How to Attract The Attention of Big Companies For Your Small Business

I’ve had a VERY fortunate career. I was ahead of the curve on a particular shift in technology that affected how businesses and people interacted. Because of this, I’ve spent time with a lot of the biggest companies in the world, often meeting their CEOs as well. The picture above is Bob Iger, CEO of Disney. I’ve met and spoken in front of Beth Comstock, vice chair of GE. Fritz Henderson, when he ran GM was kind enough to blurb my first book with Julien Smith. And so on.

I’m not writing a single word of this to brag because to be honest, every single time I’m in front of people from Coke or Pepsi or Google or Microsoft, I have the same feeling: why the HECK am I here? How did I get here? And is it really that easy to be invited into the offices of some of the biggest companies in the world? (No, it’s not.) I’ll tell you what I know.

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How to start writing a blog post?

It can be really hard to come up with a topic for a blog post. When you finally found the perfect subject, you probably want to start writing immediately. But to write that perfect blog post, you should take some time to prepare it properly. Today, I’ll give some tips on how to begin your writing process. If you take some time and prepare your blog post adequately, your writing will be so much better! 

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$ 199€ 199 - Buy now » Info Preparing takes time

The writing process can be divided into three phases. The actual writing is the second phase of your writing process and only takes up about 20% of the time. That is, if you’ve done the preparing phase properly.

In my opinion, the preparing phase is the most fun! You can brainstorm, try out things and be creative in this phase. So, although it may seem like this preparing-stuff is just holding you back from the actual writing, you should think of it as the most creative and fun phase. And the most important phase!

Brainstorm

Always start a blog post with a brainstorm. Once you’ve decided on the topic of your post, you should make a list of all the things you would like to address in your post. Don’t be critical in this phase. Just write down anything you come up with. You always can cross off the ‘not so good ideas’ later on.

What is your message?

What is the one thing you want your readers to remember after they’ve read your post? What’s the most important thing you want to say? The answer to these questions is the message of your post. You should write that message down. This is the key information of your blog post. That message should eventually come in the first paragraph of your blog post.

Write a little bit

Although the actual writing comes in the second phase of the writing process, you should definitely write some sentences. Try to find the right words for your topic and for your audience. Try to write some beautiful sentences. I wouldn’t advise you to try to write the first sentence of a blog post in this phase, but you could write a few sentences of an important paragraph. Playing around with words will help you to find the tone of your blog post.

Structure, structure, structure

The most important thing you should do in the preparing phase of writing a blog post is to come up with the structure of your text. At the end of the preparing phase, you should end up with the skeleton of your blog post. What subjects will you address in what order?

After you’ve brainstormed about the topic, you’ll probably end up with a long list of things you would like to address in your blog post. Read through your list, cross of the things you’re not totally sure about and try to see whether or not topics resemble each other. Bundle similar topics. After that, you should think about the order you want to discuss your topics. Make sure you discuss things in a way people understand. Subjects and paragraphs should follow each other in a logical order.

Before I start the actual writing process, I usually have a list with paragraphs. For every paragraph I also have a short description of the things I would like to discuss and the examples I would like to use. In some cases, I already formulated some nice sentences for every paragraph as well.

Hit that keyboard!

Preparing your blog post can be real fun. I really enjoy this phase the most. If you’ve thought your post through it’s time to turn to the next phase and hit that keyboard. Go write your post!

After writing your post, you’re inevitable going to end up in the correcting phase. Very important. Totally hate that phase.

Read more: ‘SEO copywriting: the ultimate guide’ »

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Five annoying contact page mistakes

If your business website’s goal is to get in touch with (potential) customers, you should avoid a number of contact page mistakes. Here, we’ll mention the mistakes we find most annoying. And we’re not unique in that.

In my previous post about contact pages, I already mentioned that the right content on this page can improve both user experience and SEO. In the comments on that post, Simon asked: “What do you think are the 5 most common mistakes on a website contact page?” What I think are the most common mistakes makes it my personal list, so I decided to dedicate this post to what I find the most annoying :)

Let’s dive straight in with number one. 

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$ 19€ 19 - Buy now » Info #1 Just a form

If your contact page consists of a form and nothing but a form, you are not serving all of your visitors. Naturally, there will always be people that don’t understand the form. Provide a fallback option, like an email address or a phone number. Here are some reasons why people might dislike / do not understand your form:

• Your form is too long. People get lost or simply don’t take the time to fill out all the things you want to know. Keep forms short and clear.
• Your form isn’t responsive. This ruins the mobile experience on your contact page. Labels might get lost, as a mobile browser will focus on the form fields.
• Your form can get broken. Perhaps you missed an update of your favorite contact plugin, just to name one reason.

#2 Fancy names for your contact page

Don’t you just hate it when you have to do an internal search on a website just to find their contact page? In my opinion, there are two options:

1. Add the menu item “Contact” to your main and/or footer menu.
2. Add your contact page at example.com/contact/.

I won’t look in any other spots. It’s straight to your search or back to Google to find the next company that’s going to answer my question. Preferably, you want that link to your contact page to be above the fold. But I have to say that a footer link is common as well, both as an extra and as the main link.

