Technical SEO

Apr 29 2023

React SEO: Best Practices To Make It SEO-friendly

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become essential to any online presence. It not only impacts the success of a product or service in the marketplace but also affects the revenue and efficiency of any business owner, directly or indirectly. React websites face unique challenges when it comes to SEO due to the complex nature of the framework.

With mobile users accounting for nearly 59% of all global website traffic, businesses recognize the importance of having effective digital marketing strategies that can expand their reach and draw in a larger audience than originally anticipated. Single Page Applications (SPAs) offer a viable solution to this problem, allowing companies to boost their reach and gain access to untapped markets.

Understanding Google Bot WebPage Crawling

Learn how to make React SEO work for you

To optimize the SEO of a React web app, it is essential to comprehend how Google bots work and the common difficulties React solutions encounter. Google utilizes bots to rank websites, scanning your website’s pages and discovering new ones. You can avoid having too many bot requests by specifying the pages you want to be crawled in the robots.txt file.

React applications are single-page applications, making it hard for the bots to crawl the pages. Technologies like React Helmet and server-side rendering can be used to ensure that the bots can access and index the pages effectively. It is also important to structure the React web app to enable bots to access the content easily. It can be done by organizing the content logically and using the appropriate HTML tags.

Google Bot crawls webpages by following the links on a page and then downloading the page it finds. It is done by using a process known as web crawling. The bot then reads the content of the page and stores it in an index, which is then used by the search engine to provide relevant results when a search query is made. It is important to note that the bot only reads the HTML code, not the JavaScript code, which can make it difficult for React websites to be indexed correctly.

Why is SEO Compatibility Important?

Search engine positions are incredibly vital nowadays. Studies show that 95% of all web users go to websites displayed on the initial page of Google’s results. If you want your app to be noticed by those who will utilize it, you must enhance it to be search engine friendly.

A recent study revealed that the top 5 search engine results page (SERP) listings account for over 65% of all web traffic. It demonstrates the significance of achieving a high ranking on Google.

Major SEO Challenges for React SPA Pages

When the crawler first visits a React single-page application, it is greeted with a blank page. The application elements appear on the screen as the HTML and JavaScript codes are slowly loaded.

In addition, various other issues must be addressed for a React single-page application to succeed. Let us discuss some issues:

1. Site mapping

A sitemap is a document outlining the structure of a website, including its videos, pages, and other branches. It helps Google easily crawl through the site and understand its contents. Unfortunately, React does not have a built-in method for generating a sitemap. If you use React Router to manage a route, you must find an external tool to generate a sitemap, which may require some effort.

2. Blank First Pass Subject

React apps are known to rely heavily on JavaScript, which can make them difficult for search engines to crawl and index. It is because React uses an “app shell” model, where the HTML page does not contain meaningful content, and instead, JavaScript must be executed to display the page’s content.

It means that when Googlebot visits the page, it sees an empty page, and only after the page is rendered does it get the content. It can create a significant delay in indexing thousands of pages.

3. Metadata of the Webpage

Meta tags are helpful for social media sites and Google to show correct thumbnails, titles, and descriptions for a certain page. However, these websites rely on the tag of the web page to acquire this data.

When a website or app does not use JavaScript for the landing page, React renders all the content, including the Meta tags. It makes it difficult for individual pages to modify their metadata as the app shell stays the same for the entire website or app.

4. Loading Period and User Interface

Completing JavaScript tasks can be incredibly time-consuming, from fetching to executing to parsing. It is even more challenging when network calls must be made to gather the desired information, resulting in extended loading times for users.

When assessing page rankings, Google considers this as long loading times can adversely affect the user experience and result in a lower ranking.

Methods to Make React SEO-friendly

React websites can be optimized for SEO during development, ensuring they are search engine friendly. Incorporating React for SEO best practices into the design and coding of websites will help to boost their rankings and draw in more organic traffic. Let us discuss some of the tricks to developing React apps with an SEO-friendly approach.

1. Prerendering Technique

Prerendering is a good way to ensure that a React single-page application complies with search engine protocols. It involves pre-generating and storing the HTML and CSS scripts and storing them in the cache memory.

An algorithm then checks if the website request is from a user or a Googlebot. The browser will load the HTML file as usual if it is a user. If it is a bot, the HTML script stored in the cache memory is rendered instead, significantly reducing the loading time and eliminating the possibility of a blank page appearing.

Pros:

Simple implementation
Compatible with trending websites innovations
Requires less codebase variation
Executes every JavaScript file by translating it into static HTML.

Cons:

No free services
It takes longer time for large data files
You need to generate a new version of the page each time you change its content.

2. Isomorphic React Practices

Isomorphic JavaScript Technology can automatically recognize if JavaScript is enabled or disabled on the server side. If disabled, Isomorphic JavaScript can take over on the server side and deliver the resulting high-quality content to the client-side server.

Once the page is loaded, all the necessary content and features are instantly available. With JavaScript enabled, the website behaves like a dynamic application, with multiple components that load quickly. It results in a smoother user experience compared to a regular website, providing a more enjoyable single-page application experience.

3. Server-side Rendering

To develop a React Web application, you must know the distinctions between client-side and server-side rendering. Client-side rendering involves the browser receiving empty HTML files with limited or no content. In contrast, server-side rendering is a process where the server responds to a request with a completely rendered HTML page. Having a grasp of these two concepts is essential for creating a React Web application.

JavaScript code downloads the content from the servers and makes it available on the user’s screen. However, client-side rendering can create difficulties for search engine optimization (SEO) as Google’s web crawlers can either not see the content or see less content that has not been indexed correctly.

In contrast, server-side rendering provides browsers and Google Bots with HTML files that come with the complete content. This makes it easier for Google Bots to index and achieve higher rankings.

Pros:

It offers optimization for social media pages
Top-notch SEO compatibility
Provides immediate page availability
Improves UI features and functioning

Cons:

Slower webpage transition
Complicated catching functions
Costly than other methods

Tricks to Maintain the SEO Compatibility of React Webpages

When crafting a SPA, developers can utilize one of the popular JavaScript frameworks such as React, Angular, or Vue. According to a recent survey, React is the most popular. Here are some of the tricks to develop SEO-friendly React websites. Let us start with the following:

Utilizing the URL Cases

Google bots can be tripped up by pages with different URLs depending on the case of the letters, such as /envision and /or Invision. To avoid this issue, it’s best practice to use lowercase when creating URLs.

Less Use of <a href>

A common mistake in developing SPAs is to use a <div> or a <button> to modify the URL. Although this is not a fault of React itself, it can pose a problem to search engines like Google. Google bots process URLs and look for additional URLs to crawl through <a href> elements. If the <a href> element is missing, Google bots won’t crawl the URLs and pass on PageRank. To ensure Google bots can identify and crawl the URLs, it is important to include <a href> elements for the bots to detect.

Constantly Solving the 404 Code

If you encounter an error on any page, it will likely display a 404 code. To fix this, it is best to update the files in server.js and route.js as soon as possible. Doing this can drive more traffic to your website or web app.

Final Words

Single-page React applications provide excellent performance, smooth interactions similar to native applications, a lighter server load, and easy web development. SEO issues should not prevent you from leveraging the React library, as strategies are in place to combat this problem. Additionally, search engine crawlers are becoming more sophisticated yearly, so SEO optimization may eventually become a non-issue when using React.

