the specified URL.

Meta Robots Noindex: One meta tag that can be particularly useful in dealing with duplicate content is meta robots, when used with the values “noindex, follow.” Commonly called Meta Noindex, Follow and technically known as content=”noindex,follow” this meta robots tag can be added to the HTML head of each individual page that should be excluded from a search engine’s index.

If you own a company, you have probably heard of search engine optimization. Essentially, this is what allows your company’s website to be one of the first websites shown on the results list after a search has been made. Having better search engine optimization can lead to more individuals seeing your website and, as a result, having more potential customers. However, the entire process of improving your company’s search engine optimization can be extremely difficult, especially for those who are not as knowledgeable in the area of technology.

Today, many business owners are trusting their website’s creation and search engine optimization to the experts, they are hiring professionals to handle this for them. If you are an India based company, there are many options available to you, but finding the perfect fit is key. There is a good chance that you know other business owners and one of the first steps to finding the perfect company to help you will be to ask others who they use. Once you have a list of potential companies, you can do your own online research to narrow down your search, but there are some things you should ask the company directly before making an official hire.

First, it can be beneficial to ask who their past and current clients are. This can give you an idea of the types and status of the companies that they have worked with before. Also, you may be able to use these past companies as a reference point. If you could speak to an owner of one of these companies it can give you a direct idea of how they were treated and if the company did in fact improve their SEO.

Next, you should inquire on how the company will improve your search engine rankings and the results you should expect. The key to this question is that they give you a realistic answer, as it is practically impossible to give you a top search results on every search engine out there. Each company you speak to should have a specific plant they follow when working with customers. Though these plans may vary, you can expect them to stick to something like an initial website review, weeding out problems that lower your ranking, on page optimization, improving website URL, developing page titles, headings, and tags.

Of course, most popular search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have specific guidelines that they expect companies to follow and breaking these rules can result in lowered search results and even banning from the results completely. You will want to ask the company you are considering if they follow these rules, which are called webmaster guidelines. For example, Google prohibits twelve SEO tricks that can lead to incorrect optimization. Ensuring that the company you choose avoids breaking these guidelines is extremely important.

Another thing to consider is obviously the price you are willing to pay for your SEO help and if the companies you are considering fits this budget. You will want to ask if you will need to pay by hour or by project and what you can expect your overall costs to be. Another important question is how often and how you will be contacted if needed throughout the process. You will want to stay up to date on the changes being made on your website and the results you are receiving with the SEO changes being made.

Overall, improving your company’s search engine optimization can lead to more potential customers seeing your website. Learning how to make your website SEO friendly and changing things that are setting you back can be a lengthy and difficult process for business owners. This is why you should hire a professional team to handle the search engine optimization of your site.

The content of your website is crucial for ranking, thus, it has to be unique and to the point, but before it goes viral and ranks higher, it needs links that Google crawls and come to know about your content. These links give an idea of the structure of your website, so, Google will analyze it, whether it has all the factors that it needs to rank or not. Now the question is why it is important for SEO and why you need to focus on it for better ranking. If you don’t know, so, here we are to help you out. Scroll down to know its importance.

• Improve Usability Through Anchor-Texts: Internal Linking is very much helpful to improve the usability of your website through anchor texts. And for this, you need to use, user-friendly and relevant links in your Blogs, Articles, and Classifieds, PDFs or any other type of content. It redirects the readers to another article or blog that increase their stay time on your website. But make sure you prevent duplicate content to get positive outcomes.
• Boost Page View: Another benefit of internal linking is that it helps to boost up the page view of your website and helps all your visitors to navigate your website thoroughly. This may double the chances of your website conversion and generate more leads. To make it possible, you have to make sure your website has proper links and loads its page properly without taking forever.
• Improve Ranking Of Your Web Page And Overall Website: Internal Linking plays an important role in increasing the rank of any particular page if you target the right keyword and use the proper links. As the rank of your web page improves, so, it may also improve the ranking of your overall website.
• Visitors Retention: It increases the chances of visitor retention because it’s a human nature that if they like something, they will surely browse more. It give your visitor a reason to stay on your website and give it some time, which clearly indicates that they like your website, which is good for your business and help you win the customer for life.

These are some of the common benefits of internal linking of the SEO and you should focus on it to get the great and positive outcomes of your efforts. In case you think, you need professional support, don’t hesitate to consult an SEO expert near you.

So, you own a website. It’s well-optimized. The content is relevant. You’ve used website audit tools to deck it up. You are ready for a thorough Google indexing. You have nothing to fear. Right?

Not so soon!

Have you ever used backlinks? Ever used a third party SEO service? Did you entirely avoid looking at your backlink portfolio?

If you just nodded yes to any of the above mentioned three questions, snap to attention! Your website can be penalized anytime now. You need a backlink audit.

Wait! Backlinks and Penalty? How Does That Work?

A link to your website on any web page is a backlink. And it’s significant for SEO.

Some time ago, Google was focussed on the number of backlinks- the higher, the better. Cheap SEO service providers began creating a fake blog/page to link to all their clients. The resultant Private Blog Network increased backlink number for websites and Google, in its sheer innocence, believed said sites to be reliable sources of info.

Because if so many sites are linking back to your website regarding ‘Food for diabetes,’ you must be a diabetes diet expert, right?

Well, the quantity-only approach began producing spammy search results. So Google decided to refine its filters.

Now, If a genuine, reputed website links to you, your authenticity improves. If many powerful, relevant web posts link back to you, your Search Engine Results Pages rank (SERP) takes a hike.

Do you see what I’m working towards? Excellent quality and quantity of backlinks- better SERP- improved reputation- Google considers you credible.

Poor backlinking- your website sinks like the Titanic and Google slaps a fine on you.

Okay! What Happens If Google Fines/Blocks/De-Ranks You?

The backlink popularity of your website makes up for about 22% of your Google Rank.

It means any shady, irrelevant, pointless websites that link back to you will be considered by Google. And that’ll affect your index rank.

If Google finds you guilty and puts a Manual Action Penalty on you, it can demote your website, remove a few pages, or the entire site temporarily. You may suffer organic traffic, sales, leads, and conversion losses.

If, however, you get hit by the algorithmic penalty, no warning. Your traffic will deteriorate over time without any seeming explanation. You’ll need special tools to uncover the reason. By the time you know what hit you, you’d have lost too many leads and traffic.

So Think Hard- Have You Ever Practised Spammy Backlinking?

Have you ever rigged blogs’ and websites’ comment sections with your website’s URL wrapped within a crappy, almost aimless message to build backlinks?

Is it possible that the cheap SEO company you hired duped you and built a shady backlink portfolio using bad SEO techniques?

You need to analyze your backlink portfolio. Look closer. If you ever used guest blogging, news articles, genuine comments, profile shares, press releases, or social media for backlinking, you’ll probably recognize the sources.

Point out the ones you don’t. Do some research, confirm the domain metrics of suspicious entities, and separate the credible backlinks from the spammy ones. Or, just use a free backlink audit tool and get your ducks in a row.

You can also do a competitor backlink analysis. Compare a few websites on the SEO audit tool and look at how damaging their results are in contrast to yours.

Your Solution- Use a Backlink Analysis Tool and Audit Your Website’s Negative Backlinks

SEO Gurus always try to stay a step ahead of Google algorithms. And they’ll advise you as well to have a list of natural looking backlinks. Only, Google is tweaking its filters every day now. And unless your backlink portfolio is genuine, you need to perform a backlink audit.