September 2019

Page Speed: A Complete Guide For 2020

Oct 23, 2023 @ 7:26 am

Page speed has been an SEO issue ever since Google made it an official ranking factor in 2015. The importance of page speed is paired with the significance of providing a better user experience, an important aspect of user engagement. Now it remains an important factor that could save you clients and revenue.

What exactly is page speed?

Page speed is the measure of time it takes for your page to load (not to be confused with site speed, which is the overall speed of your website). Page speed is measured by the time it takes until the first contentful paint (FCP), which. is the first appearance of content.

Every web page has a sequence of items that need to load before we see the full web page. The browser loads a page in the order it’s prioritized. You can increase the speed this all takes place by improving any or all of a number of the issues that can cause a bottleneck and result in slower load time.

What are the benefits of fast page speed?

The time it takes your pages to load can have a significant impact on the performance of your website. If your site is already fast, the improvements might be marginal, but the long-term benefits will be substantial.

Reduced bounce rate

By far, this is one of the most well-known improvements you can make to your page because it has such far-reaching implications. The bounce rate of your site is the percentage of people that land on your page and back off of it without clicking through to other pages or reading any of the content.

Generally, a high bounce rate indicates the user is not interested in what they’ve found when they land on your page. Studies have shown that there is a direct, inverse correlation between page speed and bounce rate. The faster your pages load, the lower your bounce rate becomes.

The opposite is also true where the longer it takes your pages to load the more users will bounce off of your page.

According to Google, every second in load time represents a percentage of visitors who will back out of the site in search of another that loads faster. This becomes very apparent after three seconds.

The logic behind the relationship between page speed and bounce rate is simple; People hate to wait and when their patience is tested, they will leave your website in search of another whose pages load faster.

Increasing your page speed will literally keep more people on your website.

This discovery led retail giants to save billions of dollars every year. The more they improved page speed, the more they reduced abandoned shopping carts and increased their revenue.

The general consensus among people is that they tend to distrust websites that take a longer time to load. Long load times equate to poor user experience. If Amazon experienced a loss in potential business and they are one of the most trusted sites in the world, what do you think people will think of your site if it’s not loading in a time that’s up to the status quo?

So what is the status quo for page speed? Below is a chart of the average load times across different industries.

What you can draw from this is that although there is a heavy emphasis on improving your pages load time, there are still a lot of websites that haven’t conformed to the recommended standard set by Google of 3 seconds.

This presents an opportunity to get your site faster for a competitive advantage that contributes to ranking and a better user experience than what your competition offers.

Now that we can all agree that the faster your page load time, the more visitors stay on your site, there are a bunch of good things that happen from the domino effect.

Fast page speed improves your click-through rate

More visitors staying on your pages means a higher click-through rate. If your pages are loading faster, you’re getting more of your content in front of them to find and click through to on your website.

Longer dwell time

With more users able to click through to more pages, the average time spent on your website is going to get longer. Longer dwell time demonstrates a positive signal that will benefit your website’s search visibility from improved ranking.

Increased search visibility

Improved page speed leads to improved user engagement, which is also a positive ranking factor that becomes highly relevant on the first page of results. Rankbrain is one of Google’s artificial intelligence programs that is specifically designed to assign rank positions.

Rankbrain measures user engagement statistics along with other ranking factors to determine the popularity of a website and whether users are enjoying the content they find. Your site will experience increased search visibility from a higher ranking.

Increased volume of traffic

Higher rankings will almost always mean an increase in the volume of traffic your website receives. Apart from the rise in traffic from improved ranking, the increased volume of traffic that stays on your site provides your website with more opportunities to convert visitors into clients.

Higher conversions

Longer dwell time and higher click-through rates are the perfect recipes for increased conversions. The more content you can get in front of your audience, the more opportunity you have to build trust and guide them to products, contact forms or making a phone call. The conversions on your site will naturally increase.

Time is money. Walmart and COOK have reported huge percentages of increase in profit by reducing their pages load time. Walmart increased conversions by 2% with every second of increased speed. Cook increased load time by 0.85 seconds and enjoyed a 7% increase in conversions. (~Radware Blog)

In the chart below, mPulse Mobile was tested for its conversion rates vs. load times. The case study was performed by Skilled and here are their findings :

• At 2.4 seconds they had a 1.9% conversion rate
• At 3.3 seconds conversions were 1.5%
• 4.2 seconds was less than 1%
• 5.7 seconds and higher was 0.6%

Increased revenue

The ultimate benefit of increased page speed is the increase in revenue your company receives. The law of averages suggests that the more visitors that land on your website (from relevant search terms), the more conversions and sales your website will experience.

If your website traffic goes from 500 visitors a month to 1000 visitors a month, you can expect to see a direct relationship in the revenue your company receives. Improving the page speed within your website will ultimately increase the revenue your website generates on a regular basis.

How to improve your page speed

• Test your speed
• Images
• Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript
• Leverage browser caching
• Lazy loading
• Use CSS Sprites
• Use a CDN
• Delete unused plugins
• Choose the right hosting plan

Test your page speed

The first step to increasing your page speed is to get a report on the actual speed of your page. Included with your actual page speed will be a list of items that you. can do to speed up the load time of your page.

How do I test the speed of my website?

Go to any of the following websites to generate a report on the speed of your website.

1. Pingdom
2. Google PageSpeed Insights
3. Google Mobile Website Speed Testing Tool
4. Google Analytics Site Speed
5. WebPageTest
6. GTMetrix
7. KeyCDN Website Speed Test
8. DareBoost
9. Web Page Analyzer
10. YSlow
11. Chrome DevTools
12. Load Impact
13. Site Relic
14. dotcom-monitor
15. New Relic

You can any of these free tools but why not go straight to the source by using Google PageSpeed Insights.