Author Bio – Jigar Agrawal

Jigar Agrawal is Digital Marketing Manager at eSparkBizTechnologies. He is passionate about anything related to Digital Marketing. Wants to unlock the world of technology and Social Media where every day there is a chance for new possibilities as well as innovation.

Jan 27 2021

7 Advanced SEO Strategies To Grow Website Traffic

Everyone has a website these days, but not everyone is ranking on the first page. How do you send droves of traffic to your website when thousands of others are competing for the same keywords? Here are some well-known advanced SEO strategies that are proven to increase website traffic for more leads and new clients.

Repurpose content
Re-evaluate your keyword strategy
Build high-quality links
Update, Merge, Delete
Invest in video marketing
Optimize, optimize, optimize…
Optimize for local traffic

Repurpose content

Choose one of your top-performing pages and repurpose the content into another form to take advantage of existing interest and the traffic already flowing to the page.

What does this mean exactly?

Let’s say you have a blog post on 7Advances SEO Strategies that get a high volume of search traffic. Use the content from that post and turn it into a video, podcast, infographic, slideshow or anything you believe will get a good response from your audience.

Why does repurposing content generate more traffic?

Using an alternative form of content gives you another way to deliver your content. Users all have different preferences on how they choose to consume content and so by providing multiple versions you open up new channels of interest.

Those that may have skipped through or skipped your blog post entirely may choose to watch a video or listen to an audio version.

The bonus of repurposing content that it’s not as hard to do as producing content from scratch. A good deal of the work is already done since you have a finished product. The content is already there it’s just a matter of putting it together in a way that users can consume.

Repurpose your blog post into a new infographic

Turning a blog post into an infographic is a popular method of repurposing content. Visualized data has a much higher retention rate for people because it is a combination of images and facts. Images help visitors retain the most important points of a blog post.

Step one: The first step is to determine your key data points.

What do you want readers to remember when they see your blog post? This will form the skeleton of your infographic.

Step two: Organize your infographic with sections and headers.

The key to a good looking infographic is to make it look extremely organized. If everything is balanced and aesthetical it will make more sense to users when they read through the content.

Step three: Keep your text brief and to the point.

The idea behind making the infographic is to give your audience the most important data points. Don’t try to transpose the entire blog post onto your image. Otherwise, they could just read the blog post.

Step four: Include notes for the designers.

Be as descriptive as possible when making notes for the designers. You want your ideas to materialize as close to your vision as possible. Tell designers exactly what to do when it comes to branding, colours and images.

Here is an infographic from Venngage that walks you through these exact steps:

Infographic on how to repurpose content which is considered one of the advanced SEO strategies

Publish a video

Hey, have you heard about that new website called YouTube?! It should be obvious by now that if you’re going to publish a video, you’ll want to do it on YouTube. Not only is it the second-largest search engine in the world, but also, videos rank on Google all the time for high volume keywords.

(Click here to learn about video trends in 2021)

Add YouTube traffic to your monthly search volume

Drive traffic from both Google and YouTube by publishing a video optimized for an important keyword that will drive traffic. YouTube is not as competitive as Google when it comes to ranking for keywords, which is something, you can capitalize on.

If you’re shy about being on camera, use the images from your infographic to make a video/infographic. You’ll need to be the narrator and be super engaging if you’re not going to show your face on the video.

Tips for optimizing your video

Make sure your main keyword is in the title, filename and tags. Take your video optimization to the next level by including a keyword-rich video transcript in the description. Add Chapters within your description to break up your video into segments. Take note of the top ranking videos and duplicate the tags they use since it also plays a big role in how YouTube sees your video.

This image highlights where keywords are located in YouTube video optimization. This is an advanced SEO tactics that will earn you a lot of traffic

Keep in mind that if people get bored and leave your video before it finishes, it will sink your YouTube ranking. Make sure there are no flat and boring segments. If you can’t help but be super boring then make your videos into short clips. Engagement is the key here.

Publish a slideshow

Slideshare logo

If you’re going to go as far as publishing a video, you can easily import it to Slideshare to publish a slideshow. That’s not the only option for creating a slideshow. PowerPoint presentations convert perfectly and you can always make a slideshow from scratch.

Slideshows allow you to separate your content from the masses by providing a form of multimedia that isn’t as common as infographics and videos. They require user interaction which entices visitors to stay on your page longer and boosts engagement statistics.

Slideshare also has an average of about 80 million unique visitors a month with approximately 38 million registered users. This option can serve as an excellent source of traffic for B2B marketing.

Create bite-sized information for social media marketing

Divide your blog post into the most important points and post pieces of it on your social media one piece at a time. This can give your posts a longer lifespan for capturing interest and driving traffic to the blog post on your website. Oberlo does this really well with its infographics like this stat that was cut from their social media marketing infographic.

Example of making bite sized info for social media. Another advanced SEO tactis

Rather than one post of your entire blog article, you can use multiple posts that are more like teasers to get people to visit your page to read the whole thing. Not to sound like a broken record, but infographics are perfect for this type of social media marketing.

If you’ve turned your blog post into an infographic already you can use each segment as a social media post. Each post will be one of the main data points you’ve chosen for your infographic. With this already done you already have images and the most important messages ready to post.

Save time, resources and boost traffic with repurposed content

If you’re producing content regularly, repurposing content should be a regular part of your routine. It’s not easy to go through years of producing content regularly without experiencing overlap in topic and ideation.

Why not improve the quality of existing content and expand the reach it has by using multiple sources of traffic?

Re-evaluate your keyword strategy

There’s a common misconception that your keyword strategy is a “one and done” type of task. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Your keyword strategy should be re-evaluated periodically to expand on areas that are working to improve your bottom line.

Re-optimize for keyword variations

If there are keywords that are bringing in high converting visitors, you’ll need to pay closer attention to those phrases to build more content surrounding those issues and topics.

Why settle for one high-converting keyword when you can optimize for four or five similar phrases that work to produce the same results? There are many cases where you can get the same page to rank for more keyword variations by making small adjustments to optimize the page. To capitalize on those opportunities, you have to be aware of the keywords that are working to boost your business.

Publish relevant content

The content you publish is heavily influenced by the topics that are important to your audience as well as weighing in the business value the target keywords represent to your company. What you decided were the most popular keywords 5 years ago, heck, even one year ago may have changed in priority and almost most definitely in volume.

It’s important to stay updated on what is being searched the most to continue producing relevant content for your audience. Refreshing your keyword strategy is a way to ensure you’re up to date and delivering fresh and relevant content that drives traffic.

Steal ideas from your competition

An effective keyword strategy is not complete without doing a competitive analysis. Just as you may review popular terms being searched by your audience, you also want to check in on your competition to what terms they’re driving traffic from as well.

You can get ideas by running a competing URL through analytic software to see the both paid and organic traffic that is flowing through their site.

If they’re executing an optimized PPC campaign, then paid traffic can speak volumes about what terms are making money for their company. Why else would they be paying for traffic if they weren’t making money from it?

The organic traffic that’s being driven is an indication of the content that’s being produced. If there are keywords they rank for that you don’t, take a closer look at the pages that rank to analyze the content and see if it’s a good fit for your audience.

If there’s business value in the search terms, you have new keywords and fresh content ideas to add to your keyword/content strategy.

A keyword strategy is a living entity

Think of your keyword strategy as something that is constantly evolving. Just as your rose bush needs priming and pruning, your keyword is also in need of fine-tuning to get the best results. Don’t stop adding keywords that work and taking some away those that don’t from your overall strategy. As your website develops over the years, re-evaluating your keyword strategy maintains relevant content and boosts traffic.

