Key Takeaways

• Backlinks act as votes of confidence between websites. They improve trust and authority, making you shine above the competition in the eyes of search engines.
• High-quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant sources have been a cornerstone of search engine optimization rankings and increasing your organic traffic.
• Having a smart ratio of dofollow vs nofollow links, different types of anchor text, and a diverse set of linking domains makes your backlink profile look natural.
• Strategies like guest posting, broken link building, and creating link-worthy content such as guides and infographics are effective for gaining backlinks.
• Conduct regular audits of your backlink profile to identify any toxic backlinks. By disavowing these links you’ll ensure your SEO efforts are more robust and long-lasting.
• Tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush can help you analyze your backlink profile, track your progress, and keep you informed to make strategic improvements over time.

Backlinks are links that go from one site to another. They function as a type of vote of confidence for the content being linked to. They are important—vital, even—to search engine optimization (SEO).

By judging websites, they allow search engines to figure out credibility and relevance. Relevant, high-quality backlinks are one of the best ways to improve a site’s visibility in search results, leading to more organic traffic. These are hard-earned links, pointing to your content, from original sources, such as blogs, news sites, or social media conversations.

You typically earn them by producing useful, link-worthy content. How do backlinks work and why are they important? Understanding backlinks is critical to developing a great online presence.

They raise visibility, improve rankings, and create opportunities for connection and collaboration. This engagement makes them a linchpin of any successful digital marketing strategy.

What Are Backlinks

Backlinks are the lifeblood of the internet, its underlying structure. They are what links web pages together and play a crucial role in determining how websites connect with one another and earn visibility in the search engines. They lead users on a path to conversion.

Simultaneously, they are key components that help form a site’s overall authority and trustworthiness in the digital landscape.

Definition of Backlinks

Backlinks, or inbound links (or sometimes incoming links), are hyperlinks from one website to your own. They pass person and link equity value from the linking site to a specific page on the receiving site.

These links come in two types: dofollow and nofollow. These are the backlinks that pass authority to the linked page, making them extremely important for SEO. On the contrary, while nofollow links don’t pass authority, they are still extremely valuable for driving quality traffic.

Search engines rely on backlinks to find and index new content. If site B links to a new blog post on site A, search engine crawlers go into action. Google follows this link, indexes the post in question, and determines its relevancy.

How Backlinks Work

Backlinks serve as votes of confidence to search engines, showing that the content being linked to is a trustworthy source. Search engine crawlers look at backlinks to determine how to rank pages, including the quality and relevance of each backlink.

For instance, a link that comes from a highly trusted site, such as a .gov, has more weight. A link from a spammy niche blog is much less valuable.

Search crawlers use these links to navigate and connect web content. For instance, an article on solar energy linked by a leading environmental organization is not only indexed faster but seen as more authoritative.

Role of Backlinks in SEO

Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors, so they have a direct impact on your SEO performance. Created by Google’s co-founder Larry Page, the original PageRank algorithm determined a webpage’s authority by the quality and quantity of backlinks.

Indeed, strong backlinks—particularly from authoritative, well-respected domains—carry far more weight to improve a site’s visibility and ranking than hundreds or thousands of weak, low-quality links.

Internal and external backlinks pass link equity too. While internal links help connect a site’s pages together, external links coming from other domains help establish authority.

For instance, having a backlink from a highly trusted news organization tells search engines that you are valuable, and can lead to higher rankings.

Why Backlinks Are Important

Backlinks are a huge factor in how a website is seen online. These votes of confidence are precious, passing from one site to another. They let search engines know that your content is high-quality and credible.

Backlinks increase referral traffic and help you rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). Backlinks aren’t just a nice to have thing – they are the foundation of any successful SEO strategy.

Boosting Website Authority

So when an authoritative site links to your site, it’s like they’re passing on some of their authority and credibility to you. This backlinks process increases your domain authority, one of the most important factors in search engine rankings.

Backlinks are like votes of confidence, testifying that the most authoritative sources in your industry see value in your content. As an example, getting a backlink from a high-authority site like a major news organization or a respected industry leader can boost your website’s authority dramatically.

Building a strong backlink profile over time increases your authority. This results in sustained, long-term benefits and puts you at a competitive advantage in your niche.

Increasing Organic Traffic

Referral traffic from backlinks can lead to more highly targeted visitors. For example, a link from an influential blog within your industry can drive highly targeted traffic from readers who are already invested in your subject matter.

This type of traffic is more targeted, leading to higher engagement rates and increased chances of conversion. They’re a huge part of getting higher search rankings and more organic traffic too.

Viral content sharing is an added bonus when backlinks help you reach a wider audience.

Enhancing Search Engine Rankings

In fact, search engines like Google still rank backlinks among their top ranking factors. A diverse backlink profile, meaning you have lots of links from other reputable sources, gives you more chances to be visible in search results.

Backlinks from sites within your niche are even more powerful, boosting your site’s ability to rank for the keywords you’re targeting. This mix of relevance and diversity is everything needed for long-term search success.

Characteristics of Quality Backlinks

Quality backlinks are the bedrock of effective SEO. They are defined by three key traits: relevance, authority, and diversity. These are the qualities that search engines look for in links and how they add to your site’s trustworthiness.

When you know what these characteristics are, you’ll know how to make meaningful connections that go beyond collecting links.

Links from Trusted Sources

Backlinks from high-authority websites are very powerful. Search engines, especially Google, want links from the most trusted domains in the world because those links indicate trust.

For example, links from authority sites such as a government (.gov) or educational (.edu) domains are highly regarded. The domain alone does not prove authority—it’s the content and reputation quality that count.

Links from spammy, low-quality sites are bad for your site’s rankings. Prioritize editorially placed links. They make up 80-90% of all links on good sites, and they just fit into the content.

Relevance of Linking Sites

The context of the link matters — the relevance of the linking site is just as important. Backlinks from other websites or pages in your niche carry much more weight.

A health blog linking to a fitness-related brand carries more weight than a financial site. Conversely, a link from an unrelated site adds almost no value.

These links help SEO because they are consistent with sources that are relevant. In addition, they strengthen the user experience, often by establishing these valuable connections directly in the content. Contextual backlinks placed within the body of an article carry particular weight.

Effective Use of Anchor Text

Anchor text, or the visible text inside a link, plays a major role in how search engines understand the link. It is true that using targeted keywords in your anchor text can help improve rankings, but moderation is important.

Over-optimization by using repetitive anchor text will get you penalized. A mix of generic phrases like “learn more” and branded terms, such as a company name, is considered good practice.

These types of variations are crucial to create a natural and diverse link profile.

Importance of Dofollow Links

Dofollow links are important since those links pass link equity, which helps improve your SEO rankings. Nofollow links do not help rankings directly but they do bring referral traffic and establish brand awareness.

A realistic backlink profile includes a mix of all three types of backlinks. Striking this balance lowers your chances of being flagged as tricksy by search engine algorithms.

Unique Linking Domains

Diversity of linking domains is a very important characteristic. Backlinks from a diverse range of unique domains boost a site’s authority and credibility.

For instance, getting links from 20 unique domains carries more value than 20 links from a single domain. After a point, several links from the same source provide decreasing returns to scale, which further accentuates the value of variety.

Types of Valuable Backlinks

There are two main types of backlinks, and one largely determines how your website will perform in search engine rankings. Not only do they drive direct traffic, but they signal trust and authority to search engines. Here’s the catch—not every backlink is a good backlink. Each type of valuable backlink, such as high quality backlinks, has its own unique purpose, but aiming for a mix of them helps create a complete, diverse, and powerful backlinking strategy. Below, we explain the most valuable types of backlinks and how they can help you.

Editorial Backlinks

Editorial backlinks are the most natural type of backlinks to be included within top-notch content published by journalists or content creators. These links are usually seen as endorsements, showing the authority of your website.

For instance, a tech blog might want to link to your post on AI trends to help prove their point. To acquire these types of links, produce truly useful, evergreen content that people would want to link to. Google recommends organic links as the safest and most effective method for link building, making editorial backlinks a top priority.

Guest Post Backlinks

Guest posting is the practice of publishing expertly-written articles on third-party sites to earn valuable backlinks. This strategy not only builds your authority, but it enables you to reach a new audience.

For example, if you’re working on a physical activity initiative, writing a guest blog post for an influential fitness website can earn a backlink to your wellness community. The key is going after the relevant, high authority sites that make sense for your niche. When done correctly, guest posts not only reinforce your backlink profile, but they position you as the expert in your field.

Resource Page Backlinks

These links are from curated lists of valuable resources on focused topics. These pages usually include tools, guides or in-depth articles that provide supplemental value to their readers.

So perhaps a travel website’s “Best Packing Guides” guide would provide a link to your ultimate packing checklist. To earn these links, you’ll have to reach out to webmasters and demonstrate why your piece of content should earn a place there. Additionally, resource pages can drive relevant traffic to your site, improving visibility and credibility at the same time.

Broken Link Backlinks

Broken link building is the process of finding dead links on a website and recommending your content as a replacement. This strategy is a win-win for everyone—you get a great backlink, and the webmaster appreciates the help of a fixed broken link.

When a relevant blog has a broken link to an old marketing guide, you can intervene. Your new guide is the ideal replacement! Tools like Ahrefs or Semrush are invaluable when it comes to identifying such opportunities, making this a highly efficient method for building backlinks.

Infographic Backlinks

Infographic backlinks are the type of backlinks you earn when you produce and distribute visually interesting content. While infographics are often used for complex data sets, they can help break down complicated information into digestible bites.

According to a Semrush study, webpages with at least one image receive 555% more high-quality backlinks. Or perhaps a cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy trends that might earn you links from environmental group blogs. Focus on easy-to-read design and captivating content to encourage social shares and backlinks.

Best Practices for Building Backlinks

Building backlinks is a fundamental part of a strong SEO strategy. High-quality backlinks improve your site’s overall authority, which in turn increases your site’s visibility in search engine results. Effective link-building takes time and dedication, a long-term strategy that looks at diligent quality over quantity.

Here are some real-world tips to get you on your way to building a healthy backlink profile.

1. Create High-Quality Content Assets

At the end of the day, quality content is the cornerstone of any successful backlink strategy. Content like articles, how-to guides, and in-depth resources attract natural backlinks as they provide genuine value.

For instance, an in-depth article on “beginner’s woodworking projects” would be a hit with woodworking hobbyist blogs. Regularly updating your content helps to keep it fresh and relevant, which will make it much more likely to earn backlinks in the long run.

2. Use Link Roundup Opportunities

Link roundups are curated lists of valuable resources, usually posted by bloggers. Get in touch with bloggers who consistently publish these listicles and pitch your content for inclusion.

As an example, a personal finance blog with a post on “top financial planning tips” could link back to your extensive post on how to budget efficiently. Getting included in something like these roundups puts you in front of a built-in, loyal audience.

3. Apply the Moving Man Technique

This tactic is all about finding old or unlinked references to your brands or products. So, for example, if a blog featured your software but forgot or failed to link to your website, ask them to add a linking.

This strategic, laser-focused outreach approach not only adds relevant, authority-boosting backlinks, but it fills gaps in existing content.

4. Engage in Broken Link Building

Look for broken links on sites that are relevant to your industry and suggest your content as an alternative. For example, if a health blog has a broken link about “meal prepping tips,” suggest your article on the same topic.

A short, polite, and professional email to the website owner is all it takes to get the ball rolling on this one.

5. Submit Testimonials for Links

Share favorable testimonials and use cases with manufacturers of your favorite products. Companies commonly display these reviews on their site, with backlinks to the person who reviewed them.

For example, if you share a testimonial for a blog design tool, you might earn a link on their “customer stories” page.

6. Explore Guest Posting Opportunities

By pitching your content to websites that are open to guest posts, you can provide them with useful content and gain authoritative backlinks in return. A guest post on “content marketing trends” shared on a leading digital marketing blog could immensely broaden your exposure.

It’s a great way to build your expertise in the subject matter.

7. Leverage Visual Content Like Infographics

Infographics turn complicated information into a visually appealing masterpiece that’s easy to consume and share link to. Or, a high-quality infographic on the benefits of “eco-friendly home upgrades” could earn links from green living blogs.

By promoting your infographics across social media, you increase the chances of them gaining backlinks organically.

8. Reclaim Lost or Broken Links

Make a habit of checking your backlink profile so that you can find lost links as they happen. For example, if they remove an article that you previously built a link to, reach out to the webmaster to have it replaced or restored.

Keeping up with this practice makes your backlink profile more powerful in the long run.

9. Analyze Competitor Strategies for Backlinks

Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can help you determine where competitors are earning their backlinks from. If a competitor gets links from a resource page on “beginner coding tools,” get to work!

Produce that style of content to increase your odds of being included, too. Borrow ideas that work and put your own spin on them.

10. Focus on Link-Worthy Content Formats

Some types of content, such as in-depth case studies or ultimate guides, lend themselves to earning backlinks more easily. A case study on “boosting e-commerce sales with email marketing” might be referenced in other industry reports.

Having a clear understanding of your audience will help make sure the content speaks to them and really takes off.

Strategies to Gain More Backlinks

Developing a robust backlink profile involves a combination of systematic tactics, imaginative thinking, and persistent work. A comprehensive link building strategy is the best way to increase the authority and visibility of your website. Here are some actionable strategies to gain high quality backlinks to your site.

Build Links from Outdated Resources

Tired, outdated resources on popular websites are ripe opportunities for backlink outreach. Find a page that has a bunch of broken links or disconnected content.

Next, offer fresh, relevant content from your site as substitutions. For instance, if a website links to an article that has since been removed, reach out to the site owner and provide your relevant content as an alternative.

This method is not only more valuable, it’s more trustworthy — making it more likely that you will earn the backlink.

Convert Brand Mentions into Links

Tracking brand mentions across social media and the web is another great way to earn backlinks without having to scout for them. Tools such as Google Alerts are invaluable for tracking where your business gets mentioned.

When you discover those unlinked mentions, simply contact the site owner or editor with a courteous request to link back to your website. Keeping these brand image and personalization in communication will ensure your outreach stands out.

Target Authority Resource Pages

Authority resource pages list the best content around a topic, making them some of the best backlink opportunities out there. Find pages that have linked content in your niche and reach out to pitch your content as a worthy new addition.

For instance, if your site provides a comprehensive guide on renewable energy, submitting it to green energy resource pages can drive traffic and boost credibility.

Use PR Platforms for Link Outreach

Public relations platforms such as HARO (Help a Reporter Out) link you with active journalists and bloggers in need of your expert source. Replying to their questions with helpful data can net you valuable mentions and links from news articles or blogs.

Creating an enticing pitch that is specifically suited to their needs is sure to up your odds of getting published.

Publish Comprehensive Guides and Tutorials

Comprehensive guides and how-to tutorials earn backlinks organically by being the go-to resource. As an example, an ultimate guide to digital marketing strategies would attract links from other businesses, marketers and even educators.

Share these resources via social media and email campaigns to ensure they have the broadest possible impact and engagement.

How to Assess Your Backlink Profile

A diverse, relevant, and authoritative backlink profile is one of the key building blocks to any successful SEO strategy. By evaluating its quality on a regular basis, you’ll have a better understanding of your website’s authority and can make improvements accordingly.

Weeding out bad backlinks and finding new opportunities are how you can improve your rankings, and beat the competition in search engine results.

Tools for Analyzing Backlink Profiles

There are a handful of tools available to help make the process of analyzing your backlink profile easier. In fact, I know a lot of people who use Ahrefs and SEMrush. They love these tools for their in-depth reports on backlink quantity, quality, and sources.

These tools do a good job of pointing out important metrics like unique referring domains, as well as Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating (DR). You can check DA directly using the Search Atlas dashboard. It can help you determine whether links are from reputable sources.

Maintaining a healthy and diverse list of unique referring domains is what ultimately signals to Google that your site is reliable and trustworthy enough to rank higher. These tools can help you catch potential problems, such as spammy or low-quality links, at the first signs of trouble.

Identifying Toxic Links to Disavow

As we mentioned above, toxic backlinks can seriously damage your SEO performance. A regular monitoring routine will help you catch these toxic links, which usually originate on spammy or unrelated sites.

Using disavow tools, available in platforms like Google Search Console, allows you to safely remove such links from your profile. By keeping a clean backlink profile, you’ll protect your site’s credibility and steer clear of search engine penalties.

Tracking Progress in Link Building

Importantly, tracking your link-building efforts will allow you to continuously refine your strategy. Set clear, measurable goals like adding more unique referring domains or raising DA.

Monitoring increases or decreases in search traffic and rankings provides a clear picture of how your backlinks are helping (or harming) performance. First-hand research or original interactive content is a sure-fire way to gain high-quality links, like GoPure’s image-based backlinks.

Make strategic changes based on performance to keep the momentum going.

Conclusion

Backlinks are one of the most important factors when it comes to increasing your website’s authority and organic visibility. They link your content to a more expansive audience and show search engines your worth. By prioritizing quality over quantity, you’ll reap the rewards for years to come. Creating authoritative backlinks requires work, but the benefits are worth it in improved rankings and credibility.

Stick with what’s been shown to work. Produce compelling content, network strategically, and keep a close eye on your backlink profile. With a little consistency, you’ll be amazed at the progress you make.

Visit the next step to reinforce your backlink strategy. Continue to iterate on your process, and don’t be afraid to try something new. Those right backlinks can do wonders for your site. Keep your head down, and see your website flourish.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are backlinks?

Backlinks, or incoming links, are links pointing to your website from other sites. These quality backlinks serve as a badge of trust and authority for search engines, allowing sites to improve their search engine rankings.

Why are backlinks important for SEO?

Backlinks, especially high quality backlinks, can tremendously help your website’s authority and credibility. Search engines view them as votes of confidence, which means they can improve your search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic.

What makes a backlink high-quality?

High-quality backlinks, which are essential for effective backlink building, are links from relevant, trusted, authoritative sites. They are topically relevant to your niche, placed naturally within the content, and have high domain authority.

What types of backlinks should you aim for?

Aim for high quality backlinks from editorial backlinks, guest blog links, and links from industry-relevant directories, as these backlinks are extremely valuable from trusted sources.

How can you build backlinks effectively?

Produce exceptional content and develop a strong link building strategy by partnering with authoritative domains. Leverage outreach and relationship-building to earn high quality backlinks, as offering something of value encourages others to link back to your site.

How do you check your backlink profile?

Use free tools such as Google Search Console or paid SEO platforms like Ahrefs or SEMrush to check the quality and quantity of your SEO backlinks, ensuring they are relevant backlinks pointing to your site.

Can bad backlinks hurt your website?

Indeed, toxic backlinks can negatively impact your search engine rankings. This is important because search engines will penalize your site, so it’s vital to proactively monitor and disavow bad links.

What is SMS Marketing Software?

SMS marketing software enables businesses to deliver promotions, reminders, announcements and notifications directly to clients’ phones. In contrast to emails that can quickly get lost in mailboxes the messages sent via SMS are instantly and are usually seen to recipients in minutes after the time they are sent. That means that SMS marketing is among the most effective methods to grab attention and spur the recipient to take action.

Marketing software for SMS typically includes features such as personalized messages, automation as well as real-time analytics that can help businesses improve their marketing efforts. The features will ensure that marketers will be able to deliver relevant, timely messages that meet their target clients’ preferences.

What are the reasons to integrate SMS Marketing Software with Newsletter campaigns?

The combination of SMS marketing and newsletters has several benefits. It is true that the best newsletter platforms usually focus on email marketing, but the addition of SMS as a second option can result in a more complete marketing method. This is why the integration can be so successful:

1. Higher Open RatesSMS messages are able to have more open rates than emails. The research shows the SMS open rates can be up to 98% while the open rate for emails typically sits between 20 and 20%. Incorporating the SMS marketing tools to your newsletters you can ensure that your newsletter messages get noticed but are also taken action on.
2. Improved Engagement
   Because of the immediate and direct quality of SMS messages, businesses could prompt their customers to act immediately. If it’s clicking an image to view the entire newsletter or availing the time-sensitive offers and SMS could encourage faster response. It increases engagement and improves relationships between the company and the audience.
3. Personalized Messaging
   One of the major strengths in SMS marketing tools is the ability to deliver personal messages. When you send updates, an exclusive promotion, or an event reminder, SMS lets the user reach out to customers using their name, and to tailor the content to their needs. This, when combined with the contents of your newsletter could significantly enhance your overall experience for customers.
4. Better Conversion Rates
   The use of SMS marketing when used in conjunction with newsletters will result in higher conversion rates. When you send SMS reminders or offers that are tied to the contents within your email, it is possible to motivate recipients to take action in response to your call-to action. This method is particularly useful when it comes to offers with a limited time or other sensitive material.

The Role of the Best Newsletter Platforms in SMS Integration

To maximize the effect of SMS marketing to your newsletter marketing campaigns It is essential to select to use the best newsletter platforms. They provide the platform required to design, create the sending of newsletters and a lot of them have capabilities that allow for SMS advertising integration. 

These platforms perform an important role in the process:

Seamless Integration

A few of the best newsletter platforms make it easy to connect SMS advertising software. That means businesses are able to create both email newsletters as well as SMS messages using one platform, which makes managing campaigns easier. Through a system that is unified companies can manage their strategies for messaging and provide an identical customer experience through different platforms.

Automation Capabilities

It is important to note that the best newsletter platforms often come with automated features that permit users to plan SMS messages in accordance with certain events. In this case, for example, you could instantly send an SMS message to those who haven’t yet opened the latest issue of your newsletter, or send an SMS notification following a subscriber’s click on an advertisement in your email. Automating doesn’t just save time however it also guarantees that your newsletters are delivered to the correct audience when they are needed.

Comprehensive Analytics

Analytics are essential for understanding the efficacy of any marketing program. It is essential to understand the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Best newsletter platforms, when integrated with SMS marketing tools, provide detailed statistics that monitor both the SMS and email performance. Marketing professionals can see what messages are most popular with their customers and which strategies require improvements. Based on this information, companies are able to continuously improve their marketing strategies to achieve more effective results.

Segmentation and Targeting

A further feature provided by best newsletter platforms is the possibility of segmenting your subscribers according to their behavior or preferences and their interactions. In conjunction using SMS marketing software it is possible to deliver targeted messages to certain subsets of customers. It doesn’t matter if you wish to offer an exclusive promotion to the most loyal customers of yours or offer a product recommendation in response to previous purchases SMS and email segmentation can assist in customizing your marketing campaigns for specific groups of people.

Best Practices for Using SMS Marketing in Newsletter Campaigns:

Incorporating SMS marketing software into your newsletters needs a well-planned strategy to ensure the success of your campaigns. These are the best methods to ensure you are getting maximum benefit from the integration process:

Obtain Explicit Consent

When sending messages via SMS ensure that you get the explicit permission of the subscribers. There are regulations in most countries regarding SMS marketing. It’s important to adhere to these guidelines in order to avoid fines and keep the satisfaction of your customers.

Provide Value

Similar to email newsletters, the main ingredient to a successful SMS marketing campaign is to deliver the value. Make sure you send relevant, interesting messages that subscribers enjoy. Be careful not to overwhelm your subscribers with numerous messages; rather, you should focus on content that is of high quality rather than volume. In particular, you can send special promotions, reminders of events, or other important information that is in line with the content of your newsletter.

Use Short and Concise Messages

SMS messages are limited to a certain limited number of characters. It’s essential to keep messages concise and clear. Make sure you’re providing an easy-to-read, action-oriented message. If you’re directing your readers to your website or newsletter make sure to include a concise message to entice viewers to explore more.

Optimize for Mobile

Because SMS marketing is a way to reach mobile phones, you must ensure your website’s content can be viewed on mobile devices. If it’s a hyperlink to your newsletter, or an embedded call-to-action, it is designed to be easy to look at and navigate with a smaller display. Improve your website’s websites, landing pages, and newsletters for mobile devices to enhance the experience for users.

