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Tips for Making More Interesting Blog Content

Tips for Making More Interesting Blog Content was originally published on: http://www.coronationim.com

One of the most significant problems with the idea of creating compelling blog content is staying fresh, relevant and interesting over a long period of time. The problem with this lies in the fact that every niche has a relatively limited number of topics that you can get into before your content become, well, repetitive. Nonetheless, there are so many different angles, voices and narrative techniques for you to discover. With that in mind, these several tips might be something that every single content creator might end up needing at one point.

1. Try storytelling

The first thing you might want to try out is a tad different approach from the way you usually write. For instance, instead of just going with a regular, run-of-the-mill narrative, why not start with a problem and hint on the solution (foreshadow) in order to keep your audience tuned in? This is just one of many narrative techniques that writers are using to keep their readers interested, even prevent them from skimming. Aside from this, you can also try to write in the first person, make underdog success stories and even resort to many other, similar storytelling techniques. It all depends on your audience, your preferences, and your writing prowess.

2. Invest a fair amount of research

Numbers change, and just because you’ve unveiled an important industry-related metric a year ago, it doesn’t mean that it still holds up. In fact, even if nothing’s changed in the industry (which is highly unlikely), the chances are that your readers might be turned away by the fact that the content that they’re reading is not from 2018. Therefore, you should regularly revamp and edit old content, even make a comparison as to how numbers hold up over the course of several years.

Furthermore, you need to look for credible sources, which is why it’s wise to look for government organizations or prestigious institutes. Just because you’re not the original researcher, people will still hold you responsible if you’re the one that they got that information from. For those who are doing a lot of research in their creative work, a dual-monitor setup might be particularly useful, since you can write and fact-check without having to switch between tabs or windows. This is also why your creative work might benefit from an additional Samsung monitor.

3. Don’t be obsessed with word count

As of late, there’s a statistic that blog posts that average more than 3,000+ words tend to do much better than shorter posts. This makes some bloggers try so hard to get past this threshold that they quickly go off topic, and it even makes them feel compelled to resort to fluff text as much as they can.

Sure, a quality 3,000+ words long post may be more efficient than a quality, under 1,000 words post, however, keep in mind that this only happens in a scenario where both of these articles are of the same or similar quality. Sacrificing your post’s quality for a slight algorithm-favoritism (potential favoritism at best) is never a good idea.

Besides, three 1,000-word posts can be stretched over two or three weeks, while publishing a single 3,000-word article per month won’t be deemed nearly as appropriate. Keep in mind that this is usually the same amount of work that we’re talking about.

4. Don’t stick to text

Previously, we talked about words and word count, however, if you aren’t that keen on writing, keep in mind that there’s no reason why you should stick to it in the first place. A video, a podcast episode or an infographic are just as informative and can be far more entertaining than their textual counterpart. Besides, keeping your content diverse may help you attract more audience, while at the same time making your job much more interesting. Remember, once you stop being passionate about what you do, the quality of your work will inevitably start declining. Keeping your content diverse is one of the ways to keep things spicy and exciting enough.

The problem with this particular idea lies in the fact that different formats may require some specific knowledge that you currently don’t possess, or they might even need some specialized equipment. This means that you would either need to enroll in a course and get some shopping done or that you will have to team up with someone from this branch and start outsourcing/collaborating.

Conclusion

The best thing about the above-listed four ideas is the fact that they’re not exhaustible. There are always new narrative techniques to discover, new content formats to explore and old content to revamp. In other words, for those who are serious about keeping their blog content fresh and exciting, there’s no excuse for failing to do so. Especially now that you know better.

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with many companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and a regular contributor to Technivorz.

from :https://coronationim.com/?p=13582

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7 Top SEO Tips for Using images on Your Website

7 Top SEO Tips for Using images on Your Website is available on: Coronation IM

In internet terms, a picture can be worth more than 1000 words, so choose wisely. Learn about using images on your website and winning at SEO here.

Did you know that using images on your website can be done in a right way or a wrong way? And we don't just mean that you're using the wrong images, although that's definitely a factor.

Images can be an essential part of your on-page SEO strategy, but you have to take the correct path to do so.

Interested in boosting your SERP? Read on, and we'll give you ten hot tips to help you make sure that you get the most out of your images when it comes time for SEO.

1. Pick the Right Images

All of the great stuff you can do isn't going to mean much if you're not using great photos in the first place.

Many places actively discourage the use of stock photos, but they can be remarkably effective when picked well in the first place. You can also use slightly off the track websites like Unsplash to find some surprisingly beautiful photos with full rights for free.

The important thing is to make sure that the photos are relevant and add something or don't detract from the overall message of the content you're using.

Bad photos, or even good photos that seem randomly placed, aren't going to get you anywhere no matter how much SEO work you do with them since user experience will suffer and Google hates that.

2. Size Things Appropriately

With platforms like Wordpress, it's really easy to take an extremely high-resolution photograph and jam it in wherever it might fit in your formatting.

And people do, frequently.

What they don't realize is that just because you've got a 480x480 frame on your site, that 5000x5000 pixel picture is still loading in its entirety behind the scenes.

That means slower loading times. Load speed is a huge part of your SEO. It's also a just a big part of keeping your site together, those with a high-speed connection who notice a page is taking an exceptionally long time to load aren't going to stick around.

3. Optimize Your Alt-Text

You're also going to want to optimize your descriptions of the photos. You know, that little rollover text that shows up when you leave the mouse cursor hanging around for a bit.

Insert your keyword, or a secondary keyword here, but do it naturally. It's actually more important to accurately describe the image in question than to try keyword jamming in a photo's description.

Alt-text is designed for web accessibility, which means that an accurate description can be used to help a visually impaired person view your web page.

This is another reason that choosing the right image is important: to maintain relevant alt-text you want something which is related to the content of the page.

4. Optimizing File Names

File names are the right place for you to add in your keywords for the most part. Things should always be relevant, of course, but it never hurts to add another primary or secondary keyword into your photo descriptions.

Optimizing your on-page with photos is all about care and the little touches, and this is one of those which can help immensely.

Click here for a good example. You can inspect the element in the background photo and see that the file name remains relevant to the topic and descriptive, giving it a great little bit of additional SEO.

5. Optimize File Types

A lot of people will tell you to make sure that all of your files are .jpegs.

It's not a bad idea, but it depends on the type of image that you're working with. Instead, make sure that photos are in a .jpeg format and any logo or vector art is placed as a .png to ensure that the colors stay more true to the original.

This can solve a lot of the issues people have when placing photos on their pages, where sometimes colors bleed and other "unexplainable" images happen.

You can also compress your files further, programs like Caesium will let you do it without sacrificing too much quality but make sure that everything still displays well before you finalize the decision.

6. Organize The Images in Your Sitemap

You'll need to make sure that all of your images are included in the XML sitemap. Fortunately, most of us use Wordpress which is remarkably good about keeping things updated but anything else, and you may need to submit your site to Google manually.

For Wordpress, there are a ton of plugins which will handle it for you in the background.

7. Keep the Rest of Your On-Page SEO in Mind

Your images can help, but they're usually not going to be the make or break part of your SEO unless you're vying for the top spots in a highly competitive niche.

That said, it's good practice, and you never know if you'll have to get more competitive in the future.

Using images on your website is important, both for user experience and SEO but if you go through our checklist of tips then you'll be in good hands.

The really important thing is to make sure you've got a full SEO strategy, including your pictures, rather than thinking a few file names and alt-texts are going to bring you up the SERPs.

Using Images on Your Website Isn't Optional

Images are actually quite important for SEO. Using images on your website is pretty much a requirement to rank, how many times have you seen something top Google without them?

SEO is perhaps the most competitive edge which you can gain when it comes to organic searches, and it's vital for all businesses. Your images may seem like a small factor but when you're trying to top things out.

If you're looking for more SEO tips, then why not dig into our blog and see what you can find?

  from :https://coronationim.com/?p=13570

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Understanding the Value of a Fully Optimized Google My Business Listing

The article Understanding the Value of a Fully Optimized Google My Business Listing was first published on: Coronation Internet Marketing Website

SEO, SERPs, the ‘Walled Garden,’ knowledge graphs and maps all thrown in with a mix of thousands of websites can boggle the mind. Every company makes a website with the intention of driving more business.

But with so much competition out there, chances are that a website won’t get much visibility from a Google search unless it’s engaging in SEO.

Luckily, some of those terms that opened this article can actually benefit small local businesses and give them a place of prominence on the all-important Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

One of the best tools offered by Google to get better results for local searches is Google My Business. A Google My Business listing could make all the difference to the success of a small business and even bigger businesses. Matter Solutions did some in-depth research and found that optimizing your Google My Business listing is incredibly beneficial for your website’s SEO, in some instances showing improvements of up to 30%.

What is a Google My Business Listing?

For companies that are not yet familiar with this feature, Google My Business is a free tool provided by Google for businesses and organizations. With the help of Google My Business, companies can create a profile and manage their online presence.

A verified Google My Business listing is more likely to be thrown up in the suggestions at the top of a SERP for local searches. In other words, an interior designer can get a Google My Business listing and have the business verified.

As part of the profile, the designer adds location and more details about what the business offers. The next time someone in the same locality searches for an interior designer, the designer with a verified Google My Business listing will show up as a suggestion close to the top of the page.

Being at the top or near the top of a SERP is every business’s dream come true. With an updated Google My Business listing the same interior designer stands a much better chance of getting a click than one without a GMB listing.