Just like the link in the URL, I’d like the title of that page to be “Contact” or a variation of that, like “Contact us” or “Get in touch”. Don’t use “Let’s talk business” or whatever strange sentence that won’t cover the immediate goal of the page. It will confuse people, even in Google already. Make it clear that this is the page where they can get in contact with you.

#3 Outdated information

C’mon people. Like all your other pages, your contact page needs some tender love and care from time to time. Moving offices? Adjust your website. New sales rep? Change profile picture and email address. Make sure your information is accurate at all times.

Don’t take this lightly, I think outdated information is one of those contact page mistakes that we choose to ignore sometimes. “I’ll get to that one of these days”. “It’s on my to do list”. No, update it when it changes. And if your address changes, let Google know in the process.

#4 Make sure people can contact you privately

That means “Reach out to me on the WordPress Slack”, “Talk to me on Twitter”, or even “Drop a comment below” isn’t enough. And yes, contact pages that use a comment form as a contact form do exist. People that want to talk to you probably just want to talk to you. Make sure they can.

Is it wise to display links to social profiles on a contact page? I believe that only makes sense if you want people to contact you on, for instance, Twitter and you monitor these social profiles for questions. If you mention Instagram on your contact page and don’t check Instagram at least every other day, it’s probably not the preferred way to contact you. In that case, that link shouldn’t be on your contact page.

Best case scenario: two options to contact you privately (form and email address or phone number would be a nice start), so if one fails, visitors can use the other.

#5 Not having a contact page at all

If only I got a penny for every website I came across that lacks a (clear) contact page… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: every website should have a contact page. Most websites are set up to interact with the visitor, get them to buy products or provide information. But they can always have extra questions or interesting business opportunities for you. Make sure it’s clear how they can get in touch.

It’s probably the most obvious of all the contact page mistakes listed here, but I just felt the need to mention it.

Are there any more contact page mistakes you can think of?

For sure. And if you’d ask me the same question on another day, I could probably come up with more. The above ones are the ones I find most annoying, but what about:

• No clear confirmation that a form is sent. So I’ll send it again. Just in case.
• Crappy captchas. The horror! Need I say more?
• Contact pages that are flooded with distractions. I just want to contact you!

Now over to you

Feel free to spill your guts in the comments. Let me know what annoys you the most about contact pages!

Read more: ‘What makes a great contact page? With lots of examples!’ »

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Closed Loop Analytics: How to Measure Actual ROI for Marketing Efforts & Content

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that just about every aspect of marketing can be measured. Tools like Google Analytics are household names when it comes to measuring website and campaign performance. CRMs like Salesforce provide reporting capabilities for sales and lead performance.…

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Your Rankings Won’t Improve Until You Try These Techniques

This happens more often than a seasoned SEO practitioner would think: They exert all their efforts into making sure that their strategy is top-notch, white hat, and is used by many; only to garner little, to no results. Why does this happen though?

Many businesses that dabble on SEO are mystified when they do everything correctly, but their search rankings just would not improve. It is discouraging, to say the least; because you use up a lot of your time, energy, and even money; only to see it wasted.

However, I am here to tell you that this is perfectly normal; this is just the natural ‘progression’ of the ever-changing mountain that is SEO. There are still ways in which you can still improve your search engine results page (SERP) rankings; even if your current strategy does not work.

This surely will not be easy, but if you put in the necessary effort, time, and money, you will see your desired results. So, there is no need to be worried about your search engine rankings not improving. Here are techniques that you can use when your SERPs rankings just won’t improve.

More often than not, the SEO strategy you are using is definitely imperfect This happens because SEO’s landscape is broad, and the topics that it encompasses are manifold; from content creation to robot.txt files, SEO can be a difficult task to undertake. Which is why you should first analyze the SEO strategy that you are currently using.

To peruse your SEO strategy, you must know the different components that are essential to an effective SEO strategy. Fortunately, Moz published an 8-step SEO strategy guide, here are the steps:

• Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Need
• Step 2: Categorize Keyword Research
• Step 3: Finding Gaps and Opportunities
• Step 4: Define Competitors
• Step 5: Spying On (And Learning From) Your Competitors
• Step 6: Customized SEO Strategy & Recommendations
• Step 7: Must-have SEO Recommendations
• Step 8: Prioritize and Summarize

It is important to remember that your SEO strategy should have all these components.

If you have examined your current SEO strategy, and you are sure that it is complete, it is time to apply these techniques to ensure the improvement of your search rankings:

Optimize and Enhance Your HTTP

Recently, Google has started releasing changes to their algorithms that wanted to ensure a better user experience. A big part of user experience is site security, and that is what you need to improve upon. It is highly noticeable that the letters “HTTP” is at the beginning of every site URL. However, having “HTTP” at the start of a site’s URL means that it is unsecured, and is generally not trustworthy.

On the other hand, sites that have “HTTPS” means that they are secure, and is generally trusted by the search engines. If you are a Google Chrome user, you would have probably noticed that when you visit a site, and it has “HTTPS”; the text on the left side of the URL bar turns green, and has a padlock symbol. This means that the site is secure, and is trustworthy. Take a look at our site’s URL:

As you can see, if the text on the left side is green and has a padlock symbol beside the word “Secure”. This occurrence can be considered as Google’s certificate of authenticity; thousands – or even millions – of people use this function to determine if the site that they are visiting is legitimate or not.

