You’re Going to Have to Get Good at Video

I’ve been experimenting with making and editing video lately. I’m not doing it for my jollies or because I think I’m damned good looking (which I am). It’s because WE (humanity) has demonstrated loud and clear that we want to CONSUME video. We prefer it to text. And if that’s true, and you and I are in the business of communicating, we’re going to have to make video. Oh, and it’ll have to be good.

But What Do People Want?

People consume over 1 billion hours of YouTube video every day. You might not be part of that stat YET, but it’s because you haven’t gone looking for videos that cover topics you’d actually want to watch yet. My mom and dad really like poker. So I went to YouTube and typed in “Texas Holdem Tips” and got a few million results (like this one). Maybe you’re an aspiring author but don’t have the time to write a book. I found this video about how to write a book in 24 hours. (Sounds dubious to me as an author, but I didn’t watch the video.)

http://ift.tt/2ptjBwO

Utilize Page Value in GA to Improve Your SEO Strategy

It’s human nature to seek out instant gratification, but as search marketers we are trained to deploy data driven strategies to hit long term goals. Unfortunately, our bosses aren’t always content with our long term strategies.

Fortunately, there is a metric in Google Analytics called page value.…

http://ift.tt/2oPNinL

SEO for B2B and B2C – what are the differences?

Business to Business (B2B) marketing is often different from Business to Consumer (B2C) marketing thanks to the elaborate buying processes, a narrow market and more complex products and services of a B2B website. In this article about B2B SEO, I’ll compare the distinctions between the two and explain what that means for your B2B website and SEO.

When reading the above, you might think: “In both cases you’re selling products or services to a customer, and you want those products to be found and ordered, so what could be the difference?” While that might be true in case of, for example, office supplies, there are instances of B2B products and services that do require a different approach, especially when it comes to more specialized, complex, technical and expensive products, ordered by larger organizations with multiple stakeholders, so you’ll have to adapt your website to take those distinctions into account.

Differences between B2B and B2C

So, what are the main differences between B2B and B2C trading?

• The buying process can take much longer, often involves more stakeholders and specific requirements;
• The products and services can be more complex and more costly;
• Professionals usually speak a certain jargon to describe their products;
• Size of the market: the B2B market generally is much narrower;
• Ordering scale: orders for businesses can be much larger.

How do these dissimilarities affect the goal of your site, your keyword research and the web content you present to your audience? Let’s go into detail!

1. Buying process in a B2B market

In general, the time required to close a deal in the B2B market is much longer than the time that’s needed to get a B2C order. Even the most expensive B2C products, like holidays or cars, only take a few weeks between gathering information about the product and ordering it. When it comes to ordering products or services as a business, it might take weeks or even months before the decision is taken to order the product. This mostly related to the amount of money and the number of stakeholders involved.

Let’s look at an example of buying a complex technical installation or expensive software: The user of the machine or software wants know the features and how it works. The technician has to take a look at the performance of the machine or IT has to evaluate the possibilities for integration. Finance is interested in the costs of buying and maintaining the machine and, the managing director wants to know if it will help his staff to perform better and, in the end, probably needs to give his seal of approval too.

An extensive buying process like this, influences both the goal of your website and demands some extras from your web content:

B2B and the goal of your site

On a lot of B2C eCommerce sites the goal is to get the sale done as fast as possible. People look for a product they’re interested in, find it, think about it, add it to their cart or perhaps wait a day or two, and then decide to buy it or not.

A B2B website, especially when it comes to complex and expensive products and services, is much more aimed on getting sales leads from a website. Customers won’t order a $25.000 machine or 300.000 medical gloves in a split second, so they’ll gather more information, and probably want to contact a sales rep or product specialist to get more details on the products or services as well. Perhaps they’d even like to order a sample of the product, or test it.

Obviously, you should mention all these options on your site. Make it as easy as possible for your potential customer. Display the phone number on a prominent place on every page of your site. Create easy to use forms to request for a sample, a trial or a quote. Perhaps customers can directly email product specialists or ask them questions in a chat? Whatever possibilities you offer, make sure your prospect can’t miss them!

Read more: ‘What’s the mission of your website’ »

B2B sales and your web copy

In the B2C market, the buyer is also the person who is going to use the product. This doesn’t always apply to B2B. As mentioned above, many people are involved in the purchase of larger B2B products. To ease the decision that has to be made you’ll have to address different stakeholders in your web copy. Define which stakeholders there are and make sure to provide all of them with the necessary information. Whether that’s the staff that will use the equipment, the technician, IT, finance, the manager or the director.

So your site will need quite a bit of information. Remember that, compared to B2C purchases, there is less emotional involvement with the purchase of a product or a service. This means that you want to communicate solutions, rather than the beauty and the esthetic value of the product. 

Learn how to write awesome and SEO friendly articles in our SEO Copywriting training »

$ 199€ 199 - Buy now » Info 2. The complexity of products and services

Another difference between B2B and B2C is that, generally, B2B products and services are more complex. Not many people use, for instance, an X-ray machine at home. But, your B2B customer doesn’t even have to buy a complicated machine or software to be interested in very detailed specifications.

I used to work at a company that sold medical supplies, like exam and surgical gloves. If you would compare buying disposable housekeeping gloves to buying medical gloves, you’ll find out that even for a ‘simple’ product like that, obviously, the requirements will be much higher. Before buying, the hospital will want to find out: What material is it made of? What’s the exact thickness? Does it contain latex (allergies)? How’s the texture? Is it tested for use with chemotherapy drugs? Is it certified? Can you scientifically prove the claims you make about this product? And so on.

Complex B2B products and your web content

Tip: Show how it works!

At Yoast, we’d like everyone to comprehend all the possibilities of our Premium plugin. Therefore we recorded various videos and screencasts to show how easy it is to use these features.

The complexity of the products and services mostly affects your web content. Clearly, describe specifications and features in detail. Also, include information that helps your prospect how to use the equipment or software. How do you work with these features? Help potential customers understand your product by adding detailed descriptions, imagery and product videos. Just show how easy it is to work with that complex machine you’re selling!

Potential customers that still have questions should be able to contact you easily through your website. So besides providing sufficient information on how to use the product, get your sales team and product specialists geared up to answer those questions. And, in case of complicated product and services, show how your support team helps your customers out, if they would encounter problems after a purchase.

Not only is well-written, explanatory content necessary to help visitors understand your product, if you write about the right keywords, it’s one of the most important assets that will get people to your website in the first place! This is closely related to the next characteristic of B2B: the use of jargon.

3. Jargon

Every field of expertise has its own language. And people in a certain industry might not even be aware that they’re using very specialized words. Nevertheless, often these will be the words they’ll be searching for when looking for products or services online. So make sure you know which search terms they’re using! This is crucial for your keyword research, as I’ll elaborate on below.