How to create a fully optimized Google My Business listing

There are a few steps that every company should be aware of when creating an optimized GMB listing:

Check for presence: The thing about a GMB is that one can be created for a business by anyone. A customer that liked a particular restaurant could build a GMB for that restaurant and add a review there. Before creating their own GMB profile, every company needs to check if one already exists for their business.

Claim it: If a GMB already exists, then the wise thing to do would be to claim ownership. There is nothing better for a business than for the owner to take responsibility for how it is viewed online.

Or create it: If a company does not already have a GMB profile, then is it time to create one. The process is simple enough and shouldn’t take too long. The important point for a business to remember is to give as much information as possible.

The name, address, services, any special offers, and so on should be added to the profile. Customer testimonials should also be invited.

Pictures: A GMB profile allows businesses to update photos of the company. This feature should be used to maximum advantage for a fully optimized listing. Photos of the beautiful interiors of a spa are more likely to attract business than just a written description.

Verify: To have the GMB listing verified, the company will have to inform Google who will then send a code via postcard to the business’s address. Once the code has been received, it can be used to verify the GMB profile. A verified profile is a company’s best bet at showing up on maps and suggestions on a SERP.

Keep updated: Updating a GMB listing keeps Google interested. Every comment, query, and testimonial that is responded to keeps the profile alive. Regular updates about new products and services also increase the possibility of the business showing up in suggestions for local searches.

The bottom line

Every company that depends on local business should have a Google My Business listing. It is no longer enough to depend on a well-designed website and search engine optimization (SEO).

Everything revolves around user-experience these days, and every search is customized. To gain maximum visibility on a SERP an up-to-date GMB profile that has been verified is an absolute must.

from :https://coronationim.com/?p=13562

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Are You Using These 5 SEO Strategies to Boost Your Lead Generation?

The blog post Are You Using These 5 SEO Strategies to Boost Your Lead Generation? was originally seen on: Coronation Internet Marketing Blog

It’s been some time now that you haven’t been satisfied with your lead generation results, so you are looking for quick fixes to make your leads grow overnight.

You can’t exactly remember where, but somewhere in some article some time ago, you read that optimizing your website for search engines can help you grow leads quickly and easily.

We will be honest with you straight away. Don’t fool yourself, SEO is not a quick fix. Rather, it is a long journey that will take both your time and energy. But the benefits you eventually reap will be more than rewarding.

When you use the best SEO practices over a long period of time, your website will be more visible to your potential customers, and you will stand much better chances to turn them into leads.

But before we start listing the most effective SEO lead generation strategies, we want to answer one fundamental question.

Why is SEO important for lead generation?

More and more users are no longer interested in paid ads. According to Statista study on ad blocking from 2014 to 2018, 24.4 percent of the people in the United States were using ad blockers on their devices. Moreover, this figure is estimated to increase to over 30 percent by the end of 2018.

In other words, if you are relying only on paid ads and neglecting the high power of SEO, you are probably failing to reach a large number of web users and turn them into leads.

Stats revealed the following findings:

18 percent of the people who performed a local search on the mobile device purchased the product or service on the same day or within 24 hours.

Half of mobile local search resulted in visiting the store on the very same day.

78 percent of mobile local search led users to an offline purchase.

All this shows that SEO is crucial for your lead generation. It is the language of web search and, more importantly for you, the foundation of successful long-term lead generation.

That is why we decided to list the five most effective SEO techniques that will improve your online visibility and ultimately grow your leads.

Know your target audience

You will not send the same type of message to your friend and your annoying team member, will you? As a matter of fact, you may not even use the same app to communicate with them.

That is the thing with SEO as well. Your audience is your friend, so you want to communicate with them in a personal and pleasant way using different apps like Slack. But to do that, you need to know them like the back of your hand.

What is your audience demographics?

You need to create a buyer persona with as many details as you can think of. This includes their age, gender, education, income, and so on.

Once you determine all this, you can use it to create engaging content on your website that will speak the language of your audience.

What bothers them?

This is a big one. Finding out your potential customers’ problems and addressing them can play a significant role in your lead generation efforts.

This is not to say that you should manipulate your audience. Instead, try to answer their questions directly and help them solve their problems. This way, you build trust and make them more likely to convert to leads.

Where do they search for information?

To turn someone into a lead, you need to know where they spend time on the web. For example, if your customers are avid social media users, then focus on social media platforms and get the most out of them.

Optimize your website

Once you have found your audience, you need to host them at your home and make them feel amazing. In this case, your home is your website, so you want to do your best to optimize it for your visitors.

Website speed

Nobody has time to waste on a slow website. And not only is your website speed important for your audience but for search engines as well.

Here are some tips to improve your website speed:

choose a reliable web host

optimize your scripts

enable caching

optimize your images

make your website responsive

remove unnecessary baggage (scripts, plugins, spam comments, broken links, etc.)

Landing pages

A landing page is essential for an advertising campaign. In fact, it is the entrance to your website. That is why you need to build landing pages that convert.

Always make sure that your landing pages are optimized for search.

A good landing page will have:

useful content based on the keyword that the visitor has searched for

no navigation (because you want users to stay on the page)

a clear call to action that will ask your visitors to sign up for email list through downloading a lead magnet (We will talk about lead magnets later in the article.)

Is your website mobile-friendly?

Stats show that responsive websites are necessary if you want to keep your visitors on the site. You need to understand that a mobile-friendly website is no longer a luxury but a necessity.

Therefore, if you don’t want to be penalized by Google and other search engines, make sure you create the landing pages that can help your business grow.

Optimize your content

The next step in your SEO lead generation journey is optimizing your content. This is a crucial aspect, especially when you know that only one page of high-quality content grew at an average of 413% in product signups for Freshsales in just four months.

Here are the most important aspects you should consider when optimizing your content:

Titles and descriptions

Titles and meta descriptions are what people see in search engines before they decide to click, so you need to optimize them the best you can.

Put your target keyword early in the title and make your descriptions appealing as this will make more people click on your content.

Page content

Include your target keywords in your content if you want to rank for those terms. Apart from targeting the main keywords, you should also include semantic keywords, which are the terms related to the primary search term.

Link building

First, make sure that you link your content to other content on your website as this enhances the website’s value and encourages your readers to go deeper into the site.

After that, you need to attract external links from high-quality sites through guest blogging, participating in expert roundups, as well as creating pillar content and mentioning influencers.

Content marketing

Even though this is not a content optimization technique per se, creating a solid content marketing plan and sticking with it will do wonders for your lead generation.

To get the most out of your content marketing, you should consider using content marketing tools as they will help you boost your content strategy and attract more visitors.

Think social media

With over 2 billion active users on social media platforms every day, it is easy to see why this type of marketing is essential. Moreover, social media marketing can be a very affordable and easy-to-use method to grow your leads.

Here are some tips that can help you get the best results on your social media:

post valuable content

speak the language which is used on the platform

use the combination of your landing page and call to action

use paid ads

organize contests

target the right audience using Facebook marketing tools

Finally, when it comes to social media, quality trumps quantity. This means that it is better to be more active on one or two platforms than to have accounts on all platforms and be unable to dedicate enough time to each of them.

Maybe your audience is not addicted to social media, but you have to build your social media presence nevertheless.

Google and other search engines take your social media presence into account when ranking websites. Therefore, fostering an active social media approach will have a positive long-term impact on your search optimization efforts.

The sooner you realize that everything is interconnected, the more effective your marketing campaign will be. After all, the Internet is not called the world wide web for no reason.

Use lead magnets

Lead magnets are special offers that you give to your website visitors. This can be any free offer which encourages them to subscribe to your email list.

It is very simple to use lead magnets. First, you create a high-quality post aimed at your visitors who are at the beginning or middle of their buyer’s journey.

However, you also need to create a downloadable companion resource such as a PDF checklist or a worksheet. The key is that this piece of content is useful to your readers.

These are the lead magnet ideas that work best:

Email courses and mini-courses

In a series of emails, you can teach new visitors how to achieve something. Similarly, you can host free mini-courses on Teachable, LearnPress or your website to show your visitors how to do something specific.

E-book

A free e-book lets you expand on a topic already covered in a blog post. In an e-book, you can combine several existing posts or even create new content, but make sure that the e-book content is longer than your regular blog posts.

Resource

If you have a post that covers a list of things (e.g., a shopping list or a step-by-step guide), you can turn it into a PDF file and offer it as a lead magnet.

Conclusion

As you can see, SEO is one of the top inbound marketing strategies, and it is among the most important lead generation factors.

It is far from being a quick fix. As we said, it is a long journey and a strategy that builds on itself. If you are wise enough to invest time and effort into optimizing your website for search engines, you will undoubtedly see an increase in your leads.

When you develop more high-quality content, optimize your website and use other top SEO lead generation strategies, you will start building an organic system that keeps your sales pipeline filled with quality leads and ultimately grows your revenue.

 Dave Schneider is the founder of LessChurn, churn reduction app. In 2012 he quit his job to travel the world and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time, he writes about SaaS and business at DaveSchneider.me.

from :https://coronationim.com/?p=13296

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Small Businesses and Social Media: Tackling the Essentials of Your Social Presence

Small Businesses and Social Media: Tackling the Essentials of Your Social Presence is available on: Coronation Internet Marketing Blog

It’s time to leave the safety of your comfort zone when it comes to content creation and your digital presence. You may feel right at home when you post blogs on your website, but disseminating your brand story takes a much more versatile approach to get more followers, views, and higher engagement. All of that, of course, for the sake of more loyal customers down the road.

Social networks are a place where your audience hangs out to be entertained, informed, and educated, with a much greater range of communicating. Through emoticons, informal comments, as well as shares, reviews, and likes, social networks have become the place where everything happens – including your possible customers’ decision-making.

