Level Up Your SEO Game for Free: Essential Tools to Attract More Customers

Level Up Your SEO Game for Free: Essential Tools to Attract More Customers
In today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving digital age, it is of utmost importance for businesses to establish a formidable and impactful online presence in order to effectively maintain their competitiveness in the market. With countless companies vying for attention and striving to capture the attention of their target audience, standing out from the crowd has become increasingly challenging. Therefore, developing a strong online presence has become not only a necessity but also a strategic imperative for businesses aiming to thrive in this dynamic and competitive landscape. By embracing the power of the internet and leveraging various digital platforms, businesses can connect with their existing and potential customers on a deeper level, enhance brand visibility, and establish themselves as industry leaders. This online presence encompasses everything from having a well-designed and user-friendly website, engaging and informative social media profiles, captivating content creation, effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, and consistent online interactions with customers. It is through the synergy of these elements that businesses can elevate their online presence and effectively navigate the complex digital landscape, ensuring sustainable growth and success in the ever-competitive business world of today.
1. Introduction
This document is a comprehensive guide for beginners to SEO. It is intended to help people with minimal knowledge of SEO to understand the basics and how to get started with their own SEO initiative. Perhaps the most critical, yet most overlooked portion of a successful SEO campaign, is a succinct and convincing flawless introduction. An introduction can often be the difference between success and failure. It’s the ‘first impression’ that a site has on the mind of the visitor. It is imperative that this first impression be favourable. An effective introduction must be able to captivate the reader and convince them that what they are about to read is both important and interesting. The content of the introduction should provide some shop-good information without giving too much away. It should provide an outline of the topics to be covered in the SEO initiative. Finally, it needs to conclude with a convincing call to action, prompting the reader to delve further into the site in search of what the business/services can offer them.
The major factor in whether or not a visitor to your site can be converted into a customer is the quality of the introduction of your business to them. Imagine a meeting between potential customer and yourself. In the space of a minute or two, you are going to need to give a brief overview of what your business can do for them. This concise overview, which needs to encapsulate all that your business stands for, is in essence what your introduction is. An effective introduction can help you to retain and convert visitors to customers, a simple but effective improvement.
1.1. Importance of SEO for businesses
Businesses, no matter how large or small, need SEO. The importance of SEO is primarily because search engines serve consumers more than anywhere else. About 80% of internet users go straight to a search engine before making a purchase. Around 50% of users are looking for a business to get into contact with. This shows that if a consumer is looking for a certain product or service, they are going to try and find it by using a search engine. In this case, the business that appears the highest in the search results is what the consumer is going to be looking for. The higher a website is ranked in the search engine results, the better chance that website has of being clicked on. If a website is buried deep within the results, it is difficult to find it. Because of this, a business wants to make sure that it is on the first page of search results. With the help of SEO, a ranking that is higher can be expected.
In business, it is common knowledge that the biggest chance of success transpires when a product or service fills a need. It is the same with online businesses. With the use of SEO, the aim is to connect with consumers that are already in need of the particular product or service. These are the consumers who are using a search engine because they want to find what they are looking for. Attracting these kinds of consumers proves to be the easiest sales. For example, a serviceman wouldn’t knock on the door of a house where he knows the people inside don’t need his services. He would rather go to a house where he knows the people inside are in need of his services. This is the same way a business using SEO wants to think.
1.2. Benefits of using free SEO tools
For small businesses and bloggers, it is always beneficial to track where money is being spent and this is such an easy task when investing into free software. Free tools are just that, free! There are no costs to you, the only thing you invest is your time. Learning how to save and the best way to use time is described as work smarter not harder. Through using certain tools, you are able to work smarter with the time you have. Generating and editing strategies becomes easier and faster hence time may be spent on other important matters. Free tools are great for providing rich analysis and in-depth information on keywords. This information may be used in the future to select keywords more wisely and generate a higher ranking within the search engines. Free SEO Tools for Businesses keyword tools can also be used to generate reports and help with the analysis of a website’s competition around certain keywords. This is a great way to select the best keywords and generate better ranking positions. Free SEO tools are ideal for small budget companies as it can provide them with the same data many pricey ones would. Free tools offer a wide range of services and can cater for all sorts of businesses and budgets.
2. Keyword Research
Here is a list of Free SEO to Increase Website Traffic tools that you can use to get started with keyword research. Remember that the data in most free tools comes from libraries of searches in the past. If you are targeting trendy areas or very cutting-edge products, the best keywords and phrases may not turn up, and your SEO campaign may be done more effectively using a professional with experience in your niche. However, these tools can still offer valuable insights into common uses of your product and could be useful for brainstorming ideas to narrow down later with better tools.