Monitor and Adjust

Keep an eye on the results of the SMS and email campaigns. Make use of the statistics that are provided by best newsletter platforms to evaluate opening rates, click-through rate as well as conversion rates. Based on the results you can make changes to enhance the effectiveness of your newsletters over time. The constant optimization of your campaigns will lead to long-term success.

The Future of SMS Marketing and Newsletters

While the landscape of marketing grows as it does, the merging of SMS marketing tools and best newsletter platforms will likely increase in popularity. As more people use mobile phones, marketing professionals are recognizing that they can combine the two to produce multi-channel promotions that are engaging clients at every point of contact.

The future of SMS marketing as well as newsletters rests in the capacity to deliver highly customized appropriate, relevant, and on time information to readers. With the advancement of artificial intelligence and automation technology, marketing professionals will be able to deliver more specific messages, and anticipate customer behaviour with more accuracy.

The next couple of years will see the integration of email marketing with SMS newsletters is set to continue to provide more positive customer experiences as well as higher conversion rates. The companies that take advantage of this technology can benefit in attracting their customers and boosting brand loyalty and boosting sales.

Conclusion

Integrating SMS-based marketing tools into your newsletters can dramatically improve your marketing strategies. Through instant communication with your target audience to increase engagement, as well as increasing conversion rates SMS is a great alternative to email newsletters. If paired with best newsletter platforms, the use of SMS marketing results in a full multi-channel communications strategy which ensures that your message gets noticed by the people you want to reach. While the world of digital is constantly evolving, companies who take advantage of this mix are able to stay ahead of competitors, establishing stronger connections with their clients and growing the overall effectiveness.

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But how do you get started with this process? In this guide we’ll take you through the key elements of creating an online site using Elementor and focus on the design, usability and efficiency. Are you ready to create your ideal online shopfront? Let’s get started.

Understanding the Core qualities of Elementor Website Builder

Before you begin the procedure of creating your online storefront, you must be aware of the key characteristics which create Elementor, the most popular option for creating online stores. The extensive library of widgets available in Elementor, templates, and other third-party integrations could significantly speed up your website design process.

Key qualities That Make Elementor Ideal for E-Commerce:

• Drag-and-Drop Editor: Elementor’s visual editor allows you to design in real-time. You will be able to immediately see your changes, without the need to toggle between various editing options.
• WooCommerce Builder Elementor comes with a specific WooCommerce builder that lets you build carts, pages for products and checkout flow without programming.
• Responsive Design: Every site designed with Elementor will automatically be responsive and ensure that your shop front appears great when viewed on tablet, mobile as well as desktop.
• Custom Widgets Elementor is packed with a range of WooCommerce-specific widgets, including price tables, product grids and carousels of products, that allow you to present your items in attractive format.

The features listed above make Elementor an extremely versatile tool that is suitable that is appropriate for novices as well as experienced developers. You can create a unique digital storefront that is as stunning as it is practical. Are you ready to begin creating your own store using Elementor? This is how you can do it step-by-step.

Setting Up Your Digital Storefront: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Install WordPress and Elementor

The first step of creating your storefront online is creating the WordPress website. Many web hosting companies have a simple WordPress installation that makes it straightforward to get your site online and operating. After WordPress has been installed and running, the next task is to install an Elementor plugin.

For installation Elementor:

• Visit Your WordPress dashboard, then click “Plugins,” and then “Add New.”
• Look up “Elementor” and click “Install Now.”
• After installation, turn on the plugin.

In order to use e-commerce features it is also necessary for WooCommerce to be installed. Similar to Elementor, WooCommerce can be downloaded directly via WooCommerce’s WordPress plugin repository.

2. Choose an E-Commerce Template

Elementor has a broad selection of templates that are specifically created to be used on online stores. The templates cover the homepage, product pages, and shopping carts. They give an early start to creating your website. It is possible to pick the template that best fits the brand you are together with or begin with a blank slate with the drag-and-drop feature of Elementor.

For access to Elementor templates:

• On the WordPress dashboard, navigate to “Templates” and click on “Add New.”
• Select “Page” or “Section” depending on the section of your website you wish to build.
• Explore the templates available and select one that is aligned to your goals.

You are able to easily modify every template to suit the brand’s style by altering colors, fonts and designs, and images. If you’re eager to start, now is the perfect opportunity to visualize how your shopfront will appear.

3. Customize Your Product Pages

The most important aspect of a digital storefront are the pages for products. They are that potential buyers will be spending the longest time. Therefore, they must appear appealing visually, simple to navigate and optimize to convert. Elements’ WooCommerce Builder makes it easy to build stunning product pages without having to write a single word of code.

A few important things to think about when creating product pages are:

• Image of Product: Make use of photos that are high-quality and zoomable for customers to have an unobstructed view of the item.
• Product Descriptions: Ensure that your descriptions are precise and optimized for SEO, with a focus on the benefits and features that the item offers.
• The Add to Cart Button: This button must be visible and easily accessible along with a clear language for the call-to action.

With Elementor it is possible to drag and drop different widgets such as product pictures as well as titles and reviews to design an attractive layout to showcase your items in their most accurate way possible.

4. Optimize for Mobile Users

In the age of mobiles having a storefront that is mobile-friendly is essential. Recent studies show that more than 50% of online website traffic is generated by mobile devices. The good news is that Elementor allows you to assure your website looks and performs flawlessly on phones as well as tablets.

Thanks to Elementor’s adaptive design capabilities that allow you to change between tablet, desktop as well as mobile-friendly views when editing your site. This lets you adjust the design to each screen, making sure that your website’s elements appear flawless regardless of the screen’s dimensions.

5. Set Up Payment and Shipping Options

When your shopfront’s design is finished then the next stage is establishing shipping and payment options. WooCommerce that integrates seamlessly with Elementor lets you accept payment via multiple gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, and credit cards. Additionally, it offers flexible delivery options, which allow the user to determine shipping charges according to locations, weights or flat costs.

6. Add a Blog Section

The excellent methods to connect with your clients as well as boost the search engine optimization of your business is to include blogs to your website. Elements’ page-building tools may be utilized to design an attractive and useful blog for your website. A regular update of your blog, including information about new products, news from the industry and stories from customers can bring the traffic organically to your site as well as increase the search engine ranking.

7. Test and Launch

Before you launch your storefront online warrant that you have tested every part of your site. Examine for broken links, warrant that all buttons as well as forms work as well, and warrant that your checkout process runs smoothly. Also, make sure to test your website across different browsers and devices to assure the site is functioning properly to all visitors.

When you’re sure that everything works exactly as it should It’s the time to start your online store!

Experience (UX) using Elementor

The creation of a stunning shopfront is just one part of the process. A second crucial element is to assure a smooth user experience. The online storefront you choose to use should be simple to navigate and use as well as optimized to speed up loading speeds.

Simple Navigation

In the world of the internet, clear navigation is crucial. Customers must be able to locate what they’re searching for swiftly and easily. Elementor lets you make easy navigation and menus, so that customers can navigate through product pages as well as categories and the checkout with no being lost in.

Optimized Page Speed

It is essential to have a fast loading website in keeping customers engaged. Websites that are slow lead to higher bounce rates, as well as abandoning carts. Elementor’s page building tool is made to be fast and light When combined with a proper hosting setup and optimization of images, the tool will dramatically increase the speed of loading your website.

Incorporating Calls to Action

A clear and convincing call to actions (CTAs) could determine the success or failure of your sales. It doesn’t matter if you’re encouraging customers to “Buy Now,” “Sign Up,” or “Add to Cart,” Elementor lets you customize CTA buttons to match your brand’s style and design and guarantee they are prominent when you display them on your page.

SEO Considerations When Crafting Your Storefront

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essential for any online retail storefront. If your prospects aren’t able access your website, your well-designed store won’t bring in revenue. The Elementor SEO tool is optimized in the default settings However, there are many actions you can follow to improve the performance of your storefront.

Optimize Product Descriptions

Include relevant keywords into the titles of your products and descriptions. Avoid putting keywords into your descriptions just to make it look more appealing; rather, you should focus on providing value and naturally using keywords people might look up.

Add Alt Text to Images

Every image of your product should include alt texts that describe the image as well as relevant keywords. Alt text is helpful for both SEO and accessibility. It ensures that those with vision impairments will be able to understand the material.

Use Clean URLs

Check that your URLs are clear, easy to read and clear. Instead of with an extended, confusing URL structure, make it simple.

Conclusion

Making your online storefront look well-qualified with Elementor Website Builder can be an exciting experience, which allows you to build a personalized, efficient e-commerce store without difficulty. With flexible options for design and WooCommerce integration, to the optimization of mobile devices and search engine optimization excellent methods, Elementor offers everything you will need to set up an online store that is successful. No matter if you’re an expert in e-commerce or just starting out, start with Elementor’s capabilities today and learn how they will make your storefront online an efficient selling device.

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Why Data-Driven Content Writing Matters

It is necessary to leverage data and analytics for your content writing because it will help you understand your content creation process.  This means knowing your audience helps you to refine your content strategy especially when you see if it is performing well or not. When you work on your content based on the data you have gotten, you can stay ahead of your competitors because you are using strategies that work best.

Ways You Can Use Data and Analytics in Content Writing

Now that you know the importance of data-driven content writing, you should know how you can implement data and analytics in your content writing.

• Understanding Your Audience

One of the core things you will do with data analysis for content strategy is to know your audience. With the help of tools like audience surveys, Google Analytics, and social media insights, you can get an idea of the people reading or consuming your content. 

Through these data, you know the age, location, gender, interests, and other things about your audience. This helps you ensure that when writing your content, it is tailored according to your audience’s interest.

Also, you can monitor how your audience interacts with each other. You will find out if they spend time reading your content to the end or if they quickly exit your content when they open it. With the help of content writing metrics, you will be able to find out the click-through rates, time on page, and scroll depth of your audience which gives you an idea of what keeps your audience engaged and what does not.

• Identify Content Performance

It is possible to carry out SEO content optimization with analytics to improve visibility and search rankings, thereby creating impactful content for your readers. There are key performance indicators (KPIs) such as page views, shares, comments, and conversions that you should take seriously. 

Through these KPIs, you know the content that your readers like and which ones they do not. Besides getting the best-rated essay services to improve your content, you can experiment using different calls to action, formats, headlines, and tags. Through these attempts, you will know what to stick to, and what you should not.

• Optimize for SEO

You can improve content with data and analytics because you can better optimize your content with SEO. Before writing your content, you should use tools to conduct keyword research to know the keywords your audience has been searching for. Likewise, you can incorporate these keywords into your content which will bring visibility to search engines. 

And this can be done by analysing the content that your competitors put out to know the areas your content has been lacking and gain ground. To help with SEO, you can include images, tags, meta descriptions, links, and backlinks on your content, this helps you to create content that your audience will engage well with.

• Leverage Social Media Platforms

You can track content success with data obtained from social media insights. If your written content is being shared on social media, you should take the time to see the kinds of posts that are getting more shares, likes, and comments. 

Monitoring the data on these contents on social media helps you to create similar content that will produce results because you know what your target audience prefers. Since most content on social media capitalizes on hashtags to help with niching down and bringing the content to the target audience, you should study the hashtags used by content writers in your field. This helps you reach your audience faster since most of them search for content based on hashtags.

• Continuously Iterate and Improve

When you measure content effectiveness you can iterate and improve your content writing. You will be able to use data and analytics to see what is working with your target audience and what has been a failure. Analyzing these data can take a lot of time, but taking time each month to study your content data will help you refine your content strategies and improve. The data you get from your content should be the fuel to write content that performs better than your previous content.

Additionally, it is important that the content you write is tailored to your target audience and you use good narrative techniques to make it engaging. If you have existing content, you can repurpose them. Sometimes, collaborating with other writers will help you reach your target audience. Do not sleep on the possibility of improving your written content because the content is indeed king.

Key Metrics to Track

While looking at the data and analytics of your content, there are some key metrics you should take seriously, like:

• The number of people that have visited your content.
• The number of visitors that have not only visited your content but have left comments and shared it.
• How quickly your readers exit your content after opening it which is the bounce rate.
• If there are actions like subscribing to newsletters, downloading eBooks, etc you can check the conversion rates.
• The click-through rate is also measured.

Tools for Data-Driven Content Writing

There are certain tools you can use to monitor your content such as:

• Google Analytics: Helps to track the traffic to your website, engagement on your content, and conversion rates.
• Google Trends: Great for identifying popular keywords or topics that your target audience has been engaging with.
• SEMrush: Enables you to analyze your competitor’s content which helps you see where your content is lacking and ways you can ensure your content is optimized for SEO.
• Ahrefs: This tool allows you to search for keywords you can incorporate into your content. 
• HubSpot: Useful to measure lead generation and conversion rates.

Actionable Tips to Take

• Take time to conduct keyword research before you start writing any content.
• Analyze engagement metrics to know how to adjust your content to meet your target audience.
• Do not make the mistake of not optimizing your headlines, subtitles, meta descriptions, etc. 
• Besides only writing content, you can experiment with other types of content like videos, podcasts, or reels for your brand.
• Do not neglect to test different types of content, CTAs, and images on each of your content. 

Conclusion

With the awareness that content plays a crucial role digitally nowadays, it is important to use data and analytics to ensure that your written content stands out from the rest. It is not just about creating engaging content but creating content that converts. So, use analytical tools to track key metrics in your content and apply the tips that were shared above to ensure that you get meaningful results from your written content.

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Social media is changing day by day. Getting noticed on the global forum that social media happens to be is tough. But when you have millions of accounts competing for attention, reaching a large number of views may look tough. Buying social media views has turned into an upcoming plan to accelerate the growth of the online community and to achieve enhanced levels of existence. 

Although this practice is highly debated, it has a few potential advantages that may prove especially useful in 2024. Here are five reasons why buying social media views might be something valuable for a boost in your social media profile and enhancing general influence.

Boost Initial Visibility

Probably, one of the biggest challenges facing a new account or business is that of visibility. Buying views gives you a head start and makes your account look more established and appealing in the eyes of organic users. 

Having more views may also mean that the chances of your posts get real views as they keep coming up on search and the explore tab will increase, giving you maximum exposure with the possibility of organic growth.

Better Credibility

Social proof is one of the most important factors in online success. A big number of views naturally converts to a feeling of legitimacy and authenticity. Therefore, buying views increases the credibility of your brand and attracts more real people to the website who are more likely to engage with the content and trust the brand.

Improved Engagement Rates

Knowing that algorithm-driven platforms are very dependent on engagement rates, a bigger follower count would then make your engagement metrics more favorable. The algorithm is more likely to further push out content coming from popular accounts. There’s improved engagement, and more people could see what you put out.

Attract Partnerships

By having more views, you will be attracted to collaborations and sponsorships with brands and influencers who usually look to collaborate with other accounts based on the size of their views. This can normally provide further growth and exposure possibilities, which increase the overall potential for your account and brand.

Kickstart Growth

The buy-views strategy can act as a catalyst for such unraveled accounts looking to get some traction. This initial push, by buying, would create the momentum that’s needed for further growth in organic views and interactions. In this way, one will be in a position to stand out in competitive markets where success is quite necessary.

While buying social media views may sound like a shortcut, in fact, it has a lot of benefits that can prove very useful in the year 2024. These will include the following advantages associated with increasing initial visibility, enhancing credibility, improving engagement rates, and attracting valuable partnerships, things that help an individual or brand stay ahead of others in this overcrowded social media landscape. 

This does not mean there are no such benefits, but you should be equally cautious about the associated risks and have this strategy as part of a more organic growth plan. If you combine those purchased views and also work to get real views, you get to build a strong and influential social media presence that will last for a very long time.

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Define your audience

Who do you address? Do you provide tips for future writers or offer a guide for enthusiastic gardeners? Are those middle-aged women, teenage boys, or Harry Potter fans of all ages? You must answer such questions to know your audience. This point matters because you align your writing with their expectations. Everything depends on the people you target: word choice, the number of paragraphs, and visual elements. Many struggle to operate abstract concepts, so try picturing a particular person you want to reach. Before writing the post, imagine their appearance, interests, priorities, and objectives. This is a brilliant start! 

Reflect the main idea through your heading

Ensure that the headlines of your posts can attract the right people. Titles should be laconic but also convey a message: what will potential readers gain after consuming your content? Why should they make an effort and read till the final sentence? EssayShark writing service provides multiple tips on the topic. Professional writers never underestimate headings and use their potential to the fullest. Simultaneously, you may need to visit dissertation writing websites if you deal with serious and highly complicated content. No jokes and memes here, only straight to the point! 

Thoughtfully craft introduction and conclusion

Your every word should be meaningful, but those are the parts that matter the most. The introduction grabs attention and sets expectations. It makes clear what the post covers and what you can offer to your audience. Don’t get the wrong idea; the opening should not be bulky. Refrain from stunning your readers with multiple facts, regardless of how important those are. Any information can wait; consider asking a leading question or joking instead. Don’t underestimate the power of conclusion: the last sentence is always the most memorable. Try to sum up critical points and share the final thoughts here. 

Don’t neglect readability

Readability matters because it guarantees that your audience can consume your content without wasting additional time and effort. Determined to make your blog more readable? Consider the following:

• Short paragraphs. Although some prefer large amounts of text, perceiving such sources as more credible, you don’t have to turn every post into a dissertation. Separate ideas into paragraphs, and don’t mix them without a significant reason.
• Subheadings. Add as many as you want as long as it seems logical!
• Bullet points. They are exceptionally useful when you have to list items or arguments. Every point that stands separately helps your readers focus and trace the logical chain.
• Transition phrases and words. Incorporate them into your writing to make it more coherent. In addition, however, fortunately,,, Those and many other transition words guarantee the content’s natural flow.
• Reading aloud. Not sure if people actually talk this way? Try reading aloud what you write. Such an approach helps to detect lengthy constructions and replace them with something more readable.

Visualize everything

Appealing visuals ultimately contribute to your blog’s attractiveness. Wading through a solid text is a challenge, so think about how you can simplify it for your audience. Almost any information can and should be visualized. Are you describing statistics or recent research? Add a graph or a chart! Make a meme to hold your readers’ attention. Everybody loves memes, even if they don’t admit it. Even a completely irrelevant picture with kittens at the end can make somebody’s day. 

Encourage interaction 

Ask questions! Regardless of the topic, you can always initiate discussion in a comments section. Encourage your audience to share their experiences and ask for their opinions. Everybody has what to say, so show your readers that they matter. Reply to the comments and keep the discussion going. You can also encourage your audience to read related posts or write their own as a thread. If you have already partly covered the topic in your previous posts, refer to them. 

Tell stories

Believe it or not, humans are born storytellers. We enjoy consuming and composing stories, sharing them, and finally receiving feedback. Sounds unrealistic? Just try! Support statistics in your post with a story. Tell your audience about yourself. Share a reason for starting this blog. Was it some kind of dramatic experience? Maybe you were just having coffee with your friend when this idea popped up in your head. In any case, that happened: your life consists of two parts now. Just be sure to depict an impulse that has finally initiated action. 

Wrapping up

Of course, tips that can improve your blog are not limited to those mentioned above. You can google to research the topic further or start your own list of useful tips. Noting power words sounds like a great idea! Or maybe dedicating additional time to proofreading? You can do anything but don’t forget to analyze your audience’s preferences. What posts gather the most reposts and likes? Try moving in this direction!

Featured image credit: Andrew Neel via Unsplash

Content credit: Calvin Bowler

Let’s Start With Content Readability

Content readability refers to how easily a reader can understand the text presented on a website. It encompasses the language, structure, and presentation of the content, aiming to make it accessible and engaging to a broad audience.

Good readability is essential not only for user satisfaction but also for maintaining their interest and encouraging them to interact more deeply with the content. From a technical standpoint, readability influences SEO as search engines aim to offer the best possible resources in response to user queries.

Readability directly impacts user engagement and retention. Content that is easy to read and understand tends to keep users on the page longer, reducing bounce rates and potentially increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Search engines like Google assess the readability of content as part of their algorithms. Websites with high readability scores are often seen as more user-friendly, which can enhance their search rankings. Clear, well-structured content is more likely to answer user queries effectively, aligning with search engines’ goal to prioritize content quality.

How Readability Affects SEO

Metrics such as bounce rate, time on page, and pages per session are critical indicators of user engagement. Readable content tends to perform better on these metrics, signaling to search engines that the content is valuable and engaging.

Modern algorithms are sophisticated enough to evaluate the readability of content. For instance, Google’s algorithms consider factors like sentence length, syntactic simplicity, and vocabulary. High readability scores can enhance a site’s SEO performance, making the content more likely to rank higher in search results.

Consider the success of well-known blogs and websites that consistently rank high. Many of these sites focus on producing readable content. For example, educational platforms providing college paper writing services often ensure their blog posts are clear and well-structured, making complex topics accessible and engaging. This not only helps students but also improves the site’s SEO standing by aligning with readability metrics.

Key Elements of Readable Content

• Clarity and simplicity: Using clear and simple language is fundamental in making content accessible. Avoiding jargon and technical terms, or clearly defining them when needed, can make a significant difference.
• Structure and organization: Effective use of headings, subheadings, and logical paragraphs helps guide the reader through the content, making the information easier to digest and follow.
• Visual elements: Including relevant images, infographics, and videos can break up text, illustrate points, and add an engaging visual layer to the information being presented.
• Typography and formatting: The choice of font, size, color, and spacing can greatly affect readability. Fonts that are too small or cramped together can discourage reading, especially on mobile devices.

By understanding and implementing these elements, creators can significantly enhance the readability of their content, thereby improving user engagement and SEO performance.

Tools to Measure and Improve Readability

Readability Formulas and Scores

Various formulas, such as the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Index, and SMOG Index, provide quantifiable measures of readability. These scores assess the complexity of vocabulary and sentence structure to determine the educational level required to understand the content.

Online Readability Tools

Tools like the Hemingway App, Grammarly, and Yoast SEO offer real-time readability assessments and suggestions for improvement. These tools are invaluable for writers looking to enhance their SEO content writing, helping them identify areas where the language can be simplified or clarified for better reader comprehension.

Practical Tips

To effectively use these tools, writers should focus on shortening long sentences, using more familiar words and phrases, and breaking up large blocks of text. This approach not only improves readability but also enhances the overall user experience on the website.

Strategies to Improve Content Readability

1. Write for Your Audience. Understanding the audience’s reading level and interests is crucial. Tailoring content to meet their preferences and knowledge can significantly boost engagement and effectiveness. For example, a paper writing service might use simpler language when explaining academic concepts to ensure that all students, regardless of their academic prowess, can grasp the content.
2. Use Active Voice. Active voice is generally clearer and more direct than passive voice, making it easier for readers to follow and understand the text. This practice is especially beneficial in SEO for content writing, as it keeps sentences concise and the intent clear.
3. Short Sentences and Paragraphs. Keeping sentences and paragraphs short helps maintain the reader’s interest. It also makes the content easier to scan, which is how most people read online.
4. Bullet Points and Lists. Organizing information in bullet points or lists can dramatically improve readability. This format makes it easy for users to skim through the content and absorb the key points, enhancing the user experience.
5. Consistent Formatting. Using a consistent style and format throughout the article helps maintain a smooth flow, making it easier for readers to follow the narrative or argument. Consistency in formatting is also crucial for creating professional and trustworthy content.

Case Studies

Websites that have focused on improving their readability often see notable SEO benefits. For instance, a renowned online paper writing service, PaperWriter, revamped its blog content to simplify complex academic advice, which doubled its organic traffic within a few months due to better rankings and user engagement.