Choose your platforms

Not all networks are created equal, at least in the sense in which you will use them to get your brand in front of the right people. Choosing the right platforms means that you first need to know who your customers are, which will also significantly shape the kind of content they enjoy. For instance, Pinterest and Instagram are highly visual, even though the latter leaves plenty of room for lengthy texts, they are predominantly used to create a visual appeal around your brand.

Then again, Tweeter is all about short and sweet posts that get plenty of traction, while Facebook allows a vast variety of content types to be mixed and matched. Maybe you should consider them all, but perhaps only two would suffice. Also, don’t forget the professionally-oriented LinkedIn, as well as YouTube as a great platform to educate and impress!

Create a plan

Even if you’re running your business all on your own, being an entrepreneur takes all of your energy, and then some, to actually grow your business. It’s not a coincidence that the tasks around social media are summed into an entirely separate job post, which means that you might even consider hiring a social media manager, or at least tech-up your posting to make it easier on your workload.

Now that you’ve established where your audience is, figure out when, how often, and how much time they spend on each network. Businesses all over the world have implemented social media tools that can help you create a desired schedule for your different platforms and organize your posts according to your needs.

Monitor and adjust

No matter how much you know about your audience, the fickle human mind changes often, even if not drastically. These changes in preferences, opinions, tastes, trends, and styles affect every brand differently. You need to know in what contexts your brand appears, how people communicate about your company, and whether there’s a fire that needs putting out.

You can learn from the best in business, as including media monitoring in Australia across many industries has become an essential part of any brand’s online strategy. You need to stay in the loop when it comes to the news in your niche and the latest events that may affect your business – and utilize the data to tailor your social media posts every time.

Diversify your content

As a small business, you deal with a large competition, which in turn means that you need to keep your social content game at its best. People get quickly bored with monotone, predictable posts, and they prefer content that provides actual value, in addition to being branded, and they least of all appreciate promotional posts. That is why you should do your best to balance the types of social media posts you share and make them as appealing and as audience-specific as possible.

The world has shifted towards a more visual-focused type of content, which lets you introduce imagery, videos, infographics, memes, gifs, and similar animations into your posts. That way, you’ll keep your audience interested! However, make sure that your posts have a purpose – whether they aim to educate, intrigue, inspire, motivate, or inform, they need to have an applicable value, or else they’ll end up delivering no results or engagement.

Meet your influencers

Finally, every business, no matter how small it may be, can make friendships with the right people. The era of influencers began a long time ago, but the trend is only growing. You can reach out to your existing customers to be your brand ambassadors on social media, or find someone who would do a review of your product or service.

This relationship alone will get you much more visibility and more engagement with each post. Influencers are the lifeblood of many up-and-coming brands, as they give your brand a more relatable look and feel, and your audience will always make decisions based on the opinions of those they trust.

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with many companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and a regular contributor to Technivorz.

from :https://coronationim.com/?p=13279

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Which SEO Hat Are You Wearing – Black or White?

Which SEO Hat Are You Wearing – Black or White? was first seen on: Coronation IM Website Blog

Like everything in life, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization for the uninitiated, has black and white areas of operation. In technical parlance, these have been defined as ‘White Hat’ or ‘Black Hat’ techniques; white for the acceptable and black for the not acceptable SEO techniques. But who decides if a method is good or bad?

All this fuss is about search engines, Google to be precise. Being the foremost authority amongst search engines, Google has defined a set of rules which outline how your content should be optimized. Fail to do that, and you will be penalized with bad ranking.

This post aims to highlight both the good and bad methods involved in Search Engine Optimization. Let's take a look at some of these white and black hat techniques which will either make or break your website.

Tip your White Hat To SEO

Applying white hat techniques to your SEO will ensure you give yourself the best chance to rank better in search results. With the use of these methods, you will also be preparing your website to face any changes in Google’s algorithm.

These changes or updates are aimed at improving the relevance of search results thus impacting optimizing techniques.

A case study that Andrew Dennis did shows how website traffic can be increased with the help of these methods. The visitors on his website grew from zero to 100k in just 12 months, all thanks to white hat SEO.

Source

Some of the white hat techniques that work best are:

1. Content Quality

Apart from being the most crucial aspect of any SEO exercise, this happens to be the most basic of all the techniques. Like any product, good quality content sets apart the good websites from the average ones.

Many Google updates later, marketers have wised up to the fact that keywords alone will not get better ranking, unique content definitely will.

Search engines like Google take pride in providing the best experience to their users, and anything coming in the way of that will not go down well with the search behemoth.

Keep these things in mind while creating content:

Originality counts - Being original with your content will pay rich dividends in the long run. Plagiarism can invite a penalty. Save yourself the blushes and stick to the original material.

Stick with long-form content - A recent study of search engine ranking factors found a strong correlation between long-form content and search rankings. So in 2018, in-depth coverage of a topic is your most useful white SEO hack.

Place your keywords where they belong - Use relevant keywords, woven seamlessly into the content. Overuse of keywords will have the opposite effect and can also lead to penalties.

Give users what they want - AI technology, Google Rankbrain has revolutionized the search engine landscape so if you offer users what they are looking for, you have a better chance of ranking higher.

The quality of your content is the deciding factor upon which your website’s ranking will depend. If you keep your audience at the core of your content strategy, your ranking will take care of itself.

2. User experience

Having great content will undoubtedly lead you to SEO glory, but the way you present it also makes a difference.

Google closely notices the amount of time people spend on your website.

And what the users get to experience on your website determines the duration of their stay. Let’s see some of the things that define a great user experience:

Navigation with ease - The way a site is structured effects not only the user experience but also helps search engines crawl better. An easy-to-navigate website will make the users spend more time on your page increasing the dwell time thereby increasing your credibility and improving your visibility on the search engines.

Load Time - Google lays particular emphasis on speed. With site speed being an essential part of their ranking metrics, it is imperative that your site loads up fast. This will not only better your page rank, but will also give users a smoother, all-around experience.

Google’s Page Speed will lead you in the right direction towards increasing your website’s performance. It offers suggestions and methods through which you can attain an optimal site speed.

The techniques mentioned above help you put on the white hat and climb your way up the search results. These methods will not only improve your conversion rate but will also hold you in good stead with search engines.

A black hat that is never in style.

Google is working hard to fight the unethical techniques which fall under the category of black hat SEO.

Matt Cutts from Google explains in clear terms how black hat SEO is detrimental to your website’s growth.

Plus with the regular tweaks in Google’s search algorithm, black hat SEO is now inviting heavy penalties.

Let’s see what some of the common Black Hat SEO techniques are:

1. Content Duplication - Search engines respect unique content. Content duplication, as a practice, is frowned upon.

As explained in Google support pages,

“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar.”

So refrain from using someone else’s content Also work on minimizing duplicate content issues across your pages.

2. Cloaking - Considered a major red flag, as per Google, cloaking is the technique of showing different types of content to the user and the search engine, for the same request.

This video by Matt Cutts explains why cloaking will never get you the desired SEO results you’re after.

To avoid cloaking penalties, place your images as close as possible to related text. Do not embed text within the image, instead place alternate text in HTML. Also, DO NOT use Flash as it is not supported by most browsers anymore.

3. Link Scheme - Google forbids any sort of link arrangement that manipulates a site’s ranking in search results. Link schemes can be of various types, like exchanging links for monetary gains, use of auto-generated links to your website or link swaps done with non-related websites.

If a search engine thinks the link adds no value to the user’s experience, it will consider it a link scheme that falls under black SEO.

4. Keyword Stuffing - One of the most prevalent black hat SEO technique, keyword stuffing involves incorporating keywords unnaturally in your content, in places where they might not even be relevant. Keyword stuffing is easily detected by the search engines leading to a demotion.

Conclusion

The methods mentioned here are by no means the only ones around. There are several other techniques that may fall into the black or white space.

SEO is an ever-evolving process, much like the search engines that it aims to win over. With clearly defined guidelines and optimization practices, the onus is on webmasters, website owners and marketers to provide better content and overall experience to the users.

With their frequent algorithm updates, search engines strive hard to make it a level playing field for everybody. Your approach can be black or white, but in the end, the hat that you wear decides your fate in the search results.

So which hat are you wearing?

Vaibhav Kakkar is the CEO of Digital Web Solutions, a globally trusted agency with a full suite of digital marketing & development solutions. Vaibhav believes in building system over services and has invested in multiple tech startups including RankWatch, NotifyFox and a CRM software to help scale up client agencies from scratch to niche-leaders with million dollar turnovers.

from :https://coronationim.com/?p=13067

[coronationim]

SEO Or PPC: Which Should You Choose?

The following post SEO Or PPC: Which Should You Choose? was first published to: www.coronationim.com

SEO and PPC are two of the most common strategies employed by start-up companies and SMEs, and understanding the pros and cons of these marketing techniques is essential when it comes to getting the best for your business.

And of course, you also want to be sure that your funds are being used in the most effective way possible and that any marketing tactics you use will generate the maximum profit. If you are uncertain whether SEO or PPC would be a better approach for your business, read on for a closer look at both of these strategies.

SEO

It's essential that you have some clear understanding of what SEO, or search engine optimization is and what the results might mean for your company. The consensus is that SEO is more useful for companies in different industries as customers looking at search engine results are over eight times more likely to click on organic results than in a PPC ad. However, if you are faced with an extremely competitive target market, getting organic search results can be a challenge as well as an often lengthy process.