The goal of keyword research is to find out what the best keywords and phrases are for your campaign, and then to analyze how difficult it will be to rank for those keywords.
Keywords are the foundation of SEO. This is the area that you want to rank for in search engines, so you need to know what people are searching for when they are looking for your product. Trying to improve your online results without knowing what people are searching for is like trying to win a race in the dark with only a flashlight to show the way. You might stumble on the finish line, but you will not know in which direction or how far away it is.
2.1. Understanding the importance of keywords
Keywords are key from a search and user perspective. Often times, the way that users find your website is not the way you might think. Imagine you have a website about boomerangs. You may think that your users will find your site by searching “where to buy a boomerang”. This could be true, but more often than not, it might be much simpler than that. Your users might just go to a search engine and type “boomerang”. A good analogy to this is a fish hook. You want your fish (user) to bite on the hook, but without the right bait, the fish will never bite. In the same sense, even though there are more specific types of boomerangs or boomerang-related products, you want to attract users to the general part of your website first.
Keywords are key terms or phrases. To put it simply, they’re the words that summarize what a web page is about. They’re the ideas and topics behind the content. A website will act as a communication tool or medium, and the keyword to success in doing so is the content. This may seem very straightforward and easy, but keyword implementation and research is a lot trickier than it seems.
2.2. Free tools for keyword research
1. Google AdWords Keyword Tool – The AdWords are the keywords of all SEO. Basically, if you want to do SEO at a high level, this is the only source for keyword ideas you will ever need. The WMS tool is integrated into it but does not give data for search volumes like the external one does. This is a downside if you have to monitor your spending on a client campaign, but because the keyword suggestions are so relevant, you can gather a good list and use the search volumes as a rough guide from another website. Google Insights for Search – This tool is a great addition to the original Google keyword tool. It shows a visual comparison of keyword trends and volumes globally, by country, by region, by city, and by languages. The device is very useful for location targeting as the search volumes for different regions can greatly differ. This can influence the allocation of resources and manpower onto more profitable areas.
2. Microsoft Excel – This is not exactly a tool for keyword research but an aid to keyword organization and segmentation. The more SEO that you partake in, the more keywords that you study. This can become very overwhelming, so using Excel to track search volumes and competition levels can make a task much easier to manage.
3. KeywordSpy – This tool has a dodgy sounding name and an even dodgier logo, but it is still worth a mention. KeywordSpy is similar to the WMS tool in that it spies on your competitors (legally) by using their search terms to generate an extensive list of related keywords. It offers varying data and different ways of segmenting information than the free tool, so it is useful for additional ideas.
2.3. Analyzing keyword competition
Analyzing keyword competition is generally the toughest step and also the most important. With the right methodology and data, you can easily find out which keywords are worth targeting and which are too competitive to bother with. This is also a critical concept when using search data to predict the success of a new website or an untapped market. From a business standpoint, the goal of keyword research is to have maximum relevant exposure for your website while not spending unnecessary time on unattainable rankings. Some types of businesses can only afford to target the low hanging fruit early on, while others can be bold and go after the big business. B2C and B2B businesses can also differ in their keyword targeting strategies. B2C businesses often have a shorter sales cycle and lower cost products, so they can afford to target keywords that attract less traffic but are easier to convert. B2B businesses often have longer sales cycles and need to invest a lot into a customer, so they generally seek more traffic. Volume is simply the amount of searches for that keyword per time period, on average. Depending on the business, an average search volume can be relative. A small business may find that a keyword with only 100 searches a month is enough to sustain their business, while an established business may seek keywords with several thousand searches a month to make it worth their while.
3. On-Page Optimization
3.3. Creating SEO-friendly URLs
Another important part of on-site optimization is URL. URL that comprising random or auto generated thing is unattractive, and would lessen the probability of incoming visitor. People love short and descriptive URL, hence it does not only look good, but it will also give brief glance of what the page is all about. High SEO value URL usually have low parameters and categorized by date or name, hence changes it to that kind of pattern would be a good idea.
3.2. Improving website loading speed
Speed defines modern site characteristic. People hate waiting, and slow sites are real pain, hence they are mostly abandoned in just a glimpse. As for SEO, since search engine also defines waiting time on-site as a negative value, it will affect the site position if it’s too slow. Make sure to keep loading time no more than 5 seconds, hence reducing the page size, optimizing images, and if you have spare cash, using CDN or premium hosting would be the best solution.
