Your website will hardly generate much traffic without some state-of-the-art SEO tactics. You probably already know about using keywords and creating online content. However, there are a number of SEO tactics online businesses can employ beyond keyword tricks. Here is a list of some of these little-known SEO tricks that will greatly benefit your business website as well:

Link Your Content on Wikipedia

You know the importance of creating good links to and from your site. Obviously, widely popular Wikipedia is a good source to have on your backlinks list. Therefore, you can try to link your online content to relevant Wikipedia articles. For example, if you have published an article about planting sunflowers for your gardening supplies e-commerce site, you can possibly provide a link to the Wikipedia page about sunflowers. Go through the article and see if you can make a contribution or support a fact with a link to your article. You can also find Wikipedia articles related to your website and write content based on those articles to provide a link. If this is too much trouble for your company, you can outsource projects like this to a local digital agency Dubai.

Republish Popular Old Posts in New Formats

If you have had a blog post or an online article that was quite popular in the past, you can republish them once the trend has cooled down. Do not republish the same article; that would be redundant. Do not rewrite and republish, either. Instead, try to envision the article in new formats, such as an infographic or a YouTube video. You can post these and possibly replicate the same success as before. Additionally, if new developments come up with regards to an older article you have published, and then write a new one referencing the old one to pique your readers’ interest.

Become Visible with Local Listings

Localizing your SEO efforts is important for building credibility and attracting customers locally. Also, did you know that search engines like Google comb through third-party local sites to find businesses? If your site is listed locally on Yelp or Yellowbook, then the site will gain better search rankings overall. Therefore, do not overlook the potential local sites have to boost the popularity of your business website. Instead of shunning them, embrace them.

Media Coverage

If your business is covered at least once by a reputed national or local news outlet, then your search rankings will be perpetually boosted. Therefore, instead of buying posts on obscure blogs, redirect your efforts to getting genuine news coverage. Journalists will be eager to cover your business if you offer them newsworthy topics, such as a new product with amazing features, efforts to improve diversity at the company or a unique success story.

Make Images Searchable

Not many webmasters do this but, if you give images a heading, a little description and tags when uploading to the site, they will become searchable as well, which is good to improve your overall search rankings.

Next time your marketing team meets, try to get them to implement some of the suggestions given above for better sales and brand awareness. Do not limit yourself to one or two tricks. SEO is a constantly changing and evolving field of marketing. Keep up to date with these changes, and be ready to implement them when the time comes.

Optimizing your website with relevant and targeted keywords is one tried-and-tested SEO strategy that improves your visibility on search engine results and increases your website visits which later on translates to higher conversion rates and eventually greater sales and revenue for your business. If you are just getting started with SEO and not sure where to place those keywords, don’t worry. This article shows you exactly where to add those relevant keywords on your website. 

Before You Start

Once you’ve identified the relevant keywords you’re going to target on your website, you need to perform a site audit first and identify which pages should target which keyword phrases before. If you need some help with effective keyword research and other SEO basics, there are some online SEO training that can help you get started.

Start by exporting all your website pages into an Excel spreadsheet. Sort your data by the most frequently visited pages. Identify which keyword category each page falls into, then add that category into a column beside the page name. Add another column for more specific keywords that you want to include on that page. Make sure that these are relevant to the web copy on that page and that these are terms which your target audience would be using during their search.

Once you’re done, you can now start adding your selected keywords and keyword phrases on your website. Here are the 5 places on your website where you should be adding relevant keywords and phrases:

Title Tags

Title tags are shown in search results as well as the browser tab, and these have a direct impact on your search engine rankings as well as searcher click-through rates or CTRs. When writing a title tag for a webpage, include one of your target keywords or phrases so it is apparent to your target audience that your results are relevant to their query. It is also best to limit the title to 65 characters or less, so that it appears completely on the search engine results page and not ‘cut’ and ending in an ellipsis. Besides looking more professional, observing the character limit allows you to concisely communicate what your webpage is all about.