Aside from proving that your website is secure, Google also gives improved rankings to sites with “HTTPS”. While it does not give an immense boost in ranking, it still helps. All of these are enough reasons to make you want to convert into HTTPS. Also, it has been reported that Google will penalize sites that are unencrypted. So, it is better to upgrade to HTTPS than to get penalized.

Additionally, you can also consider upgrading to HTTP/2. Aside from making your website secure, it also helps increase the site’s speed, which in turn, can positively impact your SEO.

This is practically common knowledge, but some people still disregard the importance of making their websites more mobile friendly. There are numerous sites that claim they are mobile friendly, however, they are only semi-mobile friendly. They can be considered as just a shrunken version of the desktop page. And it never looks good.

So, make sure that your website is really mobile friendly. Just take a look at the mobile friendly website of SEO-Hacker:

It is clear that the site is optimized for mobile users because it shows that same content with the desktop version, but is the overall look is for the mobile platform. By optimizing your website to a more mobile friendly version, you will be catering to too much more people; because the general public mostly uses their mobile decides to explore the internet.

Also, by making your mobile friendly site more responsive will increase user engagement by a considerable number.

Aside from making the website more mobile friendly, you should also make sure that every aspect of your site is really mobile friendly – especially the content. Most webmasters create content without even thinking about the mobile users; which is a grave mistake. Think about it: today, most people are browsing the internet through their smartphones, what happens if your website’s content is not mobile friendly enough? You will be effectively losing visitors in the long run because of your below average content management.

It sounds radical, but mobile should be a big part of your life as an SEO practitioner. It should be one of your utmost priorities whenever the design of a website is in the works. So, always make sure that your website is really mobile friendly; remove any flaws or errors that you have found while examining the mobile version of your site.

Whenever a practitioner hears the term “technical SEO”, it often leaves them scared and nervous. However, even if it is daunting, it is one of the primary helpers in increasing a website’s ranking. Sometimes, when people do SEO, and they do it correctly, but they do not get the results they wanted; it oftentimes is because of they lack the incorporation of technical SEO. There are three main categories for technical SEO, namely:

On-page and off-page are more commonly known by practitioners. While the technical aspect is often left out and disregarded. It is unrelated to the actual content of the website, but it deals with mobile friendliness, site speed, and HTML/XML sitemaps.

Also known as schema markup, incorporation of structured data on your site can give you a definitive advantage over other websites; because it is the one that helps the search engine robots understand what everything in your website means.

Basically, when search engine robots cannot read the data inside your website, you have to be the one to tell them. Integrating structured data is not as hard as it sounds, Google has its Structured Data Markup Helper to do the job for you:

You just need to select your structured data type, input your URL, and start tagging.

It is common knowledge that Google does not like duplicate content. However, some have the notion that re-posting their old content is considered as duplicate content. It’s not. An instance of duplicate content is when two different URLs lead to the same

An instance of duplicate content is when two different URLs lead to the same web page. Here’s an example:

This is Zalora’s page when you click on Men’s Shoes. Now, take a look at following URL:

Notice that the URL is very different from the first photo. It is the same page, however, their URLs are far from being the same. The second photo was opened from an email campaign that Zalora sent out. That is why there is “EmailCampaign” inside the URL of the second photo. This is basically considered as duplicate content.

This is not an issue for casual visitors, however, Google can penalize this occurrence. It does not mean that email marketing, campaigns, and other strategies that might produce duplicate content should stop. There are actual ways on how you can preserve your site’s SEO ethics. You first need to find duplicate content for your site, you can use Siteliner for this:

Siteliner will be the one doing all the work, and will eventually show you a detailed results page on how much duplicate content your site has and where it is located.

If you have duplicate content, you can use something called the canonical tag. It does not require a decent amount of coding knowledge, even ordinary people can use it. If you have spent enough time in the SEO scene, you might have encountered this tag, it is rel = “canonical”.

If you attach it to a link, search engine crawlers will know that the link is the preferred URL. For instance, you might have a web page with the URL called http://ift.tt/20QItK3. While other users might also access the same web page using http://ift.tt/2rPQEwY.

If you incorporate the canonical tag into the http://ift.tt/20QItK3, that specific link will be known as the preferred URL to navigate to. Basically, the link that has the canonical tag will be the one shown in the SERPs. Now that the search engine knows that there are multiple links for the same webpage, they will not consider the other links as duplicate content.

Google provides everyone with a support page that helps them use the canonical tag properly.

They also provide webmasters with steps that they can take to make sure they do not have any duplicate content.

Avoiding duplicate is not that hard – only if you really are adamant on preventing it. If there are times when you cannot help but use duplicate content, use the canonical tag from the very start to avoid forgetting.

Crawling and indexing are basically the search engine’s way to assess a website, which means it is crucial to the entire SEO scene. It should be a webmaster’s responsibility to ensure that the search engine should be able to quickly and..

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How Does Google Look for Authoritative Search Results?