3.1. Optimizing meta tags and descriptions
Meta tags and descriptions are the initial things that search engine crawler would get when they execute their task. By meta tags and descriptions, search engine crawler would know what the content of the page is and how to categorize them, hence they need to be optimized with the right keywords. Grammatically right or not it doesn’t matter. Brevity on explaining the page of what it’s all about is the only thing that is needed.
Among the most essential parts of SEO is on-page optimization. Coming as the initial step of your SEO venture, on-page optimization gives most of value which can be characterized as what you require as a result as the best position in search result. This is the time when you need to manage your website and enhance each and every page with the correct keywords. Since each page has separate feature and purpose, you need to treat every page independently to get the best result.
3.1. Optimizing meta tags and descriptions
Meta tags and meta descriptions are another part of the site that you can effortlessly optimize for great results. A meta tag is a snippet of HTML code that contains metadata about your web page. Meta tags contain information about the page or article that it’s about, keywords, description, type of document, and author, etc. Meta tags are placed in the “head” section of your HTML and thus aren’t visible to the user looking at your site. It’s important to craft meta tags and a meta description that are enticing and that contain strong keywords because these improve your chances of having a high click-through rate to your website. A description that is well-written with strong keywords also improves your site’s rank on search engine results pages. Using a plugin like Yoast will allow you to easily edit the meta tags and meta description for your article. Yoast has a specific section to allow for easy editing of a meta description. When you scroll down on an edit/add new post page, you can see this awesome plugin below the text editor. This section also has a spot to add a focus keyword to help gauge your SEO effectiveness. If your meta description is well optimized with a strong keyword, you can expect better rankings.
In Joomla, you have the option to set a global meta description and global meta tags. This is highly useful if your site has more of a static, unchanging home page and/or certain articles. The global meta tags and description can be set by accessing global configuration and then going to the metadata settings. Keep in mind that these global meta tags will apply to all your articles and blog pages, so it’s good to go back and change this if you have a certain page for which you want to have specific meta tags.
With WordPress and Thesis theme, there’s an option to have a noindex for archive pages (Yoast has this feature too). It’s good to enable the noindex on paginated pages, category, and tag pages. This will prevent search engines from indexing these pages and having them appear as duplicate pieces of content. When these pages are indexed, it takes away from your precious link juice. A lot of times these pages are full of unimportant content and anchor text, so they aren’t the best landing pages for visitors coming through search traffic. These are a good place to use the meta tag “noindex, and nofollow” so they don’t appear in search engine results and don’t decrease the link juice to your other pages.
3.2. Improving website loading speed
Finally, limit the amount of ads on your site and only use them if it is absolutely necessary. Although you may make some money from it in the short run, it can hurt the user experience and make your site look too cluttered.
You can also optimize the speed of your site by using image optimization plugins like WP Smush.it, which will reduce the file size of your images without reducing the quality. You should also avoid using any flash as it’s extremely slow and not indexable by search engines.
The loading time of your site is critical. You need to have a fast site or else people will leave. If your blog is on WordPress, you can install W3 Total Cache and use a content delivery network (CDN) like MaxCDN (same one I use). The combination of the two can make a dramatic difference. I’ve seen loading times go from 5-6 seconds to 2-3 seconds after implementing the two. You can’t ignore this.
3.3. Creating SEO-friendly URLs
When it comes to URLs, there are a few things you can do to ensure your website’s address is SEO-friendly. Firstly, make sure you have readable URLs. This means that they should be simple enough for anyone to understand what they will find on the page just by looking at the URL. An example of a non-readable URL is [Link] A readable URL would look something more like this: [Link] As you can see, the second URL is much cleaner and easier to understand. This is beneficial for SEO because search engines will give more value to links with URLs that contain relevant keywords.
Another thing to consider when creating SEO-friendly URLs is keyword density. It is important to include the keywords that you are targeting to rank for in the URL. This will give the search engines an indication of what the destination page is about. It is important not to overdo it with the keyword density, as this will look like URL spam, which is not only bad for your brand’s image but also decreases the probability of a page being clicked on. A good standard for keyword density is to aim for around 1-3 words in the URL.
4. Content Creation and Optimization
Content should always be user-centric. Always write fresh content that is informative, unique, and interesting. Do not add too much thin or repeated content on the website. It’s always better to have high-quality and engaging content than having a bulk amount of content that has less quality. Users may get distracted and leave the website if the content is not what they are looking for. Try using simple words and effective language that should pass the message to the user. It’s a great idea to add a few links or references to other pages of the website if you are explaining a particular topic in a section. This can make the user spend more time on the website.
4.1 Writing high-quality and engaging content
Content creation is an essential aspect of SEO. It is about designing, modifying the website, and restructuring it in an effective way. As content is the only thing that satisfies the query of the user, SEO is affected mainly by it.