Meta Descriptions

Like title tags, meta descriptions are also shown in search engine results and can also help increase your CTR.  Although meta descriptions don’t have a direct impact on search engine rankings, they are helpful for searchers as they provide a brief introduction about your webpage and give them a reason to click on your webpage link. Add one of your target keywords or phrases in your meta description so your target audience can easily tell that your webpage content is relevant to their query. Convince them to click through the link by making your meta descriptions enticing to the reader.

Webpage Headings and Content

Adding the relevant keywords in your headings and content makes it more likely for your website visitors to stay on your web page, as they see the terms which they had searched for on it. Make sure to use these keywords naturally, Google places value on the users, so write for the readers and provide relevant and valuable information for them.

Adding the right keywords in your web copy is also used by Google as a ranking factor, which helps improve your placement in search engine results. When adding keywords in several different locations throughout your website, one thing you need to avoid is stuffing keywords in title tags, headings, meta descriptions, page content, and URLs as this will make your website look spammy, aside from the fact that this is not approved by search engines. Keyword stuffing can make your website appear manipulative and may cause your website to be demoted in search results.

Image Titles and Alt Text

Another way you can add keywords naturally is in your image titles and alt text. While this may seem minor and might not affect your search rankings as much as the other locations we’ve mentioned, this is also used as a minor search ranking factor. Including keywords in image titles and alt text helps Google find your website during image searches. This also improves accessibility for users who have poor vision using screen readers. Make sure you add accurate and descriptive keywords to these, so they match your images and do not mislead your target audience.

URLs

It is also recommended to include keywords in your URL. Make sure that these accurately describe the webpage contents. This is particularly significant for businesses that do a lot of blogging because each blog post lives on its own unique URL, so this is a great opportunity to optimize your URLs on every blog that you publish. Remember keyword stuffing? This is a no-no for URLs as well. Search engines will penalize keyword stuffed exact match domains. A good format would be yourbusinessname.com/topic-topic.

Optimizing your website with the right amount of relevant keywords and phrases in all the right places will definitely improve your website SEO. By naturally adding them in these five places, you can now start looking forward to more site visitors, increased sales, and greater revenue.

When it comes to SEO, it shouldn’t be a case of putting all of your eggs in one basket. Far too many sites make the mistake of focusing on one activity to boost their search rankings, when in actual fact SEO improvements are most reliably gained through a multitude of actions.

Even today, there are still hundreds of sites out there that are just buying backlinks in hope of increasing their search rankings. Not only is this considered black hat SEO and something that could get you penalised by Google but it’s also going to provide little in comparison to a multi-functional SEO strategy. Concentrate on just one activity (especially a bad one like this) and you’ll never see the results you’re hoping to achieve.

Having said this, solely focusing on creating content is not going to be as effective as an integrated digital marketing approach either. Sure, if it’s unique and relevant to your business then its white hat (ethical) but unless you take other actions, your SEO strategy is going to fall short. 

A blended approach is the best approach to SEO

In 2015, it is highly recommended that brands take a blended approach to SEO in order to increase their search rankings ethically. This means carrying out a wide range of SEO activities that work together to boost your site’s visibility on search engines. Below we have outlined some of the different elements you need to utilise as part of an effective SEO strategy.

On-site SEO

We mentioned before that it’s not enough to simply create backlinks to your website in order to improve your SEO. You also need to optimise your site and ensure it is search engine friendly. One of the ways you can do this is through optimising your website content. Using title tags, meta titles, H1s and image alt text containing relevant keywords will tell search engines what a particular page is about and what you want it to rank for.

Uploading new content to your blog and updating your website content frequently will be great for encouraging search engine spiders to re-visit and crawl your site on a regular basis. Great content is also linkable and will therefore be fantastic for getting natural backlinks, which will help your sites SEO.

Something that is also recommended is internal linking. This is where you link to other relevant pages of your website, within your content. Internal linking not only encourages readers to explore your site in greater depth but search engines too. It will also pass your link juice onto lesser-known pages to help them rank in search engines. 