A NASA Android that Voyaged to Space

If you’ve done any SEO for a site, you may recognize some of the steps involved in working towards making a website authoritative:

1. Conduct keyword research to find appropriate terms and phrases for your industry and audience
2. Review the use of keywords on the pages of your site to make sure it includes those in prominent places on those pages
3. Map out pages on a site to place keywords in meaningful places
4. The meaningful places on your pages are determined by information retrieval scores for HTML elements such as Titles and Headings and Lists
5. The placement of keywords in prominent and important places on your pages can make your pages more relevant for those keywords
6. Research the topics your pages are about, and make sure they answer questions that your audience may have about those topics in trustworthy and meaningful ways

Focus on Authoritative Search Results

A patent granted to Google this week focuses upon authoritative search results. It describes how Google might surface authoritative results for queries and for query revisions when there might not results that meet a threshold of authoritativeness for the initial query. Reading through it was like looking at a mirror image of the efforts I usually go through to try to build authoritative results for a search engine to surface. In addition to using some of the same language that I use to describe how I build authoritative pages, the patent also defines what an authoritative site is for us in terms that I might find myself using too:

In general, an authoritative site is a site that the search system has determined to include particularly trusted, accurate, or reliable content. The search system can distinguish authoritative sites from low-quality sites that include resources with shallow content or that frequently include spam advertisements. Whether the search system considers a site to be authoritative will typically be query-dependent. For example, the search system can consider the site for the Centers for Disease Control, “cdc.gov,” to be an authoritative site for the query “cdc mosquito stop bites,” but may not consider the same site to be authoritative for the query “restaurant recommendations”. A search result that identifies a resource on a site that is authoritative for the query may be referred to as an authoritative search result. The search system can determine whether to obtain an authoritative search result in response to a query in a variety of ways, which will be described below.

This definition seems to tell us that authoritative sites are high quality sites. The timing of a couple of other actions at Google seem to fit in well with the granting of this patent. Once is the publication of a Blog post by long time Google search engineer Ben Gomes (who joined Google in 1999), on steps they have taken to improve the quality of results at Google, titled Our latest quality improvements for Search. In that post, Ben points out that Google has published a brand new set of Search Quality Rater Guidelines – May 11, 2017, publicly, so that they are shared with the world instead of just to Google’s Search quality raters.

One of the named inventors on this patent was an inventor on another patent that I wrote about which focused upon high quality sites as well. That patent is worth reading about together with this one. That post is one I wrote named Google’s High Quality Sites Patent. As I said of that patent, it describes its purpose in this way:

This patent identifies pages that rank well for certain queries, and looks at the quality of those pages. If a threshold amount of those ranking pages are low quality pages, the search engine might use an alternative query to find a second set of search results that include pages from high quality sites. Those search results from the first query might then be merged with the results from the alternative query, with the pages from the low quality sites removed so that the search results include a greater percentage of pages from high quality sites.

So the aim of this new patent is to find results from higher quality search results. Google does seem to be targeting higher quality pages these days with the results they show.

Google sets a fairly high bar with search results, telling us in the description to this new patent:

Internet search engines aim to identify resources, e.g., web pages, images, text documents, multimedia content, e.g., videos, that are relevant to a user’s information needs and to present information about the resources in a manner that is most useful to the user.

In the summary section for this patent, the objective of the patent is identified to us as finding authoritative answers:

This specification describes how a system can improve search result sets by including at least one authoritative search result that identifies a resource on an authoritative site for a query. The system can include an authoritative search result, for example, when scores of an initial first search result set are low or when the query itself indicates that the user seeks resources from an authoritative site.

What this Patent Does

A search engine doesn’t choose the query terms that someone might use to perform a search with; but it might be able to identify query refinements based upon the initial query term. If the original query doesn’t return an authoritative result; Google might insert into the results shown for it some authoritative results for one of those query refinements based upon that original query. It might show that authoritative result at the top of the search results that it returns. This means that Google will be more likely to return high quality sites at the top of search results, rather than results from sites that might not be seen as authoritative sites.

The patent that was granted this week is:

Obtaining authoritative search results
Inventors: Trystan Upstill, Yungchun Wan, and Alexandre Kojoukhov
Assignee: Google Inc.
US Patent: 9,659,064
Granted: May 23, 2017
Filed: March 15, 2013

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for obtaining authoritative search results. One of the methods includes receiving a first search query. First search results responsive to the first search query are obtained. Based on the first search query or the first search results, an authoritative search result that identifies a resource on a site that is authoritative for the first search query is obtained. A ranking of the authoritative search result and the one or more first search results is generated, and the ranking of the authoritative search result and the one or more first search results is provided in response to the first search query.