4.1. Writing high-quality and engaging content
Your content, the actual words you use, is the most important aspect of your website. It not only gives your products a voice, but it also gives personality and a feel for what your company is all about. It helps develop a relationship with your visitors with the use of comments, feedback, and interaction. Your content is a vital key element to the standard SEO practices mentioned above. Your content should be written in a professional, clear, and concise manner, using your chosen keywords in plural or singular forms. Your website content should be insightful and able to resolve a specific problem that your target market audience will be looking to resolve. Web content must be relevant to the search query – in fact, this is probably the most important point. It should be directly related to the title and subtitle and the exact content that your specific page is expected to display. Any off-topic content will deter your readers and send them searching elsewhere. Having a targeted approach will bring the best results in all marketing endeavors. Make sure not to overuse keywords. Always read your content out loud to see if it sounds natural. If the keyword placement seems forced, odds are it is. The keyword density within the content should be roughly 2.5-3%. This means the keyword should appear roughly 6-7 times for a standard paragraph. It is also very important to keep your content up to date. Ads and offers that are no longer relevant can detract from the user experience, so they should be removed or altered. Regular valuable content updates are viewed favorably by both users and search engines alike.
4.2. Optimizing content for keywords
There are few direct things that can be done to optimize a page for a certain keyword phrase. Assure that the keyword is in the page title. As this is the most important piece of on-page content, this is one of the most important places to have a keyword. Place the keyword phrase in a subheading. This is simple but effective way to step up the keyword relevancy of a page. Sprinkle the keyword phrase throughout the page. Note that the first instance of the keyword should be within the first 25 words of the page. Bold or italicize the keyword a few times. Using the keyword phrase in bold or italics can have a bit of a keyword relevancy boost. Only do. Use keyword as anchor text in a link from another page on this site. This makes the page a hub page and really boosts the relevancy of this page in regards to the keyword.
4.3. Utilizing heading tags and internal linking
By internal linking, you can highlight the importance of certain pages, as they end up with more links than others. Links within the site show search engines other pages of your site and how they are related. This is important because search engines try to build a map of your site and determine the relation of each page. Internal linking can enforce the keyword used in the destination page, plus it provides easy access from the user. Try to build as many links as possible between your pages, but be sure to avoid having too many links on the same page. A good goal would be to create a link to every page on your site on every page of your site. This is an effective way to ensure that every page gets indexed, and providing that the strength of the pages are relatively equal, each page will hold similar rankings.
Heading tags have a significant impact on search engine rankings. Utilize keywords in your headings to help search engines understand what your content is about. Utilizing heading tags also allows for the creation of a contents page, which will use jump links to help organize your contents pages. By helping out the search engines in categorizing your content, you will be more competitive in your keywords.
4.4. Incorporating multimedia elements for better SEO
Images and photographs can also be optimized. File names and directories should contain a keyword or phrases that are relevant to the image. This is particularly relevant on image-based websites such as clipart or photography stores. The file should also be saved in the correct format, JPEG for photographs and PNG for images such as clipart. This has to be balanced with the image quality, however, as large images can slow down a website, which can have a negative effect on SEO.
ALT text is used to describe an image. This is an important part of an image’s HTML code and is used when the internet connection is poor and the image fails to load. In this instance, the ALT text will display instead. It can also be used by people who are visually impaired, using screen reader software. The description should be a more detailed explanation of the image and can also include a keyword.
Often, the best resource is the most accessible one, and that resource is multimedia. Images and video can be a great asset in improving your site’s SEO. Both image and video search are becoming more widely used and can be a good source of traffic.
5. Link Building
Members of the SEOBook team have been active in SEO since 2000. They have worked on many websites, from small personal sites to very large websites. Their tested techniques and insights into the way search engines work have been distilled into this book, which will enable you to avoid the potentially devastating mistakes that can be made by those new to marketing their websites in search engine. Step-by-step we will teach you how to build a successful website, including how to successfully market it through search engines. Enjoy the preview. Buy the book. Read it, and start increasing your traffic and sales today!
Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results. There are many different methods for building links, and while they vary in difficulty, SEOs tend to agree that link building is one of the hardest parts of their jobs. This section shall serve as a brief primer on a few different link building techniques. On the whole, the point of link building is to increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website in the hope of increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results.
5.1. Understanding the importance of backlinks
First of all, let’s start by asking an important question – What are backlinks? Backlinks are obviously links on other websites that link to your site. This means if I run a website and site A links to my site, then that link is a backlink for my site.
Now understanding the importance of backlinks is not so difficult. What they do is increase your site’s popularity. This, in turn, increases your site’s pagerank.