Enter the URL of your page and you’ll receive a page speed score out of 100 on both desktop and mobile.

Scroll down to view a list of items that are affecting your load time.

Every website will experience its own unique issues but for the most part, the following are the most common fixes and should be incorporated into a routine to maintain the time it takes for your pages to load.

Whats a good page speed score?

If your page scores a 90 and above, your page is considered to have a “good score” A score between 50-89 is considered to “need improvement.” If your page scores less than 50 it’s a bad score that needs immediate attention.

Reduce the size of your images

Images are one of the leading causes of slow page speed, however, there’s a lot you can do that directly affect your pages load time. The first is to reduce the file size of your images by reducing the dimensions and pixels you upload onto your site.

Choose the exact dimensions that are needed in order to eliminate the need for additional resources requests from the server.

When you upload an image taken directly from a camera, the file size is often 1000’s pixels in width and length. If the required size is smaller than the actual image size, you can streamline the time it takes to load by only uploading an edited version.

Use the correct image formats

Another way to reduce the size of your images is to use the most appropriate formats than enable compression. GZIP is ideal to use on your website for the smallest version of your images.

Choose PNG and JPEG as the preferred formats. PNG is mostly for web colours, which is ideal for charts, graphs, banners, etc. JPEG is best for actual photos with a more complex range of colours.

Remove unnecessary metadata

Many cameras will embed information into the images it renders. Removing the unnecessary metadata can reduce the file size and streamline the load time.

Use lazy loading

Lazy loading prioritizes the sequence of loading images on your page. The priority is given to the images that are located above the fold and in plain view when a user lands on a page. The images below the fold are delayed loading until the user scrolls down.

Prioritizing this sequence on your page allows more resources to be dedicated to the content that is immediately being viewed. When the user scrolls down, the images are then triggered to load, which is faster than having the entire page load at the same time.

Minify and inline HTML, CSS & JavaScript

You may see on your page speed report to minify and inline scripts and languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This refers to streamlining the code that is found in the header of your website.

Most WordPress sites are built from templates and the code used in the header will often have notes and many spaces between the lines to separate segments. These spaces are mostly for human developers since the bots that read the headers don’t need the spaces to differentiate segments or the notes for their understanding.

You can reduce and compress the code on your page by eliminating both. It may seem difficult, but you don’t need to do this on your own. Some plugins will do the work for you-we’ll name a few tools you can use later in this article.

Leverage browser caching

You can lighten the load your server takes on by enabling a command that tells browsers to save the most important files on your site. Browsers will save images and other time-sucking resources so that after the first visit from a user, those files are ready for display in a fraction of the time it would take to retrieve them from your server.

Browser caching increases your page speed by reducing the number of server requests you make when loading your website.

Use CSS sprites

The use of CSS sprites can save load time by using a template image that includes many smaller images that can be used on different parts of the page.

Rather than have the server make multiple requests for each individual image, you can choose to show the parts of the image to use on the different parts of your website.

Use a CDN

A content delivery network is ideal for reducing server response time. Your website data is loaded into servers that are strategically placed around the world. Whenever your website is accessed, the information is taken from one of the remote servers as opposed to being requested from your hosting company servers.

The information being relayed from your server to your website has less distance to travel which cuts your server response time down tremendously if you’re website is being accessed all over the world. Activating your CDN with default settings has been stated to improve site speed 10 times faster than without.

Delete unused plugins

Every plugin on your website will take up a specific amount of resources due to the code that’s written in the header. By deleting plugins you don’t need you can free up more resources by eliminating clutter in the header. Even if the plugin is deactivated, delete it if you’re not using it on your website.

Choose the right hosting plan

Depending on the resource requirements of your website, the wrong hosting plan could negatively affect your page speed. There are three options when you choose a hosting plan and each plan allows you different amounts of server resources.

Shared hosting plan

This plan is to put your website on a server that’s shared by a group of other people. Whenever people land on your website, there is a request for resources in order to load the page. If your server doesn’t have those resources available, your site will experience a delay in load time.

This can happen if too many accounts share one server. Multiple server requests made at once can overload the capacity of the server to handle every account’s needs. Even if the server has a reasonable number of accounts, if the traffic on your site grows, you may need to upgrade to the next level of hosting.

VPS hosting account

A VPS hosting account guarantees you a specific amount of resources at any given moment. This ensures your website has the resources needs based on the expected volumes of traffic you receive.

A VPS hosting account is still a shared account, however, the number of accounts is limited in order to persevere the guaranteed allotted resources for your website.

Dedicated server

If your website experiences massive spikes in traffic you may need a dedicated server to handle the loads required to keep your site up and running. A dedicated server means there is no one else sharing your resources, which makes your server response time lightning quick.

Tools for page speed maintenance

Many of the issues that prevent fast load times can be solved without needing a degree in computer science. If there’s ever an item on your page speed report that you’re unsure about, you can always Google the problem to find a plugin that solves that issue.

Here are a few tools that can handle the majority of page speed problems and contribute to faster load times.

W3 Total Cache

This plugin can handle a few different issues in one fell swoop.

Once installed, you can configure your settings to inline and minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript by simply enabling this function in the settings.

The option to leverage browser caching is also located with the settings of the plugin. Be sure to enable this option and set it to the maximum amount. of time-which is one year.