A before and after analysis of a health advisory website showed a significant decrease in bounce rates and an increase in average time on page after they simplified their medical jargon and reformatted their articles into shorter paragraphs with clear headings.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Overcomplicating Language. Using overly complex language or industry jargon that the target audience may not understand can alienate readers and decrease engagement.
2. Ignoring Mobile Readability. With the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet, it’s crucial to ensure that content is optimized for mobile reading. This includes making sure text and images appear correctly and are easy to navigate on smaller screens.
3. Neglecting Visual Hierarchy. Proper use of headings, subheadings, bold text, and other elements can guide readers through the content. Failing to utilize these effectively can result in a confusing layout that impedes readability.

Conclusion

Improving content readability is not just an exercise in writing simplicity; it’s a strategic approach to crafting SEO-friendly content that resonates with both the audience and search engines. From the strategic deployment of an effective paper writer to the thoughtful application of SEO practices, every aspect of content creation should aim to enhance readability. As the digital landscape becomes more competitive, the clarity of your content can set you apart, ensuring that your messages are not only heard but also appreciated and acted upon. Remember, in the world of SEO and digital marketing, clarity is king.

Featured image credit: Christina @ wocintechchat.com via Unsplash

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Content credit: Jeremy M. Shaw

As press release distribution has shifted from an offline to online activity over the years, people are realizing the potential press release can have for increasing a company’s search engine presence, which brings me to my next point. SEO and press release writing works best when done together these days.

Many search marketing tactics come and go, but one channel of promotion that has steadily evolved is the practice of optimizing press releases. The good news is you don’t have to be an SEO expert to properly optimize your press releases.

The right release can go a long way in promoting any company or story, just like this list of successful press release examples. One of the greatest things about press releases today is that even if they don’t get picked up by a specific reporter, they are great distribution channels that can really boost your business’s online reputation.

Benefits Of Press Release Distribution

You may be wondering what SEO and press releases have to do with each other. It’s fairly simple! Today’s press release still helps companies get media coverage, and they can also provide SEO benefits.

The benefits of press release distribution are numerous. Here are 5 of them.

• 1. Use your news to get more customers. With today’s online press releases, the media is no longer the only audience you’re writing for. 80 million people get their news online every day. Many of these people are your potential customers. So, always keep your customers in mind when crafting your press releases.
• 2. Increased visibility and trust. The more people read about you, the more they know you. Press releases also let you build authority on different fronts, by stimulating journalists and media outlets to cover your story, giving your prospects a new reason to buy from you, land on your website, buy and spread the word about your new product or service.
• 3. Enhanced SEO efforts. Press releases published by several media outlets will offer you valuable backlinks to your website. By optimizing your content, you could increase its visibility online and make your articles searchable on the Internet.
• 4. The opportunity to brand yourself as an industry expert. Press releases are a great way to build trust and credibility in your field of activity. An excellent PR campaign will offer you the chance to brand yourself as a high-authority business owner and underline your unique attributes to your products or services.
• 5. Increase Sales. By basing your marketing strategy around a press release, you can tap into buying triggers like credibility, authority and likeability. If you’re using a press release to launch a new product or service, then you’re likely to see a growth in sales. You may experience this benefit even if you;re not specifically trying to increase sales!

Maximize Backlinking SEO for Press Release

There’s a good chance that your press release lacks one thing and that’s SEO – the tendency of being ranked and found on Google’s search engine.

As such, besides educating and informing your loyal viewers, you need to make sure your press release can be easily read especially by people who don’t know about you. To ensure that you press release is well written, make sure to hire credible writer or use a proven AI press release generator to create the press release. Next, you want to make sure your content is good enough for search engine optimization.

And how do we do that? Here are 5 quick tips for you to quickly implement and gain a wider audience that you deserve:

• 1. Choose Your Keyword(s)
  Aim for keywords that have high search volume and low search competition
• 2. Use Keywords In Headline, First Paragraph and Content Paragraphs
  Spread it out and put it on appropriate places in your release.
• 3. Anchor Text Backlinks
  This helps drive readers from the press release to your website therefore, creating additional traffic. Remember not to spam your release with backlinks though! 2- 3 will suffice.
• 4. Multimedia Variation
  Incorporate images, video, file attachments and audio into your content to keep viewers engaged and wanting more (If the press release site allows)
• 5. Maximize Press Release Distribution
  Use press release distribution services to establish your press release widespread across as many media outlets as possible.

A good way to make sure that you’re choosing the correct keyword for your press release is by using a SEO tool like SurgeGraph.

The keyword tool built into BiQ can give you amazing insights and data to help you choose the correct keyword for your press release.

You should choose a keyword that has low to moderate keyword difficulty, and at least 100 -100 search volume (or simply choose the keywords with the highest Opportunity Score.) When you have a list of keywords with such stats, this can boost your press release more and help your SEO efforts.

At the end of the day, SEO friendly press releases should have these elements incorporated to help you improve the reach of your press release. At the same time, it also helps in positioning your site to rank at the top of search engine result pages.

What’s In Store For Me?

Now that you know the benefits of having an optimized press release, it’s time to put your knowledge into practice. Assuming you have written a masterpiece, what should you do now? Well, just by writing isn’t sufficient to get your name out there.

Thanks to online PR services, your press release automatically becomes web content, which means it certainly has a shot at becoming news. The benefit of using a press release distribution service is that your release will be sent to the online news service such as Yahoo! News, BusinessInsider and many others, making them instantly available to your customers who are searching on the Internet.

With MarketersMEDIA Newswire’s wide distribution network and coverage, you’ll have the tools to execute your communications strategy more effectively.

If you need your message to get noticed by the media and the millions of online viewers out there, leveraging the top-notch partnerships of MarketersMEDIA Newswire can help you tell your story better and louder. Being able to rank on reputable news websites like Google News, Business Insider or Fox News simply by optimizing and distributing a press release offers attractive benefits at a nominal cost.

Reach out to huge viewership and customer base with instant publicity to generate massive traffic. You’re just one click away from achieving the best publicity. Track and analyze your success with complete data analysis and cost-effective method, exclusively on MarketersMEDIA Newswire. So, begin taking advantage over these great benefits of press releases for SEO now!

Time for some serious publicity! Always remember that having an optimized press release is sure to benefit you in more ways than one.

• Twitter Survey: Search Engine Optimization vs. Pay-Per-Click
• The Law On Diminishing Returns For Local Reviews
• Google’s Danny Sullivan On AI-Generated Content 

7/11 – Twitter Survey: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) 

SEO professional Lily Ray recently did a poll on Twitter asking fellow content marketers which method they are pouring money into.

The result?

The result shows that people are inclined to spend more on PPC as compared to SEO. Looking at the results, however, you should note two things. 

Firstly, Lily has more of an SEO following on Twitter, so the results might be even more lopsided if the poll was conducted by someone on the PPC side. 

Secondly, while the case may be that people are more inclined to spend on PPC, it does not mean that people prefer PPC over SEO. This is because SEO has always been the cheaper alternative as compared to its pay-to-win counterpart. 

What about you? Are you an SEO or PPC person? 

The Law On Diminishing Returns On Local Reviews 

Local SEO expert Joy Hawkins recently conducted another case study on the impact of local reviews of rankings. 

In her research, she noted that once a business gets approximately 10 local reviews, there is no point in further pushing for more reviews for the purposes of ranking. 

This is because anything more than 10 reviews plays into the Laws On Diminishing Returns. 

In her research, a business’s Google listing rank does see an improvement passing the 10 review mark. However, anything more than that, even where the reviews reach a number of 30+, does not improve Google listing rank whatsoever. 

8/11 – Google’s Danny Sullivan On AI-Generated Content

There has recently been some debate on Twitter about how Google’s October Spam update has had a large impact on AI-generated content. 

However, Danny Sullivan, who is Google’s Liaison for Search, clarified that AI-generated content only does not give negative SEO to a website. Instead, what matters is whether the content produced is helpful, reliable, and people-first in nature. 

Only content created, be it by humans or AI, for the sole purpose of ranking on search engines would be targeted by Google’s October Spam update and helpful content update.

And Google has always been clear about this. 

So the next time that you feel reluctant about trying out AI-generated content. Just remember that it is not the tool that is the problem. It is the nature of the content. 

Even if you are using AI-generated content, as long as it is helpful and authoritative, who’s to tell that it is AI-generated?

That’s It! 

What do you think about this week’s news? Do you dip your finances into SEO or PPC? Do you use incorporate AI-generated content for your website? Let me know in the comments below.

• Google’s John Mueller on having duplicate content URLs in the sitemap
• Case study on whether local reviews affect SEO 
• Google Search Console verification does not affect crawling

31/10 – Google Search Console Verification Does Not Affect Crawling

A Twitter user asked John Mueller on Twitter whether having your website by Google Search Console would increase your crawling intervals. 

In response, John Mueller replied saying that crawling is independent of whether a website is attached to Google Search Console or not. 

However, webmasters should note that you can use the URL inspection tool to manually push URLs to be crawled faster. However, it is only on an URL-to-URL basis and done manually. 

Google’s John Mueller On Having Duplicate Content URLs In The Sitemap

Again, a Twitter user by the name of John Dietrich asked John Mueller whether having duplicate content URLs in the sitemap would affect a website’s ranking. 

In response, John Mueller responded saying that it would unlikely affect the immediate rankings for the whole site. However, you would initially see confused crawling as an early effect due to the duplicate content URLs. 

Case Study On Whether Local Reviews Affect SEO 

A local SEO expert – Joy Hawkins, recently conducted a study on whether adding specific keywords in local reviews would affect a business’s SEO. 

To conduct her research, she chose something that was out-of-season, a Christmas tree business in the middle of summer, to have the most accurate result as possible. 

And over the next few months, she had six different people leave reviews to make it look more natural, incorporating keywords such as “fresh cut Christmas trees” and “Christmas trees”  into the reviews.

Ultimately, the result showed that adding keywords to local reviews does not affect your local SEO. The conclusion? Don’t coach your clients to include clients certain words in their weirds; keep it natural and genuine. 

The End 

That is it for this week’s news. How was it? Did you learn anything valuable? Let me know in the comments below and as always, see you next week! 

• Google Search Showing Fewer Rich Results 
• Google’s John Mueller on Link Wheels 
• Microsoft Bing With A New Search Bar Location 

25/10 – Google Search Showing Fewer Rich Results 

Google has recently started showing fewer Rich Results in Searches such as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and People Also Ask (PAA). 

This reduction in rich results in Google Search has been picked up by several tracker tools. 

As you can see from the tracker tools above, there have been major reductions in rich results in SERP. The question then remains on whether this is just a temporary bug caused by the recent updates or is it permanent. 

Google’s John Mueller On Link Wheels

A Twitter user recently asked Google’s John Mueller whether Link Wheels are a good practice. 

 In response to the user, Google’s John Mueller stated that Link Wheels go against Google’s spam guidelines which do not bring any benefit to a website’s SEO. 

For those of you who don’t know what Link Wheels are, they are essentially an SEO technique that goes against Google spam guideline where one creates several sites and link them to each other in a round-robin fashion.

These sites are specifically created for the sole purpose of manipulating the rankings of a website, to manipulate Google into thinking those links are natural. 

Microsoft Bing With A New Search Bar Location 

Google has always been at the forefront of search, but it seems that this time Bing has taken the lead. 

In a new design that is being tried out by Bing Search, searchers would now be able to access the search bar at the bottom-right of their page without needing to go to the top of the page. 

What do you think of this new design? Would it be useful for searchers? Should Google follow suit? 

The End! 

That is all for this week’s SEO news. What do you think about this week’s news? Has Bing gained the edge over Google? Let me know in the comments below. 

• Google tests out two People Also Ask answers 
• Confusion on HTTPS reporting in Google Search Console 
• Google tests out highlighting People Also Ask answers

19/09 – Google Tests Out Two People Also Ask Answers 

Google is now testing out a new feature to the People Also Ask section. This new feature will see two answers to the People Also Ask sections. This means that it is now more worthwhile for webmasters to structure their content to target the People Also Ask sections. 

However, it is not all a bed of roses for webmasters. In SEO forum threads, webmasters have been raising concern that this move by Google would potentially reduce traffic to websites as their content has been lifted to form answers under the People Also Ask sections.

Google Tests Out Highlighting People Also Ask Sections 

A Twitter user has also noticed that Google has started to test out highlights for the People Also Ask sections. 

While it may be nothing new, as Google has already tested out highlighting in featured snippets, however, it should be noted that Google is now pouring its focus on the People Also Ask section. Hence, it may be worthwhile to structure your content in a way that is in line with the People Also Ask section. 

Confusion On HTTPS Reporting In Google Search Console 

If you have been following the SEO news, you would know that Google has recently introduced HTTPS reporting in the Search Console. 

Following this introduction, there has been some chatter/confusion online on the HTTPS reporting around a specific error. 

The error is worded in a way webmasters would think HTTPS might prevent a page from being indexed. 

In response to this confusion, Google’s John Mueller explained that this error does not mean the URL won’t be indexed. It means Google has never seen the URL or has been the URL but has not crawled it yet. Google may also be indexing the HTTP version of that URL instead for the time being. 

John Mueller has also said they will update the warnings to make them “less scary.” 

The End

That wraps up our weekly SEO update! And as always, let us know if there’s any important news we missed out on below. Have a safe weekend, and I’ll see you again next week!

• Google introduces new featured snippet callouts 
• Further update on Google’s helpful content update 
• Google upgrades review-type results to product-type results in Search

05/09 – Google introduces new featured snippet callouts

Google has recently introduced new featured snippet callouts or perspectives.

With the introduction of these new featured snippet callouts/perspectives, would this mean that webmasters would be more incentivized to create content that fits into the format of featured snippets? Does this mean the chances of webmasters appearing on featured snippet is higher?

06/09 – Further updates on Google’s helpful content update

Recently, Glenn Gabe stated on Twitter that the helpful content update might not be the initially expected big update. Previously, SEO experts have compared helpful content updates to past updates, such as Panda or Penguin. 

He stated that the recent update only affects the worst offenders, and the general impact on websites has been little to none.

In response to this, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Public Search Liaison, reiterated the importance of the helpful content update to fostering people-first content. He also pointed out that the helpful content update is a weighted signal, so only the worst sites made purely for ranking may notice a stronger effect. 

08/09 – Google upgrades review-type results to product-type results in Search

Google has announced that it will decrease review-type results and introduce more product-type results in Search. This new focus by Google would see an overall decrease in the Review snippet impression and an increase in Product result impression. 

As such, users would see a change in how these items look in Search, while webmasters would see a change in how Search Console assigns these impressions and clicks. 

The End! 

What do you think of this week’s news? Has the recent update impacted you? Is Danny Sullivan trying to downplay the initial misconception about the helpful content update? Do let me know in the comments below. See you again next week. 

• Google Search Console adds video index reporting 
• Google deprecates International Targeting Report, to be removed from Search Console 
• Webmasters on the forthcoming helpful content update 

22/8 – Google Search Console adds video index reporting 

A few weeks back, I told you guys that Google Search Console would be adding a new video index reporting feature. Well, it is finally here! The video index reporting is finally live. 

Do note that this will feature will only show up for websites that have one or more videos. 

Three things are achieved by the video index report, they tell you:

1. how many pages does Google identify a video? 
2. which videos were indexed successfully? 
3. what are the issues preventing videos from being indexed? 

Webmasters on the forthcoming helpful content update 

A recent twitter pool that Aleydas Solis ran showed that generally, webmasters are quite uncertain about the outcome of the helpful outcome update. 

However, some veterans such as Barry Schwartz and Marie Haynes feel that the potential implications of the update would be much more considerable than expected. 

Marie Haynes thinks the helpful content update is comparable to Google’s 2012 Penguin update. 

Meanwhile, Barry Schwartz compared the upcoming update to Google’s Panda update in 2011, which would cause a large-scale impact. Traffic will vanish overnight for some sites; people will lose their jobs, and businesses will shut down. 

Of course, this is all just speculation, so there is no need to panic. We have yet to see the impact of the helpful content update. I guess we would just have to roll with the punches. 

24/8 – Google deprecates International Targeting Report, to be removed from Search Console 

Google has recently tweeted that it deprecates the International Targeting Report and will have it removed from Google Search Console on September 22, 2022. 

However, Google says that it will continue to support hreflang and Google’s recommendation for managing multilingual and multiregional sites still stand. 

The End! 

What do you think about this week’s news? Is your website prepared for Google’s helpful content update? Let me know in the comments below.

• Google search timer and stopwatch are back 
• Google Search Console completed the migration of the new reporting system 
• Google announces a new helpful content update

15/8 – Google Search Console completed the migration of the new reporting system 

Google recently reported that they had completed the migration to the Search Console’s updated issue categorization, including new changes to the coverage (Page Indexing) report. 

With the completion of the migration, this would also mean that the validate fix button is not back available for users. 

18/8 – Google search timer and stopwatch are back 

A few weeks back, I reported that Google search no longer provides a timer or stopwatch. I guess the people at Google have heard the public’s plea. The timer and stopwatch function has been re-instated into Google Search, and I couldn’t be happier. 

Your tabs now also shows the time remaining from your timer so you can navigate through different tabs while keeping tabs on the time.

Google announces a new helpful content update

Google recently announced a new helpful content update that downgrades websites designed to rank well rather than promoting helpful content. 

The updates will start rolling out next week and take up to two weeks to fully roll out. Google said that websites impacted by the update would take months to regain their ranking by showing Google that they are consistently creating content that is helpful for readers. 

This update is a sitewide algorithm which means that Google will use bots to determine whether the entirety of your website is helpful for readers. If Google determines that most of your content is unhelpful for readers, Google will downgrade your whole website as opposed to only that specific article or a certain segment of your website. 

The End! 

What do you think about this week’s news? Are you scared of the new upgrades? Let me know in the comments below. 

• Google’s People Also Ask section rising while FAQs drop
• Google: Dynamic rendering is only a temporary workaround 
• New image preview interface on Google Search 

8/8 – Google’s People Also Ask section rising while FAQs drop

Recently, RankRanger has reported seeing People Also Ask sections rising to almost 70% of searches. 

On the other end of the spectrum, RankRanger has reported that they now see fewer FAQs in Google Search. 

Does this mean Google is transitioning to do away with FAQs and shift their full focus on People Also Ask sections? Only time will tell. 

New image preview interface on Google Search 

Google is introducing a new image preview interface on Google Search. Clicking on an image on a search would not now send users straight to Google Image but would load a preview of the image directly on Google Search itself.

10/8 – Google: dynamic rendering is only a temporary workaround 

Google recently updated its help document to say that dynamic rendering is only a temporary workaround, not a permanent solution. 

For those unfamiliar with the concept, dynamic rendering is when there are two versions of Javascript-generated content. One is a client-side rendered version for visitors, while the other is a server-side Javascript content that is converted to a static HTML version preferred by the Google bot. 

This workaround is for larger websites with many dynamic and Javascript-driven content that search engines have difficulty crawling and indexing. 

Google, however, discourages this because there are Javascript features with limitations in Google Search. Some pages may encounter problems with content not showing up in the rendered HTML. 

The End!

That is it for today, folks. What do you think about today’s news? Let me know in the comments below. 

• Google Search Console’s validate fix function is currently unavailable 
• Legal ruling may reveal Google’s secret ranking algorithms 
• Google’s People Also Ask dynamically loads at the footer of Search

1/8 – Legal ruling may reveal Google’s secret ranking algorithms 

Google has recently come under fire with an antitrust lawsuit by Rumble, which alleges the search engine is favoring its video streaming platform, Youtube, over other video streaming platforms. 

In a recent legal ruling, Judge Haywood Gilliam dismissed Google’s motion to the court to split the suit’s arguments and dismiss substantial parts of the reasoning as well as strike parts of the suit related to Android app preinstallation.

Do note that the judge’s ruling does not mean that Rumble is successful in their suit. However, this would potentially result in some of Google’s secret ranking algorithms coming to light. 

2/8 – Google Search Console’s validate fix function is currently unavailable 

Google’s Search Console function is currently unavailable for users. This means that users would be unable to validate fix for now. 

Google also tweeted about the matter, saying that the validate fix would be unavailable for a period of 2 weeks as they are updating the item classification in Google Search Console. 

Google’s People Also Ask dynamically loads at the footer of Search

Google is introducing a new way to load People Also Ask section on Google Search. Users who interacted with the People Also Ask section would now dynamically trigger another set of People Also Ask section at the footer of the page. 

That’s it! 

What do you think about this week’s news? Do you think that Rumble stands a chance in their lawsuit against Google? Do you think that Google will fight tooth and nail to protect their ranking algorithms? Let me know by leaving a comment below. 

• Google’s John Mueller on counting backlinks 
• Google’s Privacy Sandbox Initiative delayed 
• Google Maps to delete Selfies and low-quality images 

25/7 – Google’s John Mueller on counting backlinks 

A Twitter user has recently asked Google’s John Mueller on how to accurately backlinks. This is because different backlink tools show a different number of backlinks for his website. 

In response to this, Google’s John Mueller said there is no correct way of counting backlinks. Instead of focusing on the number of backlinks, webmasters should instead think of links as ways that people can reach your page instead of a method that affects ranking. 

26/7 – Google Maps may delete selfies and low-quality images 

Google Maps has recently updated its guidelines to delete irrelevant images to a particular location. Additionally, they will also be deleting images that are low in quality that “dramatically alters the representation of the place.” 

It’s about time! I just hate it when I try to search for a particular location, and I’m just greeted by a bunch of blurry or irrelevant images that doesn’t represent the location. 

27/7 – Google’s Privacy Sandbox Initiative delayed 

Google has recently announced that it will be delayed the phasing out of third-party cookies. Some of you may not be familiar with Google’s Privacy Sandbox Initiative so let me give you a lowdown. 

The Privacy Sandbox Initiative is an initiative introduced by Google to phase out third-party cookies and cross-app tracking. This is to address the increasing concern over netizen data. By phasing out third-party cookies, Google can protect user privacy and prevent misuse of personal data. 

Google says the launch will be delayed to Q3 2023 due to feedback and testings by advertisers, webmasters, and other relevant stakeholders. 

The End

What do you think about the changes that are being implemented by Google? Are you supporting them, or do you feel that Google should not change what was already working? Let me know in the comments below. See you at the next set of SEO news in August

I hope your week has been swell. Let us check out some of the SEO news we have in-store today. Shall we? 

• Google testing interactive card knowledge panel box layout
• Stopwatch & timer removed from Google Search 
• A new way to verify site and property on Google Search Console 
• People Also Ask section is back on Google Search

19/7 – Stopwatch & timer removed from Google Search 

You may have already noticed that Google Search has removed the stopwatch and timer function. If you search for Stopwatch or timer on Google, only some Youtube suggestions and top pages would appear. 

20/7 – New way to verify site or property on Google Search Console 

There is now a new way to verify your website or property on Google Search Console. Users can now verify through a new DNS method, CNAME. 

Although, you can argue that this is technically not a new method to verify as this verification method was provided under the older version of Google Search Console. 

But hey, one extra method to verify your website or property is always better. 

Google testing interactive card knowledge panel box layout

Google is currently testing out a new interactive card knowledge panel box layout for more specific search terms such as “How tall is Aaron Judge?” etc. 

What do you think about this interactive layout? I am quite a fan of it. 

21/7 – People Also Ask section is back on Google Search 

It was just last week that RankRanger and Semrush trackers reported that People Also Ask sections are appearing less frequently on SERP. 

Now it seems People Also Ask section has bounced back to normal levels. The question now remains, was this a bug, or was this Google testing out SERPs without People Also Ask section? 

That’s it, readers!

What do you think about this week’s news? Have they affected your site performance? Leave your opinion in the comments below. 