If your site is a local business, then a well-placed backlink on a popular site can seriously bring the traffic flooding in. These types of backlinks can be very hard to get but are extremely worthwhile. It’s just a case of getting in contact with the site owners and telling them that you believe that your site is so useful that it would benefit their visitors. This should be backed up with quality content.
5.2. Free tools for finding link building opportunities
Link Diagnosis
Uses: Yahoo! Site Explorer
Link Diagnosis is a fantastic tool for checking out your own backlinks and the backlinks of your competitors. For those of you who are familiar with Yahoo! Site Explorer, you will realize that Yahoo’s data does not match up with their PageRank. With the Yahoo data, this tool can be quite inaccurate. This is why Diagnosis is such a great tool, it allows you to import backlink data from both Yahoo! and the Link: command, and combine the results, thus getting a comprehensive list of backlinks. The tool uses its own PageRank and anchor text data and will even allow you to compare these with competitor’s backlinks. You can also filter the links that it returns by various different factors, I generally like to sort by the highest PageRank first. Last but not least, one benefit that this tool has over Yahoo! Site Explorer is that there is no limit to the amount of backlinks that you can view.
So there are many tools around the web that you can use to find link building opportunities, discovering sites that are in a relevant field to your own, that have a good PageRank, and already have a bond with your site without you even knowing. Some of the best tools to use for link building research include tools like Link Diagnosis, SEOquake and Advanced Google Search Operators. All of these tools have the ability to extract various levels of information to help identify prime link building opportunities.
5.3. Building relationships for guest posting
This is the most vital part about guest blogging. The primary thing you have to do is distinguish your objectives. Will you expect to get activity to your site? Get introduction to your name or brand? At last, the objective is connection obtaining as this is the most huge advantage to offsite content. Make a rundown of web journals you need to target. In the first place, go for the top web journals in your industry, these will profit you the most. These will commonly be websites with a Google Page Rank of no less than 4, ideally higher. In any case, it is essential to gone through a qualification prepare as it is likely these destinations will get numerous offers and it is not beneficial investing energy composing for a blog which won’t distribute your post. This qualification includes surveying how important the websites movement is to your site. One great measure of movement quality is the measure of remarks that are made. If the site proprietor consistently answers to remarks, then this is a decent sign that the group of onlookers is mindful and locks in. Then again, on the off chance that there are a ton of spam remarks, then this is not a decent sign. An alternate method for qualifying the site is discovering how frequently the substance is tweeted about. This can be carried out by duplicating the URL of the site into Topsy.com. Simply sort paste the URL into the hunt bar and it will give you a rundown of the amount of times that it has been tweeted. This is an incredible approach to gage the online networking vicinity of the website. You will likewise need to evaluate the website’s gathering of people, how far it comes to and the significance of your substance to the group of onlookers. A discourse with the site manager may be essential. A successful approach to keep tabs of it is through a spreadsheet. Have an alternate sheet for each one website you are focusing on. In the first place, you will need to track general measurements, for example, the name of the online journal, the URL, and contact subtle elements. Then another segment for necessities. This will help you to monitor if the site meets your capability criteria. Assuming that it does, then you can keep tabs on creating a relationship with the manager, else you can move the site to an optional need and assess it later.
6. Technical SEO
SEOquake is a fabulous and free SEO tool that can identify problems in meta-tagging, broken links, duplicate content, and much more. SEOquake is an extension that can be added to any browser. This is great because websites can be analyzed on the spot. Search status examines different aspects of a website, such as Google page rank, meta-tags, and who is linking to your website. This tool creates a report of your website’s strengths and weaknesses SEO-wise. This will, in turn, highlight the areas of SEO your website needs to improve on most. This tool can also be used to compare different websites against each other.
Conducting website audits is essential to understanding your website’s current state and improving it. A website audit goes through and analyzes all the factors connected to search engine readiness, providing you with insight into your website’s workings. These factors include crawlability, which ensures search engines can access and crawl through your website. Your website also needs to ensure it’s using the right keywords and meta data. Google ranking is also something your website should check. Basically, the higher your page rank on Google, the more likely your site will be found. For example, if your site sells shoes, when someone Googles “shoes,” your website may appear in the result list. An analysis of your website may bring to light a few more factors.
6.1. Conducting website audits
1. Crawl your own site: You can find several tools on the internet that can be used to crawl your own website. You need to find the one that you feel is best. One such tool can be found at [Link] This tool is used to create a map of your site to provide a detailed search engine. It creates the sitemap in two formats, one for the viewers on your site and one for the search engines. The sitemap page is created for users, so that they can find easily what they are looking for. This is generally based on the hierarchical structure of the site and it can be in the form of a link page.