Build high-quality links

There’s no doubt that one of the advanced SEO strategies, high-quality backlinks increases the traffic to your website. Consider what makes a high-quality link and it’s a guaranteed fact that if you’re acquiring high-quality backlinks, you’re increasing search visibility.

If the link is on a highly relevant website that receives a lot of traffic, you’ll receive referral traffic with highly engaged visitors.

If the website has massive domain authority then that domain authority is transferred to your website, thereby raising your ranking ability. With improved rankings, the click-through rate from the SERP skyrockets.

IMage showing the CTR for SERP positions

To be in the top 5 (top 3 positions are the bulk of the traffic) you need backlinks. The argument of what comes first, the chicken or the egg can be applied to this situation. Some debate that being in the top 3 ranked position leads to more backlinks, whereas others might say you need to acquire the backlinks to get to the top 3 positions.

Chart showing the relationship between backlinks and Google Ranking

Regardless of how you see it, it’s important to make high-quality link building a part of your routine for developing websites that rank at the top of the search results.

What’s the best way to build high-quality backlinks?

In an ideal world, the content on your website would naturally attract high-quality backlinks. Producing good content is a non-negotiable requirement to compete in the top 3 spots, but it’s not enough to acquire backlinks in a reasonable amount of time.

For a page to accumulate a high number of backlinks naturally, people have to know about it. It needs to be promoted through the proper channels and (ironically) have links built to it to get traffic flowing. Here are a few ways to build links to your pages to get your content in front of the right audience.

Outreach campaigns

This is one of the few methods reproducing natural link building at an accelerated rate. The concept of natural link building is people find your page, they like it so much that they link to it from their web properties.

In its simplest form, outreach campaigns are you reaching out to other website owners and telling them about your content and hope they like it enough to link to it. The major problem with this tactic is that it gets an abysmal conversion rate. Most simple outreach campaigns average an 8% conversion rate.

Here are a few themed outreach campaigns that boost your conversion rates to result in more links built to your page.

Broken link building

Broken link building is identifying broken links on your prospects page, contacting them to inform them of it and offering your link as a substitute for that link.

This tends to get a higher conversion rate because website owners care about the user experience of their pages. If there is a link that leads a user to a deleted page then it’s considered the link is contributing to a bad user experience.

By offering a page with content that is similar to what used to be there, you have more leverage by offering more value in linking to your website.

Unlinked mentions

This form of outreach is themed to contacting website owners or authors who have mentioned your brand without linking to it. This receives a higher conversion rate on average because if your brand was worth mentioning, to begin with, most website owners won’t have a problem linking to your website.

Link reclamation

This type of campaign targets website owners that have linked to your website, but for some reason, your link was deleted. Links are deleted all the time, whether it by mistake, through updates or moved pages-it happens.

You can save a high percentage of lost links by simply reaching out to owners and asking them to replace your link.

Guest posting

This form of link building is probably among one of the top choices for business owners and SEO companies because it allows the opportunity for branding. Publishing an article on a popular website allows a company to demonstrate their expertise to an outside audience as well as a link back to their website.

Guest posting can land some high-quality backlinks when the websites you link from are highly relevant and have high domain authority.

Editorial links are also considered the crème de la crème of all the types of links you can get.

Update, merge, delete old blog posts

As a way to keep your blog content fresh, relevant and ranking highly, it’s important to update, merge and delete underperforming content. This is one of the advanced SEO strategies to add to a periodic routine for improved search visibility and high volumes of traffic.

Chart showing the impact of one of the advanced SEO strategies Hubspot used which was updating old blog posts

First off, Google prefers fresh content to stale content. There are some niches where fresh content is a ranking factor because of the continuous changes that can occur in the niche.

SEO is a prime example of a niche where things can change dramatically over a year. In many cases, there’s content that becomes irrelevant and out-dated making it completely obsolete.

Update old blog posts

Look for opportunities to update older blog posts that have slowly lost the traffic it once generated. The chances are that newer posts have been published that cover more information, cover new information, are more updated or just have more multimedia and value-added features.

Merge underwhelming blog posts

There are often situations where you’ve published blog posts that target similar keywords and answer similar search intent. If these blog posts are not ranking in the top 5 spots on the first page, you merge the two to create a monster blog post with more capability of ranking highly.

Combine the content of both pages to make your article a more comprehensive version. You will need to choose which page to keep and which one to delete based on the keywords within the URL and the backlinks that point to each page. It’s necessary to use a 301 redirect to tell search engines that content has moved from the deleted page to the merged page.

Google has made 301 redirects very clean in terms of transferring power from one URL to another, however, err on the cautious side and consider keeping the page that has more backlinks pointing to it. You can also use the volume of traffic and the keywords in the URL as part of choosing which page to delete.

Delete old posts with no traffic

It’s been proven that deleting pages that do not receive traffic can help increase your overall website rankings. Find pages that don’t rank well, or don’t drive traffic and delete the ones that aren’t contributing to your business.

The reasons to delete pages from your blog should match the following criteria:

The page has not received traffic within 90 days.
No backlinks are pointing to the page.
It’s a low-quality blog post.
There’s no business value associated with the post.

Use a 301 direct redirect to send users to new pages in case external links are pointing to those pages. You also want to save the link juice and send it to a similar page on your website.

Invest in video marketing

Video marketing boasts a slew of statistics that are pretty hard to ignore. One reason that stands out is that videos increase conversions by 80% when you add them to a landing page. This is backed by the fact that almost 90% of marketers are using video marketing in their digital marketing strategy.

Capitalize on social media traffic

Videos have been the preferred form of content for some time now by over 70% of people. The beauty of publishing a video is that once it’s on YouTube not only can you benefit from YouTube traffic but you can use it across multiple social media websites as well.

Facebook reports that video is the most shared form of content. Facebook stories, Insta stories are proving to be some of the most popular ways to get users’ attention.

Incorporate “Stories” for high engagement rates

The FOMO effect (Fear Of Missing Out) seems to be strong with most social media users. The idea of losing out on the opportunity to view a video (as such is the case with Stories) has proven effective for generating higher engagement rates.

Increase ranking on Google search

There’s evidence to support that incorporating video on your ranking pages can help push your ranking higher. Higher engagement statistics create a positive ranking signal and if you’re already ranking on the first page, it could be the added boost that pushes your website towards the first position.

Rankbrain image of the AI assessing user engagement and assigning rank

Rankbrain factors in the user engagement statistics of a page to help determine what page satisfies search intent at the highest level. The most noticeable engagement statistic that increases is the average time spent on a page after adding a video. With more users spending more time on your page, the message is being sent that they are enjoying the content you’ve created, making your page more popular.

Increase traffic from Google SERP features

Your video can also appear in video carousels, the video tab on Google search, featured snippets, and the PAA box. As long as you have a link from your video to your web page, your video provides additional traffic to your website.

Optimize, optimize, optimize…

There’s always room to enhance optimization and get your page to generate more traffic. Optimization can occur in a few different areas both on-page content and building off-page.

Target featured snippets

Featured snippets are continuously appearing more frequently on Google, which is creating more opportunities for traffic and branding. Optimizing your content to appear in this feature is an absolute must when it receives the highest CTR. The fact that Google displays your website as the featured result contributes to the excellent branding of your company as industry leaders.

To learn more about optimizing for featured snippets click here.

Target PAA boxes

People Also Ask Boxes can also add a substantial number of visitors to your monthly volume of search traffic. If you rank for one of the questions in the PAA box, there’s a good chance you rank for several variations of that question.