Test your website before and after installing and setting up the plugin. You’ll want to make sure you see a notable drop in your page speed. If your website doesn’t get faster, there may be a conflict between plugins that you’ll need to identify before moving forward.

Cloudflare

As a free option for using a CDN, Cloudflare is ideal. The company has an extensive network of remote servers making your website convenient to load from any region of the world. There are similar options you would find in W3 Total Cache to increase page speed.

Smush

This plugin compresses all of your images to the smallest size possible. The beauty of this plugin is that once it’s installed it will compress every image you upload automatically.

You will need to manually compress images that were uploaded prior to installing this plugin (in the free version).

Smush gives you the option to enable lazy loading to prioritize the load sequence of the images on the page.

Alternate versions of Google PageSpeed Insights

There are multiple tools for testing page speed that you can use instead of Google. Each tool has slightly different features that you may find more useful for your needs.

Sites include, but are not limited to:

• GT Metrix
• Pingdom
• YSlow
• Webpagetest.org

Incorporate page speed maintenance into your daily operations

Achieving fast page speed is not a one-time shot that is achieved overnight. Sure, you can make significant improvements with specific actions, but there are regular maintenance routines you should practice in order to maintain a website that loads quickly.

Install the plugins that best suit your business in order to automate many of the functions required for fast-loading websites. Keep in mind that just because you installed Smush doesn’t mean you can skip editing the size of your images.

Page speed is a value that fluctuates over time, and so requires a periodic evaluation. Test your pages every month to make sure there aren’t any bottlenecks building up the time it takes to load your page.

Some of the changes you need to make may be quick and apparent, while others may be more gradual and not as clear-cut. Staying on top. of the situation ensures your website pages are continually maintaining and increasing the speed at which they load.

Maintain constant vigilance of the page speed on your most important pages. The effort you put into keeping load time low will result in a landslide of benefits that ultimately increase your revenue on a regular basis.

How to Make Your Website Appear First On Google

Oct 23, 2023 @ 7:26 am

Want to know how to make your website appear first on Google? It’s simple once you understand the basics of SEO and put in the work. With the right SEO strategy, you can get your site to the top of the search engines for multiple keywords that are important for your business.

To go straight to the top of the search results you need to consider what keywords you’re targeting and the competition that’s pursuing those very same search terms. It’s very difficult to take a brand new site straight to the top of the rankings for a highly competitive term.

Choose the right audience

Choosing a keyword is as simple as describing your business. You can get pretty accurate with your keyword selection by simply explaining what your company offers in a way that people type when searching online. To find visitors that are a perfect match for your business, create the perfect buyer persona.

Creating a buyer persona is an exercise that will help you meet the needs of your client on a more personal level. When you go through this exercise the age, occupation, sex, marital status and many personal defining attributes are established. This brings you to a closer understanding of how this person thinks, what’s most important to them and how you can relate to them on a much deeper level than simply describing your product. Knowing your audience is one of the first steps in creating great content because the language you use is more focused and appropriate in communicating your message.

By establishing who your audience is, the subtopics you choose will be tailored to the issues unique to their current life situations. This makes the content you create more relevant to your readers and contributes to optimization for your main keyword topic.

Assess the competition

One of the major ranking factors that you need to consider is the backlinks and authority your competition possesses. If you type in an extremely competitive keyword such as, learn SEO, you’ll see the first three results are websites that have been around for years and each has thousands of backlinks pointing to its page.

These domains are also considered high-authority domains and major influencers in the SEO industry. It would take quite some time to build up enough authority to be able to beat these websites for a competitive keyword like this. This doesn’t mean you abandon this term completely, however, you’ll need to be more strategic with how you choose your keywords.

Eliminate tough competition with focused keywords

Reduce the strength of your competition by using long-tail keywords to get more specific with the audience and traffic you’re targeting. For example, you can turn the keyword “learn SEO” into a long-tail keyword such as “learn search engine optimization from scratch” to loosen up the competition.

As you can see from the search result in the image above, there are a few positions on the SERP that are held by much lower authority websites. In addition, the average number of backlinks has dropped dramatically.

Long-tail keywords make up about 70% of the total searches made on Google. The advance in Google’s ability to understand intent has improved dramatically allowing search phrases to be longer and more conversational. This creates infinite opportunities to optimize for a phrase that will be specific enough to drive traffic that’s a match to your business.

Longer search terms tend to convert at a higher rate because they are a better match to your content. The more specific you are with the phrase you’ve optimized for, the more specific the intent is of the visitors who land on your site.

A clear example of this is if you sold extreme temperature winter boots for men.

Consider who is searching for term winter boots.

If you optimized for “winter boots” you wouldn’t be getting a perfect match for your product because your product would only appeal to a small percentage of the total traffic searching “winter boots.”

Women would make up a huge percentage of the traffic and would immediately leave your site since you only sell men’s boots.

By using more qualifying terms to describe your product you can make your site more visible to those who are actually looking for what you’re selling.

Publish shareable content

When the first page of Google is the goal, shareable content will help propel your site to the top by getting more people on your page and giving your content a higher chance of being linked to by other sites. The number of referring domains linked to your page boosts your ranking and although social shares are not a direct ranking factor they give your page a larger audience and a better chance of being linked to by more websites.

Publishing shareable content means creating pages people enjoy reading as well as find value in what is offered. Great content means it is highly relevant to its audience. If you’ve done a thorough job on your keyword research, you should have been able to come up with a few issues or problems that are common to your target audience. By offering the solution to these problems the value of your content increases as well as its shareability.