• Google Search Console introducing new video indexing reports 
• People Also Ask section appears less frequently on SERP
• Google testing Rich Card Layouts for celebrity searches 

11/7 – Google Search Console introducing new video indexing reports 

Google Search Console will be introducing a new feature that reports on your website’s video indexing. 

Through the introduction of this new reporting feature, you can tell: 

• The number of pages that Google has identified a video 
• Videos that have been successfully indexed by Google 
• Issues that are preventing your videos from being indexed

The new Google Search Console video indexing report would be rolled out in the next few months and would look something like this. 

People Also Ask section appears less frequently on SERP

Recently, tracking from both RankRanger and SEMRush has detected that there has been a drastic drop in People Also Ask sections in Google. 

With this decrease in People Also Ask sections appearing on SERP, would this mean that performing your keyword/topical research for your content would be less effective on Google? 

Is Google publishing content writers adopting keyword research tools? Or do you think this is a temporary bug that will soon be addressed by Google? 

14/7 – Google testing Rich Card Layouts for celebrity searches

Google is currently testing out a Rich Card Layout for certain celebrities. 

As you can see above, the layout shows at times the net worth of the celebrity and at other times would show the age of the celebrity together with the top news. 

It seems that Google is arranging the Rich Card Layout through what is the most commonly searched by users. 

I tried performing searches for currently trending celebrities such as Elon Musk or Johnny Depp but it seems Google has not awarded them a Rich Card Layout just yet! 

Thus, it is quite unclear how Google chooses which celebrities are getting awarded with a Rich Card Layout. 

That’s it!

What do you think of this week’s news? Do you think that Google is slowly transitioning out the use of the People Also Ask section or is it a temporary bug? Let me know in the comments below. 

•  Google announces a new reporting update for Google Search Console 
• Twitter removes the NoFollow attribute from links 
• Microsoft announces that it would pull support for Internet Explorer

13/6 – Twitter removes the nofollow attribute from links 

Twitter has recently removed the NoFollow attribute from links. While Google has yet to respond or released a statement in relation to this move by Twitter, the general consensus online has not been a good one. 

People have been speculating that this move by Twitter would turn an already spam link culture on Twitter into one that is even more spammy.

Additionally, the general understanding by SEO professionals is that Google will unlikely grant any sort of link juice to links stepping from Twitter just like what is practiced with other social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. 

15/6 – Google announces new reporting update for Google Search Console

Google has announced a new reporting update for its Google Search Console. This would change from the previous reporting which separates reporting into errors, valid with warning and valid to valid and invalid. 

Google hopes that the new reporting system, which comprises valid which are pages & items without critical issues, and invalid which are pages & items with the critical issue, that it would help users in prioritizing and identifying critical issues. 

Critical issues in this context would be issues that would hinder Google from indexing and ranking a certain page or content. 

Microsoft announces that it would pull support for Internet Explorer

Microsoft announced that it would pull support for the Internet Explorer which has been serviced for 27 years and instead shift focus to Chromium-based search browser, Microsoft Edge instead. 

Windows users would have Microsoft Edge as their default search browser instead of Internet Explorer and existing Internet Explorer users would also be directed to Microsoft Edge. 

So, let’s have a moment of silence for Internet Explorer. Shall we? 

The End!

That’s it for this week’s SEO News people. What do you think about this week’s news? Is Internet Explorer your first-ever search browser? Leave a comment below. 

• Ahrefs announces new search engine: Yep
• Google: Restricting XML sitemap is acceptable 
• Google: Don’t waste time filling up alt texts with nonsense 

6/6 – Google: Restricting XML sitemap is acceptable 

A Twitter recently asked John Mueller whether it is fine that some websites use Cloudflare to restrict access to their XML sitemaps? 

John Mueller’s response to this was that it is perfectly acceptable for websites to restrict access of their XML sitemaps to visitors and make them available only for search engines. 

Google: Don’t waste time filling up alt texts with nonsense

A Twitter user recently asked Google’s John Mueller whether it is detrimental to a website SEO to fill up all the images in a website with a company’s name as this was requested by the Twitter user’s client. 

John Mueller’s response to that was that it is a complete waste of time. He said that you not only waste time by implementing it but you are also wasting time in the future if you would need to clean it. 

Image Alt texts are meant to convey the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. 

Ahrefs announces new search engine: Yep 

Ahrefs has recently announced that they are releasing an all-new search engine to compete with Google. 

How Ahrefs plans to differentiate its search engine from Google is by 2 methods. 

Firstly, the search engine would not collect personally identifiable info from their searches but instead would only collect necessary information such as the entered keyword, the searcher’s preferred language, and the general geo-location of the searcher e.g. the city in which the city was made. 

Secondly, the search engine would practice a 90/10 ad revenue sharing with content publishers taking 90% of the cut. Ahrefs says that by implementing this 90/10 revenue sharing, content publishers would be incentivized to create good content for readers instead of just doing clickbait titles to lure people into their website. 

Additionally, websites like Wikipedia wouldn’t need to ask people to donate to keep their website afloat anymore. 

That’s it, folks!

What do you think of this week’s news? Do you have any comments or suggestions about this week’s news? Would you use Ahref’s new search engine? Leave all your thoughts in the comment below. 

• Google May 2022 Broad Core Update  

As you can see, there is not much SEO news for this week in terms of quantity but let’s aim for quality, shall we? 

25/5 – Google May 2022 Broad Core Update

As some of you may already know, Google recently announced that they are coming out with a Broad Core Update. 

The new update was announced late on the 25th of May and will take between 1 to 2 weeks for the update to be fully rolled out.  

So, what does this mean for webmasters and SEOs? Well, it is too early to tell just yet. According to the forums, it seems the best thing that you can do now is to sit back, observe your website’s traffic and wait for the update to be fully rolled out, and then evaluate your SERP ranking. 

Reacting too hastily to the update will only be detrimental to your website as they update has not been fully released just yet. 

So let the dust settle before doing anything to your website. 

What is Google’s advice? 

Well, Google recommends that any webmasters that had their website affected by the update look into re-writing some of their content and incorporate more E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) factors into it. 

Whether this actually works? I will leave this to you to evaluate. Although I must admit that I’ve seen both sides of the argument. From people who say that this is helpful advice to some who think this is pointless. 

Does this seem to only affect informational websites?

Looking through forums, it seems that most of the websites up to the point that I am writing this post, which are affected by Google Core Update are mostly informational websites. 

Whether this is just a coincidence? It is still too early to tell. 

That’s it!

That is all for this week’s SEO news fellow readers. Have you been affected by the recent Google Core Update? What do you think about the update? Yay or Nay? Do let me know in the comments below. 

• Google talks about Keyword Density and Word Count in their Digital Marketing Certification Coursework
• Google introduces a new Personal Information Removal Tool 
• Ahrefs introduces a new credit/report spending system

9/5 – Google talks about Keyword Density and Word Count in their Digital Marketing Certification Coursework 

Google’s digital marketing certification and courses are off to a rocky start as Google receives massive backlash following one of its slides within the course telling course takers to write more than 300 words on their web page as well as telling them to keep keywords to under 2% which is under the industry standard. 

The reason that this is receiving so much backlash is that Google has previously stated that SEOs or content writers should not focus on keyword density or word count. Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison has subsequently stated that the people behind the recommendation are not part of the search team nor is Danny part of the team that produced the recommendation. 

Google has since removed the recommendations as seen below. 

What do you think? Was this an honest mistake? or could this be something that Google has let slip? 

Ahrefs introduces a new credit/report spending system

Ahrefs has recently introduced a new credit/report spending system that is receiving backlash on online SEO forums. The new credit spending system, inter alia, includes: 

• 1 credit to open any report whether it’s Backlink Profile, Organic search, Pages, Outgoing links, Paid search, or Legacy report. 
• 1 additional credit whenever you apply filters, change modes or pull additional information such as nested tables or charts which includes SERP overview, Position history, etc. 

When users exceed their allocated 500 reports, they automatically start consuming additional reports from a pool shared by all workspace users. Additional reports charged are done in blocks of 500 per month. Any unused additional reports are not carried over to the next month. 

So readers, if you have the time, do spend some time going through Ahref’s new credit spending system. It’s always best to be more informed to prevent yourself from being overcharged. 

12/5 – Google introduces a new Personal Information Removal Tool 

Google at their recent annual conference (more commonly known as Google I/O) will be introducing a new tool that will let you more easily request to remove their contact details such as home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. This new tool will be available in the Google app and on individual Google search results.

Readers beware!

It is important to note that even with this new feature/tool, Google may deny your request for removal if it determines that leaving the information intact is in the “public interest,” perhaps because of its newsworthiness or because it is part of a public record on a government site. 

Moreover, even if Google agrees to remove your information from its search results, the material may show up in other search engines’ results, on social media, or on websites. 

And, scene!

That is it for this week’s SEO news folks. What do you think about this week’s news? I feel there is some pretty spicy news this week so don’t forget to leave your thoughts below. Till next time!

You will learn:

• Foundation about search intent: its importance and types.
• How to know and optimize search intent.
• What to pay attention to while understand the search intent.

An effective website should provide readers the information right when they need it most. Such informative websites will probably get a lot of readers and low bounce rates. In order to achieve that, identifying the user’s search intent behind each query is a way for SEOs and content creators to deliver better value to users.  

This article will show you the search intent and how to optimize for each type of intention now. A keyword research tool like BiQ Keyword Intelligence can be an important tool to help you.

What is a Search Intent?

Search intent, or User intent, is the main goal a user has when typing a query into a search engine. In other words, it is the why behind a search query: why did the person make this search? Do they want to learn something? Are they looking to make a purchase? Or, are they looking for a particular product?

For example, you want to cook up some chicken for dinner but want to find a fast and simple recipe to eat now. So you head to Google and search for “quick chicken recipes”.

The first result you click on seems to be good at first. However, the process takes over an hour. So you click back, and choose the second page. This one gives you some ways of cooking, and all of them takes less than 30 minutes. This is probably what you want.

The idea here is that, the second page provides you the more relevant result that you need, so you stay on that page.

Why do you need to know about search intent?

It is simply to say that satisfying search intent is ultimately Google’s top goal. If you want to succeed with SEO and content marketing, search intent is a big part of your approach. You need to be the most relevant result for the query. 

First and foremost, finding the right keywords and creating content that aligns with search intent is something you should focus on. There are a million of keywords for one topic, but do you know 0.16% of the most popular keywords are responsible for 60.67% of all searches? This means the little percentage is only taken by the keywords with the right search intent. How well you understand the search intent impacts your ability to rank and whether your readers are satisfied with your page’s content. 

Take a look at the keyword “title generator”. What do you notice about these results? They’re all tools. People who search for a “title generator” don’t want a piece of content that is only about the title generator or how it works. They want the content with full context. 

From time to time, consumer behavior also fluctuates, presenting challenges and opportunities for businesses. It is essential to be nimble, and to move quickly in order to meet demand in real time For instance, there is 150% increase in searches containing “near me with outdoor seating” these days. So your business can see whether your product/service is suitable with the keywords, and optimize for that.

Overall, a thorough understanding of search intent can assist you: 

• Target the right search terms after doing effective keyword research, which align with your audience’s needs.
• Create content that answers user questions and structure pages in a way that’s friendly to both users and search engines.
• Attract more traffic and rank higher by creating content that are more valuable and relevant to users.

4 types of search intent

Informational intent

The searcher is looking for information. 

This might be an answer to a simple question like “Who is Donald Trump?”. Or something that requires a longer and more in-depth answer like  “what is macroeconomics?” However, not all informational searches are formulated as questions. It could be in other forms like “PR definition”, “way to fold a plane”.

In the purchase intent, this type of search is at the top of funnel traffic. The content type is informative.

Navigational intent

The searcher is looking for a specific website. They might already know where they want to go (it can be landing pages, sites or location). It’s probably just quicker and easier for them to Google it than to type the entire URL into the address bar. They may also be unsure of the exact URL.

The search intent requires websites to be optimized for accurate and qualified queries. By doing so, the customers can get to the websites easier. 

For example: 

• seopressor.com
• seopressor blog
• kendall jenner instagram
• napoleon wikipedia

Commercial investigation

Searchers are in the market for a specific product or service but has yet to make a final decision on which solution is right for them. They’re most likely looking for reviews and comparisons and weighing up their options.

This intent requires websites to provide potential persuasion to customers about the benefits of your products/services; like the product comparison, listacles, detailed description. 

Other examples include: “coffee near me,” “cheapest restaurant in Singapore,” etc. These searches also have commercial investigation intent, in the form of local seaches.

Transactional intent

When searcher is looking to make a purchase, they’re probably in buying mode and at the end of the purchase intent. Most likely, they already made the purchasing decision and they are just looking for a place to buy it.

Here is where the landing pages of your product/service need to be optimize.

The examples are:

• buy woman hoodie
• netflix subscription
• all of us are dead new episode

How to know and optimize search intent

#1. How to determine the search intent: 

You can dominate search intent SEO by focusing on keyword intent. Here are the 2 ways to understand the search intent. 

Find from Google search results: 

The easiest way to determine search intent is to use the search results themselves.

Search intent is often obvious from the wording of the query. 

You can examine the types of content that come up on page one, to determine what medium a person expects when they search that term.

If the results start with Google Ads, shopping results with product reviews, a booking tool, or show a store’s location on a map, Google identify that as a transactional intent.

If the first search results are the URLs for a company, the knowledge panel for a company, a company’s tweets, and/or a company’s own Google Ads, Google identify that as a navigational query.

If the search results include the answer box, a table, a list of URLs, event listings, the ‘people also ask’ box, the knowledge panel, recipes, a map, and/or videos, that is an informational search.

Commercial search will usually contain Google Ads, answer boxes, and URL results.

Read or watch all of the top results and identify what they have in common. The search engines have obviously deemed that unifying thread are the most satisfactory result.

If applicable, look at the related results under ‘people also ask’, and make note of any questions you can answer in your content. 

Find from BiQ Keyword Intelligence: 

If you’re using a keyword research tool like BiQ Keyword Intelligence, you can use these modifiers to filter for keywords with specific intent. In a situation where you’re looking for some relevant informational keywords for blog posts: First, enter a few seed keywords into BiQ, choose your language and location, then click generate.

You can see the results as below. In the “Intent” column, it shows you the search intent of the keywords.

Remember that when performing keyword research, you also need to consider search intent in addition to keyword popularity and keyword difficulty. 

Your piece of content should contain a mix of keywords with high search volume as well as long-tail, highly specific keywords. BiQ also gives you number of short and long-tail keywords. You just need to match your keywords to users’ search intent and write your content. 

What else can you get with BiQ Keyword Intelligence? You can research keywords in 35+ languages, thus, collect and visit keywords board that you like.

With free access to Keyword Intelligence, you can:

• Check the search results to identify the type of intent behind your keywords
• Examine the types of content that come up on page one.
• Get common content ideas, popular questions related to the keyword, and trending searches involving that keyword. 

#2. How to optimize for each search intent:

• Informational Intent: 

To target keywords with informational intent, you should pay close attention to the information users are searching for. Then, you need to write your content to provide it as clearly as possible. 

For example, a “how-to” query typically looks for a structured process. You can see that content with this query has featured content appears as an ordered list, and with clear numbered steps. 

If you click through to the source, you’ll notice that each step is a subheader with detailed information below it. 

• Navigational Intent: 

First, you need make sure your site’s structure is organized and easy to navigate to target these navigational keywords. Each section of your site should be clearly labeled, with page titles, tags, headers, and descriptions that tell the user what information they’ll find there. 

• Commercial Intent:

Commercial searches are about products or services that people are interested in but aren’t quite ready to purchase. Usually they include words and phrases like “best” or “which [product] should I buy?”. 

• Transactional Intent: 

The best way for this intent directs users to a page designed for their purpose, whether it’s a product or a landing page. This page should have: 

Page Title, Description, and Headers that include keywords and indication of the purpose.

A clear Call to Action that’s easy for users to spot and understand

An eye-catching yet simple design that helps users find the information they need quickly and complete their conversion easily

What else should you do?

Besides the above-suggested method, you can also consider these two ways: users experience and customer journey.

Consider the user experience

You might be wondering how Google know a page is a good fit for Search Intent. The answer is that they look at how people interact with the SERPs.

In other words, they can tell if people aren’t loving a specific search result or if the keywords aren’t fitting for the search result. When this happens, the site will be downranked. 

So how do you make sure that people will love your page?

Pay attention to these elements:

• Limit Popups: Too much pop up can make users feel uncomfortable. So if you do use a popup, you should only use them with exit option on the page. 
• 14px+ Font: You can have the greatest blog post every written. But if it’s hard to read, people are going to bounce like a pogo stick. The font also need to be appropriate, and easy to read at the same time.
• Use Subheadings: Searchers want their answers fast and they aren’t going to read every single word of your page. Headings and subheadings let users skim your content for the main points.

• Use Videos and Images: Using visual makes your content more appeal to user to discoverand understand. 

Consider the customer journey

As Google stated, the emotional motivation driving a particular search is not only shaped by the category of the search intent but also where they are in their purchasing journey.

In many cases, you can determine a keyword’s intent based on the keyword and its search results. But, there are also other things that you need to know. For example, an informational keyword will often use question words or phrases to indicate what the user is learning.

As in the marketing funnel, the journey can look like this:

• Awareness: Informational keywords like “how to check backlinks”
• Consideration: Commercial keywords like “best backlink checker.”
• Conversion: Transactional or navigational keywords (often branded) like “BacklinkGap subscription.”

TL;DR

People’s queries reflect where they are in the conversion funnel. Understanding search intent can help you create effective content that targets potential customers.

A keyword research tool like BiQ Keyword Intelligence not only provides you a list of potential keywords but also shows you the search intent for each keyword. 

You will learn:

• The need to monitor backlinks and identify broken links
• How to find broken backlinks
• What to do to keep the quality of your backlink and grow.

One of the most effective ways to increase your online business is through backlinks. But your backlink profile is not always filled with quality links, sometimes you will experience broken links. And, you need to fix these links to keep your website quality in Google’s eyes.

That’s what we’re talking about today, along with how to manage your backlinks building.

What you need to know about backlink building

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are incredibly valuable for SEO as they are still one of the top 3 factors in Google ranking. This is because these backlinks are seen as a vote of some sort from one website to the other. 

There are inbound links and outbound links. Inbound links are links that come from other websites or a different domain name. Outbound links are those links on your website that link out to websites with a different domain name.

The backlinks received by your website are a good sign to all search engines that other sites find your website trustworthy. Thus, your site looks more legitimate and informative for potential users. Due to this, you’re able to move up the rankings with these types of backlink ‘votes.’

Why do you need to monitor and fix your backlinks?

The more authoritative backlinks a website has, the more Google will view it as an authority which in turn results in higher keyword rankings. As a result, you need to make sure your level of authority keeps maintaining or rising. 

If you get penalized, it reduces your page rank, decreasing the chances that your content will be found. In addition, you will never know in advance when your backlinks disappear or broke. You can even miss your backlinks for weeks and months if you do not monitor your profile regularly. Some webmasters and website owners who don’t update their website regularly might not even be aware that they have these broken links on their site unless a user tells them so.

Broken backlinks

A broken backlink is often referred to as a dead link. It occurs when a webpage linking to you becomes malfunctioning. To be more specific, when you click on a link that is supposed to take you to particular content (your page), it takes you to another page that shows a 404 error message. 

What causes broken link:

• The website is temporarily or permanently unavailable
• The web page has been deleted
• The web page permalink was modified or changed
• The web page was blocked by a firewall or other similar software

Why are broken links bad for your sites?

Firstly, broken backlinks affect your traffic. Traffic is one of the major components of having a good page ranking on search engines. One backlink fall off can decrease your sources of getting more readers.

Secondly, broken backlinks, if not fix quickly, can harm your SEO. In Google eye, these broken links can be seen as bad backlinks, adding no score to crawl your page higher.

It is important to update your website regularly because your partner’s website won’t always notify you if they have made any changes or moved the link to another location. There is also the possibility of external servers being brought down temporarily or permanently as well as domains could be expired or sold. 

So, the best thing is to control your site. You can take precautionary action by checking your website regularly. With a broken link checker, you can know whether the website that links to you is broken, so you can get rid of it as it can be considered bad backlinks.

Find broken backlinks with a Broken link checker

Before jumping into how to fix broken links, we first need to detect them. 

Use a backlink checker like BacklinkGap

BacklinkGap shows you which site linking to you is broken. Then you can nip them in the bud before they negatively impact your SEO. It’s often easier to use an SEO backlink checker like BacklinkGap to find these toxic backlinks. 

By using the monitoring feature, you can get your eyes on the backlinks you want. BacklinkGap will monitor these backlinks daily and notify you of any changes that happened.

The tool can help you identify broken links in an instant. It allows you to make better decisions and take quick actions to fix them. 

You can see your broken link in the list and add it to disavow list or add a tag to fix it then.

This backlink checker will also get you notified of new and lost backlinks. You can get the latest updates on any backlinks or referring domains that you’ve gained or lost. You can also immediately reach out to websites for missing or removed links.

While monitoring, you can adjust the dashboard by pause, resume or remove the backlinks. 

What to do after using a backlink checker?

As these are backlinks, it is hard for you to fix the link from your sites. There are only two ways, contact the webpage or disavow the link.

You can reach out to the webpage and notify them about the broken pages. Then, ask whether it can be fixed since they also need to improve their website quality.

Removing the link is the solution when you cannot contact the sites that link to you. It is often called disavow links. It can be time-consuming if you have a lot of broken links. But the process is straightforward, just locate the link in the content, then add it to a disavow file. You can disavow the bad backlinks like that with Google Search Console.

BacklinkGap is also here to help you say goodbye to these bad links. You can gather all your unwanted backlinks, disavow them, then relax as your rankings recover.

You add all the broken backlinks to the Disavow list in the tool. From the Disavow List view, you can see all the backlinks that you want to disavow. You can then extract the data you want in a CSV report.

A disavow file is a request for Google to ignore the links which you upload and ensure that they are not taken into account when analyzing your site’s ranking factors. It is a great way to handle toxic links.

You can simply upload them to Google’s Search Console disavow tool. Google does provide guidance regarding the formatting and disavow file limitations set. 

If you haven’t known much about disavow backlinks probably, read this: How to Disavow Links: A Guide with A Disavow Tool

How to build backlinks effectively?

Guest blogging

If your brand provides quality content, people will come back for more. It’s really as simple as that. 

Guest posting on other related sites allows you to display your depth of knowledge in your field. One last advantage of guest posting is that it allows you to get a backlink to your website, which is a major factor in SEO ranking. 

You can start by making a list of anywhere from 10-50 sites that you’d like to guest post for. Reach out, then provide your content.

Skyscraper technique

The skyscraper technique focuses on finding the best piece of content out there around a particular keyword. Then you need to create something even better with the goal of offering this new content as a replacement backlink to the websites that have linked to old content.

There are three steps that’ll make the skyscraper technique work:

• Find popular content that’s already ranking for your target keyword
• Create a piece of high-quality content
• Promote your piece of content to the blogs and publications that refer or link back to some of the best performing pieces of content for your target keyword

Write testimonials

Not only is review helpful to a customer during the decision-making process but testimonials and reviews are also an excellent way to establish trust and credibility for your business. Testimonials and reviews provide benefits to three parties: The consumer, the reviewed business, and the reviewer. Since when leaving reviews, is a link-building opportunity. Your personal information when providing reviews can come with your business links.

If you’re interested in attracting links via the testimonial method, you’ll first need to reach out to companies with whom you do business. 

TL;DR

Website masters have to put a lot more effort to obtain quality backlinks. Monitor backlink is one vital work to get the eyes on every change in backlink profile. A broken backlink can harm your SEO and website reputation. You need to identify and choose the way to fix it as fast as possible. 