However, being able to stay ahead of the curve is a must if you adopt SEO as a strategy, as algorithms often change, and many see this as a drawback. It's also important to realize that effective SEO is more about being able to keep your position in the search engine rankings once you have obtained it.

PPC

Firstly, you will need to budget more for PPC, as it can be very costly to maintain. PPC, or pay per click, is a paid search advertising approach, in which you are paying a small amount whenever a customer clicks on your campaign. There is a much lower chance of getting your company's name noticed in those all-important search engine results, although PPC offers a much higher conversion rate, with customers about 1.5 times more likely to convert.

So Which is Better?

Your company's digital marketing budget will be a significant factor in deciding whether PPC or SEO is a better strategy for you. If you don't have as large a budget as you would like, and the target keywords are very competitive, it can become very costly to use PPC, even though you can impose small bid limits on each campaign.

With SEO, you shouldn't expect to see positive results immediately, as it really should be seen as a true invested, yielding results over the long term. In general, you can expect to enjoy better results the longer you invest in SEO. One benefit is that you tend to know fairly accurately just what you are getting for your money, as a monthly retainer can be used. The bottom line is that you need to be somewhat patient; if you are the kind of person that expects instant results, then you may find that this isn't the right strategy for you and your company.

One recommended step is to find out the average cost of the CPC's in your specific industry to help you determine whether PPC really can be an effective marketing tool for your company. To help decide whether the budget constraints that you have would support an SEO campaign, you should make a point of finding out just how competitive the SERPs are in your particular industry.

There are some questions you should be asking yourself if you are trying to decide if a PPC campaign or a strategy that relies more on SEO would be a more effective solution for your company. As you can see, there are pros and cons to both of these marketing methods, and you want to be sure you choose the strategy that works for you. And of course, the available budget is also something that has to be considered, and whether a PPC strategy justifies the extra expense.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12915

[coronationim]

5 Black Hat SEO Tactics You Need To Avoid

The post 5 Black Hat SEO Tactics You Need To Avoid is courtesy of: Cary Blackburn

Most business owners today understand the crucial importance of search engine optimization. Every day, there are roughly 63,000 Google searches per second (or 2 trillion per year). And more people are searching on mobile devices than desktop devices in many countries, including the United States. The fact is, if you want people to discover your business, you’ll need to implement solid SEO tactics to make your company more discoverable.

However, in the efforts to improve SEO and put their website in front of people searching for information, services, and products, many business owners engage in black hat SEO tactics. Sometimes, this is done unknowingly, while other times, marketers make informed decisions to do what’s necessary to put their business at the top of Google search results.

Black hat SEO refers to “cheating’” strategies some people use to achieve those desirable results. The following black hat tactics should be avoided at all cost. You might get away with some tricks in the beginning, but that usually doesn’t work in the long-term.

Buying Links

The more links there are to a webpage, the more relevant that webpage is to Google. For this reason, many business owners will buy links to make their website appear more important to search results. After all, in the digital world, links are also considered “votes.” However, one thing many people fail to understand is that Google weighs where links come from.

Typically, companies who pay for links receive link placement from subpar sites. Google understands the difference between a link on a low-quality website that has low traffic, versus a link on a high-quality website that gets regular, organic traffic and has solid SEO.

If the link comes from a site that Google doesn’t trust, then it’s not only discounted but could actually hurt SEO rankings. This is because Google has an entire team that has dedicated its time to locating link selling schemes and identifying other black hat methods, and certainly penalizes those that break the rules.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is one the most popular black hat strategies. It involves overloading a post or page with words that the business wants to rank for. For example, if you wanted to rank for the term, “best websites for real estate,” you might stuff it throughout the copy of a blog post, adding it to headings and scattering it in paragraphs. Keyword stuffing is used to manipulate Google rankings, but it can have many risks.

First and foremost, keyword stuffing is not user-friendly. You may be able to (temporarily) trick Google into ranking the business higher organically, but you cannot fool your visitors into making them believe your site is useful. And if your site isn’t useful or user-friendly for your visitors, they’ll leave, which will hurt your retention.

Search engines can comprehend the bounce rates of websites: if your users are coming and leaving immediately, what does that say about your site’s usefulness?

Standard practice suggests that you should aim for a 2% keyword density. Keyword density refers to the percentage of times a particular keyword appears in a particular text. You can check your keyword density using keyword density tools. If you notice that your keyword density is on the higher end, you’ll need to do some tweaking to ensure Google doesn't flag you.

Using Invisible Text

Some webmasters try to circumvent the consequences of keyword stuffing by using “invisible text,” which is when the text of words is the same color as the background. This way, search engines are still able to crawl the page and recognize the keywords, while it doesn’t thwart the user experience for the visitor. However, in addition to the algorithmic reviews Google conducts, there are also manual reviews. This means that even if the algorithms catch you, that doesn’t mean you’ve gotten away with it.

A manual review is when Google engineers take a look at your site and decide you need to be penalized for some of your tactics. Typically, a website is manually reviewed if it shows up in one of Google’s spam reports. These websites are “flagged” because, although they may not face scrutiny under algorithms, they could have another issue. Other times, you may just be a part of Google’s routine check.

As a webmaster and business owner, you never want to be hit with a manual review, and should take the “better safe than sorry” approach to design. (However, if you recently were penalized because of a Google manual review, there are still some things you can do).

Duplicate Content

Having a blog is crucial for SEO. But when business owners don’t have the time and/or money to put into blogging efforts, sometimes they can engage in black hat tactics. And of those is plagiarizing, which then turns into duplicate content. When Google crawls websites for search results and finds the same content across multiple sites, it’s a clear sign that manipulation has been used to trick search engines. Search engines rarely show multiple results containing the same copy, and any links that are in the copy are diluted as a result. This means that in the end, duplicate content only hurts your SEO efforts.

Article Spinning

Article spinning is something like a “cousin” to plagiarism. Article spinning is when a person uses software to copy another article by spinning the words and rephrasing in an attempt to trick search engines into believing that the “spun” article is an original. But there are many reasons article spinning software should be avoided at all costs.

Many article spinning software programs spin perfectly fine copy into unreadable content. This is because they simply replace words with synonyms that don’t make sense, rearrange sentences and phrases in an unnatural way, and in some cases, aren’t spun enough to even be considered a new article. You also have to consider that some of the most popular online articles are spun hundreds of times, leaving hundreds of variations of the same copy all over the Internet. And many times, Google is able to recognize that spun content, and you’re penalized for it anyway.

If you see an article online that has a great concept and you insist on spinning it, then you should do so manually, and add your own flair. Spinning an article manually would probably take the same amount of time as editing work that was spun using a software program.

Image source: Search Engine Roundtable

CEO of Square 1 Group. Emmanuel is an entrepreneur, DJ, web developer and online marketing nerd. He is also a licensed Realtor.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12794

[coronationim]

Digital Marketing and SEO for HVAC Companies in 2018

Digital Marketing and SEO for HVAC Companies in 2018 is republished from: Coronation Internet Marketing

A lot has changed with marketing for HVAC companies in the last five years. In 2018 it's no longer good enough to say that your HVAC company does marketing online. Something as fundamental as a website is no longer going to cut it. There are 1,000 other points of entry and places that people find you online beyond sites that you need to be concerning yourself with.

Just Having a Website is Not Enough

The website is still important. The site still needs to be a center point and a landing page for all of your various sources, but by itself, it will do absolutely nothing for you. For instance, let's say you live in Seattle and you want to rank a website for HVAC in that area. So you excitedly put together a site “Seattle Heating” or whatever your business is called, and you build it, and it goes onto the internet. You may or may not be surprised to learn that that website is now sitting in absolute oblivion on the internet. Google may have recognized that the site pertains to Seattle, and it may have understood that it relates to HVAC and the heating and cooling industry, but it's giving you a very low ranking because one, your website is very new. It will prioritize sites that are older than yours. And it will prioritize sites for many, many various reasons, including the quality of your content and how much content that you have, it ensures that your content is not duplicated from anywhere else. And then even if you get all of that perfect, it then starts to rely on sources outside of your website to see if your site is an important website.

One of the primary ways it does this is by looking at what other websites that Google trusts are pointing at your site and saying that is a valid and vital website. If it starts to check those boxes, Google will reward you by increasing your ranking score. It's not an actual term but essentially what that means is how close you are to the number one spot when somebody types in, let's say, "Seattle Furnace" or "Seattle Air Conditioning." Having a higher ranking spot is extremely important when it comes to on-demand type business like locksmiths, HVAC companies, et cetera. If you think from a customer's perspective, they were sitting there, and everything was working fine. Then one day their system broke down, and they found out that they need to get a new air conditioner or they decided to get a new air conditioner, they then in 2018, often will go to Google and type in "new air conditioner."

Focus On What You Do Best and Let Professionals Do Your Marketing

Google will then geo-locate them in the Seattle area and serve up the results that it finds to be the most pertinent. Of course, giving priority to its own advertisements. All of this is done in the world of the search engine optimization company. All of this is extremely time-consuming. Generally, if you're an HVAC company, you want to be putting your time and effort towards doing HVAC and let professionals deal with the things that you don't want to deal with. With my own business, I don't like to deal with accounting, so I hire an accountant, I'm not going to do my own legal work, so I hire lawyers, and for steadily climbing rankings in various communities I hire search engine optimization people. For us, we chose Coronation Internet Marketing after an extensive search of multiple companies.

Work With Your SEO and Digital Marketing Company

Just because you hire a company does not mean that your job is over. A good internet marketing company or a good search engine optimization company will have expectations for you and tell you what they need from you to keep moving the ball forward. For instance, you should create content consistently. Maybe even once per week put out some information about your industry or market specifically. Your SEO person should be able to take that information to convert it into pages and other media on your website to help improve your website's rankings.