There were some really interesting points raised in the patent, which makes the whole thing worth spending time reading carefully:

1. Google might maintain a “keyword-to-authoritative site database” which it can refer to when someone performs a query.
2. The patent described “Mapping” keywords on pages on the Web as sources of information for that authoritative site database.
3. Google may also maintain “topic keyword and category keyword mappings to authoritative sites”.
4. Google may calculate confidence scores, which represent a likelihood that a keyword, if received in a query, refers to a specific authoritative site.
5. The patent talks about Mapping revised queries, like this: “The system can also analyze user query refinements to generate additional topic or category keyword mappings or refine existing ones.”
6. Interestingly, the patent talks about revisions in queries as being substitute terms that might be used “aggressively to generate revised search queries.” I’ve written about substitute terms before in How Google May Rewrite Your Search Terms.
7. If the original query, and the replacement query used to surface an authoritative result are similar enough (based upon a similarity score that would be used to compare them), that authoritative result may be demoted in the results shown to a searcher.

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Advanced SEO Techniques to Improve Your Site Traffic

Understanding and meeting your target audience’s needs can considerably increase your site’s traffic and your overall conversion rate. Evidently, there are thousands – or even millions – looking for your website, even if you do not know it.

It is your job to help them look for your site in an easier and more efficient manner, and the only way that you could help them is to learn SEO. Becoming an expert in this online field is actually easier than most people make it out to be, and you can save a lot of money by not having to hire an SEO service provider.

Based on B2B marketing, every month, Google’s search engine goes through an average of 10.3 million searches. In the U.S., an estimate of 78% of the population uses the internet to search for products and services.

Consequently, if your website is highly ranked in Google, you will notice an increase in revenue because of the increase of clicks that you receive. Similarly, people have short attention spans, and want to find the right website at the first page of the organic search results; that is why the sites that are ranked in the first page of Google searches receive higher traffic than those located in the other pages.

It is common knowledge that a website’s traffic primarily comes from search queries, which only necessitates the need for high-quality search engine optimization. So, here are advanced SEO techniques that you should implement immediately to increase the rate of visitors you receive, search traffic, and your conversion rate.

Audit Your Site Structure

Auditing is more commonly known as a systematic process wherein you assess, examine, and determine which areas are underperforming in events, results, concepts, and financial matters. After auditing, you can make smarter decisions regarding the area that you audited. In SEO terms, auditing is a technique that can help attract and retain a handful of customers. Basically, auditing a site structure is done to discover why a website is not getting enough search traffic and sales.

When you audit, you should examine your site’s performance as closely as you can, and proceed to implement a new set of goals that are based on your assessment. This will enable you to have an increase in profit while still having the same workload as before.

If you are knowledgeable enough, you can conduct the auditing yourself, but if you do not have any knowledge whatsoever of auditing your site’s structure, here are some simple steps:

• There are websites that can assess your web page, and one of them is Quicksprout. Go to the website and input your page URL into the search box
• Click the “Log in with Google” button to start the assessment
• Analyze the results from Quicksprout

The analysis that Quicksprout provides includes your website’s SEO score, speed score, errors, warnings, load time, page size, and requests. The great thing about Quicksprout is that it gives you details on the problems of your site. By taking into consideration what Quicksprout gives, you can already remove or improve the page elements that are deemed as red flags.

The common warnings that webmasters experience are related to the heading tags; because the optimal heading tags should only contain 15 to 65 characters, but most of us create heading tags that are more than 70 characters.

SEO experts might tell you that this simple change in one element will not improve the overall page rankings, but it will definitely get you more clicks, and more clicks mean improved traffic. This is all due to the fact that heading tags and meta descriptions are important SEO elements and should be created properly.

Google expects to see them in pages because they are a basic, standard-compliant HTML element. That’s how you can gain more traffic when you properly create heading tags and meta description. Similarly, properly created headings can give your visitors a much better experience because the subheadings and the body stand out, which will enable your readers to understand and better enjoy your content.

Data Research from End-User Value

Essentially, Google is a data company which makes every platform, tool, or algorithm that they send out primarily for one purpose: to get data from users and use it to improve and build a stronger system called the search engine. Similarly, you need to use the data that comes from your target audience. The feedback that your ideal users of a product or service give will help you create content that is in accordance with their own tastes and standards.

Basically, the public is responsible for the sharing, funding, or production of a certain idea or concept. Obtaining that relevant data can be hard, but if you know which social media platform your target audience spends the most time in, you can already assess what their preferences are. Here are some basic steps that you can use to collect data from your desired users (Quora is the social media platform that will be used as an example):

• Go to Quora., and input your primary keyword in the search box
• Click search
• Assess which of the results has the most answers, or click on the most relevant headline and read the answers that the users provided for that certain thread.
• Extract the ideas, brainstorm on how you can convert the ideas into an SEO-worthy content, create the content, and publish it.

The important thing to remember is that data research is only useful if it is applicable to your users. Also, as long as you can create content that can answer user queries, your site’s search traffic and conversion rate will significantly improve.

Creating More Optimized Landing Pages

Most B2B companies do not regard the importance of having landing pages that are in search results. They do not know that by creating more high-quality landing pages can improve and open their doors for improved search traffic; because a well-made, optimal landing page can improve sales and lead generation.

A considerable amount of clicks in a B2B company’s website direct the user to the homepage, and not a landing page. Obviously, homepages are important, but the landing pages are where you try to build a relationship with each and every visitor.