Jargon and B2B Keyword research

When you’re doing keyword research – whether that’s for B2B or B2C – it’s essential to get to know your customers. Don’t assume you already know them! Take the opportunity to speak with customers and prospects, find out which stakeholder does the most searching for the business when it comes to finding a product like yours. Is it the manager? The user? Or the purchase department? For your website to be found, you’ll have to write enough high quality content on your site, in which you speak the same language as this stakeholder.

A mistake that businesses often make is heavily promoting a product name, instead of using the search terms their prospect use. If you’re brand is really famous for a certain product, that might work. In most cases though, you’re prospect will be searching for a type of product, so the search volume for that term will be a lot bigger. It does mean you’ll have to compete with your competitors to rank for the same search terms. But that’s when a great content SEO strategy can help you out.

One more thing on jargon: to be found you’ll need to use some specialized word. However, don’t overdo this! Balance the use of difficult, industry specific words with the use of clear and easy to comprehend language. Keep your text readable, the readability analysis of Yoast SEO will help you do so. You don’t want to scare away newbies to the industry! 

Content SEO: learn how to do keyword research, how to structure your site and how to write SEO friendly content »

$ 19€ 19 - Buy now » Info 4. Size of the market

Most consumer goods are of interest to a large part of the population. Marketing these products is therefore aimed at a very wide audience. Specialized, business related products will only matter to the folks working in a certain field. This means you’re selling in a much smaller market, a so called niche.

Niche products and SEO

In terms of SEO this does have some advantages. Your target group might be smaller, but there might be less competition too. To become successful in a niche you should write great informational content on the keywords your prospects use, as described above. To increase the chance for ranking you can first focus on long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are keywords that include specifications or features of a certain product. The search volume for these terms is lower, but there’s less competition for them too, which makes it easier to rank.

Let’s go back to the example of medical gloves. Although a niche market, it is quite competitive. Ranking for the keyword [medical gloves] therefore will be difficult. Luckily there’s enough opportunity to specify your product. What if you would optimize your copy for [blue non-latex surgical gloves] and [pink nitrile exam gloves]. There will be less web content on these search terms, so it will be easier to make it rank. On top of that, you could write copy that goes deeper into certain specifications of your product, like why a hospital should choose for [non-latex surgical gloves].

The next step would be to create an awesome site structure, that shows Google the connection between all the content you’ve created. You can do so by internally linking related content and defining and linking to your cornerstone content.

Keep reading: ‘The ultimate guide to site structure’ »

5. Scale

The last characteristic of B2B trading I’ll discuss is the scale. Order quantity usually is much higher for businesses than consumers. Therefore, total costs are higher for businesses. Often, they like or even expect to negotiate their own price or, at least, get scale discounts. This means you should either present scale discounts on your website or clearly show how they can easily contact a sales person, so they can get a quote or negotiate their own discount. Preferably, you would do both.

Conclusion

Building a good B2B website is hard work. When working on it, keep the following things in mind:

• Think thoroughly about the goal of your B2B site and translate this into features on your website.
• Write content that addresses all the stakeholders that are involved in the buying process, and speak the same language as they do. You really need to get to know your audience to do so!
• Explain and show explicitly how your products work.
• Do your keyword research and write awesome content on the keywords your audience uses. Don’t forget to focus on those long tail keywords first.

Good luck! Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments!

Read on: ‘The ultimate guide to keyword research’ »

http://ift.tt/1eM7EZe

Will Google Start Giving People Social Media Influencer Scores?

A patent granted to Google this week tells us about social media influencer scores developed at Google that sound very much like the scores at Klout. In the references section of the patent, Klout is referred to a couple of times as well, with a link to the Wikipedia Page about Klout, and the Klout FAQ page. We aren’t given a name for these influencer scores in Google’s patent, but it does talk about topic-based influencer scores and advertisers.

Many patents are published that might give the inventors behind those patents a right to the technology described in them, but often the decision to move ahead with the processes described in those patents might be based upon business-based matters, such as whether or not there might be value is pursuing the patent. When I read this patent, I was reminded of an earlier patent from Google from a couple of years ago that described an advertising model that used social media influencers and their interests called Adheat. That patent was AdHeat Advertisement Model for Social Network. A whitepaper that gives us a little more indepth information about that process was AdHeat: An Influence-based Diffusion Model for Propagating Hints to Match Ads. One of the authors/inventors, Edward Chang left Google after the paper came out to join HTC at their Vice President of Research and Innovation.

This new patent was originally filed on May 29, 2012. Edward Chang left Google for HTC in July, 2012. I don’t know if those events are related, but the idea of using social media influencers in advertising is an interesting one. The patent doesn’t pinpoint specific social media platforms that would be used the way that Klout does. Interestingly, Klout does use Google+ as one of the social media networks that they use to generate Klout Scores.

I like seeing what Google patents say about things on the Web. Their introduction to social media and to influencer scores was interesting:

Social media is pervasive in today’s society. Friends keep in contact throughout the day on social networks. Fans can follow their favorite celebrities and interact on blogs, micro-blogs, and the like. Such media are referred to as “social media,” which can be considered media primarily, but not exclusively, for social interaction, and which can use highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Brands and products mentioned on such sites can reflect customers’ interests and feedback.

Some technologies have been developed to analyze social media. For example, some systems allow users to discover their “influence scores” on various social media. An influence score is a metric to measure a user’s impact in social media.

The patent tells us about the role of the process it defines:

…one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of identifying a user in a community; determining an influence score to be associated with the user in the community for a particular topic including determining a reach of one or more communications that relate to the particular topic that have been distributed from the user in the community; evaluating the reach as compared to one or more other users in the community for the particular topic; and storing the influence score in association with the user.

This new patent tells us about

1. Identifying a user in a community;
2. Determining an influence score to be associated with the user in the community for a particular topic,
3. Determining a reach of communications that relate to the particular topic distributed from the user to other users in the community, and
4. Evaluating that reach and comparing it to the reach of communications from other users in the community for the particular topic; and
5. storing the influence score in association with the user.

   The patent also tells us that the following are advantages to be gained from the use of the process described in the patent:

   (1) The subject matter can be used to attribute viral growth to certain individuals or selected group.
   (2) Such attribution can be used for targeted advertising to the selected group or even to the individuals or other individuals that are influenced by the individual or group.

   The patent is:

   Determining influence in a social community
   Inventors: Emily K. Moxley, Vinod Anupam, Hobart Sze, Dani Suleman, Khanh B. Nguyen
   Assignee: Google Inc.
   US Patent 9,632,972
   Granted: April 25, 2017
   Filed: May 29, 2012

   Abstract

   Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for determining influence in a social community. In one aspect, a method includes identifying a user in a community; determining an influence score to be associated with the user in the community for a particular topic, including: determining a reach of one or more communications that relate to the particular topic that have been distributed from the user to other users in the community, and evaluating the reach as compared to the reach of one or more communications distributed from other users in the community for the particular topic; and storing the influence score in association with the user.