Post your content to your social media networks to get as much traffic as possible on your site. Use a call to action and ask people to share your content. Social sharing plugins will make it easier for people to pass your page along through their network.

Outperform competing pages

To outperform competing pages, you need to look at the top ten results for your specific keyword. Take note of the article length, type of media used, the topics covered and the links they’ve acquired to beat them in every way imagineable.

Google tends to prefer longer articles

Article length isn’t a direct ranking factor but it does affect the length of time a visitor spends on your page. It also is an idication of the depth a specific page offers for a specific search query. I fyou look at the average length of the top 10 results on Google you’ll notice that the average length of a top-ranknig page is above 2000 words.

To outperform a page make your article longer by including more details and subtopics that would improve the user experience. Avoid “writing for search engines” as it can be easy to get caught up with ranking and miss the mark entirely in publishing a better performing page.

Use multimedia to enhance user experience

Video improves dwell time and is the preferred choice in learning about a topic by most users. Include a video at the top of your page to immediately engage your visitors. Combine video with other forms of media to create deeper levels of understanding while increasing your reader’s level of engagement.

Increase CTR with better headlines and meta descriptions

The click-through rate your page has will affect your first-page ranking. You can improve your click-through rate by creating headlines that grab the attention of your audience. Use established headline strategies to improve the percentage of clicks your page gets in the search results.

Your meta description also plays a role in determining your click-through rate. Write a convincing description of what’s in store for a potential reader should they click on your site. This is the sneak preview so make the 160 characters work to entice your audience.

Here’s an example of a very well written meta description that encourages the click with a call-to-action.

Cut the competition using paid ads

You have to consider this option if you’re in a position to benefit from the traffic from a high-converting keyword. For the more competitive terms that you can’t rank for in the short term, you can get on the first page of Google by using Google Ads.

If you have products that sell and you just need to get it in front of more eyes, a PPC campaign is an option that will make you money by instantly increasing your search visibility for highly competitive terms.

Identify search intent before paying for traffic

When choosing the terms that you’re going to pay for the traffic, you need to consider what the true intent is of the keyword. It would be a waste of time to select a keyword that you pay for and yet no one that lands on your site converts into a client.

Confirm intent by checking the organic results

The first indication of search intent is to see what Google has ranked in the organic positions for the search term in question. The search results can give you the best idea of what people are looking for when they type your keyword in a search.

Compare cost-per-click

The CPC of a keyword is also an indication of whether other websites are making money from that keyword. In most cases, the more publishers are willing to pay for one click, the more valuable the keyword.

There are search terms whose CPC can be misleading, so make sure you use this as an indicator and not the sole reason for pursuing a search term.

Optimize for a SERP feature

The search engine result page is a dynamic landscape that is constantly changing according to search intent. You can take advantage of some of the features that appear on the SERP to enhance your search visibility and appear on the first page of Google.

Featured snippet

In order to appear in this feature, your page needs to be the best answer to a query. The featured snippet is where to make your website appear first on Google because it’s the first thing a user will see in a search result.

Here are few tips to qualify for this feature:

• Your website needs to already be on the first page.
• Target long-tail keywords
• Use h-tags for all of your headings
• To win the position, take note of what the current snippet holder has done to achieve this top position and duplicate the optimization.

For example, in this featured snippet, it was awarded to a site that featured a video. In order to compete for this spot, you would need to match the result with a video.

People also ask box

When this feature became more common many SEOs were able to capture this position by creating FAQ pages. Publish a Frequently Asked Questions Page to give your website as many opportunities as possible to win a position in the PAA box.

The winning combination for optimization is to tag your questions and provide short succinct answers that range from 40-60 words immediately after the question.

Local Pack

If a local pack is triggered by searching your target keyword, consider optimizing for local searches. Geo modifiers can cut out a large chunk of competition and get your site featured in the local pack.

For people who are looking for a business that’s close to them, this is the perfect solution for high-converting traffic. Make sure you add as much information as possible to your Google My Business profile and publish local content on your website.

Get your site to the first page of the search results

It’s not always the most obvious solution, but there are many different ways you can get your website to the first page of Google. Search engine optimization is simply finding the best way to get your site in front of people looking for what you offer.

Define a keyword strategy that makes sense for your website. If you’re a newly developing site, you may need to consider the options that cut the industry influencers and major competitors out of the equation.

Assess the SERP and the options you have available to make your website appear first on Google. There are plenty of ways to get your website in front of an audience that will engage in your content if you’re looking in the right places to drive traffic.

The final destination for great content is naturally on the first page of search results. In order to get your website on the map for what your company offers, produce content that helps users find what they need. Know who your ideal audience is and publish hyper-focused content specifically tailored to provide value in their lives to generate traffic that is the best match for your business.

How To Select The Best Keywords For Your Website

Oct 23, 2023 @ 7:25 am

Learn how to select the best keywords for your website to drive traffic that converts to clients and sales. Qualify keywords through a series of endeavours including but not limited to the following:

• Identify your main seed keywords
• Develop keyword options
• Assess commercial intent
• Target long-tail keywords
• Perform a SERP Analysis
• Assess the competition

The keyword research and strategy you implement can make or break the success you have in converting visitors to clients.

If you want to know how to find the best keywords for your business, this article will walk you through a few of the most common steps in determining a strategy.

Identify your main seed keywords

Make a list of keywords on a spreadsheet describing the major areas of your business. Come up with as many different keywords as if you were a client typing in a search to find information about your product.

Keep in mind that there are different stages of the sales funnel for every keyword you’re thinking of optimizing content to rank for. You will need to target both transactional and informational keywords to help move visitors along the buyer journey.