Unbeknownst to most webmasters, optimal landing pages can generate more income than other pages in a website. Take Moz for example, Conversion Rate Experts made $1M from a single, optimized landing page and some email promotions. This only necessitates having more optimized landing pages for business websites and having quality link building can definitely help as well. The goal is to create more clickable pages with an impressive value proposition.

Here’s a simplified version on how you can optimize your landing pages:

• Choose a long-tail keyword, and create a landing page for it so that you can gain results from search engines
• Add title tags, meta tag description, and keywords
• Use the keywords as naturally as you can, so that you can avoid keyword stuffing.
• The content of the landing page should be 2000+ words because that is the standard on how you can prove to Google that your page is more valuable than others, and that it deserves to be ranked higher.
• Your landing pages should be useful.
• Write the landing page to persuade visitors to take the next step
• Always remember that the perfect landing page contains a headline, secondary headline, bullet points, and CTA’s (call-to-actions)

The primary purpose of your landing pages is to engage with your audience without ever having to meet them. When your landing pages start to rank up for their main keywords, you can tweak the content, or add more CTA’s to increase your conversion rate; while also improving your skills in SEO.

Also, having a beautiful design will help your landing page succeed, because if you have a well-written landing page, but your design is not up-to-par, then the whole landing page will downright fail. This is because the design of your landing page is as important as the content itself. It makes your page unique, and it gives your readers a different experience than just reading the content.

Lastly, build link in your landing pages. Links are an essential part of Google’s ranking factors. Without links, your page will not rank – even if it is full of quality content and unique designs. So, always incorporate a link to all your pages!

Site Responsiveness and Being Mobile Friendly

The growth rate for mobile search queries has unexpectedly multiplied over the last couple of years; which will entail more traffic if you make your website more mobile friendly. Since the introduction of smartphones, people have begun to use their mobile gadgets to access and scour the world wide web.

Similarly, mobile users are more passionate shoppers because of the fact that they can buy anything from anywhere; which is impossible to do when you are a desktop user. Again, there is unlimited potential for gaining more search traffic when you make your website more mobile-friendly.

Improve Your Infographics

Using infographics is one of the simplest ways that you can increase your site’s search traffic. Infographics have so much potential when it comes you increasing your web traffic. You can imagine for yourself that when you create high-quality content that is visual in nature. However, most people do not focus enough on the information part, while wasting their time on the graphics part. That is why you have to make sure you have a balance between the two whenever you make an infographic.

You may ask yourself: Why do people prefer infographics? Well, the simplest answer is that the human brain processes visual information faster than just plain text. Also, research has concluded that 90% of information that enters the human brain is purely visual.

Generating Increased Search Visitors through infographics is something that most people do not know. Here’s something that can help you:

• Create an infographic through thorough research about trending ideas or topics.
• Couple your infographic with fresh, high-quality content that introduces your audience to a more detailed discussion of the “information” part of the infographic.
• Submit your infographic to infographics directories.
• Focus on building quality links because it is never about the quantity.

Use Latent Semantic Indexing

Through the years, SEO has evolved to adapt to the regular algorithm updates made by Google. One factor the Google uses to determine the rank of a page is Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. It is essentially an indexing and retrieval technique that makes use of mathematical formulas to identify any patterns in specific parts of a text.

Simply put, LSI constantly finds the synonyms of keywords. It helps your website rank higher because it aids Google in understanding the topic that your content is talking about, and how relevant it is to the search query every user inputs.

Here’s an example: Whenever you use the word “Apple”, through LSI, Google determines that “Apple” is the company that Steve Jobs headed, and not about the fruit. Also, always avoid keyword stuffing in your content to avoid being penalized. However, if you LSI keyword, which is basically the synonyms of your chosen keywords, then it will not be regarded as keyword stuffing.

Here are a few reminders when you use LSI keywords:

• Always look for LSI keywords that are synonymous to a specific keyword, but has different spelling and structure.
• Never overstuff your content with LSI keywords. Only use them when they flow naturally within a certain paragraph.
• Write naturally. Avoid making the LSI keywords become more important than the keyword that you are trying to rank.
• Always remember that the LSI keyword is there to provide additional meaning to your content, and help Google understand the topic at hand.

Essentially, Google always looks for these key terms in your content. If they find these keywords, Google believes that the readers will benefit from them as well; which will enable you to have higher rankings.

Your Competitor’s Keywords

Researching your competitors is a move that is widely acted out in the business industry, and it is also common in the online business platform. You can research your competitor’s keywords that they are ranking for, then you create much better content for those keywords that will be published in your own website. Also, knowing which keywords that your competitors are using is easy, here’s how:

• Go to SEMrush
• Input your competitor’s site URL
• Set the country to wherever you are located in, or the country your target market is in
• Click search
• Analyze the live keywords that pop-up
• Verify the ranking of the keywords by doing a quick Google search, and inputting the keywords that you have researched

After doing all of these, you can now create much better content for the keywords that you have researched, and you should also build link in that particular page to boost its capability to rank. Also, it would be helpful if you research the sites that link to your competitor’s site.

Then, contact the sites that you have found, and tell them about your article that is closely related to your competitor’s. There is a high possibility that they will link to your page as well, which will give you additional referral traffic. One site that you can use to find the pages that link to your competitor’s pages is Backlinkwatch.com.