You can use a broken link checker like BacklinkGap to find broken backlinks faster.

Then, you also need to find the best ways the build backlinks more.

You will learn:

• What and why doing keyword research is important.
• 5 steps to do free and effective keyword research

Creating content for the right audience and reaching them at the right time requires the right keywords to target. Thus, the success of an online marketing campaign lies in good keyword research. That all goes with the relevant keywords.

That is why finding the right keywords is so important in SEO. Once you find common phrases that people use to search for things, you can adjust your content strategy and optimize them to rank for those phrases. A keyword generator is a great tool for researching keywords, making it one of the survival kits for your SEO works. 

In this article, you can know the exact steps to find your right keywords, with the help of the right tools like LSIGraph.

What is keyword research?

Do you know that 91% of pages get no organic search traffic? Thus the top pages from Google drive more than 50 percent of all website traffic? To get a more organic search, a good keyword is one of the most important elements. 

Generally, keyword research is a way to figure out what people are typing into search engines. You need to know this to avoid creating content that nobody is searching for. It is much more purposeful to find the “right” keywords and put them into “right” places. 

The goal of keyword research is to identify search terms that your site may have the potential to rank for in Google Search. These insights can help inform your content strategy, as well as your larger marketing strategy.

Google is becoming better and better at understanding what people are looking for. Its main goal is to offer content that satisfies the users’ needs. As Google emphasizes more on the quality and relevance of the content, it is now more important than ever to thoughtfully research keywords before you even start writing.

Types of keywords you should know.

#1. Short-tail keyword

Short tail keywords are search phrases with only one or more words. Because of the length, these keywords are less specific than searches with more words.

Individual short tail keywords are being searched more often than individual long-tail keywords. For example shoes, teacup, cake, etc.

#2. Long-tail keyword

Long-tail keywords are made up of three or more words, which are highly focused, and targetted to specific audiences. Long-tail keywords are search queries that get a small number of searches per month. Besides, they tend to be longer and more specific than their “head” counterparts and, therefore, yield a higher conversion rate.

Short keywords are tempting to target. But the more general the search query, the more details you’ll have to include when addressing it. On the other hand, if the search query is specific, you can often answer it rather briefly and still satisfy the searchers.

In other words, creating content for long-tail keywords generally requires less work.

Why do you need to do keyword research?

Keyword research is becoming more and more topical. It is no longer about finding one ideal keyword, but about understanding the audience and covering the topic in a comprehensive way. It is one of the most important SEO tasks to help you reach more people with your content.

The keyword researching process helps you find the most relevant keywords in your industry. A keyword finder is also going to provide you with opportunities to get the most out of your entire SEO strategy. 

As you start producing content, you may find that you are writing about the same things over and over again. You can take advantage of keyword research tools, like a keywords generator, to find related keywords to the ones you are already using. That way, you can expand not only the depth of your content but its breath as well. If you are able to rank highly for multiple keywords, you can get more traffic to your website.

How to do free keyword research?

Here are the 5 steps to help you find your relevant keyword. 

#1. Get the idea of ‘seed’ keywords

Similar to short-tail keywords, seed keywords are short. They are typically one or two words, without modifiers. Seed keywords are the foundation of the keyword research process. They define your niche and help you identify your competitors. 

For example, if you sell baking machines and equipment, then seed keywords might be:

• cake
• baking
• baking oven
• mixer

It should only take a few minutes to find them. As soon as you have a handful of broad ideas related to your website’s topic, move on to the next step. 

#2. Doing competitors analysis to know the ranked keywords: RankingGap

Analyzing competitors is one advantageous way to get the top-performance keywords. 

Competitor keyword research is one of the most valuable features of keyword tools. However, it is super tedious to find your competitors’ keywords manually. You would literally have to go page by page and guess the keywords your competitors focus on. The good thing is, tools like RankingGap are made specifically for this process.

You can use RankingGap to discover a lot of things about your and your competitors’ keywords. The tool will show you the keywords in four views:

• Missing: Keywords that all competitors rank, but you don’t. 
• Gap: Keywords that some of competitors rank, but you don’t. 
• Unique: Keywords you are ranking for, but your competitors don’t.
• Common: Overlapping keywords that you and your competitors are ranking for.  

Furthermore, if you do not want to find your online competitors manually, you can discover your competitors based on insightful competitor data gathered by RankingGap. 

The tool can analyze your competitors’ strengths by gaining in-depth insight into the significant data such as their web traffic, intersecting ranked keywords (common keywords) shared, and their top 10 ranking keywords. An overview of these core metrics will allow you to have an idea of which competitors you should keep an eye on.

#3. Use a free keyword generator tool, like LSIGraph.

Competitors can be a great source of keyword ideas. But there are still tons of keywords your competitors aren’t targeting, and you can find these using a keyword generator.

Using a professional keyword research tool saves you a lot of time because you can get hundreds of keywords ideas literally in one click. It offers data you wouldn’t find elsewhere like keyword difficulty, search volume, SERP data. Thus, the tool also gives you a competitive advantage against those who don’t use any keyword tool.

There are a lot of tools that give you keywords, but I want to introduce you LSIGraph. LSIGraph will give you hundreds of keywords that are semantically related to your target keyword. 

Like most keyword tools, LSIGraph provides you with trends, volume, cost per click, and competition. However, not only will you get long-tail keywords, but also the LSI keywords. LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing, are conceptually related terms that search engines use to deeply understand the content on a webpage.

To use LSIGraph, you only need to go through 2 steps.

Step 1: Visit lsigraph.com.

Step 2: Type in your main keyword and press the ‘Generate’ button. 

Since the costs, competition, and performance of similar keywords can vary greatly from one region to another (even for two businesses operating in the same industry), it’s a good idea to be as specific as possible. You can select your location and language. 

When you’ve entered your initial search query, you’ll see a range of keyword data. The keyword recommendations can be found on the left-hand side, and each keyword has four corresponding metrics: Google Search Volume, Competition, CPC, and Trend. 

With the free access, you will not be able to see LSV metrics and export features as the pictures showed. However, all the basic data, as well as the great “Top Performing Content” are ready for you to use.

LSV metric is one of the premium features

The best features are only available with the premium membership. If you get your premium access, you can have unlimited searches. Not only that, you will be provided with features that uncover all the accompanying data. 

• Unlimited LSI keywords search 24/7: You can get extensive data on all the keywords you’ll need to rank.
• Search volume data for the past 12 months of each LSI keyword.
• Latent Semantic Value (LSV) shows you the most valuable keyword to rank. 
• Export your handpicked keywords as PDF & CSV files, no more scribbling down on a notebook or relying on Google Keep.
• Endless exclusive white-label reports give you free rein to customize the report as you like. 
• Project manager for every project and client, so you won’t need to frantically dig through your notebook to recall details for old projects

With the help of LSIGraph, you can find a lot of relevant and valuable keywords for your website.

#4. Analyze your keyword list: 

Having tons of keyword ideas is all well and good. Some keywords are incredibly easy to rank for, while others are pretty much unattainable. How do you know which is which? Based on the metrics like Volume, CPC, Competition, Traffic, etc, you can figure out which will be the most valuable words.

• Search volume: It tells you the average number of times a keyword gets searched per month. It’s the number of searches, not the number of people who searched. There are cases where someone might search for a keyword multiple times a month. Even if you manage to rank number one, your traffic from a keyword will rarely exceed 30% of this number.

• Competition: SEO professionals typically gauge the ranking difficulty of a keyword. This is to know the picture of that keywords’ difficulties. 
• Cost Per Click (CPC): It shows how much advertisers are willing to pay for each ad click from a keyword. It’s more a metric for advertisers than SEOs, but it can serve as a useful proxy for a keyword’s value.
• Trend: With the trend, we know whether the term has some staying power, at least over the year provided here or not. We also know where the term gets the most attention. 

#5. Study your customers’ search intent: 

After you get your keywords list, you need to filter it out. One of the best ways is to understand what customers want and what they often ask.

Searcher intent describes the “why” behind a person’s search query and what their intended goal is for that search. It is commonly categorized into four different buckets:

• Informational: Queries that focus on finding specific information or answers.
• Navigational: Queries that typically involve brand, product, or service names and are used to find a particular website or page.
• Commercial: Queries that inform purchasing decisions but aren’t directly tied to conversions, and often involve comparisons
• Transactional: Queries that are directly associated with purchasing.

Getting the idea of the customer’s intention helps you study your niche in more detail. 

Thus, a good starting point is to browse industry forums, groups, and Q&A sites. This will help you find missing information and opportunity gaps that your potential customers are searching for. 

But if you dig deeper into the niche, you’ll find that people that are interested in walking may also use keywords like:

• “GPS watch with heart rate monitor”
• “best android app for walking”
• “how long does it take to walk the X”
• “how many calories does walking burn”

Publish content with targeted keywords

After sorting out all your beneficial keywords, you now can apply them to your website. Besides posting the content on your own blog, you may also consider publishing content as a press release. And, MarkertersMEDIA – a press release content creation platform can help you with this.

Press Release is a form of written communication that is distributed on news media outlets for the purpose of announcing newsworthy content. Your SERP rankings will be enhanced because these press releases will be indexed by top news search engines, storing your content inside Google’s (or any other search engine’s) database for easy accessibility.

TL;DR

Analyzing keywords and identifying search trends will help you build pages that best serve the needs of your audience. The relevant keywords provide your customers the information they’re searching for and solving their problems, hence increasing your website traffic. 

The keyword-finding process includes the help of the right tools like RankingGap and LSIGraph to give you the best keywords list. Choosing the right keyword generator also needs your careful consideration.

• Content in hidden tabs result in lower rankings 
• People Also Ask box displaying two or more times on search engine result page 
•  Google’s John Mueller gives a hard lesson on Google ranking and spam

9/3 – People Also Ask box displaying two or more times on search engine result page 

Recently, Twitter users have reported that the People Also Ask box has been coming up two times on a single page. 

With the increase in People Also Ask box, would this mean that optimizing your website to appear for People Also Ask box would be the way forward? 

This may be the case as People Also Ask box is unlike featured snippets. It is possible to appear in a People Also Ask box and hold a standard organic ranking on page 1 of Google. 

Content in hidden tabs results in lower rankings 

In 2018, Google came out to refute the claims that contents hidden in accordion tabs, etc., for user experience are not given full weight and demoted.

However, recently SEO consultant Dan Schure posted on Twitter that he saw an immediate improvement in traffic and rankings when he made some content hidden to users behind accordion dropdowns visible for users by default.

10/3 – Google’s John Mueller gives a hard lesson on Google rankings and spam

Recently, a Reddit user mentioned that his backlinks were not indexed on Google Search despite having created backlinks on top websites with good domain authority and low spam scores. 

Google’s John Mueller then replied to the user, saying that he should spend more time on more effective SEO things rather than just dropping links on random sites. For years, search engines have been dealing with and ignoring these issues.

He also stated that there shouldn’t be an overreliance on SEO tools as everyone who crawls the web does it differently, with different speeds and assumptions.

In his parting advice, Google’s John Mueller said to throw all these strategies away and instead focus on a long-term, real effort approach. 

That’s it, Folks!

That is all for this week’s SEO news, gentleman and gentleladies. Do you have any comments on this week’s news? Would you be changing your optimizing strategy upon reading this news? Drop a comment below. 

You will learn:

• What backlinks are and types of backlinks.
• 5 tactics to create backlinks.
• How to use a backlink checker like BacklinkGap.

Google’s algorithm is a sophisticated system that tries to provide the best results to its users. And as a business owner or marketer, being aware of these important algorithms and ranking factors gives you an advantage over your competitors.

And among all the ranking factors, building backlinks is arguably one of the best strategies to boost your traffic and domain authority. As a website owner, you must learn how to create backlink to your website. 

What is a backlink? 

Backlinks, also known as “inbound links”, “incoming links” or “one way links”, are links from one website to a page on another website. 

Google and other major search engines consider backlinks as a “vote” for a specific page. The theory is that when someone links to another website, they are effectively saying it is a good resource. Otherwise, they wouldn’t link to it, much in the same way that you wouldn’t recommend a friend to a bad coffee shop.

Pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have higher organic search engine rankings. A site’s overall link authority strongly correlates with higher rankings. So the more of these “votes” you have, the higher your site will rank in Google and other search engines.

Within SEO, link building plays an important role in driving referral traffic via other websites, especially in competitive industries. When combined with strong technical SEO foundations, great on-page SEO, excellent content, and a good user experience, link building can be super effective at influencing your search ranking and eventually driving you more organic traffic.

Not only is link building beneficial because it can help contribute towards improved rankings and traffic from organic search, but it also has a range of other advantages which can benefit your business. They can also be good for creating awareness and driving traffic. Link building should be a major part of your SEO strategy.

Types of backlinks:

Dofollow & Nofollow 

A dofollow backlink is a link that helps in terms of SEO by passing link juice of the origin site to the destination site. Acquiring dofollow backlinks will help improve a website’s domain authority, or domain rating, which in turn, helps to improve general search ranking.

By default, links are dofollow, so there is no need for rel=”dofollow” when linking to a website.

In contrast, a nofollow backlink is a link which does not pass “link juice” on to the website it is linking to. These links do not help as much in terms of SEO. To make a link nofollow, add rel=”nofollow” to the code when linking to a website.

Acquiring nofollow links is not a bad thing. Although you do not get the full SEO benefits of a dofollow link, nofollow links can generate traffic to your website, as well as diversify your backlink portfolio.  Even if they don’t count for PageRank, they’re still noticed by search crawlers. A site that has zero nofollow links could be a red flag to the crawlers, denoting something spammy or fishy going on.

In addtion, there are also a few other types of backlinks:

• Editorial Backlinks: Editorial is a link that naturally refers to your website, including one placed in relevant, high-quality content, making it the ideal backlink. To attract editorial backlinks, you will need to create regular content that showcases your thought leadership, such as your website and brand being hailed as a resource leading up to interviews. and industry insights. 

• Guest Post Backlink: When providing guest posts to high authority websites, you can place valuable backlinks pointing to your own website. Reaching out to blogging clients to createhigh authority backlink is an important part of an SEO strategy.
• Backlinks in Business Profiles: When you create a digital profile, both personal or business profile on social networks and blogs for your brand on business websites, media, you can include backlinks pointing to your website. When done naturally, the search engines will review and rate your website as well-established, reputable, and professional.
• Acknowledgment Backlinks: Another SEO boosting backlink that can help you boost your website branding is acknowledgment backlinks. This type of backlink is mostly published when your brand sponsors an industry event, has representative speaking, and many more. 

How to create backlinks:

There are a lot of ways for you to create backlinks. And, you should not learn just 1 or 2 ways. You can decide your primary method, but also remember to apply other tactics as well to gain the most backlinks.

#1. Become a quality source for reporters and bloggers: 

This means that you must be able to create eye-catching and helpful content first. When you have the right content, people will actively want to link you as a trusted source. 

According to lots of SEO ranking factor studies, long-form content tends to perform better in Google than short articles. Thus, comprehensive guides tend to contain a lot of content on a single page. So your guide can be the “go-to” resource for a topic, and people will link to it whenever they write about that topic on their blog.

In addition, content format is also important. In other words, if you want to get backlinks, focus on these content formats:

• “Why” Posts
• “What” posts
• Infographics
• Videos

#2. Publish “Skyscraper” Content

A piece of Skyscraper content will put you ahead of your competitors.

First, find a piece of content in your industry that’s already performed well (in terms of backlinks). You can do this in the easiest way like a simple Google Search.

Pay attention to pages that are ranking on the first page, lots of people have probably linked to it. Next, create a piece of content that’s 5-10x better than what you just found. If you are able to pull this off, the content will automatically attract backlinks simply due to the fact that you are the best piece of content available online.

#3. Build Links From Outdated Resources

Slightly different than broken link building is the practice of link reclamation, where you fix or “reclaim” links that once pointed at your site. These are links that point to pages on your website that no longer exist. You can either 301 redirect or fix these links on your end, or ask the webmaster to change the link.

Other types of problem that you can also fix by asking the webmaster to change/add your links are:

• Non-linking brand mentions: It’s sometimes common and easy to find others writing about your site without linking to it. Often a simple email to the author is enough to secure a link.
• Non-linking images: Instead of filing a copyright or DMCA takedown notice, this presents a terrific opportunity to earn a link instead. The way this works is to contact the website who has used the image, tell them that the image belongs to you and that you love that they’ve used it, but would they mind giving you a credit link in exchange for using it.

#4. Submit Testimonials

Companies big and small love to show off customer testimonials. If you’re using a product or service that you love (or at least like), consider sending them a testimonial.

Guess what: To show that you’re a real person they’ll often add a link to your websites without you even having to ask.

#5. Blogger Reviews

On the other side of submiting testimonials, if you have a piece of software, physical product, consulting service or anything of value that you sell, you can easily turn that into dozens of high-quality backlinks. How? By offering your product to bloggers for free.

All you need to fo is find bloggers in your niche that might be interested in what you have to offer. If you sell an information product that teaches people how to make their own perfume, you’d Google things like “perfume making”, “make perfume at home”, etc.

Your results will be a mixed bag of blogs, news websites and “how to” websites. Filter out how-to sites or news sites. You’ll be left with a solid list bloggers that might be interested in your offer. 

Make sure you have the right backlink checkers: 

After all, you will need to check your backlinks status, whether before or after building your backlink profile. The hard thing is that you can not do this manually. A tool that helps you check your backlink, BacklinkGap, is what you need.

A backlink checker like BacklinkGap can help you monitor your backlink profile so you are immediately notified when any poor-quality sites link to you. 

Here are what you can do with BacklinkGap to discover your backlink profile:

• Evaluate your backlink’s profile strength and weakness
• Identify if your backlinks type, whether they are “dofollow” or “nofollow”
• Monitor your backink profile and get the most up-to-date information
• Get all-time backlink data

BacklinkGap has a simple interface and very easy to use. You just need to enter your domain or URL, and this is what you will see:

You can get a huge amount of useful data like the number of backlinks, friendship score, total referring domain, new & lost backlinks, and so on. BacklinkGap also provides you information if you want to know more about the types and attributes. This information is illustrated in chart types for you to easily notice.

BacklinkGap gives you free access to most of the data to know your backlink profile. When you get much more access with premium level, you can explore much more; such as more number of backlink checker rows, monitoring rows, and the ability to export CSV files.

In addition, BacklinkGap can also help you check out your competitors’ backlinks. 

As a business leader, you probably know that it’s important to gather as much information as possible about your competitors. By examining the backlink profile of a competitor that’s already ranking well for your target keywords, you can gain insight into the link building that may have helped them.

Also, type the competitors’ domain/URL to BacklinkGap, and you will get as much information about them as you need. 

These data will empower you as a blogger/marketer to decide if the most effective SEO content marketing techniques that work for them will do the same for you. Spying on your competitors’ link-building strategies can give you ideas about how to get backlinks to your website.

TL;DR

Learning how to create backlink is important for every website. There are some helpful ways for you, such as becoming a quality source, publishing “skyscraper” content, building links from outdated sources, submitting testimonials or getting more blogger reviews. These are how to create backlinks for your SEO.

Although backlinks can be time-consuming to earn, that is when a backlink checker comes to support. A backlink checker like BacklinkGap is a necessary tool for you on the SEO journey. Thus, when new sites or those expanding their keyword footprint may find it difficult to know where to start when it comes to link building, they will need to research competitors’ backlink profiles.

For most SMBs, the key to generating more traffic, leads, and sales lies in outsmarting your competition.

In digital marketing, especially, established brands make it incredibly difficult to compete. They not only can attract the best sales, marketing, and research talent but also possess the financial clout to quickly outmuscle you in a toe-to-toe contest. It means that if you’re not smart, you’ll forever feed on scraps.

So, how do you get past this hurdle? How can your small business compete despite these obvious challenges? Simple – competitor analysis – researching your competition! Competitor analysis allows you to;

• Find out what makes your competitor tick; what’s their secret?
• Uncover and exploit opportunities the competitor has overlooked

This guide should help you plan and execute one of the most rewarding forms of competitor research in digital marketing – competitive keyword analysis.

It’s not exactly easy. But, with dedication, you can do it even on your own. Let’s start with a definition;

What is Competitive Keyword Analysis?

Competitive keyword analysis, also known as SEO competitor analysis or SEO keyword competition analysis, is just that – unraveling your competitor’s keyword strategy. 

By analyzing the competitor’s keywords, you’re able to gain insight into the interests of your shared audience and adjust your SEO campaign accordingly to improve your SERP performance.

Benefits of SEO Competitor Keyword Analysis

There are three main reasons why you should prioritize competitor SEO analysis for your search engine optimization campaign;

• Discover keywords that work

Using SEO competitor research tools, you can find out the full list of keywords your primary competitors use, along with the number of clicks received for each keyword, and overall search volume. You can then sort out these terms to come up with a list of proven keywords to drive your campaign.

• Find out keywords you omitted

If you already do SEO, competitor SEO search can also be instrumental in finding out valuable keywords that you might have overlooked in the past. What’s even better is that most competitor SEO analysis tools now let you compare your SEO keywords with the competitor’s to uncover the keywords missing in your campaign.

• Gives you a competitive advantage

Business is about outsmarting the opponent. It’s about finding new ways to stay ahead of the pack. Competitive SEO analysis adds another weapon to your business intelligence arsenal. Once you know the keywords that are driving your competitor’s success, you can find high-performance long-tail versions and even alternative keywords to outrank that competitor.

Tools like RankingGap will certainly play a huge role in helping you work out your keywords, what your competitors rank for, and how you fare against them.

It has 4 core features or keyword views that cover the necessary areas of a keyword gap analysis practice.

But of course, before you jump straight into the tool itself, maybe learn a bit more on how to perform competitive keyword analysis.

How to Perform Competitive Keyword Analysis in 3 Steps

So, having learned about the above benefits, you’re probably thinking – where do I start my competitor keyword analysis? Here’s how to proceed;

Step #1: Define Your Competition

Who are your competitors?

Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward answer to this question. While it’s easy to discover your local rivals by searching your primary keywords in Google, SERP results alone won’t reveal all your global competitors.

For instance, for a local bakery trying to rank for the keyword “tasty buns in Texas,” the competition would be limited to bakeries in Texas. But, the moment the same bakery attempts to rank for a how-to article, it’d be up against even national brands such as Taste of Home and the Food Network. Making it to the first page then becomes a lot more difficult than in the first scenario.

For purposes of competitive keyword analysis, therefore, we prefer to define a competitor as; “anyone who ranks in the first result page for your target keywords, whether or not these people are your local business competitors.”

With the Competitor Discovery feature in RankingGap, you can quickly identify your top competitors. You just need to paste your domain to RankingGap and wait for the results. RankingGap will show you your top competitors in a chart view.

When you click on a specific competitor, you can get information about your competitors, including the common keywords, the estimated volume of web traffic, and the percentage of keywords on the first page of SERP.

Step #2: Find Out Your Competitor(s) Keywords

This part should be easy! Pick an opponent (one of your competitors) and use SEO analysis tools to discover the core keywords driving their campaign.

Begin by searching your target keyword in Google and see the results that come up. Then, pick brands/companies behind those results and analyze their SEO strategies one by one.

There are multiple tools you can use to accomplish this process, including Google Analytics, SEMRush, and Moz. We, however, prefer (and recommend) BiQ Ranking Intelligence. With BiQ, all you need is the competitor’s site URL. Once you enter the URL into BiQ, the dashboard fills up with all the intelligence data you need.

Even better, BiQ allows you to select from five SEO intelligence parameters, i.e., keyword, content, link, rank, and site intelligence. You only pay for the selected parameter(s).  