You can optimize for the PAA box by answering popular questions that appear in the box. Tag your question using an h2 or h3 tag and use short, succinctly summarized answers directly after the question.

Optimize for search intent

Optimizing for search intent is a continual process. Make sure your content adequately covers the same topics as any of the competing pages in the top 10 results.

You can create a better page by expanding your topic coverage or improving your multimedia.

Optimize using anchor text links

The number of optimized anchor text links pointing to a page affects the page’s optimization. You can enhance the overall optimization of a page for a specific keyword by concentrating or diluting the anchor text ratio of the keyword you’re targeting.

(Read more on anchor text optimization here.)

Optimize for local traffic

Capitalize on high converting local traffic by optimizing your website with a local SEO strategy. Whether you have a brick and mortar business or not, it makes sense to pick up on searches being made within your area that can land you some extra business.

Creating a Google My Business profile is non-negotiable. It’s one of the easiest things to do-although optimizing your profile can be a little more involved.

How to optimize your GMB profile

The first order of business is to fill out the basic information about your business. Make sure you enter data on every single field that’s available. The more information you provide to Google, the more searches your listing can appear for.

Small details count

Some businesses fail to enter their store hours. Let’s say that your store is open late yet if someone searches “X type of stores open late” you won’t appear because you didn’t enter store hours. Make the effort to include the small and simple details since they can land you more traffic.

Add citations

To rank as a local business you need to have links from local websites and local directories. List your business in the top directories that are well known, such as Bing. You can transfer your GMB profile directly to a Bing account.

Use other websites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Foursquare to get local traction in the search results. See more on the local link building here.

Increase traffic systematically using expert SEO tactics

The traffic generation ideas mentioned above are considered advanced SEO strategies and can be used to increase the volume of traffic your website receives regularly.

If you don’t have time to implement these SEO strategies yourself, feel free to send us a message for professional assistance. We’ll give you a full site analysis free of charge and let you know which of these tactics will help you generate the most traffic to your website.

Jan 25 2021

6 Different Types Of SEO Techniques

SEO is a practice that consists of many different tactics, strategies and efforts. It’s an umbrella term that can cover a wide spectrum of different types of SEO techniques that will make your website more optimized for search engines.

Types of search engine optimization techniques

Some websites will need more than one type of SEO than others. Knowing which types of SEO techniques your website needs puts you in a position to improve your search visibility for target keywords.

The following are some of the major types of SEO techniques that you should be aware of. All SEO practices can be classified into one of three categories: White, Black and Grey hat SEO.

Although it would be rare to find an SEO company that operates using black hat SEO, it’s important to know what it is and how it can affect your website.

#1-Black hat SEO

Black hat SEO has a very negative connotation attached because it consists of SEO practices that deliberately break the rules search engines try to enforce. Black SEO is any practice that is considered to “game the system” such as sneaky redirects, doorway entrances, automated link building, paid links and type of activity that provides an unfair advantage in the ranking.

Is blackhat SEO considered unethical?

Blackhat SEO is considered an unethical practice in the context of a client and SEO provider relationship unless the provider is being upfront with their practices and explains the risks. If not, the provider could be taking on high (and unnecessary) risks for a quick gain, jeopardizing the status of the clients’ website.

The penalties for violating Google’s SEO best practice guidelines and terms can range from a mild slap on the wrist (decrease in the ranking from an algorithmic filter) to a full-fledged de-indexation of your website (Google exile enforced by a manual penalty).

The only way to recover from a manual penalty is to reverse any wrongdoing and submit an appeal for re-evaluation. Even if your re-evaluation is approved, many violators have said their rankings are never the same and it’s more difficult to gain Google’s trust again.

For this reason, black hat SEO is not an option for most legitimate SEO companies.

An image of two types of SEO techniques: black and white hat seo

#2-White hat SEO

White hat SEO is all of the recommended practices for developing a website and improving its search visibility that fall within Google’s guidelines. White hat practices include publishing high-quality content, natural link building, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization.

White hat SEO is usually a longer process because it takes time to develop content and even longer to accumulate links naturally. The fact that pure white hat link building takes so long has influenced even SEO companies to dabble in grey hat link building.

#3-Grey hat SEO

Grey hat SEO is just as it sounds. It’s the in-between area or “grey area” that neither completely falls within the guidelines, but is not exactly punishable by definition.

Link building, for example, is an issue that many SEO companies struggle with at scale because it’s important to get results for clients in a relatively short amount of time.

Grey hat SEO are the types of SEO techniques that are in between white and black hat SEO

Google’s perspective on link building

According to Google, links should be acquired naturally, which means users not only have to find your website but like it so much that they link to it to share it with others. This is all good in theory but with 2 million blog posts being published every day what company wants to wait around hoping people are going to link to their website?

Outreach is a white hat SEO practice that is still heavily favoured by SEO companies because it’s reaching out to people asking them to link to your website. This can take an enormous amount of effort and time and at the end of the day, you’re at the mercy of other website owners to give you a link.

Enter grey hat SEO.

The devious nature of PBN’s

Many SEO companies will build their websites and link to their client’s websites. There are already a few of your reading this, pointing your finger and screaming,

“Witch! Black Magic! That’s a PBN! Private blog networks websites are illegal”

Fine. You may be right however, there is a grey area that this falls into when the website is built, developed and nurtured as a real, purposeful website. How can Google tell the difference between a PBN website and a normal website?

Example of how PBNs are set up to raise authority and ranking ability

PBN’s were targeted a few years back when they were extremely effective and working to rank websites quickly. All you had to do was buy an expired domain, slap an article on the homepage and link to your website.

Here is what a bad PBN website looks like that leads to a Google penalty.

What about this website? Is it a PBN or a real website?

A good PBN website is one of the many types of SEO techniques that are used today

If a website is publishing articles regularly and has real traffic flowing through it, who’s to say it’s being used solely for link building?

That is an example of grey hat SEO link building-when white hat practices are bent to give more control over the links that a website acquires. It happens all the time and it works very well if you’re good at it.

#4-On-page SEO practices

The optimization of a web page can go into many different degrees of compliance. There’s the technical aspect of optimizing a page to account for what search engines reward as well as the overall user experience that it provides. After all, what’s good for users is good for search engines.

Keyword optimization

One of the more infamous forms of optimization is keyword targeting. To influence a stronger appearance in the search engines for a target keyword, the keyword should be placed in specific parts of a page to enhance on-page optimization. These areas include but are not limited to:

Title
URL
First 100 words (the first paragraph is even better)
Keyword synonyms in subtitles
Image alt tags
Meta Description

It’s important to note that this method of optimization is not as powerful as it used to be. The days of ranking pages according to keywords on-page is now over. Search engines will use the topical optimization of the page as a larger ranking factor.

keyword optimization has been replaced with topical optimization as one of the newer types of SEO techniques

Keyword topic optimization

It should be noted that search engines have evolved past the point of relying on keywords in the metadata to define what a page is about. The ability to provide information in a way that users engage with is a major aspect of how well your page ranks for specific search terms.

To improve the way your page performs in a search query it should have the ability to satisfy search intent by covering a keyword topic in its entirety (as it pertains to the search). This type of coverage creates a resource for users and makes the page relevant to related searches since it is likely covered within the content.

Search intent optimization

The true intent the user has for initiating a search is referred to as user intent and/or search intent. When a user can end their search on a page it is considered to have satisfied their need to search further and thereby satisfies search intent.