Being Active on Authoritative Platforms

You can get ranked better in Google, generate more traffic, and build a new following, by simply being active on an authoritative platform. Authoritative platforms are websites wherein millions of users visit, and sites that rank for whatever keyword they target.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are not authoritative platforms but are helpful in user engagement rather than being direct ranking factors. Examples of authoritative sites include: Quora, Slideshare, Blogger, and Docstoc; these websites helps you engage your followers while directly affecting your ranking factors. Here’s an example of how you can improve your rankings using authoritative sites, in this instance, Slideshare is what we are using:

• Find a trending topic or idea that you can use as your presentation topic
• Create an outline for your intended presentation
• Find images that you can use to support your content
• Study and use successful Slideshare presentations to improve your own presentation
• Finally, create your Slideshare presentation

Another thing that can help you establish your authority in search rankings is to share your presentation to websites like Docstoc, scribd, and animoto. You will attract fresh, younger audience, and boost your link through the use of SEO service tools.

Deep Linking To Internal Pages

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Cornerstone analysis to help you create your best articles

Cornerstone articles should be the best and most complete articles on your website. That means that you should make an effort to make this article as awesome as possible. Raise your normal standards and write extraordinary cornerstones. To help you create excellent cornerstone articles, we developed a special cornerstone analysis. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Why do you need a separate analysis?

Of course, our default SEO and readability analysis already helps you to write awesome articles. So why do you need a separate analysis for cornerstones? The answer to this question is that for cornerstone articles you should raise the bar. Your cornerstones should be the best. They should be better than your other articles and the demands on your writing should be higher. Our cornerstone analysis will help you to raise your standards (and stick to it). It will be harder to score that green bullet. You have to do all important things right!

What does the cornerstone analysis do?

You know our green bullets, right? In our default analysis, we check whether or not your post is readable and SEO-friendly. The cornerstone analysis is an adaptation of the default SEO analysis. In the cornerstone analysis we’ve set higher standards. A number of checks in both the readability analysis as well as the SEO analysis has been adapted in Yoast SEO 4.8.

How does it work?

If you’re working on a cornerstone, you should indicate so by checking the cornerstone box. If you checked the box, the default analysis will automatically change into the cornerstone analysis.

Which checks are adapted?

We adapted 2 readability checks and 8 SEO checks to come to the cornerstone analysis. You’ll need to use enough subheadings and make sure to write in rather short sentences to receive a green bullet in the readability analysis. Cornerstone articles are usually long and therefore a bit harder to read. Subheadings and short sentences will help people to read all the way through the end.

Most important adaptation in the SEO checks is the demand for a lengthy article. Cornerstones should be informative and complete. They just need to be long. In order to score a green bullet on text length, you’ll need to write an article of at least 900 words.

The other checks we adapted for cornerstone articles are:

• keyword in subheading;
• meta description length;
• title width;
• images;
• links;
• URL keyword;
• URL links.

We’re just a bit stricter concerning these checks. To score a green bullet, you need get all of these right: use keywords in the subheadings, write an awesome meta description, use your keyword in the URL and make sure your images are optimized properly. For cornerstones you just need to go all the way. These are the articles you would like to rank with, so make sure you give them the very best chances.

Check out the internal linking tool

Cornerstone articles are an essential aspect of your SEO strategy. You should make sure to embed these articles correctly into your site structure to get the most out of a cornerstone approach. The Yoast SEO premium plugin can help you do this. Our internal linking tool suggests which articles you should be linking to when you’re writing a new post. Cornerstone articles actually get a priority in the internal linking tool as these are the articles you want to be linking to:

Optimize your cornerstones!

So go ahead and start optimizing your cornerstone articles to make them rank higher. Use the new free cornerstone analysis in Yoast SEO as a guide to find out which aspects of the article you could improve. And if you want to take it a step further, get Premium to help you do some sophisticated internal linking. Good luck!

Read more: ‘Site structure: the ultimate guide’ »

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What You Need to Know About Google’s New Maximize Conversions Bidding Strategy

For the last few months, Google has had an exclusive beta kept underwraps for select accounts at Seer. The beta is a new bidding strategy called Maximize Conversions.

The beta was initially only available to run as a 4-week experiment within a select number of campaigns that Google chose based on a specific set of criteria.…

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How to Onboard Your Selected Search Agency [Checklist]

How to Onboard Your Selected Search Agency [Checklist] was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Whether for the first time or the tenth, reducing the ramp up period when onboarding a new SEO agency is going to save you time and money. Plus, an effective onboard process lays the path to a productive partnership.

There are two parts to effectively onboarding a selected new agency:

1. Educating your agency about your business, and
2. Understanding their process, workflow and digital strategy for your business.

Here you’ll find a checklist and expanded description of checklist items for both steps.

1. Educating Your New Agency

At my agency, we use a new client questionnaire to build a brand brief for all our clients. Whether you or your agency is compiling the brief, the end product should provide clear answers on your audience, marketplace, competitors, marketing strategy and history, unique differentiators, and success metrics.

To get to know everything about one another, you’ll want to share everything about how you work and learn everything about your new agency’s processes. Even before your first meeting, put together a brand brief about your business to give to your agency.