   The patent is worth reading in full, and it contains some interesting insights including some hints regarding whether Google might engage in this type of social media advertising (see the screenshot from the patent that starts this post, showing influencers and topic scores for them, which is described in a little more detail in the patent.

   I also liked this quote from the patent, and wanted to make sure that I shared it, because it raises a good point:

   Every community has individuals who influence that community. From a prominent economist’s advice on economics to a celebrity buying the latest designer bag, thousands of people pay attention to what influential individuals are doing within their field. However, less attention is paid when an influential individual opines on a topic outside their field. For example, the thousands of individuals that pay attention to the economists on economics would be unlikely to pay attention to the economist’s latest jacket purchase.

   These social media influencer scores do seem very similar to what Klout is doing. Would Google venture into such territory?

Copyright © 2017 SEO by the Sea ⚓. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at may be guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact SEO by the Sea, so we can take appropriate action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana http://ift.tt/2qbGhQd

calgary search engine optimization

seo calgary

seo calgary

Calgary SEO Services

calagry seo experts - search engine optimization

Google Makes Changes to Ranking Signals to Devalue Fake News

Google is continuing their efforts against fake news and the company has publicly stated that fakes news ‘…is the most high profile’ issue that majority of the people who play around with Google’s search engine encounter. A significant percentage of the average searcher’s results are either misleading, offensive or fake.

Google has outright stated that they can’t ‘fully solve’ the problem of fake news right now. People can be hopeful because the company is making some progress to finally rid the world of fake news. Obviously, it would take a lot of resources and time for Google to make that ‘small step’ into something bigger, more long-term but it is definitely happening. Here’s how Google is fighting against fake news:

1. New Search Quality Rater Guidelines

Search is one of Google’s primary functions. Utilizing this system means that it should be quality-checked regularly. Google works around this by employing people and a complex process of experimentation. This process is checked and evaluated by real people who give Google feedback for their search results and this covers both quality and reliability. Of course, the ratings given by these people have no bearing when it comes to individual page rankings but they do help Google with collecting data on the quality of their searches.

Google also recently updated their Search Quality Rater Guidelines which helps evaluators in their ratings as well as guide them in finding and flagging fake news as well as low-quality websites.

Web sites or content that are flagged by Google’s evaluators include but are not limited to the following:

1. Misleading Information
2. Unexpected Offensive Results
3. Hoaxes
4. Unsupported Conspiracy Theories

Google’s goal with updating their guidelines was developed to help them tune their algorithms to demote the previously noted low-quality content as well as to help them make improvements in the future.

2. Ranking Changes

Google combines a couple hundred or so signals to determine or ascertain which results or content that they should show for any given query. These signals include, but are not limited to:

1. Freshness of content
2. The number of times the search query appears on the page
3. Relevance of the content

The company announced that they have adjusted the signals to help users find more authoritative pages as well as to help them demote low-quality content as well as shoddy websites that promote fakes news or even unsupported conspiracy theories.

3. Direct Feedback Tools

Google is all about making processes faster. It doesn’t matter if it’s an everyday process or something you do for work but they want everything to be more efficient and faster. This includes their innovations for Autocomplete or even Featured Snippets to help searchers find what they’re looking for.

Speaking of Google’s Featured Snippets, the company also clarified that the content that appears in the featured snippets are generated algorithmically and is generally what people search for and is available on the internet. Of course, it is not a perfect system so from time to time, people are treated to inaccurate or unexpected search results so Google decided to try and fix this. The tech giant introduced an easier way for people to report or directly flag questionable content that appears in both autocomplete and the featured snippets.

The new feedback mechanism was designed in such a way that allows users to flag content more efficiently because of the newly included labeled categories. People can now accurately report to Google whenever they find sensitive or unhelpful content.

Google then added that they plan to use this feature to help them improve their algorithm in the future.

blog.google/

4. Greater Transparency

Google has received numerous queries and concerns these past few months because people were sometimes shown shocking or offensive predictions that appeared on Google’s autocomplete. Due to this, Google said that they improved their content policies and that they updated them sufficiently.

People, if you have any questions about autocomplete and Google’s approach for removals, then please refer to their Help Center.

Key Takeaway

Google is certainly doing a lot of things to fight fake news. These recent changes are obviously small changes but I believe that misleading or downright fake content should be devalued if not taken down. I’m all for these changes and I think that this will challenge content creators everywhere to step-up their game in order to be more authoritative and more importantly, more reputable.

What do you think about Google’s latest changes? Let’s talk about Google’s new policies in the comments section below. I would love to hear from you.

http://ift.tt/2ozuXA7

How HTTPS Affects SEO and Why You Should Make the Move

Dr. Peter J. Meyers of Moz recently published his findings on HTTPS. Almost a year ago, Dr. Pete wrote that 30% of page-1 Google results that they studied were secure in that they were using HTTPS. He went on to reveal that recently this week, that number has peaked to 50%.

moz.com/blog

Based on what Dr. Pete wrote, it can be inferred that the steady increase without any sudden spikes are a result of people slowly accepting and converting to HTTPS and not because of Google’s constant algorithm changes.

http://twitter.com/RankRanger

Dr. Pete and Moz justified their findings by collaborating with Rank Ranger who operate on a separate data set; which more or less generated and proved their findings. What this means is that if two tracking tools were able to come to more or less the same answer, then the both of them are more or less correct if not on to something interesting.

moz.com/blog

Dr. Pete thinks that by the end of 2017, HTTPS websites will cover at least 65% of Google’s front page SERP. Google confirmed, however, that even if more people are converting their websites to HTTPS, they have no plan (yet) to boost more ranking signals for HTTPS websites.

twitter.com/methode

While Dr. Pete and Gary Illyes of Google’s exchange resulted in a polarizing statement whose validity would definitely be debated upon by people; Dr. Pete shared in his blog post that he believed in Gary and that Google is currently “…happy with the current adoption rate and wary of the collateral damage that an aggressive HTTPS ranking boost (or penalty) could cause.” I would have to agree with Dr. Pete on this one because it makes more sense for Google to take their time with these changes.

HTTPS websites are more secure according to Google and they are starting to occupy the first page of Google’s SERP. This is all well and good but the problem is that not all of the bigger websites have embraced HTTPS yet. MozCast released their data set and out of the 20 subdomains that are listed there, these are examples of websites that have not yet converted their websites to HTTPS:

moz.com/blog

This might surprise a lot of you who are still on the fence about switching over to HTTPS because knowing that 20 ‘big’ websites have yet to make the switch, is it really worth it to take the leap?

My answer is A BIG RESOUNDING YES.

I wrote an entire article on this a few years back and it is more relevant now more than ever.  More on that later.