To enhance the ability of a page to satisfy search intent you can link to related content that enhances the user’s experience. The connection your page has to relevant resources improves the amount of information you’re providing to the user. This helps the user in their search and therefore contributes as a positive ranking signal for searches related to your keyword topic.

Search intent optimization image that shows the steps to solve and satisfy user intent

User experience optimization

One of the aspects of optimization means making your page more user-friendly by providing an enjoyable experience. This task can sometimes be fairly technical, while on the other hand there is a creative aspect to improving the user experience.

Technical improvements

Page experience can be accounted for systematically since Google provides the exact formula for performance. Your website needs to perform in the following categories to be compliant:

Core web vitals
HTTPS
Safe Browsing
Mobile-friendly
No interstitials

Creative improvements

On the creative side, the user experience improves according to your decisions regarding the uniqueness of your page. For instance, the type of multimedia you choose makes a difference to how the user interacts with your content.

Video content

If you have a video to explain your page, it provides an additional way for your content to be consumed. Since 0ver 70% of users prefer video as a means of learning about something, it means you’ve improved the user experience for at least 70% of your audience.

Slideshows

In some cases, having a slideshow may work even better than a video. As an alternative form of content, you can create a unique experience for users and in effect, separate your page from the masses.

Audio files and podcasts

Podcasts have taken off over the last few years and more and more people are gravitating towards them as they’ve found a place for them in their everyday lives.

Adding multiple types of media can improve the quality of your content and therefore help to rank higher in the search results. One way of looking at is to ask yourself,

“Would the world miss my content (or website) if it were to suddenly fall off of the face of the universe?”

If it would leave a gaping hole in your niche, then you know you’ve done a great job in providing users value in your content. If your pages are easily replaced and are as similar as everyone else’s, you have room to improve the quality of your page and content.

#5-Off-page optimization

Optimizing your site off-page is one of the more well-known types of SEO techniques. Search engines, especially Google, consider off-page optimization to be a highly relevant ranking factor that can heavily influence where your website appears in keyword searches. PageRank is what Google uses as one of the major indicators for determining the order in which websites are displayed in the search results.

Establishing credibility and authority

PageRank refers to a page’s ability to rank based on a scoring system that is designed to reflect the popularity, credibility and trust of a website. PageRank is often misinterpreted as domain authority, which is also a term that alludes to ranking ability.

Example of PageRank visualized by a web of websites linking to one another

Domain authority is primarily based on backlinks, but rather than using Google’s proprietary formula, it is based on the quantity and quality of backlinks by third-party companies. These companies provide a metric for the authority of the domain as well as a page itself. It can be measured in a few different scales of measurement:

DA/PA (domain authority and page authority) was invented by Moz.
DR/UR (domain rating and URL rating) was invested by Ahrefs.
TF/CF (trust flow and citation flow) was invented by Majestic.

Why is domain authority important?

The ultimate goal of any search engine is to provide the most relevant and helpful results to a user when they type in a keyword. To do this the search engines not only need to assess the relevance of the content, but also the authority and credibility of the website that has published this content.

How to improve domain authority and credibility

Authority and credibility are measured by the overall number of websites that vouch for their content by linking to their pages. The quality of the linking websites plays a big role in the impact of the links that are acquired.

To improve the authority your domain has in its niche you need to acquire backlinks from other quality websites that have authority and credibility in the same niche or a close vertical to it.

Link building is one of the most powerful types of SEO techniques to use for increasing search visibility.

Build citations

One of the first steps to building links is to acquire citations from popular directories and review sites. These types of sites are already trusted by search engines such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, Manta, Foursquare, etc. They provide the first layer of trust and can be considered a natural way of acquiring backlinks.

Build high-quality links

As the name “The web” infers, the internet is a web of linked websites. The PageRank theory precludes that the most credible and popular websites should have the most backlinks because they are being shared the most because of the quality of their content.

The secret to a higher ranking is to therefore build high-quality links from websites that are relevant to yours.

HIgh quality link building means moe time spent on quality content

What is a high-quality link?

A high-quality link comes from a website in which its visitors would be interested in your content. That would prove the relevance between websites and therefore be good for both users and search engines.

The linking website will power up this type of link if it has a high volume of search traffic or a high number of quality links (from websites that would be a good fit to link to yours).

The effects of a quality link should do one or both of the following;

Provide quality referral traffic: The visitors that arrive on your site via the link should be engaged with your content for the link to be effective. Engaged visitors eventually lead to a goal conversion-which can be anything from an opt-in to an email list, on-site purchase or a phone call.

Possess powerful authority: When a website’s authority metrics are powerful enough to lift your website’s authority metrics, it can be considered a good link. Higher authority means more ranking ability.

The off-page optimization is not only limited to external links. Internal links can also be a powerful form of optimizing a page for a keyword topic or specific search term.

Internal link building

You can optimize a page for a specific search term or topic by linking from other internal pages within your website. Internal links are a way of pointing users to relevant pages that relate to the content they’re currently consuming.

Make use of optimized anchor text

By linking with the keyword as anchor text you can enhance the optimization of a page. When search engines see that a specific term is being used to link to the page, it directly communicates the importance of the term.

There is the possibility of over-optimization so the use of keyword synonyms is highly recommended.

Share link equity

Internal link building spreads link equity. A page that has a high number of links, and therefore a high page authority, will pass on authority when it links to another page on your website.

Increase authority by sharing link equity via internal links.

Build topic clusters

Topic clusters are an effective way to create a content hub that links related content together. The structure of linked content will often point to one core page, known as the pillar page, which covers the topic in breadth.

Example of a pillar page with cluster content which forms a topic cluster.

Linking to a pillar page within a topic cluster improves the authority of the page, which contributes to higher rankings.

Technical optimization

Not all off-page optimization comes in the form of content. There are also things you can do to improve the technical performance of your website and its pages.

Page speed

The time it takes your pages to load is a direct ranking factor. Off-page optimization tactics could include the implementation of a CDN, choosing the best hosting options and leveraging browser caching-all tactics to increase page speed.

Indexing issues

The issues that affect indexing can often be found off-page. For example, search engines use the robots.txt file as an instruction manual for which pages to index. If there’s a mistake in that file it could stop your pages from being indexed-which means no one will see them at all.

#6-Negative SEO

Negative SEO is a way of attacking the credibility and authority of another website by linking it to unrelated websites. This unethical practice is one of the types. of SEO techniques that usually come in the form of automated link building where the victim site is targeted and the software will automatically build thousands of links to its pages.

Google has become fairly good at detecting malicious attacks and will for the most part ignore massive amounts of links when it’s obvious they aren’t aimed at manipulating ranking.

The more devious attacks can be successful when the attacker uses relevant anchor text repeatedly and links to sites that will negatively impact credibility.

The solution to negative SEO

The solution to negative SEO attacks is to use the Disavow links tool. Google provides this tool to exclude links that are being built to your site which you can’t control.

Upload a disavow file to the tool and once it’s processed, the links will be discounted from your backlink profile.

This tool is a must if you’re issued a manual penalty for link building and can’t get the website owners to delete your links (as is commonly the case when links are automated).

Choose the types of SEO techniques that works best for your website

As you can see, there are many different types of SEO that are available to improve your search visibility as well as SEO practices to hurt your or other people’s websites. Not every website will require the same approach so it becomes necessary to prioritize a list of goals and assign the correct strategies and tactics to achieve them.