2. Check the site search: If the site has a search feature, then use it to search the site for a common syntax error, like broken links to images or misspelled URLs. These errors may seem trivial, but they can lead to big problems. Using this method, you should also manually search through the site to check for errors on pages that may not be indexed or are hard to get to from the home page.
Website audits are as essential as the whole SEO. The audits are conducted to find out the flaws in the process. Basically, the audits are done to track the evolution of the SEO program, to find out what has been done in the previous steps are bringing out the desired results or not, if not then the reason why it is so.
There are several ways for conducting an SEO website audit. It is not fixed that a particular method is best. It basically involves checking the below mentioned points.
6.2. Fixing broken links and redirect errors
Anyone’s search engine optimization efforts, especially when beginning a new website, should always start with a thorough examination of the website’s existing condition. Assessing the site’s strengths and weaknesses allows you to both identify areas that need improvement and track progress after implementation. By registering and verifying your website using Google Webmaster Tools, you can receive a comprehensive list of any crawl errors that Googlebot encounters while indexing your site. These errors occur for a variety of reasons and may be hindering your search engine rankings. One of the more common errors is a ‘not found’ error, which is displayed when Googlebot attempts to index a page that does not exist. A more concerning error is the ‘access denied’ error, which occurs when Googlebot is blocked from an intended destination. Unfortunately, crawl errors happen to even the most diligent webmasters, whether it be a mistyped URL when publishing new content or an accidentally deleted page. With the information provided by Webmaster Tools, you can find and fix these errors quickly, ensuring that Googlebot is able to index all of your intended content. After resolving any crawl errors, it’s also a good idea to submit an XML sitemap to Google. This ensures that all of your site’s content is successfully indexed and can be accessed through the search results. Remember, the more content you have indexed, the better your chances are of attracting organic traffic from an increased number of search queries.
With only your company’s website or blog and the free tools offered by Google at your disposal, you can propel your site’s search engine rankings and increase online traffic. In this article, I’ll describe in detail how you can exploit the features and benefits specific to two free Google tools: Webmaster Tools and Custom Search Engine. Whether you’re an SEO practitioner or a website owner, I’m certain you’ll be able to take away something of value that will help increase your site traffic and search engine rankings.
Level up your SEO game for free: Essential tools to attract more customers.
6.3. Implementing structured data markup
During a time where rich snippets and instant answers are becoming more prevalent in search results, it is crucial to communicate with search engines in their own language. Step one to implementing structured data is always to choose a markup vocabulary. A markup vocabulary is a set of tags and a lexical scope which can be used to apply meaning to the content they enclose. The most widely used vocabulary for structured data is schema.org, which is sponsored by all the major search engines. schema.org contains a large library of schemas, each with specific properties that can be used to mark up a web page. For example, the schema LocalBusiness contains properties such as telephone, address, and geo which are used to describe the information one would find on a local business page.
Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a movie page, information such as the movie title, its genre, and the actors involved can all be marked up using structured data. This improves Google’s understanding of the page content and can, in some cases, allow special search result features and enhancements.
But how can a business tell Google specific details about its services, in ways that Google can understand and use to better organize search results? This is where structured data comes into play.
Let’s say that a potential customer is seeking out the services of a business that offers mini golf and batting cages, and they are located in close proximity to where the customer lives. This customer could go to a search engine and query, which may return a list of the nearest batting cages. Unfortunately, there is no way he can filter these results to display only the batting cages that also offer mini golf. This is a problem he is likely to encounter on Google, as it tries to sift through large amounts of data on the web to create organized search results. These results are then displayed on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and are often the initial impression of small businesses on potential customers.
With the increased importance of search engine presence for businesses, it is now more critical than ever to ensure the data on your website is representative of your business and services. This article will focus on the problem of messy unorganized SERPs and introduce structured data as a potential solution.
7. Local SEO
With this, you can also try obtaining reviews from your customers. This can be a bit of a daunting task due to the fear of negative reviews affecting your business’s image, however, this will provide your business with feedback and the chance to improve as well as increasing your click-through rates. Google often ranks listings higher the more reviews they have, so the more the better, assuming they’re not all 1 star!
First thing you will want to do is put yourself on Google Maps using Google My Business. This has become more important after several changes made to Google search with search results showing Google Maps on the right-hand side and a location pin in mobile search results. By setting up a Google My Business account, your business’s information will be shown in a panel on Google Search and Maps. You can do things such as change or add a photo, update your business’s opening and closing times, respond to reviews, and you are also provided with insights about how and where people are searching for your business. By providing Google with this information, you will be more likely to be recognized with a location and this will increase the probability of appearing in local search results.