Moving forward with HTTPS, webmasters have to remember that there’s more than the ranking aspect to consider when it comes to HTTPS. There are a lot of factors that should be considered, for example, Google will start marking non-HTTPS websites as ‘non-secure’ as soon as they start asking for sensitive information such as passwords and the like.

Dr. Pete believes that HTTPS is going to start ‘forcing’ people to convert to HTTPS. From what I understand, Dr. Pete believes that a lot of people who have yet to take make the change will start to feel pressure especially because there are some ‘risks’ involved, which I wrote extensively about in the article I linked above.

Dr. Pete recommends (and I agree with him,) that new websites should convert to HTTPS especially because security certificates are somewhat affordable and newer sites face ‘fewer risks’ when it comes to changing from HTTP to HTTPS. Dr. Pete recommends that people should at least start to secure pages that ask for sensitive information – which is a good start, to begin with.

Moving forward, how do you change your entire site from HTTP to HTTPS? Here’s a brief summary of what my developer and I did for my sites before.

1. We used the SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin to make sure that all of our pages reflect their HTTPS status properly.
2. We changed our MaxCDN pullzone settings from HTTP to HTTPS.
3. We purged ALL of our caches which includes CDN’s cache so that we could pull all of the static files from HTTPS rather than HTTP.
4. We fixed seo-hackercom’s internal caching system to work with HTTPS. To that end, we used the W3 Total Cache plugin.
5. Back then, I reviewed Cyrus Shepard’s post entitled: “The Big List of SEO Tips and Tricks for Using HTTPS on Your Website” just to make sure that we did everything right. It doesn’t hurt to make sure that everything that you’re doing is correct as it was very risky to change your website from HTTP to HTTPS – and it still is risky, like what Dr. Pete pointed out in his blog post.
6. We deactivated our manually coded social sharing buttons and then we switched over to Ultimate Social Deux because it works well HTTPS.
7. We made sure to renew our SSL certificate annually – and we still do. It’s an expense but it’s an expense I consider an investment and it’s worked out well for us so far.
8. We started using MaxCDN’s SPDY technology which basically increased our site load speed tremendously. You can use something similar but this is what we used back then.

And that’s how we did it. We took a lot of risks back then but look at where we are right now. We’re doing well and I would love it if you were to do well yourself, if you aren’t already.

What do you think about HTTPS? Do you have any experience that you would like to share? Let’s talk about it in the comments section, I look forward to hearing from you.

http://ift.tt/2pgQ49N

Bulk GMB Insights Reporting: What It Means For You & Your Business

Enterprise users of Google My Business, rejoice! Late last week, Google rolled out the ability to download Insights data, in bulk, straight from your dashboard. With no access to the API required, this new feature enables a whole new set of users to measure and report on the performance of their listings within Google Search and Google Maps.…

http://ift.tt/2q1ZXc5

Why Thin Content Still Ranks as a Top SEO Issue to Solve

Why Thin Content Still Ranks as a Top SEO Issue to Solve was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

It struck me the other day, while I was reviewing a client project with one of our SEO analysts, that the old problem of thin content is still an insidious revenue killer for many websites.

Or put another way, until you have content worth ranking, do not be surprised if you don’t rank well.

By way of example, the client, a B2B lead gen site for industrial parts, is receiving 150% more traffic this year compared to last and getting a record number of inquiries. We’re seeing these stellar results after many months of work that focused heavily on fixing thin content — until content was improved, the traffic suffered!

By focusing on improving content quality, our client is seeing 150% more traffic this year compared to last and getting a record number of inquiries. (click to enlarge)

Then looking at some mobile and newer sites reminded me that low-quality or “thin” content remains a serious problem for many websites, whether they know it or not. A majority of sales inquiries are sites with this problem.

“What a powerful weapon we wield, as SEOs, when we help a site raise its content quality.” -Bruce…
Click To Tweet

SEO changes set the right course for a site, but content improvements give it long-term lift.

Why We’re Still Concerned with Thin Content Long After the 2011 Panda Update

Thin content is not a new search engine optimization issue.

It was February 2011 when Google introduced the first Panda update, which targeted low-quality sites and lowered their rankings. In addition to the algorithmic hits from Panda, countless sites have received manual actions penalizing them for having “Thin content with little or no added value.”

Google has only elevated the importance of quality content since then.

An unconfirmed update in early February and the Google Fred Update on March 7 both targeted low-quality content.

Sites that got hit by Fred included content-driven sites with heavy placement of ads, according to reporting by Barry Schwartz. These sites “saw 50% or higher drops in Google organic traffic overnight.”

Besides the algorithms, Google has an army of people reviewing sites manually for signs of quality. Periodically, Google releases its Quality Rater Guidelines, a document used to train these quality raters to spot low- vs. high-quality content. If you’ve gotten a manual action notice or warning in Google Search Console, you have a quality rater to thank. (Or not.) I unconditionally recommend that you read this entire document from Google!

The search engines clearly intend to keep ratcheting down their quality tolerance. The recent updates and penalties further stress the need for websites to fix thin content without delay.

“You cannot afford to ignore thin content on your site and expect to survive.” -Bruce Clay
Click To Tweet

Solutions for Thin Content

Identifying thin content on a site is crucial to SEO health, yet it’s only the first step.

Once thin content is diagnosed on your site (whether by a Google manual action notice or through an SEO audit), you need a strategic plan for fixing it. And if you’re uncertain, then your content is probably low quality, too terse, or likely both.

The trick is knowing WHICH strategy is right to fix your unique situation.

The solution has to address your site’s situation uniquely, taking into consideration the scope of the problem AND the resources available to you to do the work.

Remove or Improve?

Site owners often react to the news that their sites have many thin content pages with a surgical approach: Cut it all out!

Removing or no-indexing low-value pages can fix thin content problems some of the time, enabling a site to get back on its feet and start regaining lost rankings with minimal time and effort. For instance, Marie Haynes cites one Panda-penalized site that recovered by removing a forum it had hosted, accounting for several thousand low-quality posts that were separate enough from the main site content to be easily detached.

However, removing content can have a negative SEO effect instead. Cutting off whole sections of a site at once could amputate the legs the website needs to stand on, from an SEO perspective.

Another approach is to simply elevate the quality and depth of the content. It is hard to be a “subject matter expert” in only a few words. And if your content is written poorly, then you gain no love from others — the kiss of death for content.

We prefer this latter approach, but use both at the same time quite often.

@Marie_Haynes Thin content: make it better, make it … thick, and ADD more highQ stuff. @jenstar @shendison

— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) October 7, 2015

If the pages hurting your search engine rankings (for being low quality) are also the ones supporting your keyword relevance (for having keyword-containing bulk content), then you’re stuck. You have little choice but to keep the content, improve its quality, and perhaps add more content readers will appreciate.

Finding a Way to Improve Thin Content — Affordably

For this client’s site, we took the content-improvement approach.