If you have any questions about the SEO strategy your website should implement, feel free to call or send us a message for full website analysis. Our team will develop a custom strategy to include the exact types of SEO techniques that make your site rise in the SERPs and dominate the competition.

Jan 18 2021

Page Experience: Core Web Vitals Are On Google’s Radar

It was in May 2020 that Google announced the introduction of Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console. There should be no surprise that Core Web Vitals are now going to be included as a ranking factor pending the Page Experience Update in May 2021.

There's a ton of information about them starting at https://t.co/LPlEXdVKxy – that's where I tend to go. LCP is similar to the page loading speeds you've probably looked at, but it tries to figure out when the primary elements are visible, which is what users care about.
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) May 28, 2020

If you’ve been reading about how search engines work, you may have come across the fact that they like when websites provide users with an enjoyable experience. If a user is satisfied with the results provided there’s no need to continue searching.

This is the underlying reason for the Page Experience Update. Google is adding core webs vitals as new ranking factors to consider when assessing the overall experience a page provides to the user.

Core web vitals are being added to the page experience ranking factors

Page experience can be broken down into the following major categories:

Core Web Vitals
HTTPS
Safe browsing
No interstitials
Mobile-friendliness

Google already considers page experience as an influencing ranking factor with the exception of the new additions within the core web vitals.

All truth be told, page speed is already a ranking factor but it is now being broken down into three metrics that make up core web vitals. The May 2021 update will mark the start of including those metrics in Google’s ranking algorithm.

Core Web Vitals

There are three components to measuring core web vitals. Each of the components has a direct impact on the user experience your website offers.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The LCP is considered the time it takes the main content on your page to load. Users need to see the major content of the page (text block, image or video) before feeling satisfied that the page is useful. According to Google, that moment is the LCP.

Here is an example of where the LCP loads later in the page poad time.

Example of LCP loading late which is considered a poor page experience

Here is an example of where the LCP loads closer to the beginning of the pages total load time.

Example of the LCP loading early contributing to a better page experience.

To provide a good user experience the LCP of your website should be at or under 2.5 seconds.

The scale for LCP that shows what's good, poor and needs attention

First Input Delay (FID)

The FID is a measure of the time it takes your website to be interactive. It measures the time it takes your website to respond to a command such as pressing a button, clicking on a link or interacting with an on-page feature.

The greater the delay in interactivity, the worse the user experience. If a user clicks on a button and there is no response they may click on it again or click on other buttons which can result in unintentional actions.

The FID should be maintained at a time no longer than 100 milliseconds.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

This aspect of UX is a big one because it deals with the stability of your website. The CLS measures the time it takes your website to stabilize (stop shifting completely).

Consider a situation where the user sees two very different options and attempts to select one but at the last second the layout changes causing an unintentional selection.

Below is the perfect example of how this can result in a detrimental user experience.

The CLS standard to maintain a good user experience is 0.1.

The scale for CLS that shows what's good, poor and needs attention

How will the Page Experience Update affect your business?

The answer to this, like most things SEO-related, is it depends. It’s hard to say exactly what this update means for your business specifically, but in the general sense, this update will affect everyone.

Content will always win over page speed

For those who aren’t competing for extremely difficult keywords, you may have some leeway when it comes to the technical side of page experience. If your content is the best solution to search intent you may not see any changes in your keyword positions and ranking.

Content trump’s most ranking factors. You may have a slow website, but if users love your content Google will surface your website over another that has fast page speed with weaker content.

We have to put it into perspective that although page experience is a ranking factor, it won’t be as influential as a page’s content and above all, its relevance to a search.

Brand searches would remain unaffected

Would it make sense that if a user types in Home Depot, that Home Hardware shows up first because their site is faster than Home Depots? Or if the site becomes interactive quicker than Home Depots, does it deserve to outrank it in a brand search?

Hopefully, you answered no.

At the end of the day, page experience is just a ranking factor that must be taken into the context of the search query. Relevance would mandate that brand searches will still return the pages from the actual brand itself.

Opportunity to gain a competitive edge

On the flip side, if Home Depot and Home Hardware are both competing for the keyword how to fix a leaky faucet then page speed may start to play a bigger role in the search.

Let’s assume both pages have similar content, similar links yet Home Depot’s page takes 10 seconds to load, while Home Hardware’s page loads under 2 seconds. Here are a few advantages that start to accumulate.

More users will stay on the Home Hardware page.
More users will leave the Home Depot Page before it loads.
More users will click through more pages of the Home Hardware website.
More users will reach conversion goals on the Home Hardware page.
More users will spend more time on the Home Hardware page.

Better engagement statistics mean a higher ranking.

All of these factors paint a picture of how users are interacting with both pages. In the case where page speed breaks ties, it will eventually mean the page that performs better, will rank higher. Higher rankings lead to higher click-through rates, increased traffic, leads and revenue.

Improved user experience leads to higher rates of conversion

Apart from a better ranking on Google, all companies should be considering their user engagement statistics seriously. Typically, what’s good for users is what’s good for search engines, so the Page Experience Update in May is just another hint at what will improve the quality of your website.

Page speed directly affects page performance

Google published some shocking stats a few years ago regarding the likelihood of a visitor to stay on your site with slow page speed. Here are the stats Google reported:

Google reports the bounce rate probability as page speed deceses

Page speed vs. bounce rate

The bounce rate is defined as when a user lands on your page and backs out without interacting with anything else on your site. A bounce is registered when there are no other pages visited, no links clicked.

The bounce rate of the pages on your website can be found by visiting Google Analytics and running a report under Behavior, Site Content, All Pages.

The bounce rate is a measure of the percentage of visitors that land on your page and back off without any further interaction. High bounce rates become a concern when you want visitors to take a specific action on your page. You’re essentially losing traffic, which in many cases, can be traced to slow page speed.

A chart showing the relationship between page speed and the bounce rate of a website.

A real-world example of how page speed affects your business

Assume your website has the best content and ranks #1 for an important keyword. The problem is your page takes 10 seconds to load. According to Google, even though a user will most likely click on your page (it’s the #1 result) there is a 131% chance that they will leave if your page takes 10 seconds to load.

Let’s assume that they wait 10 seconds and even read your content. Do you think they are going to wait another 10 seconds to read another page? The chances of a user clicking through to other content have completely diminished because every click is a 10-second wait.

There’s a 131% chance they will back off your page and go to the #2 website.

Let’s assume that the #2 website loads in less than 2 seconds. Viewing multiple pages is easy and fast. The user can read more about the company and get a better idea of what they’re offering.

There’s a much higher probability the user will fill out a contact form or complete a goal conversion when they spend more time and click through more pages on the site.

How do the page experience ranking factors affect my business?

And it’s not just page speed that is in question. There are now additional loading factors (CLS and FID) that Google is telling us can negatively affect the user experience. Keep in mind that the entire page experience encompasses four more of the aforementioned categories that currently influence ranking.

SSL / HTTPS

HTTPS refers to the secure socket layer that is installed on your website. Your SSL certificate is like your internet passport that proves your website is what it appears to be.

Without an SSL certificate, websites can hide malicious software, disguise their identity and attempt to give you a virus or potentially steal sensitive information from you. To reduce the number of harmful websites, Google made HTTPS the new standard for security.

This means your website encrypts data and guarantees a user that a website is exactly what it appears to be. If your website is not conforming to this standard you’re losing one of the ranking signals that Google has already confirmed affects your search visibility.

When browsing on Chrome, a website without an SSL will show as insecure.