Offsite SEO

Whilst building backlinks shouldn’t be your only SEO activity, this doesn’t mean you can’t use it as part of a blended strategy. Building natural backlinks (not paying for them) is a fantastic way to boost your websites SEO. One of the ways you can do this is through creating excellent content on your website. Another way is by doing guest posts on relevant industry blogs with high authority. For further advice on ethical backlink building contact Liverpool SEO Company – “Think Brands”.

Commenting on other blogs that are relevant to your blog is another way to build backlinks, though it’s important to limit this and ensure your comments don’t appear spam-like.

Finally, part of your off-site SEO strategy should involve using social media. Creating interesting content that is of value to your target audience is a great way to get likes, retweets and Google+1s. These social signals are crucial to improving your SEO, as they show search engines that your content is meeting users’ needs.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different things you can do to boost your websites SEO. Rather than focusing all of your efforts on one action and producing small results, try taking a multitude of actions and you’ll find the outcome is far more beneficial to your business.

Image credits: india7network and xiubin low

Google continuously update their algorithm to provide better search results and penalize webspam. Only good SEO experts continuously adapted their methods to get consistent results. However back in 2010 when Google introduced Google Places, the SEO scenario completely changed. A new branch of SEO – ‘Local SEO’ helped local business to reach more potential customers at a lower cost. Local SEO is a term used for optimizing and ranking a website, for the keywords targeting people in a particular area. For instance, a regular organic SEO campaign will target “locksmiths”, while local SEO will target “locksmiths in Florida” for the whole state or “locksmiths in Orlando FL” for a smaller market. Recently Google My Business, has taken local targeting to a whole new level, and hence hiring the right local SEO expert has become all the more important for small businesses. This article is about local search engine optimization and how to choose the right service provider. The first step however is to evaluate if you need local SEO or organic SEO.

Why Local SEO?

It goes without saying that organic SEO targets a larger market and hence a higher competition, therefore, the cost involved will also be higher. If you are selling a digital product/online services across the world, then you obviously need to focus on organic SEO. However, if you are an electrician who operates in Destin, FL, then you need to focus on Destin SEO and not on organic SEO, because you  obviously don’t need your website to appear in search results of people who are looking for an electricians in Brazil. Your focus should be to reach those prospective customers who are looking for electricians in Destin. So, spending on regular SEO is actually wasting your precious advertising dollars.

Choosing The Right Service Provider:

If you are a local business, local SEO is the way to go, however you need to choose the  service provider wisely. Most local SEO service providers, just submit your website to local directories  and maps, and buy cheap backlinks. Sometimes this can do more harm than good. A good service provider will also keep pace with the changing SEO scenario and have the ability to upscale. For instance if you are starting as a small business restricted to a particular locality initially however you want to expand across the country at a later point, then your SEO service provider should also have the ability to optimize your website for organic SEO. Jasonbraud.com for instance provides local SEO for Destin businesses, but has the resources and ability to provide complete SEO services too.

Like I said before local SEO is cost effective and ideal for local businesses; local businesses opting for organic SEO is just overkill, as you spend money where it is not needed at all.

SEO is fundamental to the online success of any business. We all know that this is a fact. But, when it comes to ensuring that our websites are optimised for SEO, are we doing enough? Having an excellent website is important. But, it’s also essential that it is ready for SEO purposes.

Many entrepreneurs are keen to skip the basics. They think that they need masses of content, fancy visuals and a striking Facebook presence. Of course, these are essential for success. But don’t forget the basics either. You need to ensure that you are maximising your website.

How to Make Sure that Your Website is Optimised for SEO

Your website is one of the most valuable business tools that you have. So, ensure that it is in good standing. You need to make sure that your website is giving search engines what it wants, while still being great for the customer experience.

Ensure that you are on the right side of Google and Bing and make your website good enough to rank high in SERPS. Search engines operate by pulling the right information for the users need. With this, you need to ensure that your website is relevant.

So, what are search engines looking for?

Here are four things you need to add to your website.

1. Content

Content, content, content. Everyone wants to read content. It’s one of the easiest ways to ensure that you are performing to the high SEO standards that has become commonplace for businesses. There are some great ways that you can distribute content. Do be sure to include a blog page on your website. Include content that is relevant to your consumers. If you sell windows and doors, talk about safety in the winter. Make sure that your customers are benefitting from insightful content. This is critical to your success.