Start Doing Video Marketing

Digital marketing and search engine optimization are more of a foundation to what you need to do online. But there are many, many more layers and levels of what you need to be doing. For instance, to be successful in 2018 and moving forward, you need to, in every way you possibly can, push yourself out there into the world and get yourself in front of the camera, in front of all of your potential customers to let them get to know you. If you are a good honest person, people will be able to see that through the camera. They'll be able to judge you for themselves and decide if this is somebody that I want to do business with.

At a gut level, if people decide this is somebody I trust, and this is somebody I want to do business with, they will choose your company. What 99% of your competitors are going to be doing and maybe you're doing this yourself, is not doing the hard part of pushing themselves out there and hiding behind graphics, fancy lettering, and pretty pages. At the end of the day, customers are ultimately buying you and the more you can push yourself out there as a representative for your company, the more you're going to be able to convert these people into paying customers.

Be Social

That being said, not only should you have yourself on your webpage in photos and videos, the start to push into the world of social media. Social media is not a simple task. Social media is not a short-term endeavor. However, done right, social media is a lethal weapon. If you are comfortable getting in front of the camera, even if you're not comfortable getting in front of the camera, the important part of it is people can see you and judge you for themselves. When you first start social media your challenge is going to be forcing yourself not to be advertising to customers. You really want to give them some information, but you want to connect with them.

Let your clients and potential clients get to know you. Invite them into your world, into your life. People see enough advertisements every day to last a lifetime. What people do have an endless thirst for is connecting with new people and learning about them. Be that person, and you will change the game in your market.

Steve Gadsby is an HVAC entrepreneur and owner of Furnace USA. Steve hosts the FUSA Nation podcast, a show for and about home service professionals where he talks with other professionals and marketers. 

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12609

[coronationim]

A Beginner’s Guide to YouTube Influencer Marketing

A Beginner’s Guide to YouTube Influencer Marketing is courtesy of: Coronation Internet Marketing

As social media platforms become increasingly ubiquitous sources of information and communication, they also become fertile ground for marketing prospects. YouTube, in particular, has become prime real estate for advertisements and has created a new wave of opportunities in the form of influencer marketing.

What is “influencer marketing?”

To understand how influencer marketing works, you must first identify YouTube influencers. Influencers are individuals that generate content on social media platforms, have a large following, and whose viewers actively engage with their material.

Michelle Phan, for example, began posting makeup tutorials on YouTube in May 2007 and has built an avid following, with more than 8 million subscribers. As a result of this success, Phan became a brand representative for Lancôme, co-found a beauty product subscription service called ipsy, and launch her own cosmetics line. While not every YouTuber achieves similar success, marketers can team up with those who do to advertise products effectively.

Some YouTubers, referred to as micro-influencers, have fewer subscribers and views overall but appeal to niche audiences. These micro-influencers can be invaluable to marketers because their viewers tend to engage strongly with their content, which means any recommendations for products can easily produce conversions. This is especially true if your brand or product is fairly specific to a target market.

Why YouTube?

With all the social media platforms available, why invest in YouTube specifically? The Huffington Post reported YouTube reaches 100% of 16 to 34 year-olds, and 98% of 34 to 44 year-olds, which is more than enough reason to perk up your ears. Visibility without conversions is essentially meaningless, and so the most significant figure is that YouTube demonstrated higher returns on investment than television advertising in 77% of cases. When your dollars are working harder, your job is that much easier.

According to YouTube’s own data, 72% of car buyers indicated YouTube-influenced their purchase decisions in some way, as well as 66% of beauty product users, and 62% of smartphone users. This means a vast majority of consumers use YouTube for information about, recommendations for, and examples of products before they buy.

Furthermore, marketing through YouTube is still in its development, giving you some room for negotiation and innovation. The price per ad varies widely – between $0.02 and $0.20 per view, averaging about $0.10 to $0.15 – meaning you can plan your budget accordingly. If you invest in up and coming talent (that is, micro-influencers), you may be able to spend less for the same number of views. The relative newness of YouTube gives you some creative license as you plan your marketing campaign, in addition to being a little easier on your wallet.

Finally, YouTube provides analytical resources for marketers to help you strategize efficiently and monitor your progress. For example, YouTube gathers information about times of day various age groups tend to view and which devices they view from, giving you valuable data about when and how to advertise your brand. Google Brand Lift Solutions also gathers statistics directly relevant to marketers, such as brand recall stats. This provides a significant resource to plan your marketing campaigns and to measure their success.

Strategizing for Influence Marketing

The first step toward launching an effective marketing campaign is to identify specific goals. Who are you trying to reach? How much are you willing to spend? Are you trying to increase brand visibility by achieving a certain number of views, or are you more interested in scoring sales? Specifying your goals helps you measure your progress, which means you’ll be able to tweak your strategy as needed for optimal results.

As mentioned in the description of YouTube influencers, choosing your talent depends on a number of factors beyond the number of subscribers. It is critical to choose a YouTube channel that is relevant to your brand because their audience will be more interested in hearing about it. A YouTuber’s reach evaluates the number of views per video, which may not directly correlate to their number of subscribers. Even more important is the viewer engagement with the material, which includes views, comments, likes, and dislikes. Influence measures the activity inspired by the YouTuber’s content, as well as audience growth (whether viewers become subscribers). Lastly, you want to choose a consistent user, who generates regularly scheduled material, provides meaningful content and has relatively stable viewership.

Collaboration requires aligned values, beliefs, and interests. This means you’ll want to choose a YouTuber who will be able to genuinely get behind your brand, understand your goals, and display sincere enthusiasm to their subscribers. Focus on someone who has expertise in a relevant area, who is credible on the subject matter, and who has a strong relationship with her followers, even if that means foregoing a YouTuber with more subscribers overall.

Executing an Effective Campaign

Utilizing YouTube influencer marketing requires giving the influencer the reins. Remember, they have built an audience from scratch, and they know best how to get a positive response from viewers through natural interaction with the product. You may even decide to offer discounts, giveaways, or free products to viewers for an even bigger response. Keep in mind, though, you want to do this thoughtfully, so you appear to be a generous company offering value to a specific audience, rather than a desperate business hoping to take advantage of viewers to generate revenue.

Over-controlled, cookie-cutter campaigns tend to be fairly obvious to viewers, and can actually garner a negative response. This is crucial to keep in mind, because ultimately, it’s not only the influencer who will buy your product, it’s also (and more importantly) their viewers. Scott Cook, the founder and CEO of Intuit, remarked, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is--it is what consumers tell each other it is.”

With this in mind: put your efforts towards identifying and choosing talent, negotiating a fair deal, and developing some general talking points for the YouTuber to work with. This may include basic knowledge of your product, describing how your product can help them, and what makes your product different from (and better than) the competitors. Specify your goals and how you’ll measure them, and work collaboratively with YouTubers to develop organic, effective marketing campaigns.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12469

[coronationim]

Harmonizing Mobile Web Design for SEO and Usability (UX)

The blog post Harmonizing Mobile Web Design for SEO and Usability (UX) is courtesy of: Cary Blackburn

Long gone are the days when sites were optimized for bots, meta keywords were abused, and crawlers penalized keyword stuffing. Forget about purchasing links too. Other search engines including Google have developed to the point of being able to interpret sites just as humans do, and they are getting better with this deciphering every day. Thanks to this, as such, the gap between optimizing a mobile-friendly site for UX as well as optimizing it for SEO is narrowing at a rapid rate.

Data collected at the beginning of 2016 shows that smartphones accounted for 52% of the traffic to major sites in the first quarter of 2018. Based on estimates this percentage has increased the first quarter of 2015 from 31%. Google rolled out a mobile-friendly algorithm update during the middle of 2016, stressing the need to build websites offering better mobile experience. Therefore, what can you do to balance the mobile UX and mobile SEO of your site while boosting its ranking in search results? A couple of quick guidelines given below will help you get started.

Focus on the most crucial content for that page

When choosing content for smartphones, consider what the user may be searching for in a short time frame. Considering that they are using their mobile device to browse the net, one can safely assume that surfers either have a shorter attention span or spend less time on their desktop or a combination of both. What type of content provides the maximum value to its respective page? Is it possible to save space by trimming the content? Is there good content, which is more suited for another page? Assessing your on-page content is an excellent way to remove excessive fluff that takes up valuable mobile screen estate, but focuses specific page content for your target keywords as well.

Navigation and User Flow

How do your users navigate through your site when you trim down its content? What is the most common conversion path? Leaving the most relevant page or essential page links visible while hiding the others under a drop-down menu (or removing them from your mobile-friendly pages entirely) saves the time of the visitor as well as frees up space. A link from the homepage to a contact or services page is essential. You can put the link to an "our story" page or "about us" under the drop-down.

Optimizing Individual Elements

Blanket styling is an ideal initial step for designing a responsive site. However, do not forget that individual elements may require particular attention too. On occasions, specific elements may not show up the same as others when using blanket style setting. Grid layouts are unarguably excellent frameworks, but they too have their flaws. Perfecting the look of individual elements with small tweaks can make a huge difference and avoids having a user who going away because of unsightly, wrongly sized or misaligned elements and a user who stays.

Capitalize on Mobile Only Features

What do smartphones allow us to do that that the desktop cannot? Click-to-Call buttons are pretty much the norm on mobile sites currently. Are there interactions that visitors can accomplish with the page using a mobile design approach? Why do you not add a swipe feature rather than clicking between images? Does your address link go to Google Maps? Are button and navigation elements easily accessible on the mobile screen? Most users are right-handed, and most of them use their thumb to navigate. Therefore, you should keep these critical functions at the top right. Remember to synchronize your address and phone details with Google My Business too.