Not secure warning on Chrome if your site doesn't have an SSL certificate

Do you think you might lose visitors if this is what they see before they click on your website?

To get to your site you have to click on Advanced and then proceed which I think we all can agree is not an enjoyable user experience.

Mobile Friendliness

It should be no surprise that the mobile-friendliness of your website is a ranking factor. After all, more than 50% of total searches are made from mobile devices. Google rewards and penalizes sites (mildly) based on the mobile user experience.

Apart from adjusting the layout to make things more user friendly, there are also specific aspects of web design that could affect mobile usability. For instance, if the font is too small or buttons are too close together.

Although a developer may have made a website responsive, you may need to make minor adjustments to improve the page experience for your visitors.

Safe browsing

This best practice ensures that there is no malicious content on your website such as malware. This refers to unwanted software that is harmful to a computer, mobile device, or software. It can be downloaded from a website, without the user’s permission or knowledge by attaching itself to a downloadable file.

Websites that contain this type of content will lose search visibility as it is deemed detrimental to the user experience.

No intrusive interstitials

How much do you love when you land on a page and a pop up completely blocks access to the page without any options given to exit the screen? This is an example of an intrusive interstitial.

Pop-ups, popovers, or annoying advertisements degrade the overall user experience by blocking access to the content the user intended to see in the first place.

Google penalizes websites that utilize ads or sign up forms that don’t provide an easy exit button. Cornering your users into making a decision is considered against best practices and warrants a negative ranking signal.

Provide an enjoyable page experience

Just to be clear, the page experience ranking factors have been around for some time. It is the addition of Core Web Vitals that will take effect in the next Page Experience Update scheduled for May 2021.

Although the impact on ranking can be speculated to be somewhat minimal in most cases, it should be noted that every competitive edge you can add is worth the effort. Not only will this tip the scales in a head to head tiebreaker in competitive situations, but your conversions increase when you provide a better UX for your visitors.

Take the hint Google is offering, along with a plentiful heads up to prepare for yet another update intended to improve the overall quality of the user experience.

Jan 07 2021

9 Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate & Improve Traffic Quality

Of all the ways to increase traffic to your website, it’s not often that you think of the source of new visitors as being from the traffic you’re already receiving. There’s a hidden trove of visitors you can unlock by using several tactics to reduce your bounce rate.

What is a bounce rate?

The bounce rate on your site is the total percentage of visitors that land on your site and leave without interacting with any other pages or links. This is a metric that’s reported in your Analytics and a value that can be crucial in improving the quality of traffic your website receives.

You can find the bounce rate of the pages of your website in Google Analytics by clicking on Behavior,

Use Google Analytics to identify and reduce your bounce rate

Used in the right context, this metric can identify problems on your website that may be causing people to leave.

A high bounce rate can potentially indicate a missed opportunity since visitors are already on your page and yet leave without completing a goal such as making a purchase or signing up to an email list.

What’s a good bounce rate?

A good bounce rate can be different on a situational basis. Many site managers would maintain that a bounce rate of over 60% warrants attention. Others are happy if their bounce rates are under 80% and yet this could be a catastrophic number to another website.

The percentage of a good bounce rate depends on the niche in which you’re competing and the type of page that’s generating your data.

So where is the happy medium for your website?

Your bounce rate should be assessed in light of the goal you have for the user on the page you’re analyzing.

You also need to accurately determine the behaviour of your audience to understand the meaning of the data being generated.

Aim to see the bigger picture

The problem with using bounce rate alone is that it doesn’t give you the entire story of what’s happening on your website. In the words of Dan Shewen,

No metric is an island on its own. Click To Tweet

If a user lands on your page and reads every single drop of a 5000-word article, then leaves, it would technically register as a bounce. If 80% of users did the same thing, the first glance at your analytics might tell you visitors do not like your content-which, in reality, this is not the case.

This brings us to the first point…

#1- Reference the average time spent on page

To accurately determine the true meaning of bounce rate on a specific page, you need to compare it to the average time spent on the page. In the example above, the bounce rate alone is a misleading metric without cross-referencing the average time spent on a page.

Google Analytics display highlighting the avg time spent on page

Significance of longer averages

By recognizing that each user spends 5-8 minutes on your page before leaving paints a more accurate picture of how users are engaging with your content. You can’t be certain that your content is the problem judging from just the bounce rate and not referencing the average time on the page.

If people are spending a long time on your page, it means they’re getting through your content. Consider creating a conversion goal, call to action or offer more options for related content to get them clicking through your site (discussed further in this article).

Significance of shorter averages

A short time spent on your page could mean users aren’t liking what they or they aren’t getting there because your page takes too long to load. If the average time spent on your page is short and you have a high bounce rate, you need to make changes. Users are landing on your page and not even giving it a chance.

Significance of no time on spent on page

If the page in question shows no time spent, the user might have closed the tabs or the browser to end the session on your page. If this happens, there is no time recorded because there is no exit click.

The average time on a page is measured from the entrance click to the exit click. If your users don’t click on anything and close the tabs you have some slightly misleading data being generated.

#2- Establish a CTA or conversion goal for your page

Content alone is not enough to keep visitors from leaving your page. Establish a clear and concise call to action for each of your pages to keep your audience engaged and moving through your website.

Ask visitors to share your content

Are you trying to build a stronger social presence? Ask your visitors to share your article with their social networks. Social sharing plugins are effective and offer a simple click to share option, making it easy for readers to click on the icon and share with their audience.

Social sharing icons and a CTA to encourage interaction work to reduce your bounce rate

Ask visitors to join your email list

Present your readers with more opportunities to join your email list.

Include a CTA a few times within your post, which can be on the opt-in form itself.

Create conversions on Google Analytics

Ultimately we want our website visitors to purchase a product or service from our business. Creating goal conversions tracks whether your audience is doing what you want them to do on each page.

Setting up a conversion goal on Google analytics (reduces bounce rates)

Whether it’s a sale, email sign-up form, or a social share, track your goal conversions. When your visitors start clicking on the links you want them to, it eliminates the session from becoming a bounce.

#3- Use interactive content

In the case where users are landing on your pages and leaving almost immediately, you will need to consider updating the content on the page. Interactive content is a solution to get your audience more engaged with your page and improving the stickiness it has for captivating their interest.

It’s a proven fact that people learn more when they are engaged with hands-on learning as opposed to just reading or listening. Interactive content allows your users to elevate the learning curve and retain more information. By getting your visitors to engage with any of several different content assets, you can reduce the bounce rate of your pages.

Interactive infographics

Infographics may have seen their height in popularity, but they are beneficial for both B2B and B2C sales and marketing. Visual content itself is proven to improve retention from 10% with plain text to 65% with an image. Interactive infographics boost information retention to the next level by allowing the user to interact with the graphic.

Here is an example of an interactive infographic that shows you information on the gay rights of each state in the US.

Interactive infographic on gay rights laws in every state of the US

Whichever state you hover over with the mouse will highlight the information from that state on the sidebar.

Surveys

Surveys are proven to be one of the most popular forms of content. Incorporate a survey within your content to get your visitors engaged.

You can choose from some of the most popular survey tools as a starter for testing out your audience’s response.

Polls

Inserting polls within your content also gives your audience a fun way to answer questions and compare their answers to past visitors.

An example of a poll that can be inserted into your content for users to interact with

Inserting a poll in your content can provide a good break-in text and get your visitor to actively participate and engage with your content.