Here’s your checklist for educating your new agency.

✓ Company overview
✓ Value proposition
✓ Competition and positioning
✓ Goals and KPIs for digital marketing
✓ Analytics setup and KPI tracking
✓ Website hosting and CMS
✓ History of marketing campaign service providers
✓ Audience
✓ Brand voice and messaging
✓ Writing style and tone
✓ Types of content
✓ Any other context

Company overview: Along the way from interviewing the prospective agency to inking the deal, you’ve given the 30-second elevator pitch of your business to people at your new agency, for example, their sales team. This brief is a great way to assure communication of your company’s background to your new agency’s operations team.

Value proposition: What sets you apart from anyone else in your industry or selling a similar product or service? What value do your customers hold when they align themselves with your business?

Competition and positioning: Who are your main competitors that court the same audience as you do? How do you position yourself as distinct within your industry?

Goals and KPIs for your digital marketing: What concrete and defined goals would you like accomplished through your SEO and digital marketing activities? What will you use to measure project success?

Analytics setup and KPI tracking: What analytics software is in place to track the accomplishment of your goals and KPIs? What formal conversions and microconversions are being tracked in your analytics setup?

Website hosting and CMS: How and where is your website hosted and content managed? Will your SEO agency have access to the system?

History of marketing campaign service providers: Who have you worked with before — agencies and vendors — for content, SEO, SEM, web development, design and other digital marketing work? Can you summarize the projects and what worked and didn’t work about them? Be sure to explain if you’ve ever suffered a traffic loss.

Audience: Describe everything you know about your customers — demographics, what they value, what they need and want. Of course there could be a few different types of customers who you speak to.

Brand and messaging: What exercises have you performed to clearly state what your brand stands for and the voice and messaging you use to convey it in graphics and text?

Writing style and tone: Humor, authority, stories, complexity of language — what guidelines can you convey to your SEO agency that communicates the tone of the brand? Inform them of any words that are taboo.

Types of content: What do you want your agency to know about the content you’ve created before and of competitors’ content you’d either like to emulate or avoid?

Any other context: If there’s anything else of note to convey to your agency, this is the place to include it.

2. Understanding Process, Workflow and Strategy

Step 2 of onboarding a new agency is finding out their process and workflow in order to create an expectation for receiving deliverables and responses for requests. You’ll need to get a concrete outline of the search strategy they will be using for your site.

Soon after selection of your agency, you want to become familiar with the inner workings and processes of your analysts and others on your production team, expanding your knowledge of the selected agency beyond their sales team that you’ve been speaking to before this. Here’s your checklist for understanding the process, workflow and strategy to be driving your search campaigns.

✓ What is the timeline of deliverables?
✓ How often is the project plan updated?
✓ How often will you be in communication?
✓ What processes do they have for editing your website?
✓ What schedules and forms do they have for reviewing new content and design changes?
✓ How do their capabilities for implementing recommendations align with your needs?
✓ What commitment to service do they make?
✓ Is your SEO a senior or a junior analyst?

What is the timeline of deliverables? When can you expect to see the project plan, have scheduled calls, and receive audits and reports? Do they run in sprints? You want to understand their tactical scheduling.

How often is the project plan updated? As a living and evolving document, at what interval will the project plan be updated? This is strategic in nature and is key to accomplishing your project goals and KPIs.

How often will you be in communication? What is the communication cadence of your agency team members? How often can you expect to hear from them? How quickly can you expect to hear back from them when needed? Is there a dedicated point of contact for your project?

What processes do they have for editing your website? Do they work through your staff to avoid errors? By a similar turn, what do their processes look like for evaluating links, server performance and other SEO levers?

What schedules and forms do they have for reviewing new content and design changes? In what format can you expect to receive new content or site edits? How are recommended changes tracked as the document passes hands?

How do their capabilities for implementing recommendations align with your needs? Who and what is available regarding labor and resources for education, mentoring, development, content and so on?

What commitment to service do they make? What assurance do they make regarding your dedicated staff and the meeting of your KPIs?

Is your SEO a senior or a junior analyst? How many years of experience do members of your team have? As a point of context, Malcolm Gladwell famously said it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become an expert.

Keys to a Good Partnership

It’s been said before, but the key to a lasting relationship is communication. Ensure you’re communicating with your partner and they with you, and come prepared to do the work to see the gains you want.

Other resources:

• 5 Things Businesses Should Know About SEO Agencies
• How to Hire an SEO, with Advice from Google

We can help your team as an invested partner in your SEO success. Our services are tailor-made to match your goals and audience. For results-driven digital marketing, let’s talk.

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Seven to Ten Business Days

I just lost my pair of prescription glasses. Well, maybe “lost” isn’t the word. I know where they are. They fell off my parents’ bathroom sink right into the toilet exactly after I pushed the flush down. Whoosh. Gone. What happened next is what’s annoying.

Buy Local, They Tell Me

I called my eye doctor’s office and asked them to order up a replica of what I’d bought the last time. No fuss, right? Just look at my records, get the same thing, and pow, I’m back in action when I get home from visiting my parents.

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