For example, “buy + [your keyword]” is a transactional search term that will trigger a search result that most likely lists ads and product pages.

This would be considered at the bottom of the funnel where users have already done their research and are looking to buy a product or service.

Develop keyword options

Some keywords may seem obvious choices, however, you have to consider that not everyone will search like yourself. There are many different ways people search for the same thing. There’s also the possibility that the keyword you’re thinking of may not drive traffic that’s good for your business.

One tool you can use to find popular keywords that convert is the Keyword Planner. This is Google’s tool to use when building an Adwords campaign and can be valuable for generating keyword ideas, estimating traffic and providing clues to commercial intent.

The Keyword Planner will generate a list of keyword options along with the volume, competition rating and cost per click. Each value should be considered as an indicator to use in your decision.

Assess volume in relation to conversions

The traffic that is displayed is an approximate value. Keep in mind that volume can sometimes have little bearing on the value of a keyword. It’s one piece of the puzzle that can be used as an indicator of whether your keyword is suitable for your business.

The volume a specific keyword generates should be assessed by the type of traffic drives and how well those visitors are a match to your business.

Assess commercial intent through the CPC bidding system

The commercial intent of a keyword can be inferred by the range of bids that exist for placing ads with Google for that specific keyword.

The low and high bid amount shows you what people are paying per visitor for that keyword on both ends of the spectrum.

The higher the top bid amount, the more inferred value you can assume from the traffic a keyword generates.

Target long-tail keywords

Although seed keywords typically have the most search volume they are not always the ideal keywords to pursue. They are often extremely competitive and convert at lower rate.

Targeting transactional keywords are beneficial however you also need to educate your buyers about your company and product to earn their trust.

Enter long tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are considered to convert higher because they drive traffic that is a better match to the content you’re producing.

For example, imagine your company sells silk t-shirts.

If you were to optimize for the search term “t-shirts”, it would bring you a lot of irrelevant traffic because of the broad search intent it carries. Your site would be getting visitors looking for cotton, nylon, sports t-shirts, etc.

Many visitors would simply leave your site when they see you only offer silk options. This produces poor metrics (bounce rate, dwell time).

The longer you create a target keyword, the more of a match you can make to the traffic that finds your content.

Optimizing for the term “Silk t-shirts” eliminates a lot of the unwanted traffic your site was generating from the term “t-shirts”

“Silk t-shirts for women” would be an even more specific stream of traffic to target.

Once you’ve identified your seed keyword it’s important to go through the related content that people would be searching. In most cases people are looking to solve a specific problem. Your content should provide as many solutions to problems that people have regarding your keyword topic.

“Silk t-shirts for psoriasis” would target an extremely specific group of people. By publishing a piece of content titled “Why Silk T-shirts Are Good For Psoriasis” you would be driving traffic from a very specific group of people looking exactly for what you’re offering.

Although the traffic is likely to be much lower, the competition will also be lower because of how specific this long-tail search term is.

With a high-quality article making a convincing argument, you can easily move your visitors a step closer to buying your product by targeting a problem and providing the solution.

How to find long tail keywords

Apart from good old-fashioned brainstorming, you can use a few tools to help produce a list of the questions that people ask regarding any keyword topic. One of the first places you should look at is Google Search.

You can get a load of ideas for what people are searching for from Google Autosuggest. This is literally Google telling you “Hey! Here are some popular search terms we’re suggesting will help you find what you’re looking for.”

Find related terms in the Searches related to [your keyword] section at the bottom of a search result.

You can get some great long-tail keywords and phrases from Featured Snippets.

Or PAA Boxes

You can use Answer The Public to get a list of questions and phrase matches.

You can use software from the biggest names in the industry such as Ahrefs, SEMRush and Moz. Here is your typical keyword report from Moz.

One click on the “questions” tab and your report displays related questions to your keyword.

The process for converting visitors to clients often takes more than just one visit to your site.

This is part of the reason for providing informational content on your blog.

According to a survey by Conductor, educational content makes visitors 131% more likely to purchase from your company.

Being in touch with the problems that are most commonly faced by your audience is critical in your content creation. If you can provide solutions to these problems within your content, you will earn the trust of your audience and move them closer to purchasing from your company.

Perform a SERP analysis

Analyze the SERP (search engine results page) to give you a deeper understanding of what type of search result a keyword generates. The factors you will need to consider are the features Google displays and the competition you will be up against.

Assess the competition

To assess one aspect of your competition you can use Mozbar, a free tool available for download in Chrome. This tool allows you to see the Page Authority, Domain Authority, number of backlinks and the spam score. All metrics are summarized for you right from the search result.

Keep in mind that domain authority is a metric created by Moz and does not reflect the complete picture for how to rank for a keyword. It is merely an indicator to use when determining the strength of your competition. Typically, the higher the DA, the more ranking ability a site possesses.

Account for the SERP features

Take an inventory of the different types of features that are displayed in the SERP. Google has produced over 20 different types of SERP features to better serve the search intent that a user may have for searching a specific query.

For example, if your keyword triggers a carousel of videos at the top of the page, you will need to consider producing a video to compete for the available clicks for that keyword. “How-to” searches are notorious for producing video results.

There are many phrases that will trigger a featured snippet. It’s important to recognize what terms are triggering the display because it will affect how you optimize your content.

Take note of the different features that are displayed in a search result. Each feature may require a different form of optimization. If you’re not optimized to compete for the position, you may be facing a low organic click-through rate.