In this case, you’d select keyword intelligence. Under this parameter, BiQ will help you;

• Discover your competitor’s keyword profile
• Collect all the keywords you like
• Find trending keywords for your content
• Uncover hidden long-tail keyword opportunities
• Conduct keyword searches for local SEO
• Determine the real SEO value of each keyword

The “real SEO value” in this case refers to metrics such as search volume, average CPC, and the average competition for that keyword.

Here is how you can find out your competitors’ keywords with RankingGap.

In order to know what keywords both you and your competitors share, you need to first create a project by inserting your domain and your competitors’, Then, you pick your location and language setting.

When you set everything up, you can generate your project. When the results are out, go to the “Common” keyword view, which you are already on by default. 

You’ll see a list of keywords with your competitors’ ranking positions as compared to yours.

What’s displayed here are the keywords that you, including all your competitors, have. You can see the ranking and the rank movement on each column. Other data like CPC, Volume, Competition, and SERP Features are also shown.

If your ranking is lower than your competitors, then it is where you should do your optimization.

In addition, the “Gap” keyword view lets you tap into the keywords you don’t have and keywords that some of your competitors are missing as well. The “Missing” view will show the keywords that all of your competitors are ranking for except you. Finally, the “Unique” view is the keywords that you rank for but not your competitors.

With that amount of information, you can do your competitor keyword analysis and start planning your content strategy. 

Step #3: Pick the Best Competitive Keywords

Not all keywords are equal – some promise more traffic and leads than others. Additionally, some keywords are extremely competitive. Getting an article to the first page for the term “content marketing,” for example, isn’t easy because it’s one of the most competitive keywords at the moment. You need to pick keywords that justify your efforts.

For the above reasons, sometimes, you may need to assess every keyword on your list to pick out the right ones. It’s what makes this part a little more challenging. To shorten the process, we recommend that you focus on finding;

#1. Keywords your competitor ranks for that you don’t

Are you leaving a few vital keywords out of your SEO strategy? Could your competitor be ranking higher in SERPs because they use these keywords you’ve often overlooked? If so, you need to start using the keywords more often.

#2. High-ranking competitor content that doesn’t match search queries well

Is your competitor benefiting from a lack of quality content for a particular keyword? Do they have rather poor content at the top of SERPs because there are no quality alternatives? You can take advantage of this situation by creating high-quality articles around these keywords.

#3. Keywords your competitor is paying for that you can rank for naturally

If your competitor is paying for these keywords, it follows that they’re valuable keywords in your industry. So, what do you do? Try to see if you can rank organically for these words. Create quality articles around the keywords and submit them to Google for indexing.

Invest in Keyword Gap Analysis

Finally, competitive keyword analysis isn’t complete without keyword gap analysis. A gap analysis entails comparing two domains (such as your site and a competitor’s site) to identify disparities in keyword use and performance.

We’ve already talked about finding keywords that your competitor ranks for, but you don’t. A keyword gap analysis will help you reveal such keywords.

But that’s not everything. A gap analysis will also help you discover long-tail keywords you might have overlooked as well as terms you perhaps need to use more frequently. 

Having a tool like RankingGap will definitely up your SEO game and generate an actual ROI as compared to doing manual guesswork or basic keyword research.

Conclusion

Competitive keyword analysis can significantly benefit your SEO campaign. With informed SEO competitor analysis, you could even topple some of the mainstays in your industry to rank at the top of SERPs for specific keywords. It’s something you should prioritize going forward.

Using a competitor keyword analysis tool like RankingGap is what you need to speed up your SEO process.

This post was originally written by Vivian and published on February 16, 2021. It was most recently updated on Feb 22, 2022, by Claire Le.

You will learn:

• The basic information about backlink and link-building
• How to check your backlink and know your current profile
• Way to use a backlink checker – BacklinkGap

If you want to rank on Google, you have no choice but to build links. 

However, link building is time-consuming and hard. As you may have guessed it, you’ve got lots of work to do. Research, analyze, create, reach out, and be consistent. Thus, you also need to track whether your link profile and traffic improve.

Manually checking and evaluating your backlinks is always going to be a boring process. So a backlink checker is designed and created for you. 

Choose the best free backlink checker for your site’s needs and allow it to automate the process for you. 

In this article, we will show you basic information about backlinks. You will also get to know a great tool – BacklinkGap. 

Let’s start with the definition.

Definition: Backlink and Link Building

A backlink, also known as an external backlink, is when another site links to your website somewhere in their content. This could be on a blog post, a service page, or on any other page on a website. 

Backlinks are the currency of the web. The websites that have plenty of them are deemed “authoritative” and are rewarded with high rankings in Google. While websites that don’t have any are bound to obscurity. 

Backlinks are important for SEO. The amount of authentic, high-value backlinks that you have back up the quality of the content on your website. Search engines like Google use the quality and number of backlinks as a ranking signal. 

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to pages on your own website. The purpose of link building is to boost the “authority” of your pages in the eyes of Google, so that these pages rank higher and bring more search traffic.

Why is building backlink important?

According to Google’s Andrey Lipattsev, links are one of the three major ranking factors in Google. Acquiring backlinks is a fundamental strategy in off page SEO. If you want your website’s pages to rank high in search, you will almost certainly need links.

Google (and even other search engines) look at backlinks from other sites as “votes.” These votes help them identify which page on a given topic (out of thousands of similar ones) deserves to be ranked at the very top of the search results. Do you know that the top results on Google’s first SERP have 3.8 times more backlinks than those below them?

The numbers of backlinks you actually need to land on the first page of Google results is enough to make most marketers give up.

Even the ninth and tenth positions have an average of over 30,000 backlinks.

Just having a backlink alone isn’t enough to rank high in the SERPs. The backlink has to be of good quality as well. A single good-quality backlink is worth thousands of low-quality backlinks. So, let’s move to the information about quality backlinks.

Information about backlinks

Common types of backlinks

Normally, you will see the most common names of backlinks “Dofollow” and “Nofollow.” 

Dofollow backlinks are the most common and valuable type of backlink for SEO.

When you put a dofollow link on your website, you’re telling Google that the link is organic — as in, the target website didn’t buy the link—and that you’re vouching for the accuracy of the content at the other end of that link.

Dofollow is simply telling Google and the other search engines that “the content on the other end of this link is important and should be noted.”

Nofollow backlinks are less common. They’re also less valuable. They’re used to telling search engines to ignore a particular link.

This is Google’s official definition of a nofollow tag, “Nofollow” provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link.’”

The biggest difference between these two types of links is that Google places more value on dofollow links — which means they’re great for SEO. Nofollow links, on the other hand, are paid less attention by Google’s algorithm in most cases. That means they’re arguably less valuable for SEO.

In general, both types pass the value to your site. We can assume that dofollow links are more valuable, but at the same time having only followed links is not “natural” in Google’s eyes (You will know more about the natural quality right after this.)

That’s why you need to monitor both your dofollow/nofollow distribution.

What makes good backlinks

There are some general concepts of evaluating links that the SEO community believes to be true. 

#1. Authority: 

Page authority refers to the original Google’s PageRank algorithm. The basic idea behind is super simple: the page with more links pointing at it casts a stronger vote. 

A common SEO rookie mistake is to neglect link opportunities from low-authority websites as if they’re somehow detrimental to your SEO success. It’s not. Just like a newly published page can acquire backlinks over time, a low-authority website can become a big deal in a few years time.

#2. Relevance:

Let’s say you own a blog about cake and you publish a review of your favorite macaroon recipe. Later, two of your friends decide to link to it. One from their “10 Best Easy Cake Recipes” article and the other from their “10 Money-saving Tips” article. Which of the two pages would cast a stronger vote in the eyes of Google (given that both these pages have equal authority)? 

#3. Natural:

Backlinks should be natural. The website owner chooses to link to your site because it provides value to their readers; not because you paid them to do so or tried to manipulate them. This natural approach is an example of ‘earning’ a backlink. This differs from unnatural backlinks where the intent is usually to fool search engines into believing that a website has a better reputation than it really does.

If Google believes a backlink is unnatural or spammy, Google may ignore it at first. For repeat offenses, Google will punish the site and demote them in its search engine results.

#4. Placement: 

One other thing that can affect the CTR (click-through rate) of a link is how high it appears on the page. Readers are more likely to follow links at the very beginning of the article, rather than the ones at its very end. 

And of course, the more links you have on the page, the more they will compete with each other for clicks and thus, dilute the authority which will be transferred to other pages.

#5. Destination: 

When building links to your website, there are three destinations where you can point them:

• Your homepage;
• Your linkable assets;
• The pages that you actually need to rank high in Google

And quite often the pages that you need to rank well are also the hardest ones to get links to. That’s because people prefer to link to informational pages where their audience can get value for free, instead of commercial pages where their audience is likely to part ways with their cash.

Make sure that you link to the right sites and not waste your backlinks.

How to check your backlinks

Being able to see your backlink distribution can also help you identify potential problems. You need to know how you are doing, what problem you are facing, and what you need to gain more backlinks.

A backlink checker is a tool that can help you do a lot of SEO backlink work.

Backlink Checker: 

A backlink checker can help you monitor your backlink profile so you are immediately notified when any poor-quality sites link to you. 

It also provides an understanding of potential link-building opportunities so that you can gain more positive inbound links that will benefit your site. Since you can monitor which pages are gaining positive backlinks, you will also have a better idea about which content is resonating the most with your audience.

There are a number of tools in the industry. It might be confusing when you are looking for the best free tool on the internet. Don’t worry. We are going to introduce you to one of the best tools that you can use for free – BacklinkGap.

Our favorite tool: BacklinkGap

What you can do with BacklinkGap to discover your backlink profile:

• Evaluate your backlink’s profile strength
• Identify if your backlinks are “dofollow” or “nofollow”
• Uncover your most common type of backlinks
• Get all-time backlink data

BacklinkGap has a simple interface. You just need to enter your domain or URL, and this is what you will see:

You can get a huge amount of useful data like the number of backlinks, friendship score, total referring domain, new & lost backlinks, and so on.

BacklinkGap also provides you information if you want to know more about the types and attributes, .

Overall, BacklinkGap has 9 outstanding things you can discover:

• Backlink profile strength: You can see the value and authoritativeness of all your backlinks. The friendship score stands for the number & the quality of backlinks you have.
• New and lost backlinks: You can be instantly informed of any gain or loss in your list of backlinks. This is like a real-time alarm that tells you what you need to pay attention to fix.
• Backlink Monitoring: BacklinkGap has this feature to help you identify the movement of all the backlinks pointing to you.
• Referring domain: You can uncover where your backlinks come from and the quality and trustworthiness of them.
• Backlink anchor text: This helps you to learn how your backlinks are labeled and the common keywords pointing at you
• Shareable link report: This feature allows you to share your backlink report easily and instantly. As the picture illustrates, you can adjust how the report displays by filtering or choosing the number of rows.

• Manage disavowed links: You can efficiently identify and compile unwanted backlinks to disavow.
• Broken links: The tool will recognize all the broken backlinks to your website and you will know where to reach out to patch them up.
• Identify spammy websites: You can even uncover suspicious domains that might be practicing spammy backlinks from your backlink profile.

BacklinkGap gives you free access to most of the data to know your backlink profile. However, you can get much more accessible if you upgrade with premium features, such as more number of backlink checker rows, monitoring rows, and the ability to export CSV files.

What to do after checking your backlinks

You can not just know your backlink profile and do nothing.

If you want to keep improving, you must analyze the data from the SEO backlink tool and find the next solutions. Backlink analysis is a comprehensive review of a website’s backlinks to analyze the site’s performance and identify issues that could affect its search engine ranking. 

You can regain the lost links:

A good tool gives you information not only on the recently gained but also recently lost links. When you know where the problem is, you can regain lost links and ultimately keep good link juice flowing to your site.

Has your link been deleted in particular? Was the web page deleted? Is it a 404’ed page? Find the issue, and get those links back!

You can use link-building tactics to gain more backlinks:

There’s no single right approach to link building and your choice of tactics will largely depend on your industry, your website, your resources, and your goals.

Conceptually, most link building tactics and strategies fall into one of the following four buckets: 

Manually add links to websites.

If you can go to a website that doesn’t belong to you and manually place your link there, that’s called “adding” a link. The most common tactics that fit into this category are:

• Business directory submissions;
• Social profile creation;
• Blog commenting;
• Posting to forums, communities & Q&A sites;
• Creating job search listings;

Building links via those tactics is very easy to do. And for that exact reason, those links tend to have very low value in the eyes of Google

Reach out to website owners directly to ask for a link.

You can start by reaching out to the blog’s owner and building a relationship. You can sign up to any newsletters they offer, follow them on social media, leave comments on their blog posts… In general, the more you give, the more you will get back.

Request to put up a guest post after establishing your relationship with them and demonstrating that you have things that are worth saying.

Get organic links from people who visited your page.

You “earn” links when other people link to pages on your website without you having to ask them to do so. 

This obviously doesn’t happen unless you have something truly outstanding that other website owners would genuinely want to mention on their websites.

But people can’t link to things that they don’t know exist. So no matter how awesome your page is, you’ll need to invest in promoting it. And the more people see your page, the higher the chance that some of them will end up linking to it.

Exchange money for links.

Umm… Yes. You can actually buy for backlinks. You just need to spend money and get a number of backlinks with that. BUT, don’t do that if you really want to rank top on the SERPs with quality traffic.

Even when you buy links, Google can spot it out and your content in the eye of the search engine will be marked.

You must keep monitoring your backlinks

A good link management tool allows you to also monitor exactly what you are doing.

One of the most profitable things you can do with your link data improves your SEO. This is just what the whole game is about, right?

Ultimately, we use data to make an informed decision about certain issues — and it’s the same case here. If your goal is to increase the traffic to your website, you need to build links. And to build links, you need to find those opportunity gaps. You should not keep your eye out of this backlink work. It doesn’t mean that you need to sit and see the data and charts day by day. 

With a backlink checker like BacklinkGap, you can get your report daily, weekly or monthly, and analyze it afterward.

TL;DR

Using a backlink checker isn’t optional in the current SEO landscape. Knowing as much about the people linking to your site is imperative. How to check backlinks of a site can be a hefty task; however, the work pretty much becomes simpler with such a backlink checker. 

The free backlink checker tool listed – BacklinkGap will give you a good look at the profile your site has built online. With free access, you can see a complete link profile overview with the in-depth analysis you may need.

1. More Product Rich Results showing for pages without structured data.
2. Google Search Console Performance Report suffered data loss.
3. Google testing bulleted descriptions in Search Ads.

7/2/2022 – More Product Rich Results Showing For Pages Without Structured Data

Since mid of December 2021, quite some people have been seeing product-rich results in the search results even though the pages did not use product structured data. 

Below is an example of a product rich snippet:

Some shared on Twitter their Google Search Console performance graph, showing a spike in clicks and impressions. All seem to be lining up as the behavior was noticed over the past couple of months.

Now, we know Google does not necessarily need structured data to pull this stunt. But structured data makes it easier for Google to do so.

8/2/2022 – Google Search Console Performance Report Suffered Data Loss

Google Search Console is seeing some analytics issues again. Just a few months ago, Google experienced data loss in August 2021 and January 2022. Further on, back in November 2021, there were some data delays as well. 

This month between February 1st to 3rd, Google posted yet another data logging issue on its site. The issue impacted the performance reports for Google Search, Google Discover, and Google News.

Hence, when you log in and view your performance report, there will be an annotation icon on February 1st documenting this data issue. Here is a sample screenshot:

Google informed that the “performance metrics suffered a logging issue on analytics for Search, Discover, and Google News. As a result, you may see some discrepancies in your performance data during this period”.

However, no worries as the data loss will not impact rankings in Google Search as it was just an analytics issue.

10/2/2022 – Google Testing Bulleted Descriptions In Search Ads

The last news of the week!

Some people have noticed that Google is showing bullet descriptions instead of sentences in its search ads.

This test has been confirmed by Google themselves as AdsLiaison has replied to the tweet’s query.

In my case, I’ve seen negative responses regarding this test with some mentioning that the ads format makes it look similar to an organic result. Additionally, with the bullet description taking up my vertical spaces, the organic result was pushed further below. Some even called it an “ads engine”.

What do you think about this?

Share your thoughts and see you again next week!

Ranking high and getting on the first page of Google is one of the quickest ways to drive more traffic, capture leads, and boost sales. But what should you do if you’re getting smashed down by your competitors all the time? 

In this article, you’ll discover exactly how to use keyword gap analysis to rank on the first page of Google and get the results you desire. 

I’ll help you steal competitors’ tactics, find their weaknesses, and build a solid strategy.

What to Know Before Conducting Keyword Gap Analysis?

There are certain things you should be aware of before conducting keyword gap analysis. Not knowing them could be disastrous and lead to unpleasant results.

Let’s prevent that by clarifying the most important SEO competitor analysis terms.

Why Do Keywords Matter?

Keywords are the building block of any SEO strategy. Every time people search for something on Google, they type in the keywords to the search box.

When they hit enter, they’ll get the results for the keyword they typed in. These results are shown and sorted by the search engine by the relevance, quality, etc.

If you’re looking to rank high and get as much traffic as possible, you must discover what keywords people search for and create high-quality content around them. 

It’s the only way to rank high, get more traffic, and maximize your potential.

What to Look for When Picking Keywords?

Picking the right keywords is vital for running a bulletproof SEO strategy. Yet, most people keep picking the wrong keyword and wonder why they aren’t getting any traffic.

The first thing you must realize is that contrary to common belief, you shouldn’t pick the keywords with the highest traffic. This is because these keywords are usually impossible to rank for and will only waste your time.

Instead, it’s much better to pick keywords with moderate traffic and less competition. 

Also, the more specific the keyword is, the better you zero in on your audience and tailor your content to them, which will increase the quality and relevance.

That’s the reason why you should always pick long-tail keywords over short-tail ones.

In essence, long-tail keywords are 3+ words long and specific, unlike short-tail keywords.  You can see examples of both short-tail and long-tail keywords below.

You should also care about the searcher’s intent. In other words, why is somebody looking for this keyword?

If somebody is looking to learn more about how antivirus works, there is no reason to sell these people the best antivirus on the market, right? They don’t care about that. They are just looking for more information, not buying.

If you mess up the searcher’s intent, your content will become less relevant, and the quality will suffer. So be sure to avoid that at any cost.

Here are the three search intents you can use with your keywords.

Make your content aligned with the searcher’s intent and pick long-tail keywords that are much easier to rank.

What Is an SEO Competitor Analysis?

There are multiple ways you can go about researching keywords, such as brainstorming, using keyword research tools, competitive keyword research, etc.

But these techniques only assume that you’ll rank high – THERE IS NO GUARANTEE.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, you can’t afford to only guess and hope your strategy will work. And that’s why you must conduct a competitor analysis…

Competitor analysis allows you to analyze your competitors and find out what works. It takes away all the guesswork and helps you find out proven strategies that have shown results to your competitors. 

There are multiple ways you can go about competitor analysis which you can see below.

In this article, we’ll be looking closely at the first technique – keyword gap analysis. It will help you close the gap between you and your competitors and rank higher fast.

What Is a Keyword Gap Analysis?

Keyword gap analysis allows you to find out what keywords your competitors rank that you don’t. It can help you discover missed opportunities and find keywords that your audience searches for.

It can also give you insights into what your readers want and give you new content ideas. 

This can make your content strategy more complete, fix your weaknesses, and fill in the gap between you and your competitors.

It’s one of the most effective ways to find great keywords and create useful content. But if you’re looking to make the most out of it, you must pick the right competitors, study them relentlessly and discover their strengths and weaknesses. 

This may not always be as straightforward as it may sound. Keep on reading to discover how to do it properly and supercharge your results.

The Fundamentals of Keyword Gap Analysis

Now that you know what keyword gap analysis is, let’s look at some of the juicy benefits that can motivate you to pursue it with your business.

Here are a couple of reasons why you must use keyword gap analysis in your SEO.

BETTER SEARCH VISIBILITY

Spying on your competitors can help you discover why they are getting more traffic than you do and find lucrative keywords you aren’t using in your strategy. 

You can then use them in your content, move up in the rankings, and beat competitors.

MORE CONTENT IDEAS

Coming up with new content ideas isn’t easy, especially when you have already created a lot of content.

But we all know how important publishing content regularly is.

Competitor keyword analysis can give you a hand and help you develop tons of fresh content ideas you can use in your strategy.

OPTIMIZED CONTENT

Compare your content with the competitors’ content and find out what they do differently. For example, what keywords are they using, and what are the structure and the length of the content?

Conducting a competitor keyword analysis will help you discover all these things, better optimize your content, and make it high-quality. 

It’s the easiest way to improve your content and drive more substantial results.

BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR AUDIENCE

Finding out related keywords you aren’t using can uncover new opportunities to go deeper about the topic and answer your audience’s questions.

This can make your content more valuable and help you rank in People Also Ask snippets.

Creating high-quality content that answers all of your readers’ questions should be your number one priority, and that’s why you must conduct competitor keyword analysis.

What Areas of Competitor’s Website Should You Analyze?

There are a lot of things you can analyze with the keyword gap analysis. However, you definitely shouldn’t focus on only one area – the written content.

There are a lot of other areas you should consider which we will cover next.

TITLE

The title or the headline of your content is the most critical part of content. It will help you hook the readers, make them click, and also assist you in ranking high.

This is because the title is the first indicator by which the search engine tries to understand what your content is about and if it’s relevant to the search query.

And to make it as relevant as possible, you’ll need to include keywords in it.

A keyword gap analysis will help you compare your titles with competitors, find out the differences, and fix any issues. It can also help you discover how to create better titles that can maximize your results.

URL

Another area (which is often overlooked) is the URL of the content. Whether you believe it or not, including the right keywords in there can make a massive difference in the long run.

Fortunately for you, a lot of companies skip it, which can give you a competitive advantage.

Be sure to analyze it, find the differences, and use more appropriate keywords inside the URL of your content.

Quick Tip: Don’t make your URLs too long. It’s not optimal and can hurt your rankings.

META DESCRIPTION

A meta description is another area you should pay attention to. The meta description is the subtext of your search result.

It should act as a quick summary of your page and present a hook and a strong benefit for the searchers to click. It’s also an ideal place to include related keywords that describe your page so Google can rank it properly.

Comparing your keywords to the competitors’ can help you spot the inaccuracies that may cost you the search result position.

ALT TEXT

Image alt text is not only something most bloggers ignore. It’s also something most bloggers avoid totally.

But this is not optimal, and if that’s you, you should start adding alt text to your images.

The alt text describes the image and helps the search engine better understand what’s on it.

It won’t make a huge difference but can give you a slight advantage that can be just enough to rank you higher. That’s why you should incorporate it into your keyword gap analysis.

Remember, it’s small details like keywords in the URL, alt texts, and meta description that make all the difference. You and your competitor’s keywords in these four areas can easily be analyzed and compared using a keyword gap analysis tool like RangkingGap. 

If you’re wondering how to do that, here are the four core strategies of keyword gap analysis that you need to know.

4 Keyword Gap Analysis Strategies You Need to Know

Now that you know what areas to analyze and work on let’s look at the four best keyword gap analysis strategies you must use.

They will allow you to perform the complete competitor analysis from scratch and give you the desired results in no time. So be sure to follow these strategies in the order we’re listing them to get the best results faster. 

#1 Keywords That You Rank, But Your Competitors Don’t

The first strategy of keyword gap analysis is finding out what keywords you are already ranking. There are multiple ways you can do that, such as manually typing the keywords you are trying to rank for to Google and getting your data there.

As you can see, if your site is neilpatel.com and your target keyword is “keyword gap analysis,” then you’re ranking in the 3rd position for that keyword.

However, doing it that way is extremely ineffective, inaccurate, and time-consuming.