Minimize Forms

It is tricky to set up forms on mobile-friendly sites, as they have to collect information from the visitors without discouraging them from filling out the fields. Fine tune your forms for quick information gathering, as mobile users are likelier to have a shorter attention span than desktop users. Will basic contact information suffice? A primary name, email, and phone form could capture that lead quickly on smartphones with a follow-up later to gather other details you may require.

Interstitials

A recent update shows another excellent example of Google adapting to rank, based on UX. Does your site display popups when a smartphone user first lands on the page? You could now be facing a penalty. Before launching, Google announced that it would penalize sites containing these intrusive pop-ups... a sensible decision. These pop-ups, covering up the main page degrades the visitor's experience, unless the pop up includes details required to be displayed by law, like age verification, which alter your approach in gathering this information. It is better to use a small banner at the top of the screen, which does not block the on-page content.

https://youtu.be/OCN1CQ_Ywzo

The more advanced Google becomes, the tighter SEO and UX are working in tandem. Your mobile site creates an ideal user experience if it is clean and straightforward with specific content on respective pages. They send positive signals to Google's algorithm and boost your website's rankings while optimizing it for mobile.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12449

[coronationim]

Local SEO Guide: How Local Search Works in Google

Local SEO Guide: How Local Search Works in Google was originally published on: Cary Blackburn

  You probably have used Google Maps before. Almost everyone who owns an Android or iOS device would have used the app. If you're a regular Google Maps user, you probably are familiar with local SEO or Google local search. However, you may not understand what these terms mean and are also not entirely sure about Google local search's working mechanism.

Whenever you look for a specific term on your smartphone or desktop computer, you would typically see a part of Google Maps beneath the pay-per-click (PPC) ads above Google search results.

This is the 'local three pack' that provides users a mini list of three companies located locally. For instance, if I am looking for a gym near my office, you would see the three local business suggestions right above the organic search results.

In other words, you can increase traffic to your site by optimizing it for local search. Such optimization is gaining more relevance in the recent past since many users are now doing searches on their mobile devices. Your company would most likely trail the local three pack even if you rank first organically. Moreover, your company's visibility would go down even further if there are PPC ads added to the mix too.

Kindly note local search is all about proximity to the online buyer. You should have noticed from the example before that all the local pack listings were places, not more than a mile further from me.

Therefore, the question is how does Google's local search work and what you could do as a business to increase your website's incoming traffic while working on local business optimization? There are some ways you can optimize your site for local SEO requirements. Proximity is always a significant factor, but there are other factors too determining things and helping your site rank well locally.

Optimization and the Right Address Throughout

When putting together your company listing, you can choose a maximum of three categories for your listing. These categories let Google know what keywords your business would be relevant for, and also similar keywords. For instance, if you are a lawyer offering legal services, you could select the categories "divorce lawyer", "general practice attorney", "family law attorney" or even "personal injury attorney."

Another important thing when trying to optimize your company listing is making sure your name, business address and telephone number are consistent with the details there are on your website. There should be zero discrepancies. For example, if your listing says your company located on a particular street, then you must mention the street details to the T.

Also, it is essential you have a local telephone number, which shouldn't be the 800 number. Also, adding pictures would assist with the click-through rates of your listing.

In case your business is associated with multiple locations, you must create a business listing for each of those locations.

The final thing you should seriously consider when optimizing your site's page is picking the categories that correctly represent your firm so that Google understands your business better. You are permitted to select one primary group and a maximum of six other types for the Google My Business page of your company. However, if you had to take Google's advice on this, selecting minimal categories is the best route to take.

Strong Link Signals

Regular SEO signals have a say in local SEO too. The tactics that help when doing SEO optimization for your business work when performing optimization for your website locally. The number of links that point to your site and the quality of those links, along with anchor text optimization; matter when it comes to ranking a business well locally.

When dealing with local SEO, do not oversee the importance of local links, and also anchor text that has your company's address, state or city.

Local Reviews

Positive local reviews should be viewed at as affirmative votes for your business or website. Therefore, you must focus on garnering the maximum local reviews possible. Your company would naturally rank better in local packs if your local review score is higher, which means a lot more traffic.

Get in touch with customers and clients your team is in good relationships with and let them know how much their positive reviews mean to your company. Having a dedicated 'reviews' page on your website is another excellent option. The link should direct your users to the spot where they can put their Google reviews as you see in the photo attached.

Quality reviews on platforms such as Yelp and Facebook matter too, even though their significance isn't as high as Google reviews.

Ensure your reviewers are conforming to the photo and review content policies of Google. Google may not specifically ban companies that ask for reviews, but Yelp indeed does.

While getting local reviews matter a great deal, you should also go about getting them in specific ways. For instance, if your local business website has never had reviews to its credit and ten reviews are posted all of a sudden endorsing or critiquing your company within a matter of days, things would undoubtedly appear sneaky and fishy.

Also, don't let another party put those reviews up or do not post reviews yourself.

Long Story Short, Local SEO Truly Matters

Many users are currently searching locally on Google, and this is coinciding with the increase in mobile device searches. 50 percent of these people, in fact, make a store visit in a day, as per Google's study. Also, 34 percent of the people who search on a tablet or desktop also visit the store in person.

Google's study also indicates 18 percent of the searches made on smartphones result in purchases in a day, while non-local searches trail at 7 percent.

Therefore, these statistics that come right from the horse's (Google) mouth send across the point that while link building and optimizing for your website, you must be entirely mindful of the way a Google local search functions and how to drive local traffic toward your business.

Cary is the Co-Founder, Chief Technical Officer and SEO Specialist at Coronation Internet Marketing Ltd. He's been involved in marketing, graphic design and web design for over 20 years.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12370

[coronationim]

How The Number of Words in Page Content Impacts SEO and Conversion Rate

The post How The Number of Words in Page Content Impacts SEO and Conversion Rate was originally seen on: Coronation Internet Marketing Ltd.

Do you or your clients still bother about webpage content being "above the fold?" Let me explain if you have never heard this term before.

Content on web pages, visible at the top of the page without the visitor having to scroll at all is known as "above the fold." During the 90s, people used to think that visitors could not view important content if it was not above the scroll line.

Contact information, calls to actions, menus, marketing messages, etc. are incredibly vital elements for all websites. However, the concept of "above the fold" is rapidly losing it value. Studies have revealed that people, in general, are becoming more comfortable with scrolling, which is as comfortable as clicking, if not more. A ClickTale report that analyzed 80,000 pageviews reveals that only 22% of users scrolled all the way to the bottom and 76% scrolled down a bit.

If you ponder, scrolling always made more sense than clicking. Clicking might be a minuscule action. However, most people use it to locate what they are searching for, which includes a page load. Anchor links on a page combined with scrolling offers a much more smooth action. (Note: anchor links on the webpage are fantastic for individuals habituated to having main navigation on the website, just like FrisMedia does the same with their side navigation).

What does this mean for sales?

You are thinking about earning money and have a website that is still not ranking on page 1 of Google SERP. You might not bother if users want to scroll or click. You want them to buy your goods. Let us understand how longer pages affect SEO and conversion.

Why do longer pages convert better?

Conversion guru Neil Patel ran a popular A/B test on his site. The contact form was way below the fold on the original version of his homepage on NeilPatel.com that consisted of 1,292 words. The second version consisted of just 488 words and had the form much higher on the page. Neil discovered that the original page, apart from yielding more top quality leads, also converted 7.6% better.

Following this test, he experimented on the co-relationship between rankings and the number of words. The results astounded him. He found the following conclusions based on the top ten results in Google for 20,000 different keywords.

The results consistently show that pages having greater word count (more than 2,000 on an average) rank higher in the top ten results of Google.

Long form homepages, including that of Neil Patel, convert better than shorter ones for a couple of reasons.

More calls to action

Your homepage offers room for more calls to actions (reminders to contact or buy as the user browses to the bottom of the page) if it is longer. We have observed a significant increase in rankings and leads after we configured our homepage like that.

As users scroll through your long form page, they are studying your infographics, watching your videos, or reading your copy. If you have done your job of convincing them, they will be sold. This is the appropriate moment to offer a sign-up form or contact button precisely there so that they do not have to search for it. Your goal is to take advantage of every possible manner of conversion on your site. Users are more likely to notice the conversion points if you place them strategically.

Invested users

Neil Patel probably saw higher quality leads when he put his form at the bottom of a long page, as his content convinced his visitors. They understood what Neil was selling, read a bit about the product, and decided whether they needed his services or not, by the time they reached the form. You too are likely to see more conversions by the time your visitors reach the form if you write convincing copy.

Opt for five high quality leads instead of 20 low-quality ones, even if you do not notice an increase in conversions or leads, as the chances are excellent that those five will bring you more profit in the long run.

Why do longer pages rank better?

More shares

As of date, our homepage has more than 2,000 words, making it a webpage worthy of calling home about and one of the reasons it appears on the first page of search results.

This brings up the point of whether actual web page length or word count that influences rankings. Neil Patel stated that Google prefers content-rich sites instead of more content because they feel that the former is more valuable, and data shows that users like it. Pages with 2,000 words or more rank higher as they are shared more often.

More keywords

Typically more high quality and non-repetitive content is always better for search engine optimization, be it a sales page or a blog post.