Consider the organic click-through rate

This is a measure of the total clicks that are made to the organic results as a percentage of the total search volume. If your keyword has a low organic CTR, ranking on first page may not be worth the effort to get there.

Many of Google’s SERP features have contributed to low CTR for searches that are easily answered by featured snippets and the knowledge graph (calculators, translators, etc.)

Develop an effective keyword strategy

The keywords you choose to pursue will have a direct impact on the relevance of your traffic. Developing a strategy should include keywords that target every aspect of your business and the problems your product or service solves.

A complete and effective keyword strategy is the blueprint for your content creation. By addressing the different stages of the buyer journey and sales funnel, you create content that educates your audience on the benefits you offer.

Each page you publish should serve a purpose within your overall keyword strategy. Keeping users in mind first before search engines will help keep your content focused on providing insight and useful information. Learn how to select the best keywords for your website and you are one step closer to driving traffic that converts.

Keyword research is one of the many SEO services that benefit a company. Contact us today for a consultation so we can select the best keywords that would benefit your business the most.

Related reading:

• 10 Expert Tips For Writing SEO Optimized Blog Posts
• 10 Reasons Your Website Doesn’t Rank On The First Page Of Google [Updated List]

Benefits of Online Marketing For Small Businesses

Oct 23, 2023 @ 7:25 am

Online marketing has become the norm when it comes to planning out the growth and development of your business. It’s hard to argue against the fact that owning a website gives every company the ability to acquire exponentially more new clients. Implement the top-performing digital strategies that are most suited to your business to see the full benefits of online marketing for small businesses.

The advantages of search engine optimization

As the holy grail of inbound marketing, SEO provides some of the largest sources of targeted traffic to your website. An effective keyword and content strategy allows you to tap into high converting traffic that is actively seeking the solutions your company offers. The technical aspect of SEO maximizes your website’s potential to compete and perform in the search results.

SEO targets a specific audience for high conversions

SEO deals with the optimization of both pages and blog posts for specific search terms in order to maximize the traffic each page generates. Each page is optimized to target one or more keywords that are chosen based on the volume of traffic, ranking difficulty but most of all, for the value it represents to the business.

Targeting long-tail keywords creates a narrower focus in your content in order to hone in on the exact solution the user is search Google for in the first place. When your website can be found for search terms your ideal clients are using to find businesses like yours, the organic traffic on your site will flow and convert accordingly.

Creates the ability to drive organic traffic

The SEO content you produce on your website answers the intent of a search and therefore provides value to a user. When your page appears in top-ranked positions for one keyword, it naturally appears for many different variations of that keywords as well.

Google ranks according to keyword topics, so when your content is deemed worthy of a first-page appearance, it drives traffic from multiple search terms.

An SEO content strategy broadens your reach

Developing a keyword and content strategy is a process that breaks down the major topics of your website to identify the most important issues that your ideal client wants to know about. The SEO strategy you implement touches on a number of different stages your prospective buyer is experiencing, otherwise known as the buyer journey.

Targeting keywords and publishing content that addresses the various stages allows your website to create an awareness of your product or service to a larger range of users. There are people that are unaware of the solution you offer to the problems they’re actively researching. An effective SEO content strategy continuously broadens your reach through educational and informative content.

Sharpens your competitive edge

Much of SEO resembles a race between you and your competition. The goal is to be first on Google for the keywords that will ultimately increase the revenue your company generates. SEO gives your website a competitive edge by producing content that outperforms your competition.

Link building is a common strategy for outranking competing websites. Backlinks power the authority and credibility of your content and contribute to higher rankings. Additionally, link building provides multiple entry points to your website for more traffic.

Allows control over every aspect

A large part of achieving success in marketing your business online is data-driven. You can control every aspect that can be measured to scale up or scale down the results you’re experiencing.

The benefits of Pay Per Click campaigns

PPC campaigns can drive high-converting traffic to your site for any keyword you choose to pay for. Create a campaign for the keywords of your choice, set the budget amount you want to spend and how much you’re willing to spend for every click to your website.

PPC campaigns get your website premium SERP position

When you pay for ads, your website is placed in the top positions on the SERP. This is extremely valuable for the bottom of the funnel keywords where the user is looking with transactional intent. Users are 65% likely to click on paid ads when they’re ready to buy.

This becomes even more pronounced on mobile devices since the ads are among the first features that users see in the search result.

PPC offers control

You determine the amount of money you spend in a PPC campaign for every month. Your budget is determined at the start of the campaign so that when you reach that limit, your ads stop appearing.

You can also choose the details for where you want your ads to appear. For local businesses that only offer services or products to a specific city or service area, this provides unnecessary spending.

Measurable and adaptable

PPC reporting is comprehensive and easy to understand. Reports will show you the volume of impressions and clicks and conversions that your keywords generated in order for you to better understand how your customers are responding to your ads.

Paid ads also give you the ability to run split tests to determine copy that converts the highest.

Fast and immediate traffic solution

PPC campaigns can be implemented immediately for a fast and immediate solution to driving traffic. Rather than go through a much longer development process for your website pages to rank organically, you can put your website at the top of the search results instantly and begin driving traffic to your site.

Multiply customer contact with retargeting

PPC campaigns offer an excellent solution for making your site more familiar with potential clients through retargeting. Whenever a visitor lands on your website this form of advertising will install cookies in their browser. This creates multiple instances of your ad whenever that same visitor visits Google or social media sites and an ad box present.

The benefits of social media marketing

By definition, this is the process of promoting your company, brand, products and services through the use of social media websites. Activities include posting content on your profile, commenting on related posts, sharing relevant posts and interacting with the social community.