2. Performance

How is your website performing? Is it slow and clunky? Or is it super slick and mega quick? We hope it’s the latter. You have to make sure that your website is performing to an exceptional standard. Search engines love it. But, your customers will too. Website design services can perform audits to ensure that your site is working correctly. If it is not performing as per the required standard, fix it.

Geralt

3. Authority

So, you’ve distributed content on your primary site. Hopefully, you are sharing among your social media sites too. But, do you have content that is linking back to your site? What authoritative sites are deeming your site as a useful source? Content is an excellent way of achieving this. So, look at blogging and how you can maximise your link appeal.

4. User Experience

How is your site looking? Is it a feat of modern art? Is it easy to use? What’s the navigation like? All of these things can sure that your customers are getting a good experience from your site. A low bounce rate is essential for SERPS. So, check out your bounce rate. If it’s high, look at ways to lower it.

Featured Image Credit: Geralt

SEO comes with a whole lot of mystique. It can seem like one area of SEO is dead. A new trend comes and goes. The changes to algorithms can confuse matters further. It appears to be the case that there is a host of myths, topics and discussions that are centred on the world of SEO.

When it comes to SEO, there are certainly some myths that you need to ignore. After all, your small business needs to be a success in order to grow and survive. SEO can be the ticket to your success.

1.    Making Sense of Keywords

The keyword conundrum continues to baffle people. What makes a good keyword? How can you ensure that you are using the right keywords in order to engage with your customers and clientele? Are search engines still taking note of keywords? In short, yes. Keywords are still an important aspect of SEO. But, there have been some changes. Now, it’s all about conversation keywords. But, you also need to ensure that you are omitting Meta keywords from your search.

2.    The Myth of PPC

Many people believe that buying ads can affect rankings. Strictly speaking this is not true. PPC is an excellent tool to have in your marketing arsenal. But, it doesn’t help you attain the number one spot. Rather, it acts an advert and nothing else. So, while your PPC ad may be placed higher than the number one spot, this is done to create awareness. You don’t have to dismiss PPC, but understanding its effectiveness is important.

3.    Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing, in short, is a major no-no. The density of the keywords should be used sparingly. After all, you want to ensure that your customers are getting the most from your content. Unless, of course, you want to be writing in Spam-glish. Make sure that you are writing with your target audience in mind. Add links where possible. Check out SEOoutsourcingguide.com link building tips for more information on how to do this correctly. Don’t just spam people with your thoughts in the hope that Google will see it. You need to make sure that your audience and useful links are at the heart of your content writing endeavours.

4.    Dispelling the Issue of Links

Quality links are still an important component of SEO. Do be sure to not litter your content with links for the sake of it. High authority is where it’s at. The key is to enhance the reader’s experience. Too many links can distract away from the text. What’s more, Google and other search engines don’t like this.

5.    Social Media and Social Signals

Social media is a vital tool for any small business. But, don’t rely on it too heavily when it comes to rank increases. You need to have an engaged audience. Update daily. Release blogs, content and images to encourage people to talk about your brand. Social media can be a positive tool to building a successful relationship with your customers. But, social signals are not everything.

Mark Kens

Anyone who owns and runs a business today will want to do their best to increase productivity at every turn. The speed with which processes and tasks are completed in the workplace can make a huge difference to the level of profit you achieve. With that in mind, now is the best time to do some assessments and work out how you can make things run a little faster. Thankfully, there are a million and one different ways of reaching that goal. While the suggestions we’ve listed on this page are pretty basic, it’s important that nobody overlooks them. That is because they have been tried and tested many times in the past with great success.

Offer employee incentives

Paying your staff a fair wage is essential if you want them to work hard within your business. However, sometimes it’s a good idea to take things a step further and offer extra incentives. You could start an employee of the month scheme to encourage people to push themselves. Of course, there will need to be a prize for the winner. A bottle of wine simply won’t do. You should either present them with a cash bonus or some vouchers for the best results.