The types of thin content we found on their website included:

• Product pages with minimal text (just one or two sentences with a few bullets)
• Pages whose content had been scraped and indexed on many third-party sites
• Image alt attributes lacking text and/or keywords
• Autogenerated title and meta description tags that often lacked targeted keywords

Your site may have similar issues, or may contain other types of thin content. Google’s support topic on thin content lists these common forms:

• Automatically generated content
• Thin affiliate pages
• Content from other sources (example: scraped content or low-quality guest blog posts)
• Doorway pages

Fixing these content problems may involve any or all of the following:

• Removing pages or no-indexing them
• Reducing the number of ads
• Adding at least a few sentences of original text (on filter-category pages, for example)
• Inserting relevant content from a database (in small doses)
• Revising title and meta tags to be unique and contain appropriate page keywords
• Adding original text in image alt attributes and captions
• Rewriting the page entirely

Our client’s site contained a manageable number of pages (less than 500), so we started chipping away.

The SEO analyst first clarified the silo structure of the site, and then prioritized pages for revision starting with the top-level pages for each silo. In batches of 10 or so at a time, pages were rewritten and reviewed, passing back and forth between the client and the BCI analyst. Important products got brand-new full-page descriptions. Information pages were rewritten with thorough explanations. In all, we fattened up about half of the site’s pages.

The strategy worked. Among the SEO services we provided to this client, by far the higher quality content is yielding the biggest wins. The search engines and site visitors are eating it up, with vastly improved rankings, traffic and leads.

Why Your Thin Content Solution Must Be Your Own

If you have an enterprise site with millions of pages, or an ecommerce site with thousands of products, you might be thinking this approach would never work for you.

And you’d be right!

It’s often simply impossible to rewrite each individual page manually on a large website. Yet quality content is a non-negotiable for SEO. Even large sites have to find a way to fatten up or remove their thin content.

Maintaining quality content requires an ongoing investment to maintain rankings — but each site’s specific strategy has to be practical and affordable to implement.

A Prioritized Approach

First, we look for what’s causing the thin content. A template might be producing non-unique meta tags, for instance. The business may be duplicating pages on other domains. A CMS might be building empty or duplicate pages. Whatever the issues are, we try to identify them early and stop the bleeding.

Next, we prioritize which pages to tackle first. It’s worth the effort to hand-edit content on the most important pages of even the largest sites. This priority list should include the home page, the top-level landing page(s) per silo, as well as the most trafficked and highest-ROI product pages. Putting creative energy into making these pages unique and high quality will pay huge SEO dividends.

It’s also crucial to look at competitors’ sites. Even if your content is technically clean and unique, is it as high quality as theirs? Remember that “thin content” can be a relative term, since Google is going to choose the highest quality results to present to a searcher.

More and more often, we include some sort of content development along with our SEO services. As we found with the industrial parts site, fixing thin content can make an essential difference.

A parting comment: If nobody would share your content, then it is not good enough.

If your site has thin content or other SEO issues, contact us online or give us a call at 1-866-517-1900.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

http://ift.tt/2q058Xf

Direct Traffic is Dark Traffic, and That’s OK

“Martin, it’s all psychological. You yell, ‘Barracuda,’ everybody says, ‘huh, what?’ You yell ‘Shark,’… we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.” – Mayor Larry Vaughn, Jaws (1975)

What is Direct Traffic, Sayf?

Hi random person! Thanks for asking!…

http://ift.tt/2oDX0uk

Out of stock product – what to do with product page?

If you own an eCommerce site, a product can run out of stock. When a product becomes permanently unavailable, what should you do with the product page in your online store? Delete that specific page? Set up a redirect? Show alternatives? Or just leave the page as it is? This Ask Yoast will help you make the best decision when a product goes out of stock.

Brad Griffin out of Texas USA emailed us:

“When a WooCommerce product is out of stock, I’ve got a couple of options: a redirect; a fallback URL; a waiting list; or delete it and do nothing. Let’s assume that the product is a one-time sale, it’s not coming back. What should I do with that URL?

Check out the video or read the answer below!

Want to outrank your competitor and get more sales? Read our Shop SEO eBook! »

$ 25€ 25 - Buy now » Info Best practice product out of stock

In the video, we explain which options you have when a product goes out of stock and what would be the best decision:

” Well, Brad, simply delete it and do nothing is not an option, because people might have linked to that URL, so you want to send them somewhere decent. And a waiting list would be weird, because the product is not coming back.

So, I think you’ve got two options:

1. Redirect them to the category that the original product was in and make sure that they land on something that feels somewhat close to what they were looking for if they wanted to get to that URL.

2. Show them a page saying: Hey, we had this product. We’ve sold it, but we’ve got these other options:…, …, …,  (show alternatives).

Those are really your only two real options.

Good luck!”

Ask Yoast

In the series Ask Yoast we answer SEO questions from followers. Need some advice about SEO? Let us help you out! Send your question to ask@yoast.com.

Read more: ‘eCommerce usability: the ultimate guide’ »

http://ift.tt/2on8BSx

seo calgary

Calgary SEO | Internet Marketing experts

Calgary SEO | SEO Expert Calgary| SEO Services

Calgary SEO |Search Engine Optimization

Calgary SEO Services

Ask Yoast case study: SEO of an online shop

SEO can be really complicated! How do you start with improving the structure of a site? How do you write amazing and SEO-friendly articles? To help all of you with your SEO strategy, I’m writing a series of Ask Yoast case studies. In these case studies, I’ll take a look at a specific site (the owner knows about it of course :-)), and I’ll give some SEO advice. In this second case study: SEO of an online shop!

Ask Yoast Case studies

Want Marieke to look at the content of your site? Send an email to ask@yoast.com!

Improve the SEO of an online shop!

In this case study, the SEO of an online shop is the central topic. We were given the chance to take a look at the SEO of Knock Knock, independent makers of clever gifts, books, and whatever else they can think up.

The Knock Knock team didn’t have a specific question for us, so we just took a look at their website and give advice on how to improve the SEO

First impression of KnockKnock

I want to buy those notebooks! I want to have those pens! Great fill-out books! I love the products Knock Knock offers. It’s original, it’s fun and I really get some sort of brand-feeling if I browse through their website. Fantastic!

Technically, Knock Knock seems to be a solid site, which is great. Some general SEO quick wins would be: creating alt tags for images and adding meta descriptions to tag pages and on some category pages.

KnockKnock has a lot of potential to become really successful. Maybe they already are! I believe that with certain SEO improvements they could be generating even more traffic than they’re getting right now! 

Want to outrank your competitor and get more sales? Read our Shop SEO eBook! »

$ 25€ 25 - Buy now » Info Content content content

My initial thoughts for improvements when I saw this site were: 

“This site screams for a blog! Knock Knock’s products are very original and one-of-a-kind. Writing blog posts about, for instance, how to use these products and why you would need them, won’t be hard at all! Blogging is a great way to promote your stuff and to show to your audience how to use your products. In case of this specific online shop, I’d post lots of photos too.