It helps to include as many variations of a particular key phrase as possible when optimizing a page for that specific key phrase. For example, if I am optimizing for "Vancouver pet food," I might want to include "pet food stores in Vancouver," or "Vancouver pet food suppliers" and others. The chances of bringing in more traffic increase with the number of variations; more content allows you to include additional versions of your targeted keywords.

Conclusion

I depend a lot on the Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin. I am convinced that if the little dot goes from auburn to green, it poses no problem, as long as my posts contained a minimum of 600 words. This holds true even if I did not fully optimize my posts. Google has not yet stated if word count affects the rankings of a webpage, but it is not just the word count that matters. Let us look at it from a different angle.

Higher word count leads to:

An increase in the average page visit time

Additional links, therefore, more clicked links

More content for visitors to share

More call to actions, therefore, more conversions

While word count affects SEO and conversions, all of the above factors affect webpage rankings; hence, word count affects them indirectly as well. Therefore, you should include them while optimizing your website.

At the end of the day, what matters the most is making your content readable as well as optimized for users. Visitors will share and link to your web page naturally if you create content without keeping ranking in mind. This is unarguably the best way to increase the rankings of your website. Is that not what you are looking for?

Cary is the Co-Founder, Chief Technical Officer and SEO Specialist at Coronation Internet Marketing Ltd. He's been involved in marketing, graphic design and web design for over 20 years.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12330

[coronationim]

How to Keep Consumer Data Safe

How to Keep Consumer Data Safe is courtesy of: Coronation Internet Marketing

Infosec is critical in the contemporary world. Large data breaches happen periodically, and smaller ones undoubtedly occur constantly. Our lives are increasingly lived online, and to better serve the customers, companies want to gather as much data as possible. After all, consumers like their personalization. But customers also have to trust that companies will safeguard all this private data.

Hacking attempts are likely, and for large companies, they’re a certainty. So how can business owners protect their customers and their data while still providing an experience based on that data?

Gather only the essentials

This technique minimizes the impact of stolen data. If your main need is to verify the customer – such as when they’re logging in – it is better to only store enough information to verify them. That would be a username and password. Maybe an email address. There is little need to store their credit card details, IP addresses, full name, address, dates of birth, driver license numbers, and whatever other data you think might be interesting.

Take a look at your data collection policy, and cut out anything that isn’t necessary. That way, when a breach occurs, customers will feel less damage. And hopefully remain your customer.

Maintain transparency in policies

While you’re looking at your data collection policy, make sure it is easy to read and divulges all important information. Privacy and data collection policies are often not read by consumers because they are long, tedious, and written in legalese. If you have the resources, write a layperson’s version that succinctly describes the policy.

Then, when you experience a breach, customers will already understand what information was compromised. They can also make informed decisions on how much information to give you, preventing legal trouble later. Perhaps preventing a Congressional summons, too, if you happen to run a large, influential corporation.

Encrypt data

Since data is likely to leak, it is important that the data appears as gibberish. One of the worst possible ways to store data is in plaintext. If all data is stored in plaintext, hackers need only download the data and open it. If the data is encrypted, they need to download the data and either find the keys or crack the encryption.

This means that even if hackers can breach all of your other security procedures, the data they retrieve is useless to them. Theoretically, they could brute force crack your encryption, but more likely they will simply move on to the next victim who does not have encrypted data.

Encryption is not difficult to implement, either, on the disk storage level (where you will be keeping customer data). As for network encryption, Cisco published this neatly laid out checklist.

Outsource to professionals

If you don’t know what encryption is, consider outsourcing your security to another company. There are plenty of security-focused IT companies that perform freelance work to set up secure systems. If you already have a security system in place, consider an audit by a third-party to ensure your in-house system is robust. IT is broad, so it is easy for an individual or even a team to make a couple of mistakes.

Outsourcing for payment systems is an excellent idea for small businesses. PayPal is an excellent example: the company handles all of the security on their end, and all you need to do is pay a small fee for each transaction. Not only is PayPal’s security likely more robust than yours, but it is also reputable – customers will be more willing to finish a transaction through an established channel than enter credit card details into your website. If you don’t like PayPal, find another payment processor to outsource one of the most critical points of security for any e-commerce business.

Educate Customers

One final idea to consider is educating customers themselves. Show them how easily credit card details are stolen. Inform them, in non-technical language, of how encryption protects their data. Demonstrate how your privacy policy minimizes their risks. Have a short section on the best computing security practices.

By doing this, you will build rapport with your customer base, as they will trust your intentions. They may be appreciative of the effort you’ve expended to help them. And most importantly, they will understand how to protect themselves, even if a breach still occurs, reducing the impact on them and your business.

IT is a broad area. IT security is also broad, and data leaks will continue to occur, even with robust security procedures in place. However, you are less likely to be a target if you practice good security because the effort required for attackers increases rapidly.

Nick Rojas is a self-taught, serial entrepreneur who’s enjoyed success working with and consulting for start-ups. Using his journalism training, Nick writes for publications such as Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, and Yahoo. He concentrates on teaching small and medium-sized enterprises how best to manage their social media marketing and define their branding objectives.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12245

[coronationim]

3 Actionable Techniques You Can Use Right Now to Attract Search Engine Traffic

The following article 3 Actionable Techniques You Can Use Right Now to Attract Search Engine Traffic was first published on: http://www.coronationim.com

Previously, ‘falling behind’ had a different definition. Now; however, it means not ranking high on Google. You know how they say, ‘the best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search’. In a rush of technologically evolving businesses, it has become one of the key concerns for the tech-savvy.

The goal is to gain more and more organic traffic from search results on the search engines. Organic traffic not only means more business in terms of sales but also it makes your website more attractive to advertisers because only an interested prospective customer would land on the website.

Traditionally people would buy traffic (PPC), but there are several downsides to that when compared to organic traffic. Although reaching the ideal level of organic traffic might cost you a bit in the beginning, in terms of hiring SEO experts and investing in SEO tools, it is a sustainable approach. This is because on the other hand; you needed to keep paying for traffic using PPC techniques.

Similarly, organic results have high click-through rates compared to PPC advertisements. This is because users doubt the credibility of advertisements and have more trust in organic results.

A few years back, I came across a small business owner who almost shut his business website down because he was not generating any leads online. Upon investigating further, he told that he had constantly been posting products on his website but never got traffic.

Conducting some research, I found out his poorly maintained website was the reason. He had no idea what search engine optimization was. I gave him a few SEO tips which made him realize he was at fault.

If you have read this far, it means you have a reasonable knowledge of SEO already. I know you are not here for basic SEO tips, which is why we shall discuss some more advanced tips that can help you proceed in your organic traffic game.

1. Broken Link Building

You must know that backlinks play a great role in the ranking of a webpage. In other words, more and more domains linking to your page means higher rankings on the search engine for your page.

So, what is a broken link?

Also referred to as a Dead Link, a broken link refers to a link on a page that does not work. Either the link does not exist anymore for some reason, or it is an improper (improperly inserted) link.

In a broken link building strategy, you find pages that have broken links and then suggest to them your link as a replacement for that broken link. If you want to go a step further, you can look for all the pages that link to that same broken link and then suggest to all of them, your link, instead. This is known as ‘Deep Broken Link Building.’

Let us briefly go through the steps of how you can do it.

Step 1. Find links pages, as they are the best place to look for broken links.

Use Google search term “keyword inurl:links.” This will give hundreds of results of pages containing links with your keyword in them.

Use simple Google results bookmarklet tool to get the results in a list form.

Use another tool to remove the duplicates from the list.

Step 2. Check for link ranking. Using a tool such as Ahrefs, you can find out the ranking of the domains and sort them accordingly. This would help you figure out which link you want to target first.

Step 3. Using SEO Spider tool you can now find which of the domains have broken links. It will also fetch the broken links from those pages.

Step 4. Using Ahrefs batch analysis tool, you can find out how many domains refer to each of the broken links you just fetched.

Step 5. Using another tool, e.g., BuzzStream, you can reach out to all of the domain owners at once, who have a particular broken link on their page. Prepare your pitch well – the way you structure your email will decide if the owner is convinced.

2. Content Re-launch

Many platforms that provide SEO tips for beginners tend to miss out this important strategy. This is primarily because it is a relatively newer tactic.

This strategy involves optimizing your previous posts and then reposting them. This strategy has proven quite beneficial for some. A great example that set a precedent for many is Hubspot.

Let us discuss in the light of their case, how they increased their traffic by 106% by using their content re-launch strategy.

In the process they refer to as ‘Historical Optimization,’ they optimize their old blog content to make it fresh and up to date. This also includes better SEO and rectifying the mistakes in the past. So how old is old content? There is no set definition, according to them. It can be a week old or a year, or even more.

I will highlight how they went about it so that you have a clearer picture of what content re-launch is and help you construct your re-launch strategy.

Upon analysis of their posts from the past, they found that their older posts were performing better than the new posts. Another surprising element of the report was that they generated 46% of their leads from the top 30 posts, which only made up 0.5 percent of their total posts.

This led them to set their goals accordingly, considering two outcomes.

To get more leads from high traffic blogs with low conversion rates.

To get more traffic on the blogs with higher conversion rates.

This helped them identify their re-launch strategy. They figured the lowest yielding posts despite high traffic so that they could optimize them in a way to get more conversions from them. On the other hand, they found that the posts that had high conversions did not get much traffic. They could now optimize that post to gain more traffic and generate more leads overall.

This is why it is suggested that you not only focus on the new content but also make use of the old content and optimize it to get more traffic and more leads.

The image below shows the traffic on some of their posts before and after optimization.

3. HARO

Some of us still are not aware of HARO. However, it is the most powerful means for small businesses and entrepreneurs to gain media attention and be featured in press releases.