Use the latest tech

Investing in the latest technology might dent your bank balance for a while, but it is certain to increase productivity in the long run. At the end of the day, why would you want a member of your team spending three hours performing a task that could be done in seconds by the right software? We don’t think you do. Websites like matrixcms.com have been making headlines over the last few months due to their project management and publishing tools. You should aim to get something similar as soon as possible.

Create a safe and welcoming work environment

If your employees are cold or uncomfortable in their jobs, you can guarantee it will affect their performance. While you don’t have to spend a lot of money on making them happy, a few alterations could make all the difference. To find out what you should do, simply ask them at your next meeting. In most circumstances, the changes you need to make will be very simple. For instance, the members of your team working closest to the front door might benefit from being moved somewhere a little warmer.

Consider outsourcing

You might be spending a long time performing tasks within your business that could be completed much cheaper by companies that specialize in outsourcing. Dealing with correspondence and similar jobs can be done outside your premises by well-trained individuals. All you have to do is search online to find a specialist capable of handling your workload. Using a virtual office is always going to save you time and cash.

Good luck with increasing productivity over the next few months. We’re certain you’ll achieve your goals and get there in the end. Just make sure you keep moving forward, and everything will be fine. You can check back here for more interesting articles soon.

Adios amigos!

Image credit

Lets face it, the removal of exact match keyword research data in Google Adwords has reshaped the approach towards SEO. Experts can no longer choose keywords and employ traditional targeting procedures (as it is becoming very broad and difficult).

Likewise content marketing which picked up in 2014 will also get increasingly difficult, as all top marketers hire good content writers and it will be extremely difficult to stand out purely on content based marketing. Online promotions in the form of events, interviews, outreaches and biographies will be the new methods in addition to the regular high quality content marketing.

Webmasters are already using negative SEO in full force to take down competitors, so one should be careful and put in more efforts in disavowing potentially spam links.  Instead of identifying and discounting spam links, Google has put the onus on the webmasters to disavow the spam links. This procedure will be an integral part of SEO strategy in 2015. In addition to these basic approaches, the following is a list of other important SEO methods that experts predict will work in 2015.

Make Use of Analytics:

Analytics tools available today are extremely powerful. Real time data about the search queries, time spent, bounce rates, demography and device types will give us the much needed insight about how to approach the SEO for a particular website. So make use of the right analytics tools.

Social Traffic is the New Search Traffic:

Though social traffic is yet to replace search traffic as the number one source of traffic, social signals are an important part of search engine’s ranking algorithms. So hiring the right social media experts will not only help you in establishing a good marketing channel, but also in boosting your search engine rankings.

Mobile-Centric SEO:

Based on the current estimates mobile traffic is predicted to overtake web (PC / Laptop) traffic by 2015. This indirectly implies that mobile searches might take over desktop searches before the end of next year. This provides a great opportunity as many businesses still ignore mobile searches. Developing a solid mobile SEO strategy is the way ahead.

Go Local:

If your business is Geography specific, then opt for local SEO. Such approach is cost effective and gives a better ROI. There are several city-centric SEO service providers like SEO company London.

Semantic Analysis:

Traditional keyword targeting is already dead, context is the new EMD. Semantic search is evolving at such a rapid pace that by the mid of 2015 search engines will be very good at understanding search queries and simple keyword based pages will be pushed back in the SERPs.

Authority of the Author:

The authors that contribute to your website will play a very important role in the ranking of your pages. Hiring the right authors with good social signals and reputation will increase your rankings.

Good Luck!

No matter what your business does to make a profit, you must ensure your staff have the best training possible. Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For that reason, you need to start thinking about the best ways to bring your team up to speed. Throughout the course of this short post, we’re going to present you with some basic tips that could make the process much simple. If you’ve never thought about in-house training before, this article will be a brilliant starting point. Once you’ve read through everything on this page, you should search online and perform more research.