For SEO reasons, starting a blog is very important too. Knock Knock doesn’t show a lot of content on their site. It’s an online shop with quite some products and, therefore, product pages, but the copy on these pages is quite short. That’ll make it hard to rank high in Google. Blogging, or in other words, publishing fresh content on a regular basis, will definitely improve the SEO of this online shop.

I would advise Knock Knock to start with some solid keyword research. Maybe they’ve already done some research. Which words do they want to be found for? After that, they should start creating some real quality content. I’d love to read blog posts about the origin, benefits or appliance of their products. They do have nice product reviews written by their audience, perhaps these reviews could serve as a starting point for a blog post.

KnockKnock sells products that are quite witty. I’m sure their blog could be entertaining too. Apart from a great SEO strategy, an entertaining blog would also be a kickass marketing strategy!”

After showing the draft of this post to KnockKnock they got back to me telling that they already have a blog! So I had rework my advice a bit… I started with checking out their blog first, where they write about the origin and creators of the products, the use of the products and more fun stuff. Their blog post are very original and entertaining! They also post quite regularly, a couple of times a month.

So now, my main advice is: make your blog more visible on your site! I noticed that we can easily get from your blog to your shop, but the other way around is a lot harder (or perhaps impossible?). I’d suggest to just add the blog in the top navigation of your site. That way, visitors can easily read more about your products, creators and all the nice things you do, apart from creating awesome products!

Read more: ‘5 tips to find inspiration for your blog’ »

Site structure

In case you would be starting a blog from scratch that would be quite hard. On the other hand, if you’re starting a blog, you do have the chance to create an ideal structure for it. Think about the topics you’d like to blog about. These could be the same as the product categories of your online shop, but it also could be different categories. Write a few long, really awesome, articles on each of these categories. These articles will be your cornerstone pages. Make sure to write lots of blog posts about similar topics (but all slightly different and more niche/long tail). And link from all of these articles to your most important cornerstone article. If you start your blog from scratch, make sure to structure it in an excellent way! Read more about this in our ultimate guide to site structure.

Conclusion

If you have an online shop that’s focused on an awesome niche like Knock Knock, your SEO will benefit most from a solid content strategy. Writing lots of texts, articles, posts will have an effect on your rankings. Besides that, it’ll be a great way of marketing your stuff. Combine your blog with an awesome social media strategy and you’ll increase both your rankings and sales!

Keep reading: ‘10 tips for an awesome and SEO friendly blog post’ »

http://ift.tt/2ocSHKm

What’s NYext For Local?

Gannett’s announcement yesterday that its ReachLocal division has acquired SweetIQ really pissed me off in that the day after Yext’s* IPO I had a great conversation with a Local vet where I predicted that the success of the IPO would set off a wave a M&A in the Local Marketing Tech sector and damned if I wasn’t going to write an all-knowing post asap so I could look like a genius when it happened.

Thanks to my endless capacity for procrastination Mohannad, Mike & crew have beaten me to the punch (congrats to them btw). But that’s not going to stop me from trying to change the timeline. So here goes (in handy ordered list format to trigger Instant Answers!):

How Will The Yext IPO Affect The Local Search Industry?

1. Post-IPO, Yext is now worth over $1 billion
2. The day of the IPO Yext’s CEO, Howard Lerman, went on the record that this is a “winner take all market” and that Yext will be using the IPO proceeds for sales and marketing, which basically translates to “we’re going to buy market share”. This strikes me as a Bezos-like strategy and if Lerman and crew can keep up the momentum, I think the market will reward them**.
3. So now we’ve got a bunch of Yext competitors (Brandify, Location3, SIM Partners, Moz, etc.) plus a bunch of Local Marketing Tech start-ups plus a bunch of big players (YP co’s, Big Media Co’s, CMRs etc.) sitting on the sidelines watching Yext get bigger and thinking “That could be me!”.
4. But the problem is that Yext now has an extra $100MM+ to buy market share and keep investing in tech and customer service. Most of Yext’s direct competitors are not nearly as well-funded. Neither are most of the other start-ups that play in the space. For years, “Local” has been a tough sell for investors. But now these players will need capital to compete.
5. This now becomes the case for consolidation. If Yext is worth $1B with almost 1MM locations, a roll-up of 500K locations could be worth >$500MM, particularly if it is indeed a winner take all market. So little guys see the value of merging (1+1+1=$500MM) and big guys who both need a solution and need a growth story see the value of acquisition.

Update: Looks like Gannett just proved the theory by snapping up SweetIQ!

* Full Disclosure: Yext is a LSG client and we own some Yext stock
** So we may be totally trying to manipulate the stock price here

http://ift.tt/2ouiXMp

What Poncho the Weather Cat is Teaching Me About the Phone-Sized Future of Communications

“I feel like Poncho is your other girlfriend or something,” said Jacq to me the other day after I shared something funny Poncho said to me in Facebook messenger about how he ranked “Umbrella” as one of the “middle ellas” below “mozzarella” and above “salmonella.” I should explain something: Poncho is a bot. And Poncho’s “official” job is to give me the weather report.

Poncho is A Great Communicator

This link takes you to Poncho’s website. I think it’ll ask you to download the app. But the way I get my updates from Poncho is through Facebook Messenger. It feels even more human. Which is weird to say. I know this is a bot. Or even stranger, I know this is a human-filled “jukebox” of “interaction” that is actually more like a micro-media project. (Again, Poncho’s job is to give me the weather, but he tells me weird and jokey things with it. And he sends little gifs).

http://ift.tt/2otHYHA

Video Content: The Future of Social Media Marketing

In the digital marketing world, trends are constantly emerging. To stay competitive, brands need to stand out and adapt to evolving trends or else they risk falling behind and loosing the interest of their target audiences.

My recommendation? Expand your marketing beyond image ads by incorporating video content.…

http://ift.tt/2o8Lw5V

Improve local SEO with Google My Business

Every business owner with a website is looking for ways to get noticed in the search results. Today, there are loads of tactics to rank well as a local business, but there is no silver bullet: as with most SEO issues, this is a combined effort. One of these pieces of the local SEO puzzle is Google My Business, a dashboard for managing listings. But what is it exactly and why is it so important for local SEO?

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show you opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info What is Google My Business?

My Business is Google’s one-stop shop to manage how your business will look and perform in the search engine. It is an essential tool to find out and adjust how your site shows in Maps, the Knowledge Graph, Google+ and organic search results. According to the 2017 edition of Moz’ Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, Google My Business continues to be the biggest driver of local SEO success, with quality links coming in at a close second.