HARO is the acronym for Help A Reporter Out. It was formed as a platform for journalists and/or reporters to interact with the experts of a field, which they had to write for. Those experts, in turn, got PR opportunities from the journalists.

HARO has turned into a business and has evolved much more. You can make an account and start getting emails full of queries from reporters of well-established news platforms. This would not only help you interact with them, but you can also place backlinks in the content that you provide them, as your contribution. This would generate more traffic to your website or whatever webpage you intend.

Remember, though it will not sound like an impressive tool at first, backlinks from media sites are the strongest, as they reflect authenticity and credibility.

Tips on HARO

Given it is a big outlet – there would be many responses to a single query. You need to plan your pitch accordingly for your response to stand out. It requires a lot of patience to utilize such a platform.

Give them the exact response that they need, so that they do not have to edit it. When they find the content rich and useful, they will just copy-paste it along with your links placed in it.

Address everything the reporter has asked, and do not miss out an important point. Otherwise, your response will not stand a good chance of being used by the reporter.

Place the link wisely. An author’s bio is a good way to place a link to your organization.

Over to You

Do not undermine the potential that the worldwide web has. If you think your blog or business website is not generating as much traffic as it should, it does not mean you are in a bad business. You just have to let people know you exist, and it is never too late to do so.

If you are not already utilizing the power of blogs, do it now. They are a great way to highlight the pain points of the potential consumers and to present how your business solves them. Blogs also help your website rank higher in search results.

To begin with, you can use keyword research tools to help optimize your content. Do not let any constraints hold you back.

This is the right time, so take the first step, and you will see your business grow.

Bill Acholla is a digital marketer helping small business owners build their brand through content marketing. If you like this article, check out his business blog at Billacholla.com for more actionable marketing tips.

  from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12237

[coronationim]

Four Tips For Better YouTube Marketing for Your Business

Four Tips For Better YouTube Marketing for Your Business is courtesy of: Coronation Internet Marketing Website

If you'd like to stand out from the crowd, it's important to try different strategies and get out of your comfort zone. One of the best ways to promote your business is through a YouTube channel. YouTube is also a great way to earn some extra income. There are a few ways you'll want to become intentional when you're approaching an entity like YouTube. Consider these four tips to get started.

1. Develop High-Quality Videos

Even if you don't have any experience with video creation and editing, it's not very hard to learn. Understand that you don't need a DSLR camera to get started. Start with the camera on your smartphone. Record with lots of natural light and purchase a lapel mic to record the audio. If you can naturally speak loudly and clearly, make sure to speak up for the video. There are tons of video editing programs you can purchase and download. Take your time to learn the process and you can create your own custom videos for YouTube.

2. Maintain a Strict Level of Discipline and Consistency

There are so many YouTube channels that have been in existence for years. They have millions of subscribers, lots of brand deals and a strong online presence. There's no way you can compete with them. This is why you should never try. When it comes to YouTube, you just need to sit down and focus on your race. Don't look at the journey as a competition. There will be people who love your brand because of you. Over time, those followers will find you and buy into your brand. However, in order to make things happen, you've got to be consistent. If you don't have a strong work ethic and a serious level of discipline, it's going to be difficult to get anything done. Create an editorial schedule and do your best to stick to it. Ideally, you'll want to produce videos once or twice a week at the very least.

3. Use Eye-Catching Thumbnails and SEO Tactics

The visual aspect of YouTube is important to consider because first impressions are lasting impressions. Take a look at what people tend to gravitate towards when it comes to your brand. Create thumbnails that honor the colors, pictures and fonts that seem to do well. It's also wise to look up the right keywords and insert them into your titles and descriptions on a consistent basis.

4. Prepare an Excellent Website

An excellent website will impress your followers and make them want to learn even more about what you have to offer. Maintain a strong online store and utilize the power of systems to keep everything in order. Make sure that people can easily opt into your email list. When they're ready to make purchases, make sure to have a good online shopping cart system so that the transactions run smoothly. Once you properly manage all of these aspects, your brand will be in great shape.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12230

[coronationim]

10 of the Best Components for a Strong On-Page SEO

10 of the Best Components for a Strong On-Page SEO was first seen on: http://www.coronationim.com/

Being one of the first results of a Google search can be a game changer for your brand. The impact that being #1 in targeted keyword rankings can have on your bottom-line cannot be expressed. But how do you step-up and become the leader of the pack?

A set of effective on-page SEO techniques could be the missing piece of your puzzle. They are the cornerstone of any good SEO strategy. In fact, 61% of respondents in a study said improving SEO is one of their top priorities for inbound marketing.

The crux of the matter is that by improving your on-page SEO, you can improve your search rankings. If you increase the number of people who discover your business, you can increase the number of prospects you have. More leads being generated equates to more sales. Sounds pretty logical, doesn't it?

What is On-Page SEO?

Search engine optimization involves using techniques to improve a website's visibility and rankings through organic search results. Similarly, on-page SEO refers to optimizing the pages on your website to gain relevant traffic from the search engines. That includes both content and the coding under the hood.

Search engines have complex algorithms to determine search rankings. They take into consideration hundreds of different factors to decide on a rank. Obviously, you can’t control all of them, but there are a few that you can work on to improve your rankings.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important ranking factors, why they matter, and what you can do about them.

Highly Effective On-Page SEO Elements

1. Title Tags

Your page titles play a significant role in determining your rankings. Each page and post should have a unique title that includes the primary keywords for that page or article. The closer the keyword is to the beginning of your title, the better. But more than that, it’s important that the use of the keyword is natural.

The length of the title is equally important. Ideally, you should keep it between 40 and 70 characters. Any longer than that and it will probably get cut off when turning up in the search results.

2. Meta Descriptions

Many people often forget to add a meta description to their pages. They’re a great place to add relevant keywords to your content. While it may not directly impact your rankings, they do improve your click-through rate (CTR). This, in turn, can have a somewhat modest impact on your rankings.

Give some thought to what might compel a reader to click on your result over others, and frame a meta description based on that. Try to keep it under 160 characters preferably.

3. URL Structure

When choosing a URL for your page, be sure to use the keywords you are targeting. In fact, 63% of the best sites, across industries, have keywords in their domain URL. URLs should be search engine friendly as they ensure better crawling. Shorter URLs are also likely to perform better than longer ones.

It’s better to use words and punctuations in the URL over codes. Session IDs have been known to add to content duplicity thereby affecting rankings. You can add cookies to your site to help reduce this problem.

4. Body Tags

It’s advisable that you break up your article into smaller sections and paragraphs to make it easier to read. These sections can each be given a separate heading to make the content more structured and easier to consume. You can make use of H1, H2, H3, and other such tags here.

Providing a hierarchy to the page’s content tells search engines which segments have more importance. Again, keyword-rich headlines will prove to be more helpful than generic ones.

5. Keywords

The importance of including relevant keywords throughout your content cannot be stressed enough. They are the key to letting search engines know what your content is all about. But keep in mind that excessive use of keywords can be just as harmful. Remember to use variations of your keyword as well.

Leverage tools like Google AdWords to see what keywords are trending in your domain. It even does a comparative keyword analysis and makes suggestions on phrases you can use.

  Image via Google AdWords

6. Optimized Images

Images are a great way to make your pages visually appealing. Use your focus keyword in the image file name, title, description, and alt-tags. Ensure that you use proper captions with the images as well.

Image optimization will help you rank higher in Google Image Search, thereby increasing site traffic. It will also help you reduce page load speeds and considerably improve your conversion rates. You can use tools like TinyPNG to create optimized versions of the images you plan to use.

Image via TinyPNG

7. External and Internal Links

It’s imperative that you have both internal crosslinks as well as outbound links to improve your SEO.

You can improve the chances of a search engine finding you by linking your page to other pages on your website. One way to do that is to refer to other articles you may have written in your present one. This helps enhance user experience and keeps them engaged for longer periods by providing more content to consume.

Use outbound links to articles or pages of other websites to establish your site’s credibility and authority. The Reboot marketing firm found a positive correlation between SEO and outbound links. Ensure that you’re linking to relevant content and pages that have a high Domain Authority to get the most out of this tactic.

8. Page Load Speed

A website that loads quickly is essential from both a user and website owner perspective. Users are more likely to stay if a web page is quick to load. A delay of even one second can result in an 11% drop in page views and a drop in conversion rates by 7%.

Make use of resources like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to track the performance of your website and derive actionable insights.

Image via Google PageSpeed Insights

Search engines like Google measure bounce rates and dwell times when determining your search rankings. A few easy ways to improve page load speeds are:

Minimizing HTTP requests

Reducing server response time

Enabling compression and browser caching

Optimizing images

9. Social Sharing Buttons

Social SEO is all the buzz these days. Social media is a staple marketing tool and brands should be making the most of it. By adding social share buttons, you enable visitors to amplify your brand’s message. They are a simple and effective way to boost site traffic and page engagement.

10. Monitoring Results

No matter what changes and optimizations you make, it’s important to gauge your performance and check your results. You can’t boast having an effective on-page SEO if you can’t track the results.

You can use tools like Pro Rank Tracker, for example, to check your search rankings. It even provides you with insights on how to improve your SEO.

Image via Pro Rank Tracker

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to on-page SEO than just publishing relevant content and having links in your articles. As a marketer, you’ll have to account for other factors too, like the ones discussed above. Once you get your on-page SEO game on-point, you’ll see marked differences in your page performance and site traffic.

These techniques will help build the value of your pages and the relevancy of your internal pages for particular keywords. If you have any points to add, then we’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant that specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.

from :http://coronationim.com/?p=12182