I highly recommend using the proper tool to analyze your website and give you the ranking keywords automatically. It can save you countless hours that you can invest into improving your site and SEO game.

If you use the dedicated solution, all you need to do is type in your domain’s URL, click on the search button, and automatically get the full report generated.

You can see an example of that below.

If you use a keyword gap analysis tool, you can easily make comparisons of you and your competitor’s keywords. You’ll be able to find out their rankings and compare your results to discover the keywords only you rank.

These are the most vital keywords you should invest the majority of your time in. 

You should also track them to see whether your rankings are increasing or dropping. If they’re falling, you should update your content to stay on top.

All of this is what most bloggers do, though. Unfortunately, they stop there. However, if you’re looking to get the best results with the keyword gap analysis, you shouldn’t…

You should also look at the historical data of the keyword to predict future behavior. 

This is important because let’s say you’re ranking for a keyword in the 10th position. You decide that you want to rank it higher, so you start creating more content around it.

But what you may not know is that this keyword is declining in the searches and will slowly go flat. That’s why you must check the historical data of all your keywords. For that, you can either use your competitor analysis tool or Google Trends.

You simply go to Google Trends, type in your keyword, and set the time range.

As you can see above, “competitor analysis” is still worth pursuing because it keeps its position over time and is very stable. Do so for all your keywords to discover their value, predict future behavior, and avoid headaches with pursuing dead keywords.

Find your unique keywords, build your content around them, and rank higher effortlessly.

#2 Keywords That Competitors Rank, But You Don’t

Finding every high-volume keyword and ranking for it is close to impossible. There are many keywords you can rank for, and you certainly didn’t catch every valuable one.

And that’s why you should check up on your competitors and find out their keywords.

Specifically, you should look at keywords only your competitors rank, and you don’t. Go to your keyword gap analysis tool and get a list of competitors’ keywords ranking in the top 10 results on Google.

Compare them with yours and find keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t.

You should then sort them by the ranking position and determine why you aren’t ranking for them. Here are a couple of reasons for that.

1. You haven’t covered that part of your niche yet
2. You used a synonym or related keywords
3. It’s a new keyword, and you haven’t optimized your content yet.

Either way now is the best time to fix it, get ahead, and beat your competitors.

Let’s go over two strategies you can use to leverage these valuable keywords you aren’t ranking.

PRODUCE NEW CONTENT

If you compile a list of competitors’ unique keywords, you will quickly discover the parts of your niche you haven’t covered yet.

That can help you come up with new content ideas that have shown results.

Therefore, you should start creating new content to widen your reach, attract more people, and make your website more authoritative.

If you plan to do so, it’s ideal for connecting multiple keywords. Consider the table below. The website isn’t ranking for “SEO responsive design,” “SEO recent update,” and “SEO inbound marketing.”

You don’t need to create three articles about these keywords – it would only take a lot of time. Instead, you can merge them into one piece.

For instance, you can write an article about Recent SEO Updates in Inbound Marketing and discuss the importance of responsiveness due to the rise of mobile traffic. Just like that, you save yourself a lot of time and effort while you get the same results.

On top of that, you also create high-quality articles that will make your site more helpful.

REOPTIMIZE YOUR OLD CONTENT

Optimizing your content should be among the top priorities. Delivering accurate and fresh information will help you be more authoritative and prevent confusing or misleading your audience.

And you get a big juicy ranking boost from Google too…

The process of reoptimizing your article is pretty self-explanatory. You go through your old content, add a few sections, spit in new keywords, and make it more relevant.

After that, you can expect a significant boost in traffic, higher ranking, and beating competitors.

These keywords are crucial. You must start creating or re-optimizing content around them as soon as possible and filling in the competitive gap.

#3 Keywords That Both of You Rank

If you compare your keywords with your competitors’ keywords, you will have many keywords in common. However, you may find out that a specific competitor can be beating you in almost all of them.

It can be very frustrating, so let’s discover why that is and how to fix it…

COMPILE A LIST OF COMMON KEYWORDS

The first step of this competitor analysis strategy is finding out keywords you both rank. It’s similar to the previous strategy, except you’re looking for keywords both of you rank.

After you get that, it’s time to visit competitors’ websites.

FIND ARTICLES CONTAINING THE KEYWORD

Once on their website, it’s time to locate the articles that contain these keywords. This should be no problem because most of these keywords can give you a pretty good idea of what to look for.

For instance, if you see keywords like below, you know what to look for, right?

There should be no problem in identifying the articles with these keywords. However, going through all of your competitors’ posts manually and looking for suitable ones can be very overwhelming and time-consuming.

Fortunately, you can automate it by using Google search operators.

All you need to do is type site: your site name “target keyword” to Google. So if you’re looking for the keyword “whiskey decanter” and your competitor is surprisesandgifts.com, it would look like below.

This allows you to narrow down the articles to only those that use the target keyword. You can also search for articles that contain more than one keyword.

I did exactly that below and narrowed down the 160 results we got previously to only four.

Do the same and list down all of the articles that contain these keywords. You should also do likewise with your site and compare the search result number.

If you have created only one article with the keyword, while the competitors have created over 100 of them, it’s obvious that they will rank higher than you. 

Check it out before you move on to the next step.

COMPARE THE ARTICLES

Once you find the articles, it’s time to study them and discover what makes them superior to those you have created.

There are a lot of things that you need to inspect.

First, you should look at the keyword density and compare it to yours. For example, if you include a keyword in your article only two times while your competitors use it 15 times, there is a big chance that they will outrank you.

You should also check the word count – longer articles tend to outrank the shorter ones.

Second, you should inspect the header tags and find out what audience they are targeting. You might’ve missed the search intent or forgot to include a critical section.

All of that can cost you a ranking position in the SERP – Google is very strict.

You should also look at the article as a whole and find out what makes it different or better. The more you study it, the better results you get. So don’t be lazy on this step. Take your time and analyze it as much as possible.

It will go a long way in moving you up the ladder and making you the people’s go-to.

#4 Keywords That You & Most of Your Competitors Don’t Rank

These keywords are the gems of your SEO game. If you can spot them quickly, they may lead to extreme growth and many new readers. In addition to that, they can separate you from the rest and help you stand out.

But they are also extremely rare and hard to discover…

Fortunately, there are still ways and strategies to find them and leverage them. Here are a few actionable steps you can take to use them in your strategy.

CREATE A LIST OF COMPETITORS

If you’re looking to make this strategy successful, you can’t be comparing your site to only two or three competitors. Instead, compare it with at least 5 to 10 competing websites.

The more competitors you compare, the higher the chances of finding a unique keyword.

FIND UNIQUE KEYWORDS

Compare your competitors’ keywords and find some that only one or two of your competitors rank.

The fewer competitors rank for it, the better.

GROUP SIMILAR KEYWORDS

It’s ideal when you find multiple unique keywords that you can group together. You can then come up with unique content ideas and be more well-rounded.

It will help you with increasing your authority and getting new readers only you can serve.

5 Keyword Gap Analysis Best Practices

Now that you know about the four best keyword gap analysis strategies let’s look at some of the best practices you should follow. Doing so will allow you to get better results, prevent blunders, and stay on top of your SEO competitor analysis.

Here are the five best keyword gap analysis best practices to follow.

1. List Out & Analyze Your Competitors

Starting keyword gap analysis without having a clear picture of who your competitors are can lead to poor results. Moreover, it will only waste your time and effort. 

That’s why it’s critical to establish competing websites from the early beginning.

If you’re not sure who your competitors are or how to find them, don’t worry, we got you covered with the four best strategies for finding your competitors.

MARKET RESEARCH

Take a look at other companies selling similar products that you do. You can talk to your sales team to find out which or search for it manually with Google.

For instance, you could type something like below to Google if you’re in an SEO niche.

You’ll immediately get a huge list of all your competitors in a matter of a few seconds. 

After you get the list of competitors, you should reduce it to only the businesses that are similar in size and sell to the same audience.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Another technique you can employ to get even more precise results is to ask your readers which other businesses they were evaluated. Again, this technique is superior to market research because it allows you to see your biggest rivals.

You don’t have to go through hundreds of brands and reduce them to the most relevant ones.

Instead, your readers will do the job for you, saving you time to invest in more important tasks.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is one of the best places for brands to connect with their audience and build an online presence. 

For you, as a business owner, it can also be an opportunity to find similar brands in your niche and identify competitors.

You can also go to forums like Quora or Reddit and find customers’ favorite brands.

ONLINE TOOLS

If you’re not on a tight budget, you can invest in online tools to analyze and list out the most relevant competitors automatically. It can drastically cut time, bring better results, and help you run a more solid keyword gap analysis.

If you decide to go with this option, I highly suggest you go with SimilarWeb or Contently.

They are highly intuitive and have the best combination of price and features. Both of them also feature the demo version, which you can try for free to see whether you like it.

No matter which option you choose, the quantity of competitors isn’t nearly as important as the quality. You must analyze the results, throw away companies that aren’t within your reach and focus only on the similar, more relevant ones. 

2. Identify & Compare Keywords

The four keyword gap analysis strategies we’ve talked about earlier work great. But maybe you just want to know what keywords your competitors use that you don’t and don’t care about the other three strategies.

However, if you’re looking to unlock the godly power of keyword gap analysis, you should think again…

Leveraging just one of these strategies will get you only so far, but using all of them combined will get you on the legendary level.

It will be more time-consuming, but the results are definitely worth it.

Here’s a brief yet comprehensive step-by-step method on how you can utilize RankingGap in uncovering these 4 amazing strategies:

STEP 1: CREATE YOUR PROJECT

First thing first, go to your dashboard. You’ll see a pretty straightforward user interface that easily tells you what to do. So here, select your preferred location and language, then indicate you and your competitors’ domain.

You would want to make sure that your domain is entered correctly. Instead of say, “https://www.freshworks.com”, the correct input would be “freshworks.com”.

comparing 5 websites simultaneously would be more effective as you can just straight up select the best keywords among your competitors.

Once done, you’re ready to create a new project.

STEP 2: START WITH A KEYWORD VIEW

Here’s the main biggest part that makes RankingGap what it is; The FOUR keyword views that accomplish all your keyword gap analyses.

Basically, you can start off with any of the views. But let’s just go with the flow below:

Common keyword view – This shows you keywords that both you and your competitors share. But here’s the catch…you could be ranking higher or lower than your competitors do. So, find a way to maintain or outrank those keywords.

Missing keyword view – This shows the keywords that all your competitors are ranking for except YOU! So, find the best and most performing ones to include in your own content.

Gap keyword view – This view uncovers keywords that only some of your competitors have. This means that these keywords are less competitive and in fact, valuable in discovering a new audience.

 Unique keyword view – This view lists out all the keywords that only you are ranking for. Amazingly, you are ahead of most of your competitors for these search queries.

STEP 3: REFINE KEYWORDS

While you’re in one of the views, you may scroll past some unwanted keywords. you may choose to sort it out if you’re just trying to get a quick glance at certain data (the most and least of the results).

But this method isn’t entirely effective. 

So, a better way here is to make good use of the “Advanced filter.” Just include the range that you want for the ranking position, volume, competition, or CPC.

STEP 4: STAR YOUR FAVORITE KEYWORD

If you are a fan of collecting and bookmarking things that you like, you can choose to star the keywords that you find valuable for later use or export.

You can choose to skip this step if you like. But the star feature definitely helps you organize and declutter your keywords by folds!

STEP 5: EXPORT KEYWORDS

Finally, you may want to consider exporting the keywords. You can do a quick export of 1,000 keywords (if there is), or if you’re the type that wants things fast, just export all.

And as I’ve mentioned in step 4, you can try to make clear what keywords you want first, star it, only then do you export them.

Once you’ve done the necessary, it’s time to move on to the 3rd best practice.

3. Further Refine And Filter Keywords Based on What You Identify

Now it’s time to look at the keywords you got from the four keyword gap analysis techniques and observe them further. There are three simple questions you should be able to answer.

1.What Are the Ranking Keywords Like?

Take a list of the keywords your competitors use and find out what are they like. For example, are they mostly plural or singular?

You should also discover the type of keywords they rank for.

Are they long-tail or short-tail keywords? Continue studying them and compare as many metrics as possible. In ideal circumstances, you would compare all of the metrics you see in the table below.

These will help you discover what your audience searches for and the lucrative keywords that work well within your niche.

2. What Is the Amount of Keywords Your Competitors Include per Page?

The second important thing to observe is how many keywords your competitors place on a single page. There are two parts to it.

First, you should find out how many different keywords they place on the page. You can easily find that out with the SEO Review Tool. Then, you hop on the page, type in the competitor’s URL, and hit enter.

You’ll get a list of the most common keywords they used on their page.

Second, you should also care about the keyword density – how often are keywords used on a single page. Again, you can see that in the SEO Review Tool too. 

You should be inspired by your competitors and analyze it, however…

Many companies overuse keywords, so don’t necessarily copy their density if it’s too high. Instead, I suggest shooting for 1 – 2% keyword density, which means using a keyword once or twice every 100 words.

Find out both of these metrics, compare them, and consider the change if necessary.

3. What Is the Content Surrounding a Particular High-Ranking Keyword?

Another key thing to look out for is the content surrounding the keyword. You should observe competitors find out how they place keywords on their webpage.

Is it natural, are they forcing it, or do they use it as an anchor text?

You should also care about whether they highlight it with bold or italics or just leave it blank to make it fit into the content.

Whatever it is, find that out, discover what works and use it in your strategy.

4. Categorize and Label Your Filtered Keywords

This step is especially great if you plan on creating new content with the keywords you’ve stolen from your competitors. The first thing you should do is sort out keywords by volume, CPC, competition, etc.

You should counter all of these together to get the keyword value.

Keywords with the highest value should be your main keywords, while the lower value keywords should act as related keywords supporting the main term.

You should then create a label for every keyword you have. I suggest you create two labels. First, mark it as the main or supporting keyword, and the second is to describe the topic you plan to use.  

After a while, you come to realize that some keywords don’t belong anywhere. They may have disastrous value, or you can’t fit them in any content you plan on creating.

These are usually irrelevant keywords you should get rid of because they’re worthless.

5. Recognize a Pattern in Your Final Keyword Group

Competitor keyword gap analysis shouldn’t end just with getting the list of relevant keywords you should use in your content. Instead, if done correctly, you should learn more about your audience and get to know them better.

If you look closely at the keywords you’ve stolen from competitors, you’ll come to realize a thing or two…

You should start realizing who your target audience is, how they think, and even predict the future behavior to discover what keywords will work in the future. The easiest way to do so is to create an ideal persona if you haven’t already.

I highly suggest using the Make My Persona tool from HubSpot for that.

It’s a 7-step process where you start by picking the persona’s profile picture and name and finish with the desires, problems, and education.

You can create your persona and be finished within a few minutes. After you get that, you can better personalize your content and maximize the results.

After you get that, you’ll get a clearer picture of who you are serving and what these people want. This will help you spot a pattern in your keywords, predict keywords that will improve your next content, and develop a winning strategy.

Content Gap VS Keyword Gap Analysis

What Is Content Gap Analysis?

Content gap analysis links your current content and the content that would drive desired results and fulfill your marketing goals.

It’s about identifying content you need to fill the gap between current and desired results.

There are multiple ways you can use to implement it in your business. In my opinion, one of the best ways to get the desired results quickly is to study your competitors. If they perform better, they most likely created a better piece of content than you did.

And all you need to do to fix it is compare your content to theirs, spot the difference, and make it better.

What’s the Difference Between the Two?

While content gap analysis focuses only on content, keyword gap analysis focuses on the search terms people type into Google and the way they think.

With content gap analysis, you can spot the difference between your content and the content that works, close the gap, and drive stronger results.

Keyword gap analysis works differently, though…

It focuses mainly on the keywords your site’s competitors rank for. It helps you get better insights into your audience, helps you discover how they think, and predicts their decisions in the future.

They work great hand in hand. Keyword gap analysis helps you get readers to your site, while content gap analysis will help you keep them reading longer.

Why Should You Be Focusing on Keyword Gap Analysis in Your SEO Practice?

Content gap analysis can do wonders for your content. It can fill in the gap on the market, make your content better, and help you retain more readers. 

However, it has not as near an impact as the keyword gap analysis…

While it can help you retain readers, keyword gap analysis is what gets them to your site. And that’s precisely why keyword gap analysis should be the cornerstone of your SEO practice if you’re looking to get substantial results.

You can have the best content, but you won’t get far if nobody types in your keywords.

If you want to incorporate both of them in your content, start with the keyword gap analysis and slowly progress to the content gap analysis.

Conclusion

Keyword gap analysis is vital for long-term success and getting to the desired results. But, unfortunately, it’s often overlooked by the SEO practice.

The reason behind it is simple – it’s tedious and a long process if you do it properly.

However, without getting a complete grasp of what your competitors do, you will not win in the race up the SERP. It’s definitely worth your time, and if you employ keyword gap analysis tools such as RankingGap, you should give it a go if you haven’t already.

You will learn:

• Understand the benefits of doing local SEO
• Know more about local rank tracker
• Know the best tool to track your ranking – Grid My Business

Whether you realize it or not, local SEO is a critical strategy for your business. Ignoring this aspect will only jeopardize your business more than you initially realized.

There are a lot of stages and works for a proper local SEO plan, and there are just not enough hours in the day to take care of everything that comes across your crowded plate.

But, checking the position of your business in local rankings doesn’t have to be another to-do list. You now can enable automatic local results monitoring and track local rankings every week with one local rank tracker. 

This article will show more about local SEO and local rank tracker. I will also show you one incredible tool to identify your ranking – Grid My Business.

What is Local SEO?

As mentioned, local SERPs, are the results that show up for a local-based query based on location. Local SEO refers to the process of optimizing your business’s website for a better local ranking in the SERPs while indirectly bringing better brand awareness. It is a subset of the traditional SEO commonly adopted by local businesses with physical stores to reach customers in their vicinity.

Results in search engines like Google and Bing will differ based on location, so searching for keywords yourself won’t give you objective answers. Searches in different cities, California and Nevada, will vary, as will searches in other areas, such as San Diego or Los Angeles.

The benefits of local SEO:

When roughly 97% of people use online search engines to look for local businesses, some businesses may gain an edge from a regional approach to SEO. Brick and mortar businesses like coffee shops or hardware stores are likely to benefit more when optimizing for local searches than the traditional SEO and here’s why:

#1. It helps you to increase traffic and sales. 

Reaching the top of local search engine rankings means you have to gain more website traffic, increase domain authority, and build brand authenticity. However, the ultimate benefit is the opportunity to attract more customers and increase conversion rates.

Since every SERP is localized, all businesses need to localized search results. Even if you sell globally or only deal with digital products, you should pay attention to how you perform on the local SERPs. Otherwise, you could potentially lose traffic and conversions.

Many people rely on Google My Business listings to discover a local business nearby to visit and support.

#2. It helps you to reduce advertising costs.

One of the must-do lists when planning a local SEO is to create a Google Business Profile, which is entirely free. There is no need to send out flyers, place ads in the newspaper, or conduct localized social media campaigns. By using local SEO, regional customers can easily find your business online.

#3. It can gain more foot traffic from local online visibility.

The fact is one in three people uses their smartphone to search for products before looking for a physical store. By optimizing your company’s local SEO, these local customers are more likely to find you and visit your store. 

If local customers find your business through an online search and have a positive experience, they are very likely to become repeat customers. Such customers are easier to retain and often refer businesses to others in the same locality, thus, bringing in more clientele.

Local Search and Google 3-pack

Local Search

A local search by which a user expects a subjective result is affected by the user’s location or location provided in the search keywords.

Examples:

• best sushi in Australia
• San Francisco watch shops
• Pizza in Chicago

The above search results take the user’s location or the location provided in the search query into consideration and therefore display the results that would match them best.

Previously, search results would be the same regardless of which country you searched from – provided you didn’t use specific geo-modifiers in your search. Now, Google and other search engines modify the search results based on location. Localization is arguably the most crucial filter Google passes its results through to build its SERP.

Google 3-Pack

Most rank trackers claim to track locally, but they only track the 3-pack. The Google 3-Pack, often also referred to as the Google Snack Pack, is a listing of three local businesses (with physical locations) below a Google Map with location points.

The results in the Local 3-Pack are strongly tied to the location the user is searching from, and it varies by which geo-modifier you use.

The Google 3-Pack shows up whenever your query has local intent or implied local intent. Searches with local intent might be: “coffee shop near me” or “Coffee shop in Kuala Lumpur”. 

Understand more about Local Rank Tracker

What is it?

A local rank tracker is a tool that helps you to check your website ranking as a local user. It makes you understand the results of your SEO campaign and identify the way your website is ranking on different search engines. 

All this obtained data can help you in the keyword process or give you the possibility of using them in the development of your marketing strategy.

What can you get from a Local Rank Tracker?

#1. You can see the most important SEO metrics:

If you’re running a local business, you must be able to receive and track accurate and relevant data on your rankings. When you want to refine the data, you can also add filters to see how you rank in different locations or on different devices.

#2. You can have your local ranking updates: 

The thing is that website rankings are constantly changing. Plus, they differ heavily across different geographic locations. 

Monitoring local rankings will provide you with a much better understanding of your website’s visibility on Google as well as on other search engines. This way you’ll automatically level up your SEO results that won’t take long to be noticed. 

You can even check your progress in different countries, cities, and zip code areas, and choose from daily, weekly or monthly updates.

#3. You can save your time:

You can typically set up local business listings across the web for free with tools like Google Business Profile and check your ranking automatically with tools. As a result, it can save you tons of time and effort to manage your business information on the internet. 

How to improve your local ranking

So you have gone through the information about local SEO and local rank tracking tools, and you might be struggling to know where you should start. Here are 5 tips for you to optimize your business local SEO.

Tip 1: Optimize for local keywords by creating content – BiQ

People use search engines to identify local businesses that provide the items or services they require. To rank in these search results, you’ll need to incorporate local keywords into your website.

When creating content with local intent, it’s critical to include local keywords in the title and meta description tags to help with local SEO. Thus, to delineate your site conceptually and geographically, your content will have to focus on long-tail keywords frequently.

To find keywords for your local search, you will need to conduct local SEO keyword research, and there is a tool that can make this process easier for you – BiQ Keyword Intelligence. 

You just need to put your main keyword, choose your local area and languages, then press generates and wait for a moment. You can get your related keywords, as well as the keyword intent, volume, trend, CPC, and value.

After you get your list of keywords, you should choose the keyword that has high volume but lower competition. A high-value keyword means it will bring more traffic to your website at a lower competition.

It can be quite challenging to decide which keyword to use at first, but as time goes by, you will get used to it and know your target words. That’s where you can sort the keyword value in.

Know more about SEO keywords here: Supercharge Your SEO with A Keyword Generator

Tip 2: Optimize your Google Business Profile  

Google Business Profile is often the first impression that people get for your business and brand, so it cannot be ignored. You can’t do local ranking without a proper Google My Business listing which will automatically improve SEO and increase the visibility of your business. In addition, it will effectively affect your business on the Local 3-Pack feature, Google Maps, and organic rankings.

In fact, this is one of the top factors that Google evaluates when ranking businesses based on local search and snack pack results.

To make your profile accurate and sufficient, you need a consistent NAP. A consistent NAP data is when your business name, address, and phone number are identically and accurately listed across all online platforms, including on your website, social media accounts, business listings, and other third-party websites.

Tip 3: Obtain and respond to customer reviews

To get into the local pack, you’ll need reviews, which are one of the top three factors for higher rankings. The quality and quantity of reviews on your local listings can easily bring people in as easily as it can deter customer away from you and towards the local competition. Responding to reviews is an opportunity to build a trusting relationship with each customer.

Remember that you should also make an effort to actively start asking for reviews. 