Pop quizzes

What better way to reinforce the content your visitor has just read than a pop quiz? The response from your audience may vary (some people don’t like to be tested!) but again, it’s a good way to make an option for a user to step outside of the mundane practice of reading and participate in a potentially enjoyable experience.

Sample of a pop quiz format to add to your blog content and reduce your bounce rate

You can use sites like quiz maker or better yet, Jotform’s Quiz Maker to create and publish pop quizzes in your content.

Example of the quiz maker template when creating a quiz for your content

Click to tweet

Inserting tweets a click to tweet call to action is a simple way for your audience to tweet a message or something worth sharing on your site. The amount of effort required for a user to click on the link makes sharing super simple.

This type of embed serves as a way to break up the text, get your users interacting with what you’re saying and contributes to increasing your audience.

#4- Re-optimize for user intent

When a visitor lands on your page, you have a few seconds before they decide whether your page can satisfy their search intent. Re-optimize your content to enhance your page’s ability to satisfy the user’s intent.

"Give the people what the people want."

The adage, “SEO is ever-changing” applies here when it comes to updating old content. Search intent is constantly in flux and going over old content can reveal out-dated articles that need to be re-optimized for current keywords as well as new ones.

SEO is not static with regards to the fact that at its core, it is based on user intent. People are always changing the way they search for things as well as the language they use to search. It can pay off in dividends to go over old content to make sure that your content satisfies user intent.

Improving the quality of your content and making sure it’s up to speed with the competition improves traffic and will reduce your bounce rate.

#5- Simplify your website navigation and searchability

One of the most common reasons users leave a website is because it’s not easy to navigate. When a visitor lands on a site for a specific reason, they need to believe that your website can satisfy their search. It’s important to provide easy access to all of your important pages so users can find what they’re looking for.

Even if they don’t see what they want at first glance, give them your best options to entice them to click further as well as a search box to search the website for something specific.

Counter intuitive layout will confuse visitors and lead to high bounce rates.

Avoid confusing menus and heavily cluttered pages. The actions a user takes on your site should be intuitive and laid out for the easiest and simplest understanding.

Confusing navigation contributes to a higher bounce rate

Use communicative image icons and a simple navigation bar to encourage more clicks. Think of using the signpost analogy to guide users in the right direction. Drivers need to see signs that communicate clearly what direction they want to take.

Example of an easy to understand format with an obvious horizontal navigation bar as wella s the search box above it

Simplify everything and when you’ve got some results and feedback, simplify it again. The easier your site is to navigate the better the UX experience is, which contributes to a reduced bounce rate.

#6- Reduce the time it takes your pages to load

Page speed is talked about repeatedly in almost every SEO article but it’s mentioned for good reason. Google reports that for every second it takes your pages to load you risk losing more visitors.

Think With Google statistic stating 123% increase in bounce rate from an increase in 1 to 10 seconds of page speed

Some websites have more to gain by improving page speed. If your website is experiencing load times over 10 seconds you have a big opportunity to optimize your page speed to 5 seconds and cut your bounce rates in half.

The result would be the same as doubling your traffic when you consider that you’re now getting the visitors that choose your site already but would never make it with slow loading pages.

#7- Optimize for mobile screens

If you’re not optimized for mobile screens, you risk visitors leaving your site. Reduce your bounce rate by making sure your website is easy to navigate with a layout that’s easy to use on all mobile screens.

Have you ever tried to use the desktop version of a website on a smaller screen?

When users are forced to “pinch” the screen to zoom in and out to read text or use buttons it’s considered to be a poor user experience. This can cause visitors to flee in search of a website that better accommodates their screen size.

Apart from reducing your bounce rate, you may also get a boost in traffic if you’re able to improve your mobile-friendliness. Don’t forget that Google indexes the mobile version of websites before the desktop version.

You can test your website’s mobile-friendliness on the mobile-friendly test site or directly from the SERP.

#8-Link to related content within your website

Use a topical internal linking strategy to provide links to other content within your site that a user may be interested in reading. Not only does this optimize your pages, but also you can lead users to different areas of your site for continued learning and discovery.

If the page your visitor lands on has zero links on it, where would your users go next? The only way out is backwards which registers as a bounce.

Offer related reading within your content and at the end to encourage a higher click-through rate and reduce your bounce rate.

Search engine journal related reading always at the end of every article

#9- Write long-form content

The advantage of being an engaging writer is that the more you write, the longer people stay on your page! Long-form content also gives you more opportunity to link to related content and direct traffic to product pages and other important pages on your site.

When compared to short-form content, the long-form gets visitors to stay on your site longer and reduce your bounce rate.

Increase traffic with a reduced bounce rate

Reducing the bounce rate on your site could be the key to unlocking a significant percentage of traffic that you already receive. In many cases, the bounce rate represents users that find your website but never make it to see a single scrap of your content.

Deducing the reason for a high bounce rate on your site is a priority that you can’t afford to ignore. Fixing the underlying cause can result in higher user engagement, increased click-through rates and more conversions.

As the competition becomes stiffer and the organic click-through rate dwindles, finding ways to improve the quality of your traffic will be a key element for sustainable growth and increased revenue.

If you have any questions about how to reduce your bounce rate, feel free to contact us for complimentary website analysis and learn how we can help through using custom SEO services.

Technical SEO

Understanding Google Bot WebPage Crawling

Why is SEO Compatibility Important?

Major SEO Challenges for React SPA Pages

1. Site mapping

2. Blank First Pass Subject

3. Metadata of the Webpage

4. Loading Period and User Interface

Methods to Make React SEO-friendly

1. Prerendering Technique

2. Isomorphic React Practices

3. Server-side Rendering

Tricks to Maintain the SEO Compatibility of React Webpages

Final Words

Author Bio – Jigar Agrawal

Repurpose content

What does this mean exactly?

Why does repurposing content generate more traffic?

Repurpose your blog post into a new infographic

Step one: The first step is to determine your key data points.

Step two: Organize your infographic with sections and headers.

Step three: Keep your text brief and to the point.

Step four: Include notes for the designers.

Publish a video

Add YouTube traffic to your monthly search volume

Tips for optimizing your video

Publish a slideshow

Create bite-sized information for social media marketing

Save time, resources and boost traffic with repurposed content

Re-evaluate your keyword strategy

Re-optimize for keyword variations

Publish relevant content

Steal ideas from your competition

A keyword strategy is a living entity

Build high-quality links

What’s the best way to build high-quality backlinks?

Outreach campaigns

Broken link building

Unlinked mentions

Link reclamation

Guest posting

Update, merge, delete old blog posts

Update old blog posts

Merge underwhelming blog posts

Delete old posts with no traffic

Invest in video marketing

Capitalize on social media traffic

Incorporate “Stories” for high engagement rates

Increase ranking on Google search

Increase traffic from Google SERP features

Optimize, optimize, optimize…

Target featured snippets

Target PAA boxes

Optimize for search intent

Optimize using anchor text links

Optimize for local traffic

How to optimize your GMB profile

Small details count

Categories

Add citations

Increase traffic systematically using expert SEO tactics

#1-Black hat SEO

Is blackhat SEO considered unethical?

#2-White hat SEO

#3-Grey hat SEO

Google’s perspective on link building

The devious nature of PBN’s

#4-On-page SEO practices

Keyword optimization

Keyword topic optimization

Search intent optimization

User experience optimization

Technical improvements

Creative improvements

Video content

Slideshows

Audio files and podcasts

#5-Off-page optimization

Establishing credibility and authority

Why is domain authority important?