Making sure all your staff are on the same page is one of the main issues that affect small business owners. Considering that, you should pay attention to all the information here today. We will do our best to make things as simple as possible for you as that is the best way to avoid any confusion. With that in mind, here are some essential tips…

Choosing the focus of your training

Before you do anything else, you’ll need to make a decision on which elements of your business require the most attention. In the bulk of instances, you’ll want to focus on customer service. However, you might like to consider planning staff training in a number of other areas. Just look at your operations, and try to determine which your team could improve upon. At the end of the day, it is your profits that will suffer if they get things wrong. Nobody wants to lose customers or clients due to team members misunderstanding their roles.

Deciding on the best time to perform the training

As you’re running a small business, money will be tight. For that reason, you should select the best time for your training accordingly. There is nothing wrong with asking your team to come in occasionally on the weekend if you’re too busy during the week. It might take a long time to train your staff in certain areas, and so you may not be able to spare them during standard working hours.

Performing the training yourself or calling in the professionals

There are lots of companies out there that specialise in training staff. Considering that, you need to decide whether it is more suitable for you to employ their services or deal with everything yourself. When all’s said and done, that decision will come down to finances. That said, If you can afford to pay for expert assistance, you will undoubtedly get better results.

Finding a suitable area for your training

You might only have a small office in your premises, and so it could be sensible for you to buy or hire an outside mobile. Luckily, these structures are very cheap at the moment. So, you should take a look at websites like temporary-classrooms.co.uk when working out how much this expense will set you back.

We hope you now have some good ideas about what it will take to arrange in-house training for your staff. As we said at the beginning of this post, it is now a good idea to perform more-extensive research online.

We wish you the best of luck and hope that your team will be up to speed very soon!

Image Credit

The beginning of business is marked by a number of landmarks; the initial idea; the company formation; establishing a presence; getting business; and hiring your first staff. That last one is often the most daunting for people. Many entrepreneurs are comfortable working by themselves, often through financial necessity, and often have such a strong vision for their company that they can struggle to relinquish control by bringing anyone else on board.

Hiring employees for your startup is certainly a big step, and making sure you get it right is important. The wrong hire can send a business in its early stages off the rails, whereas an astute hire can be the catalyst for quick growth and a fast-track to success. Obviously using a recruitment agency is an option. But it comes along with its advantages and risks. So here are some handy tips which could help you choose the right person when it comes to hiring for your startup.

Know exactly what you want

One of the main reasons why companies have a high turnover of staff is that they fail to consider the core skills required for the role before appointing someone. Vague job titles and descriptions in your job listings will lead to the wrong candidates putting themselves forward for the position. You can save a lot of time and effort by simply taking a bit of time to really consider what you need and write a detailed informative job listing outlining the skills and experience needed.

Prepare for the interview

A lot of job interviewers fail to address pertinent questions. Instead they just regurgitate questions they have looked up online, generally asking quite abstract questions about ‘motivation’ or ‘working under pressure’ which fail to give an accurate picture of the candidate. If you are going to be working with someone regularly, particularly in a small startup, the most important thing you need to understand is their personality. You should have eradicated all those without suitable qualifications/experience already by the interview stage. Ask some different questions which will give you an idea if you could be compatible working together on a daily basis.

Look candidates up online

Everyone puts on their best face in a job interview situation, so you may wish to dig a little deeper just to make sure your candidate isn’t too different in their day to day life. These days a cursory online search should lead you to their social media profiles – be on the lookout for unprofessional behaviour.

Don’t be afraid to say no

You might not find the ideal candidate straight away – don’t worry about it. There is no point in taking on someone who you know is probably wrong for the position simply to get somebody in the door. Far too many startups feel like they need to just accept what they can get until they grow bigger, but that isn’t true. Be willing to wait until you find the right person.

Consider everyone

Some employers go into the process of hiring with a very clear profile of the kind of person they want – in terms of age and experience – but this might not always be the best way to do things. There have been plenty of studies showing that despite lacking workplace experience, recent graduates and younger employees can offer a lot to new businesses. Look carefully at the kind of extra-curricular skills that candidates may have amassed outside their formal qualifications – and try to consider everyone beyond the surface of their formal applications. You might be surprised at what you find.