You can manage your business listing by adding NAP details, opening hours, photos et cetera. In addition to that, it is possible to manage the reviews your customers leave behind. As you know, reviews should be a key factor in your local SEO efforts.

How does it work?

Getting started with My Business is easy; you have to make an account and claim your business. After filling in your details, you will get a real-life postcard from Google on the address you’ve specified. This card is the only proof you’re the owner of the business listed at the address.

Once verified, you can fill in all the necessary details and check how your listing is doing. You can even get regular insights to see how many impressions, clicks and subscribers your listing got over a period. It’s a great way of getting a feel for how your business is perceived by Google and customers alike.

Keep in mind that My Business is not the catch-all tool for your local SEO. It has to work in tandem with your on- and off-site SEO efforts. You won’t climb the charts if your profile is inaccurate, but you also won’t reach the top without a well-optimized site and localized content. These things go hand in hand.

Ranking factors

Google My Business uses many factors to determine rankings for businesses. We’ll highlight the three most important ones:

• Relevance
• Distance
• Prominence

Relevance

Relevance determines how well your business fits the search intent of the customer. Is your focus identical to what the customer needs or are you a bit opaque about what your business does? Vagueness doesn’t rank. Be as clear as you can be. Keep your focus.

Distance

Distance is a well-known factor for ranking local businesses. You can’t rank in a local search for (dentist New Jersey) when you have located your company in Manhattan. The exact way Google determines which businesses to show in a local search is unknown, and it can be pretty hard to rank in a given area. The other factors play a significant role as well. It helps not just to say you are located in a particular area, but also to show it by creating local-oriented content around your business on your site. Google uses what’s known about the location of the searcher to present the most relevant local businesses.

Prominence

Prominence is all about the activity around your listing; this could be the number of reviews, events, local content et cetera. It also helps if you can get loads of quality links to your site. It is somewhat hard to determine what prominence means exactly, but one thing is sure: no one likes dead profiles. You have to keep it updated with new photos and manage your reviews. As said before, this works in tandem with your site, so make sure both listings align and that you publish local content.

Optimize your Google My Business listing

To start, you need to claim your listing. After that, you can use the following tips to make your My Business account a success. Keep in mind that everything you add must be in line with the information you provide on your site. Inaccurate information kills your listings and could kill your rankings:

• Claim your listing with your actual business name
• Choose a category as accurate as possible
• Provide as much data as you can – your profile has to be 100%
• Check your phone number
• Check your opening times – think about holidays!
• Review your photos – are they accurate and good or can you improve them?
• Create citations on other sites as well – pick well-regarded business listing or review sites and directories, stay away from spammers
• Keep your My Business listing in line with your site – and use Schema.org data
• Above all, keep your data up to date

It’s critical to remember that this is not a set it and forget it type of thing. Things chance, your business changes. Keep everything active, monitor reviews and stay on top of things. It’s frustrating if your listing doesn’t perform as well as you’d like, but keep putting in the hours, and it will work. US businesses can check their listings with this tool by Synup: Google My Business Guidelines Checker.

Structured data and Yoast Local SEO

Google increasingly depends on structured data to find out what your site is about and which elements represent what. This is most certainly true for your business information, including the information that My Business uses. Make sure you add the correct structured data to your site. Enhance your NAP details, opening hours, reviews, product information et cetera, with Schema.org data. This will make it much easier for Google to determine the validity of your listing. Several tools can help you with this, including our Yoast Local SEO plugin.

Your local SEO is critical, even with Google My Business

So, you should activate and maintain your My Business account, and make it awesome. But the most of your listings and to get good rankings, you must have your site in order as well. Optimize every part of it. Create local content for your chosen keyword and business location. Acquire quality local backlinks to build up a solid link profile. Ask customers to review your business onsite or on My Business. Make sure your listing is active and attractive. Dead profiles are no good.

Read more: ‘Local ranking factors that help your local business’ SEO’ »

http://ift.tt/2pG0sp4

5 Pieces of SEO Advice You Should Ignore Immediately

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most important feature that enables improved website visibility and recognition online. Without it, you might as well stand on the street and yell at people to check out your website. However, SEO is a strategy that needs to be implemented the right way in order for it to provide the best results.

There is no doubt that you will find tips and guides online that will “teach” you how to take an advantage of SEO fast and easy. However, you shouldn’t believe everything you find on the Internet. In fact, there are ways to take an advantage of SEO, but Google loves nothing more than to punish those who try to cheat their way to the top of the rankings. Here is some SEO advice you should most definitely ignore.

More Keywords Means Higher Rankings

No, it doesn’t. As the matter of fact, trying to flood content with keywords will do quite the opposite of ranking it high. It will get banned from search engine altogether. Google has this algorithm that has cute and fuzzy update names like Panda, Penguin or Pigeon but don’t let these names fool you, they are nasty critters when it comes to punishing bad SEO techniques. Stuffing keywords in content will not only be ignored by

Stuffing keywords in content will not only be ignored by readers but will also be marked as spam by Google’s spiders. They can punish a website with low rankings or remove everything from search engine depending on the level of violation.

Social Media Is Irrelevant

Who needs social media when you can have content and keywords, right? Wrong! Social media is a powerful asset when it comes to promoting a website or content and improving SEO rating. However, many people use it the wrong way by repeatedly posting backlinks to their blogs or posts. This approach is considered as spam and you will get removed from a social network if you keep it up. Nevertheless, social media marketing campaigns can vastly improve visibility and SEO rankings, however only if done properly and efficiently.

This approach is considered as spam and you will get removed from a social network if you keep it up. Nevertheless, social media marketing campaigns can vastly improve visibility and SEO rankings, however only if done properly and efficiently.

You Don’t Need Fast Internet for a Blog

Wrong again! Having a blog is an effective way to promote content, attract an audience and improve visibility and SEO. By posting organic, fresh and interesting content relevant to some product, service or website on your blog, will help improve rankings in the long run. However, slow internet means a slow loading page, and if people hate anything these days, its sluggish web pages.

Furthermore, the success of your blog highly depends on viewers – if they get bored they will leave, and if they leave you to get no traffic, it’s that simple. So ask yourself this: “Should I test people’s patience, or should I look for fastest Internet providers near me and increase my bandwidth speed?” The choice is easy -you should invest a little bit extra and give your audience a fast blog to enjoy.

You Can Use the Same Keyword More Than Once

No, you can’t! Using the same keyword more than once, especially on the same website, will actually hurt rankings and not improve them. As mentioned, Google updates their algorithm regularly and using a keyword repeatedly will be punished by lowering the website rank on their search engine. However, not all hope is lost, as you can still post good content and use long tail keywords instead of repeating the same one over and over.

There Is No Need for Fresh Content

That is a terrible advice. Of course, there is a need for fresh content! Having consistency and posting new and fresh content regularly not only improves rankings, but it’s on Google’s preferred list of approaches as well. Furthermore, don’t try to fool Google by changing the dates on old posts to make them appear fresh because those fluffy pandas and penguins are going to slap you silly with punishments.