Provides a human element to your brand

Social media gives brands the chance to put a more personal touch when engaging with potential and existing clients. This becomes an important aspect of your marketing because it allows people to relate more to your company and feel like they’re engaging with a person as opposed to a content-posting robot.

Develops a better understanding of your audience

By engaging with your audience you develop a better understanding of what means the most to your clients (and prospective clients). It’s not only the comments and threads that provide this information but by conducting surveys and research.

With a more intimate understanding of what your clients are interested in and what they need, you have more ability to produce content that they will engage with at higher levels.

Ability to get your message in front of a large audience

It’s no secret that social media has the ability to make great content viral. Despite the rarity of this happening, social websites provide a substantial audience for your content which is accessible on a regular basis. This makes social media a popular means of content distribution for brands to broadcast their message to as many people as possible.

Drive more traffic to your website

Posting content with a call to action is an excellent way to divert your audience from social media websites to your own. Social sites, for the most part, are structured to be walled gardens to keep users on their sites for as long as possible. Leave a specific CTA with a link to your website so that people have a convenient way of finding and viewing the content on your site.

Develop brand loyalty

A study revealed that 72% of purchases related to fashion were influenced by images seen on Instagram. Acquiring followers and subscribers is an excellent way to create a competitive advantage and be the reason a customer decides to make a purchase with your company. If they follow your brand there is a much higher probability of them choosing your company over another that they aren’t as familiar with.

Improved brand recognition

Social media gives you the opportunity to present your brand to a substantially large number of people. Make your brand recognizable by using your logo in images and providing a consistent tone that summarizes what your brand is about.

Implement storytelling to create easy to remember associations with the most important aspects of your brand.

The advantages of content marketing

Promoting your brand, products and services through various forms of content such as articles, white papers, surveys, infographics and video is considered content marketing. This online marketing strategy goes hand in hand with SEO with respect to the fact that you’ll want your content to be easily found and discovered by a specific audience.

Develop trust and confidence in your brand

Top-notch content goes a long way when it provides real value. Whenever a potential client considers purchasing from your business, one of the first things they will do is research your company. Providing content that educates, entertains and engages readers and about the inner workings of your business is an excellent way to build trust and confidence in your brand.

Drives interested visitors to your website

A good content marketing strategy will include publishing content on third party sites such as social media or popular websites within your niche. Publishing exceptional content on third-party sites makes your company stand out, generates referral traffic as well as additional organic traffic as it accumulates more backlinks.

Choose the websites or social media network that provides the most targeted audience for your business. Trusted, high-authority websites provide links that have a positive impact on your website ranking and overall search visibility.

Develops brand recognition

Teach people about what your brand stands for through success stories about the development of your company’s development or even better, client success stories about achieving a specific goal. When a person can learn about your company from a real-life experience it brings more transparency to your brand and gives people a story to relate to by placing themselves in that situation.

Establishes your company as an industry leader

Great content is often greatly appreciated-which is typically shown by large numbers of social shares and accumulation of backlinks. Creating unique content with original research is a way that many companies are able to establish themselves as industry leaders.

Moz publishes a State Of Local SEO Industry Report every year where they survey 1000 SEO professionals. This report gives people a better understanding of the general sentiment of what’s working and what isn’t in the world of local SEO.

Using industry reports would naturally attract attention from those within your industry and leads to a high number of social shares and backlinks to your website. That improvement in ranking, as well as the reputation gained, brands your business as a top player in the industry in which you compete.

Email marketing and it’s many advantages

The process of promoting your brand, content, products and services through email communications is referred to as email marketing. Opt-in boxes serve as a means for collecting the contact information of a website visitor. The visitor is then added to a list to send newsletters, updates, coupons and promotions.

Build and nurture leads and realtionships

Email marketing campaigns allow a company to send relevant information to its subscribers for a variety of purposes. Segmenting your list is crucial to understanding the type of content that your subscriber wants to be sent. This also allows you to drip feed educational emails to their inbox to educate them on aspects of your business that they want to know about.

As they become more familiar with your product through your content, they become more likely to purchase from your company. Maintaining your list with a periodic email ensures that your subscriber keeps your company in mind so that even if they aren’t ready to make a purchase immediately, you will still be among the top choices when time comes.

Instant traffic at the push of a button

An email list gives you the option of sending instant traffic to your website at the push of a button. Whenever a new piece of content is published or your company begins a new promotion, let your subscribers know about it.

Increased sales

An email list is also referred to as a “cash list” because of its ability to generate sales for your business. Not every email you send to your list should be a “hard sell” but when you do wnant to increase sales, often all it takes is a good sale, discount or promotion.

Many companies will promote third party products with their list because the third party will cut them a commision on the sales made. If a product will appeal to the demographics of your subscribers you can supplement your revenue by offering them something new.

Provides a source for research and data collection

Your email list is an excellent source to get the opinions and preferences of your target audience. BY sending short surveys you can quickly acquire relevant information that would help your understanding of the needs and interests of an audience that’s already interested in your content.

Original data and research are extremely valuable for publishing content that’s a closer match to the preferences of your audience. It also tends to attract more social shares and backlinks which in turn results in increased search visibility of your website.

Enjoy the benefits of internet marketing for small businesses

Historically it was only the big brands that have been able to establish notoriety and gain exposure on national and global levels. Of one the benefits of online marketing for small businesses is that it gives all businesses the ability to reach a global market.

The benefits of online marketing for small businesses continue to grow with every passing year for companies with websites positioned to receive targeted traffic. The ability to access a global market and connect with customers has contributed to more sales, leads and new clients.