In order to get your local customers and potential businesses, an essential part would be including local SEO to your website. On abject to increasing your rank on a general scale, local SEO will enable you to target your prospects by pushing your position in local search rankings. According to Google, 4 out of 5 consumers use search engines to find local information, thus it is important that you put this method into practice. This part of method involves higher costs, however there are still a variety of Free SEO Tools for Businesses methods that you can use.
7.1. Optimizing for local search results
There are three local search packs: the local organic, the local carousel, and the local pack. You can identify what kind of search pack it is by the method I hinted before. With each different type of local search pack, the type of local result ends up changing. For example, the local organic pack (pictured right) usually leads to the local organic result, which is a map embedded into the organic search results with lettered or numbered points to show the location of those specific search results. With the local carousel, you will see a carousel of Google+ pages arranged in a color-coordinated display. Finally, with the local pack, there will be a list of local search results accompanied by the map on the right-hand side.
To identify which type of local search pack you are trying to find local results for, you will need to look at the schema that is used in that search query. From there, it will let you know if your clients will be able to rank for any keywords that are going to result in any type of local search pack. If the client is able to rank for any type of local search pack, there is a specific optimization strategy that can be used to help the client increase their rankings in that type of local search results.
7.2. Creating and managing Google My Business listing
The “Info” tab is where you have set the fundamental data about your business such as its name, address, phone number, and hours of operation. This information should be set to match what is displayed on your website, to ensure accurate information across the internet. Any discrepancies can harm local search rankings and visitor confidence. This is also the place to set your business description. This is intended to be a brief pitch about your business, but it is up to 750 characters and in some cases may be displayed as an information card, so consider writing more to fill up the space. This is a great opportunity to add local keywords.
The first and most important step is to claim and verify your business. This is a simple process that can be done by confirming a postcard Google sends to the address of your business. After your business is verified, you can access all of the features that Google My Business has to offer. This tool has had many iterations and redesigns and its layout may change, but at the time of writing, the three main options to manage your GMB presence are the “Info,” “Posts,” and “Insights” tabs.
Google My Business (GMB) is a free and simple-to-use tool for businesses and organizations that can be used to manage a company’s online presence on Google Search and Google Maps. For land-based businesses, your GMB listing is crucial to your online visibility, local or otherwise. It is intended to help businesses attract more customers by allowing them to set their operating information, manage and respond to customer reviews, add photos, and learn where and how people are searching for you. Since this tool is meant to create an online storefront to increase traffic in your physical storefront, it is a local SEO tool at its core.
7.3. Encouraging customer reviews and ratings
It should be stated, however, that it is bad practice to attempt to manipulate reviews, whether by soliciting fake reviews or by incentivizing customers to leave positive reviews. Many popular business review platforms are quite adept at filtering reviews they believe to be fake or untrustworthy, and the discovery of dishonest review practices can be severely damaging to your business’ reputation. It is best to simply provide quality products or services and to seek authentic customer opinion. Customer reviews should be thought of as a bit of a double-edged sword, and negative reviews can be painful to see. However, it is widely agreed that negative reviews are not inherently bad for business. A business with no negative reviews at all looks suspicious and can actually be damaging its consumer trust. A few negative reviews provide a balanced picture of your business credibility, and if they are seen to be resolved to the customer’s satisfaction at a later date, this can, in fact, improve customer retention.
Customer reviews carry a significant weight in local search rankings and are becoming a critical competitive differentiator in every industry. They are valuable for a variety of reasons. Consumer research has shown that reviews are not only trusted but also considered to be a key part of the purchase decision-making process. A recent study by Zendesk found that 90% of participants claimed that positive reviews influenced their purchase, while 86% were influenced by negative reviews. Furthermore, reviews from customers can improve your business’ visibility in search engine results pages. Having a large number of consumer reviews, and particularly positive ratings and reviews, can see your business improve its rank within local search results. Higher-ranking results, combined with the competitive advantage that reviews convey, will mean increased exposure to a larger number of people and ultimately more customers. This feedback loop of positive increased custom and improved search ranking can make reviews a high return investment.
8. Monitoring and Analytics
Similar to setting up Google Webmaster Tools, you will need to set up each individual website that you are optimizing, providing the SEO of that website with its own unique profile. This can be useful for SEO pertaining to different websites if the user also has access to the admin area of the different websites. Step-by-step instructions can be found here, otherwise a condensed guide is listed below in the “Setting Up Google Analytics” section.