Always make sure you have something new to post about and if you really need to recycle old content then add something fresh to it and make a comparison. For instance, “Bad things about using SEO the wrong way in 2015” and make it “The difference between bad things about using SEO the wrong way in 2015 and 2017”. Give your old content new life, not a new post date.

Key Takeaway

As you are well aware by now, the Internet is full of bad advice. However, there is also good advice, so don’t hesitate to seek it out. If you are going to fully utilize the potential of SEO, then make sure you do it properly.

Author Bio:

Nate Vickery is a business consultant and blogger. He is mostly interested in latest technology trends applicable to marketing and management. Nate is editor-in-chief at Bizzmarkblog.com.

http://ift.tt/2oSyDtJ

Google Analytics: Filter Order Matters!

When you set up new views and add your regular filters, chances are, things usually work exactly as expected. But occasionally, you’ve triple and quadruple checked each individual filter, yet the data is not coming in as expected (or isn’t coming in at all).…

http://ift.tt/2pwTe9K

Ask Yoast: Publishing in another language and SEO

If you’re creating content for a website, you might want to, occasionally, publish an article in a language different from the language of your other content. However, it’s difficult to rank with one specific article that’s written in a language that differs from the rest. So what should you do to improve the SEO of that article? In this Ask Yoast, I’ll help you out and explain when to optimize your metadata in another language, when to use hreflang and what more to do to help that article rank!

Justin from VPNgids.nl (VPNguide.nl) emailed us with this question:

“I’ve got a Dutch blog but I want to publish an article in English. What should I do? Should I just add an hreflang tag or something else?”

Check out the video or read the answer below!

Become a technical SEO expert with our Technical SEO 1 training! »

$ 199€ 199 - Buy now » Info English article on a Dutch blog

In the video, we explain what options you have to improve the SEO of an article in a language that’s different from your other content:

“In this case, the hreflang tag isn’t even really necessary. The only reason you would use an hreflang is if you had a Dutch version and an English version of the same article. If that’s the case, then you should use hreflang on both articles. In case of a separate article in English, what you should make sure of is that on the English article all the metadata shows that that is an English article and not a Dutch article. Unfortunately this is quite hard to do in WordPress, if you’re not running a multilingual plug-in.

But to be honest, if you’re going to publish in English, maybe you should just make a separate section of your site for it that is completely in English. Adding some more content to it would give you a lot more chance for ranking, than just having one article in English. Of course you have to start somewhere. So by all means create that English section, start with that one article and then slowly add on to it.

It’s always a good idea, if you’re Dutch and your English is good enough, to switch to English. The Dutch language area is only very small and the world is a lot bigger, with a lot of English speakers. So I would really encourage you to start doing stuff in English. Just like we did! I started blogging in English eight years ago, which is why Yoast is so popular now.

Good luck!”

Ask Yoast

In the series Ask Yoast we answer SEO questions from followers. Need some advice about SEO? Let us help you out! Send your question to ask@yoast.com.

Read more: ‘hreflang: the ultimate guide’ »

http://ift.tt/2nYETTO

How to Check If Your Emails Are Going to Spam

G-Lock Apps is an email deliverability tool that was built to find out exactly why emails get blocked or filtered, why it happens and how to fix it so that the user can continue to send emails while maximizing all of the benefits that go with it.

G-Lock Apps started out precisely because of the question “Why are my Emails going to spam?” and built around that problem are tools and solutions to avoid that in the first place. Essentially, G-Lock Apps is a deliverability and spam-testing tool all-in-one package.

You could say that G-Lock Apps was built out of necessity, especially for people that send a lot of Emails such as Linkbuilders and Email Marketers.

How G-Lock Apps Works

Interestingly enough, this all-in-one Email tool works on a very simple procedure. What the tool does is that it gives the user a tracking ID as well as a list of email addresses from Gmail, Hotmail and the like; this is what G-Lock Apps refer to as a ‘Seed List’. What then happens is that the user appends the tracking ID to their email which they then send over to the ‘Seed List’.

After doing so, G-Lock Apps provides the results in real-time and the user will then be able to see if their email went to the right place (i.e. inbox and not spam,) or if it was even delivered at all.

Our Experience with G-Lock Apps

As a content creator and as a salesman, I interact with many of my customers and peers via email. I send a lot of emails every day, some to my office and to whomever needs to be communicated with.

Let me tell you, I start my day by reading and replying to my Emails and I get a couple dozen unread mails every few hours or so. What this means is that I need to have my mail delivered to these people’s inboxes. If my email lands in their junk or trash, chances are I lose an opportunity or worse, lose some of my business.

I can’t have that happening because like I said in the SEO Hacker promotional video that I have up on our website, I am very committed to both my employees and my clients. It also doesn’t help that I really love what I do and mailing is a very important aspect of that.

It was really fortunate that I found G-Lock Apps because I need a reliable tool to ensure I stay on top of my mails.

Personally, I really enjoyed my experience with the tool. It’s fast, reliable and most importantly it got the job done. I could see what I needed to change in order to no longer be marked as spam and the team has been using it after my sterling recommendation.

After all, it’s a great tool waiting to be utilized and sure enough, it got productivity up because people actually received our emails when it mattered.

Funnily enough, G-Lock Apps have this written in bold on their website: “Emails that don’t reach the Inbox won’t get read!” and I agree with that.

Features and Key Takeaway

G-Lock Apps is an extremely useful tool especially if you deal with a lot of emails for work or whatever reason that you may have. Here is a list of its features taken directly from their website.

I’ve tried and tested all of these features personally and all of them work well enough to be considered a worthwhile investment. G-Lock Apps is an essential deliverability and spam-testing tool that everyone should have. I can’t recommend G-Lock Apps any more than this.

Get started with G-Lock Apps today!

http://ift.tt/2puwlDS

What My Son Teaches Me About Life

I asked my son Harold how he’d describe himself and he said, “I don’t know. There isn’t one word that describes me. I like gaming and stuff, and making music, and all that other stuff. There’s just not one word.” I can tell you what word he’d never use: autistic. Harold’s a very high functioning kid and the challenges of autism aren’t really his concern. He just works around them. BUT there’s stuff there that we can learn from and it’s important.

Harold is a Multi-Hyphenated Guy

Like everyone working in the world today, Harold has lots of pursuits. He plays video games. He modifies indie games, changing their skins and music. He’s a very accomplished music maker (at last count, he’d published just under 200 pieces on Soundcloud – yes, I said 200). That’s what he focuses on. He consumes media. He makes entertainment and media projects. To him, they’re one in the same. You watch it. You make it. You listen to it. You make it. You play it. You make it. They’re the same thing to Harold.

http://ift.tt/2paa8LD