There are massive opportunities to be gained from online marketing. If you haven’t been paying attention, in 2016 digital advertising took the lead in advertising dollars spent vs. TV advertising and is still continuing to create a larger gap in disparity.

There’s no doubt that we have transitioned to a culture that has become highly dependent on Internet access to perform many of our daily activities. The research on companies, brands, products and services starts with Google search 93% of the time. The number of purchases being made directly through smartphones has steadliny increased every year.

This number is expected to increase according to e-marketer retail analyst Yory Wurmser. 

As mobile sites become better optimized and screen sizes grow, it’s becoming easier for shoppers to complete the purchase on the smartphone, which will drive m-commerce numbers up for the next several years.

Yory Wurmser ~Emarketer Retail Analyst

With so much of our attention focused online, the opportunity to successfully achieve steady growth through Internet marketing has never been better.

Choose one or all of the digital marketing strategies mentioned above to achieve levels of revenue that were never possible until now. Enjoy the benefits of online marketing for small businesses for long-lasting success.

10 Amazing Headline Strategies To Improve CTR

Following a few good headline strategies can completely change the appeal of your content. Your headline is the most important component of your article. The success of your article hinges upon having an interesting headline that makes people want to know more.

Making a headline that captures the attention of readers involves creativity but there’s definitely a science behind it that can be used to make winners each and every time. Start with a working title and make a list of at least 10-20 headlines in order to choose the best one from the bunch. Incorporate as many of the strategies below to boost your click-through rate and drive more traffic to your website.

#1-Place point-value at the front

Describe the value your article is offering the reader at the beginning of the headline. In a study conducted by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS studies 10 headlines to prove that adding the value points at the beginning of the headlines doubled the conversions of those that carried the value points towards the end.

#2-Use numbers

Conductor performed a study that proved the use of numbers in your title will increase CTR by 36% as opposed to without. In an article published on Buffer, Courtney Siter explains “Numbers work well in headlines because humans like predictability and dislike uncertainty.”

She backs this psychological tendency up with a study from Columbia University on “The psychology of waiting in line” that shows how people deal with expectations. When people know what to expect they are able to manage time differently-such as being in a waiting room waiting for their doctor. If they are told exactly how long the doctor will be they handle their expectations differently.

#3-Use the word “who”

The use of the word “who” increases CTR by 22% according to a study done by Hubspot and Outbrain. Rather than focus on the ”why” people prefer to focus on the “who.”

#4-Use your keyword in your title

Although there was a small relationship proven, it still stands to reason that using a keyword in your title benefits your ranking. Ahrefs concluded that there was a 0.049% correlation between using your title and 26% of websites that included the keyword in the title were also in the first position in a Google search result.

Position your keywords in front of your title to make sure they are the first thing the reader reads. The first three words are the most important in your headline and if your title is cut off in the search results you want to make the highest impact when appealing to the readers’ interest.

#5- Use power words

Use power words in your title. According to Optinmonster, the use of power words can increase your conversions by 12.7 % Keep in mind that negative superlatives get 50% more clicks than positive superlatives.

#6-Accurately describe what your readers are getting

Be descriptive with what the reader is getting or in other words provide more clarity to improve CTR. Dan and Chip Heath are two brothers who wrote a book  Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die detailing 6 principles of which the third principle named was the idea that when something is concrete, it brings to mind a strong visual.

#7-Use top performing numbers in your listicles

Odd-numbered listicle headlines outperform even ones by 20% (Source: CMI) and yet the number 10 has the most engagement in Facebook headlines. Buzzsumo conducted a study and found that the number 10 in a headline was the most popular number in article engagement.

#8-Use brackets

Brackets add clarity and give the reader a summary of what the article is about. People are drawn to brackets because they represent “reading between the lines” and are perceived to be more straightforward with communicating the contents of an article. Hubspot’s study of over 3 million websites concluded that using brackets in your title improve click-through rate by 38%.

#9-Optimize the length of your headline

Headlines with (14-17 words in length) get 76.7% more social shares than short headlines. Use less than 70 characters so your title doesn’t get cut off and it can be retweeted.

#10-Appeal to an emotion

People are moved by emotions and will respond with more energy when you can trigger an emotional response. The shock and awe effect creates curiosity, amazement, surprise and intrigue. Being original will earn you the extra clicks and increase your click-through rate. When you can surprise a reader your words make a greater impact on their intrigue.

Related reading: What Are The Benefits Of SEO For A Small Business?

Interesting statistics

In June 2019, Digital Ducats conducted a survey consisting of 384 blog posts on 29 top SEO blogs. The following statistics represent blog posts on the first page of the website:

• 20.37% of the total blog posts used numbers within their title
• 19.31% of blogs had numbers posted within their first 5 blog posts
• 13.93% of blog posts used brackets in their headline

Data was pulled from the following sites:

• Backlinko
•  Ahrefs
•  Moz
•  Search Engine Watch
•  Hobo‐web
•  SEMRush
•  Matthew Woodward
•  Search Engine Land
•  Search Engine Journal
•  Yoast
•  Cognitive SEO
•  GotchSEO
•  Builtvisible
•  Lion Zeal
•  Distilled
•  SEO by the Sea
•  SEER Interactive
•  Search Engine Roundtable
•  Kaiser the Sage
•  I’m From The Future
•  Marie Haynes
•  Buzzstream
•  Diggity Marketing
•  Evolving SEO
•  Web Marketing School
•  Dejan SEO
•  Greenlane Marketing
•  Robbie Richards
•  Merj