Monitoring the performance of SEO efforts provides a measurable benchmark for ongoing campaigns and quality assurance. Tracking performance ideally should be both continuous and precise. Google Analytics provides valuable insight and an extremely detailed overview of which organic search keyword and which search engine are driving the traffic to a website. Its integration with AdWords can also show further information. Google Analytics is a free tool which is easily integrated into a website.
8.1. Setting up Google Analytics for tracking SEO performance
Go to [Link] and sign in using your Google account.
Click ‘Access Google Analytics’.
On the new account sign up page, simply enter an account name to identify your website and enter the URL of your website. (NB. The account name can be anything that you like, for example, if you have multiple websites you may wish to use the specific website name. The URL has to match exactly to the URL of your website).
Select your country and click ‘Get Tracking ID’. A terms and services agreement will pop up, click ‘I Accept’.
You will be taken to a new page where you can retrieve the tracking ID for your website. At the top of this page you will see your account name in bold, underneath that there are 3 columns. In the first column labelled ‘Account’, you will see the name of your website. Underneath that you will see a tag and underneath there will be a tracking ID. This is the code which you will need to insert into the backend of your website. The second and third columns are where you can customise and set specific permissions for users of your website.
Firstly, in order to track our SEO performance, we have to start with setting up Google Analytics. It is a little daunting for some people, especially for those who are not as tech-savvy, but the benefits that you can gain from it will definitely outweigh the initial trouble. Step by step guide on how to install Google Analytics to your website:
8.2. Monitoring keyword rankings and organic traffic
Section 8.2 is a brief overview of his views on SERP tracking. First is an argument that you should not check your search engine ranking too often. The conspiracists are out in force with the claim that checking your SERPs in Firefox is increasing your ranking. I would take that with a pinch of salt but he is right on the other points; checking your position twice a day every day for the same keyword would be pointless and a waste of time. Instead, he suggests using rank tracking software to monitor your site in the top 20-50 results for selected keywords and phrases, checking once a week. This in itself is sound advice, engines can update their index at different intervals for different sites and being a couple of pages deep in the results for an auction keyword change that you weren’t aware of can cost you. If you have reached the top 20 results for a keyword and the traffic is good then it is likely that you will be more reluctant to drop that keyword and move on, but you should only really consider the improvement of traffic and influx of new customers as the deciding factor on higher ROI in optimization. Going back to [Link], Boser suggests running a report on your site to build up a list of link text containing your brand name or website name and combining this with a direct search on your brand name to run a quick check on brand reputation within the SE a couple of times a year.
Now we move to some advice on dealing with rankings drops. It is true that you could have some seasonally dependent (an example would be toy retailing) keywords and a sudden drop in rankings can be alarming. Boser has suggested that you should keep a rotating document on draw dates of rankings of keywords, as well as a list of updates or changes made to content on the site. By comparing these with algorithm updates from various SE sources you can determine whether this is an internal problem, and unless your rankings drop across the board it is likely that this is the case. This is useful information, but if it is indeed an algorithm shift it would be more beneficial to try to increase knowledge of the changes through trial and error on another site and use this as an example. This information may come from data at the time but there would be no conclusive facts about the algorithm change and this is just the kind of misleading information that SEOs have a hard time of letting go.
8.3. Analyzing website metrics to identify areas for improvement
Google Analytics’ “data ranges” feature is useful in that it allows comparisons between two time periods (for example, comparing this year’s data to data from the year before). This would be the starting point for any website analysis, but essentially it’s using data comparison to form questions that will lead to some qualitative and quantitative research. High bounce rates or low visit durations may suggest that users are finding it difficult to navigate to desired information. Goals and e-commerce data will display whether or not a change in SEO has had the desired effect on inquiries or sales. All of this information can be used to create an importance/effort matrix in which site changes can be prioritized depending on the possible effect and the resources required to make them.
SEO is a continual process of improvement; understanding where your website platform is currently and identifying impediments to its success is integral to forming an effective strategy for progression. To begin with, the most practical method of using analytics to identify areas for improvement is to compare historical data to the current status of your website. Have you experienced significant drops in traffic following major search engine algorithm updates? Have certain page ranking changes coincided with on-page alterations? These are learning experiences; they direct your attention to the strengths and weaknesses of your current SEO strategy and provide you with a point of reference for the future.
There is a stigma surrounding the use of website analytics within the SEO community. Some argue that the ever-changing algorithms make historical website data irrelevant and that it creates a mindset which focuses on maintaining current traffic rather than making progress. I wholeheartedly disagree with these sentiments. Data, as both a qualitative and quantitative tool, is essential for business analysis, and to negate its importance is to neglect a business’s chances of success.