On the other hand, if you already have customer reviews, you should take some time to learn how to respond to negative reviews and positive feedback. Why? Because it shows that you care about the customer experiences and use reviews to improve it for future patrons.

Tip 4: Build links on a local level

Backlinks from 2-3 high authority websites can do much more for your search engine results than your imagination. Though link building has always been tough, it is not impossible. 

It’s a fact that most local events most probably need sponsors. If it’s possible for you to sponsor a local event, then you can try it out; as usual, your link will be nicely positioned on the event’s website.

More link-building strategies that could work for a local site include:

• Reaching out to the local websites that write local news, cover local businesses, and host local blogs. 
• Offering your product or service to a local blogger/review site in exchange for a backlink to your site.
• Giving to your local community by sponsoring charities or local organizations can lead to backlinks.

Tip 5: Track your local ranking and continue optimizing

The essential step to improve your local search rankings is investigating your current visibility. You just need to type your business name in our local search rank checker, add phrases commonly searched by your customer, and see how visible your business is right now.

The best tool to use: Grid My Business

Grid My Business is a local rank monitoring tool that will show you the local search rankings of your local business and your competitors’ on Google Maps in a grid view.

It supports all locations that can be found on Google Maps. Once you have finalized your targeted keywords, you can obtain profound insights into your local rankings with Grid My Business. 

Other great features of Grid My Business: 

• Max up your ranking discoveries with up to a 15 x 15 grid size for each scan.
• Identify local rankings of multiple search queries by performing a quick and easy bulk scan of up to 5 keywords per scan.
• Keep track, monitor, and compare your local ranking performances.
• Get precise and on-time weekly updates of all your rankings.
• Schedule an automated rank monitoring for any of your local businesses.
• Get a comprehensive white-label report of your local rank monitoring results.

How to use Grid My Business to monitor your rankings

Most local rank tracking tools will tell you your local ranking with data alone. And that’s it. You won’t know what your local competitors’ local rankings are for the same search query.

Grid My Business solves this problem by allowing you to monitor your local rankings on a grid. This grid will be placed on top of your business location. Not only will you get to see your local ranking position, but you will also get to see the top 20 business listings at every grid point!

The numbers on each grid point indicate your local ranking position for the search query you have added. 

There are only 3 simple steps for you to monitor your local rankings.

Step 1 – Insert Your Business Location & Search Query

First, you need to enter your business location at the field given (1). A list of relevant results will appear as suggestions; you should select the location that best matches your business location.

After that, add the search query that is relevant to your business. For example, I used a local search query such as “best bakery”.

Step 2 – Select Your Grid Parameters.

The grid is one of the most important features in Grid My Business. This determines the scope and coverage you want to view your results in.

There are two items to select here.

The first is grid size. It is pretty straightforward; you pick the size of the grid you want to view your results. There are seven grid sizes available:

Next, select a grid radius. The grid radius is the radius between each grid point. 

The scanning radius between each grid point increases at an interval of 0.1. The maximum radius you can select in Grid My Business is 100.

Step 3 – View Your Scan Results

Once you have selected everything, click on the “Scan Now” button to run your scan. Do note that it may take some time for the results to load. You can wait for the results or choose to run a new scan with a different search query and location if you like. You can find all your scans in the report feature.

Once your scan result has loaded, you will see a grid that looks like this.

You will see a maximum of 20 business listings when you click on each point. The listings are organized based on their current local rankings on Google 3-pack.

All it takes is just 3 simple steps to monitor your local rankings with Grid My Business. 

TL;DR

It is vital to know how your business truly ranks in local and organic search results. Your website’s global rankings may differ from local search rankings – what your customers see when searching locally. 
This article has helped you understand the impact of your SEO work and make data-driven decisions with a local rank tracker tool. Instantly view your search result ranking, your ranking position for tracked keywords, and more with Grid My Business now.

Well, I don’t have much of a starter speech so let’s hop on the SEO news for this week:

1. Google doesn’t count links on the domain level.
2. Google test listen & translate feature.
3. Google tests the Lens button in the desktop search bar.
4. Google launched the “Google Partners” program.

01/02 – Google Doesn’t Count Links On Domain Level

This isn’t really new but…

When asked, John Mueller replied on Twitter that Google Search does not count links on a domain level. This means that each link or URL counts for itself. The links won’t add up to an overall authority metric on the domain level.

This has been known for quite a while and Google has said that they do not have an overall domain authority concept. However, Google does use sitewide signals for new URLs and other purposes.

Google Test Listen & Translate Feature

Here’s a new feature that some people have been encountering (not me) lately.

The new feature that Google has been seen testing is a feature that helps searchers listen to how a company name is pronounced. You can see that there’s a microphone icon beside the entity’s name.

From what was shared on Twitter, it seems to be a feature added to the local pack. Other than that, there’s also a “translate” feature like this one below:

Google Tests Lens Button In Desktop Search Bar

Back in November 2021, some has spotted Google testing the Google Lens icon/button in the mobile version search bar. Currently, according to 9to5Google, Google is already testing the addition of the Google Lens icon/button to the desktop search results on google.com.

Personally, again I’ve never encountered this beta test yet so let’s see what we have in store in the future.

Google Launched “Google Partners” Program

Last but not least, after 2 years of delays, Google has finally launched its revamped Google Partner program! 

So what the heck is it? As Google explained,

The Google Partners program is designed for advertising agencies and third parties that manage Google Ads accounts on behalf of other brands or businesses. 

Its mission is to empower these companies through innovative tools, resources, and support to help their clients get the most out of their Google Ads campaigns.

Google

The Premier Partner status gives you a new badge and other benefits such as:

• Product betas – Receive ongoing access to the most current product betas.
• Advanced Google Ads support – Access 24-hour advanced ads support to help you quickly and efficiently resolve your clients’ issues.
• Executive experiences – Attend invite-only industry events, such as roundtable discussions with Google leaders, sessions with other Premier Partners, and opportunities to hear from industry thought leaders.
• Premier Partner Awards – The Premier Partner Awards highlight excellence in digital marketing and showcase Premier Partners that help drive results for clients with Google Ads.
• Newly redesigned 2022 Premier Partner badge – Signal to clients and the industry that you’re recognized as a leading partner with your 2022 Premier Partner badge.
• High-value incentives – Help your clients get a better start with their campaigns with Google Ads credits.

All Google Partners and Premier Partners in selected markets, will also have the liberty to gain access to the monthly Insights Briefing from Think with Google. If you want to know more about the program, you can just head to their web page https://www.google.com/partners/become-a-partner/.

Okay, that’s all for this week and we will update you more again next week— Tata 

We all know that ever since the release of Penguin Algorithm Update, Google deals harsh penalties for websites that use black hat SEO techniques, so here’s an idea to keep you up at night:

What if a malicious party (say, your closest competitor) starts using those techniques on your site just to try and get you penalized?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is something that is commonly known as Negative SEO.

What Is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO is the act of using Black Hat SEO (the exact opposite of white hat SEO) on other websites in order to get them penalized by Google. Negative SEO can also include reducing the effectiveness of a website’s SEO properties by disabling or altering them.

Dealing with Negative SEO techniques can be quite tricky since some of them are out of your control, like pointing bad links (a.k.a link bomb) to your site. Another thing is, they are also a bit hard to detect.

Unlike some hacking practices that aim to deface or simply take down a website, a Negative SEO attack doesn’t affect a website’s look and feel.

Instead, the effects are only apparent once your website takes a dip in search ranking and incoming traffic.

But Why Would Anyone Commit A Negative SEO Attack?

Similar to hackers, people who do Negative SEO attacks might do it for various reasons. It can be intentional, such as sabotaging a competitor’s website, extortion, or simply for fun. Do not be surprised you will find plenty of these Negative SEO Services online easily.

And believe it or not, an unintentional Negative SEO attack can also happen. There are cases where family members, employees, or even hired SEO agencies deliberately do obsolete Black Hat practices on behalf of the owner thinking it will help their website ranking.

Types Of Negative SEO Attack

Just like normal SEO, Negative SEO also have both on-page as well off-page aspect to it:

Negative Off-Page SEO

As the name implies, Negative Off-Page SEO attacks without internally changing your website. Mostly it revolves around using Black Hat or negative SEO link building practices and points them to the target website:

= Link farms are a series of web pages created for the sole purpose of linking to another page on the web.

Ordinarily, inbound links are a good thing that helps to improve your site’s ranking… but if you have a lot of links coming in from the same unrelated, spammy websites, it tells Google that you are trying to artificially increase the number of links pointing to your page by creating link farms and you will get penalized. 

In a Negative SEO attack, malicious parties will create obvious link farms and heavily link to the target website.

Sometimes they will also purchase link farm services or buy site-wide ads to achieve the same effect. Since it’s hard for Google to tell who’s responsible for the links, it can lead to a Google penalty on the target site when detected.

= Copyright complaints are a bit more complex, but at their core, they usually involve someone claiming that you’ve posted material that belongs to them.

In many cases, this can result in the automatic removal of the page for up to 10 days – and wouldn’t it be just awful if your landing pages vanished right in the middle of your biggest campaigns?

= Finally, competitors can falsify duplicate content – basically just copying and pasting your web pages over and over, maybe even as part of those link farms we discussed above.

An influx of duplicated contents across domains might signal a manipulation attempt to get multiple different websites ranking with the same content. This used to be a popular Black Hat SEO technique before Google started cracking down on it.

As you can see, there are many different ways for negative SEO techniques to be done to your website… but no matter how tempting they might be, you should never even consider doing any of these yourself.

Even if it works in the short-term, it’s not going to be effective forever… and could land you in serious legal trouble if anyone can prove you were behind it.

Negative On-Page SEO

This form of attack is a little different and generally focuses on hacking into your site and changing things around. With as little as a few minutes to start messing with your setup, a hacker could easily disrupt your site’s coding, introduce viruses, and generally wreak havoc on everything you’ve tried to build.

The real threats are the ones that are hard to see, though, and consist of the following:

• Negatively altering your SEO properties: Let’s be honest – are you really that likely to notice if someone changes all the alt text on your pictures to be less effective? A lot of basic SEO techniques are intended to be “set and forget”, and that’s what can leave you vulnerable to on-page negative SEO strategies.

• Changing the Robots.txt: This is easily one of the most important files on your site when it comes to SEO because it tells crawlers how to interact with your site. It is normally used to tell Google which part you don’t want them to crawl and index such as a live but unfinished page. An attacker with access to your site can easily modify the robot.txt to tell Google to ignore important pages or even the whole website.

• Modifying Redirects: Search engines have an opinion on certain error pages – namely, they’re bad. Sites that automatically redirect from bad pages generally aren’t penalized too much, but if your redirects are changed, disabled, or scrambled, you could find yourself plummeting down the ratings.

The good news, as we’ll discuss later, is that on-page negative SEO attacks are much harder to perform… and much easier for a competent programming team to fix, too.

The Likelihood of Negative SEO Attacks

With all the stuff we’ve talked about here, you might be worried that there’s a rampant amount of negative SEO going on and you just haven’t caught up to it yet.

Well… not exactly.

Google is quite good at detecting when negative SEO is occurring. For example, if someone’s trying to do some Google Bowling and smash you over with site-wide links, there’s a good chance that the link from that site will only be counted as one vote from them – unlikely to do you any real harm.

Also, remember that while Google is actively hunting down Black Hat SEO practices, some might slip through for a while. This means that Negative SEO attempts won’t guarantee a penalty from Google for the victim. Not only that, but it might also do the opposite and actually help the target to rank better!

Similarly, hacking attempts are not that hard to avoid as long as you are using a robust system securing your site (make sure they are updated). Also, avoid using simple administrator passwords just because you think nobody is interested in ruining your humble site. You know what they say – better safe than sorry.

In general, Negative SEO can be costly, takes a lot of effort, and is highly risky. The return, on the other hand, isn’t even guaranteed and while it might work, it’s quite easy to fix once the target realizes what is happening.

In short – Negative SEO is a high risk, low reward activity. Unless there’s a very compelling reason (revenge maybe?), it is quite unlikely for anyone to attempt on doing it.

The most likely websites to be targeted for SEO are those in highly-competitive, high-money fields – gambling sites are a common example of this. Sites that are in calmer niches are far less likely to be hit by negative SEO – indeed, anything that happens is more likely to be an accident or a remnant of an old advertising strategy instead of a deliberate attack on you.

That doesn’t mean you should be complacent, though. Constant vigilance is the best way to protect your site and your reputation, so let’s look at what you can do to help protect your site.

How To Protect Your Website Against Negative SEO

Detection

The first step in protecting your website is to detect any signs of attack such as a sudden drop in organic traffic. This is easy to notice if you are constantly monitoring your traffic through Google Analytics.

You can also set up Google Webmaster Tools Email Alert. This will allow Google to notify you through email if your website is not indexed or receive a manual penalty.

If you haven’t done anything wrong, that can mean that your website is under attack. The sooner you know, the faster you can react and minimize the damage.

Disavowing

Google’s answer to Negative SEO is the Disavow tool. You can see the full process here – what it comes down to, though, is basically saying “I don’t like or trust that link, please don’t factor it into my rankings”. By disavowing low-quality links, you avoid associating your website with them so that your ranking and reputation is protected.

Utilizing the Disavow tool also tells Google that you care about the quality of links pointing to your site. This will be taken into consideration when Google’s Webspam Team is considering whether to penalize your site when they detect an influx of bad links pointing to it.

The Disavow tool is very useful against :

• Link Farms
• Google Bowling

To look for these low-quality links, you can use BacklinkGap. It’s essentially a free backlink checker tool that has the feature to add your unwanted backlinks into a disavow list.

When you have added your links to the list, just export it in a CSV format and put the list into Google’s Disavow tool.

Securing Your Administrator Login

Hackers generally require some sort of administrator access in order to mess around with your site, and by adding additional levels of security, you can drastically reduce the odds that they’ll be able to break in and start disrupting what you’re doing.

This will help you stop:

• Altered SEO properties
• Changes to important files
• Modified redirects

Revising SEO Settings

This isn’t tied to a particular problem, but you should regularly revise your SEO properties. This includes checking out your robot.txt once in a while or performing random checks on your contents’ internal coding (headers, image alt tag, etc).

If you are using SEOPressor Connect, checking SEO properties will be much easier as each content will have its SEOPressor score. If you regularly optimize your contents’ SEO properties to get a high SEOPressor score, then you can easily spot the ones with a bad score and fix them.

It is always better to be active and aggressive in searching for attacks on your site, rather than locking it up and expecting that nobody will be able to get in.

At the same time, you can use BiQ Rank Tracking to keep track of your website and keyword’s rank to notice if there are any unexpected ranking shifts. 

This especially helps in case of a negative attack and you can be quickly alerted that there is a competitor out there trying to ruin your rankings and take fast actions to recover it.  

And though many often avoid rank tracking because it calls for a huge expense. But BiQ executes everything differently because you only need to pay for the features that you use.

It just charges you for the features you actively use for the times you actually use it. That’s way cheaper than hiring SEO agencies or using the regular SEO suites.

Moreover, BiQ offers a free tier available for any new account sign-ups!

Final Thoughts

Back to the topic at hand, make no mistake, but negative SEO attacks are a real threat, not just a common one. And even though you can disavow links or report them to Google, it might take some time before Google can conclude that you are innocent and not the one who’s behind the Black Hat practices.

It’s better to be safe than sorry. Now that you know what is negative SEO, set aside some time every now and then to check for negative SEO, and if need be, resolve it using whichever technique is most appropriate. It is also a good idea to just be nice to others and avoid giving anyone any reason to attack you in the first place. After all, being nice is free.

Anyways, let’s not deviate away from the main topic for today. These are the SEO news for the week:

1. Google to discontinue Cameos effective February 17, 2022
2. Is naming your business “Keyword near me” a good idea?
3. Topics API to replace FLoC

24/01 – Google To Discontinue Cameos Effective February 17, 2022 

Google sent out an email to those who have recorded videos for Cameos on Google which states that they are discontinuing the service.

“Beginning February 17, 2022, you will no longer be able to record videos through Cameos on Google and any existing videos posted to Google Search and Discover won’t be shown,” Google wrote.

Here’s an email that was sent to Barry Schwartz, who has posted it on Twitter.

Cameos on Google going away pic.twitter.com/N9Fu5hshp0

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) January 21, 2022

Google noted that this was an invite-only pilot that they learned a lot from, but they’ll now be focusing efforts on other content creation projects.

It’ll be interesting to see what other content creation projects they have ongoing.

25/01 – Is Naming Your Business “Keyword Near Me” A Good Idea?

Take a look at this dental practice’s business name.

What do you think of it?

This image was posted on Twitter a few days ago where Chris Tweten pondered whether it’s considered as a black hat SEO strategy.

Is this considered black hat #SEO? pic.twitter.com/ULHGmAJBUh

— Chris Tweten (@ctwtn) January 21, 2022

John Mueller has given his thoughts on this matter. In his words, “I kinda wonder if it works against them, because of how easily search engines change ‘near me’ into just a location, making it really hard for people to search for them by name.”

“For a local business, probably not a problem though, and the cute name likely helps marketing too.”

I kinda wonder if it works against them, because of how easily search engines change “near me” into just a location, making it really hard for people to search for them by name. For a local business, probably not a problem though, and the cute name likely helps marketing too.

— John (@JohnMu) January 23, 2022

It’ll be interesting to know whether the business is more successful after this.

26/01 – Topics API To Replace FLoC

Google has decided to drop FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), and replace it with Topics API. Topics API will use browsing topics into 300 or so categories. This also means that FLoC is being set aside, perhaps not even be used anymore after this.

Topics is a new Privacy Sandbox proposal for interest-based advertising. Google states, “With Topics, your browser determines a handful of topics, like ‘Fitness’ or ‘Travel & Transportation’, that represent your top interests for that week based on your browsing history.”

Topics are kept for only three weeks and old topics are deleted. They are selected entirely on your device without involving any external servers, including Google servers.

You can get to learn more about the new Topics API by clicking here.

Here’s a summary by Ginny Marvin of Google:

2/4 The browser determines a handful of topics like Fitness or Travel based on the past week’s browsing history. When the user visits a participating site, the browser shares 3 topics, one from each of the past 3 weeks, with the site & its advtg partners to serve relevant ads.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 25, 2022

4/4 What’s next: Chrome will launch a trial soon for website developers and the advtg industry to test & provide feedback on Topics. We’ll also have more to share on FLEDGE & other proposals later this week. Check out the Topics API technical explainer: https://t.co/YzTLgPJRue

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 25, 2022

And that’s a wrap

And that’s all the SEO news we have for the week. To all Chinese people out there, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a happy Chinese New Year!

Until next week.

You will learn: 

• The keyword discovery process
• How to choose the right keyword research tool
• How to shortlist your best SEO keywords
• Get to know my favorite tool – LSIGraph

Good keywords can make or break a SEO campaign. The quality of your keywords is the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a waste of time. The keywords you pick will determine the strategy you are going to take, hence keyword discovery is a crucial process for anybody who wants to grow their business.

 To be honest, finding the right keywords is not easy. You can create the best content, build incredible backlinks, score #1 Google rankings and still get zero benefits in terms of business growth or revenue if you target the wrong keywords.

To help you with this, you can use a number of free and/or paid tools to learn what people are searching for on Google and other search engines.

But before we dive into the tools, let’s explore why keyword discovery is crucial for your SEO.

How does the keyword discovery process help you?

Keywords are words or phrases that people type into search engines when they are looking for something. So, to optimize your content for search engines, you can’t ignore what people are searching for and must first understand what they are looking for.

There are various types of keywords. If we sort by length, there are 2 popular types: “short-tail” and “long-tail” keywords. Short-tail keywords are keywords with one or two words, usually get a lot of search volume, and they’re very hard to rank. On the other hand, long-tail keywords have three or more words, don’t get searched as much, but are usually much easier to rank.

For example, “bluetooth headphone” is a short-tail keyword whilst “Sony black wireless bluetooth headphone” is a long-tail keyword.

Now that you have a glimpse of what keywords are, you then want to understand why you need a strong keyword strategy for your blog. 

The fact is 90.63% of pages don’t get organic search traffic from Google (but there are 3,5 million searches on Google every day!). What does this mean? This means organic traffic can be the most valuable asset for your blog if you can tap into this traffic and lead them to your blog. In this situation, the keywords you target will allow you to attract readers with a genuine interest in what your blog has to offer. Especially when high-quality content is one of the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website, keyword research serves as the blueprint for your entire content and SEO strategy.

The keyword research process will also help answer the following questions:

• What information are people searching for? 
• What keywords do they use to find that information? 
• How many people are using certain keywords?
• What type of information do they want (searcher intent)? 

What should you look for in a keyword research tool?

Just coming up with keyword ideas off the top of your head isn’t enough to ensure that you are targeting the right keywords.. You need to use keyword research tools to help you find the best-performing keywords so that more are able to find your site and do business with you.

To help you make the right decision, here are the three things you should look for in a keyword research tool:

Ease of Use

First and foremost, you need to look for a keywords research tool that won’t overcomplicate your research. The tool should allow you to jump into the action without all the unnecessary hoops. You should only need to enter a seed keyword, a relevant search phrase, or any URL to get things rolling.

Comprehensive Keyword Results

Now that we have usability covered, it’s time to focus on the actual results you’ll get.

You need to pay attention to the number of keyword suggestions a platform can generate.

Of course, the more results, the better (granted the keywords are relevant). You need all of the keyword ideas you can get to make sure you don’t miss out on profitable opportunities. Let’s compare the two tools: One gives you 20 keywords, but the other gives you 200 keywords, isn’t it obvious which is better?

In-Depth Keyword Metric

It’s not only about the words, keyword tools also need to show you related metrics, like the CPC, Volume, Trend, and so on. 

• Volume: A keyword phrase’s search volume is an indicator of its popularity or how many times the exact word or phrase is searched.
• Trend: The trend reflects how much the volume of search has changed in a specific period. Seasonal trends are important to watch. If you know that a search term peaks at a certain time (or times) of the year then you know when to target it, and when to avoid it.
• CPC: The cost-per-click estimates how much bidders (your competition) are willing to pay for a keyword phrase, thus alerting you as to whether it’s worth paying for.

The suggestion for you: LSIGraph 

There are a lot of tools that give you keywords, but I want to introduce you to LSIGraph. It will give you hundreds of keywords that are semantically related to your target keyword. 

Just like most keyword tools, it also provides you with trends, volume, cost per click, and competition. However, not only will you get long-tail keywords, but also the LSI keywords. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are conceptually related terms that search engines use to deeply understand the content on a webpage.

To use LSIGraph, you only need to go through 2 steps.

Step 1: Visit lsigraph.com.

Step 2: Type in your main keyword and press the ‘Generate’ button.

Please note that to further refine your results, you can also enter your geographic location. Which will help LSIGraph provide you with even more accurate keyword data. 

Since the costs, competition, and performance of similar keywords can vary greatly from one region to another (even for two businesses operating in the same industry), it’s a good idea to be as specific as possible.

With the free access, you will not be able to see LSV metrics and export features as the pictures showed. However, all the basic data, as well as the great “Top Performing Content” are ready for you to use.

When you’ve entered your initial search query, you’ll see a range of keyword data. The keyword recommendations themselves can be found on the left-hand side, and each keyword has four corresponding metrics: Google Search Volume, Competition, CPC, and Trend.

The tool can be accessed for free, but the best features are only available with the premium membership.

LSV metric is one of the premium features

If you get your premium access, you can have unlimited searches. Not only that, but they will also offer you features that uncover all the accompanying data. For example

• Unlimited LSI keywords search 24/7: You can get extensive data on all the keywords you’ll need to rank.
• Search volume data for the past 12 months of each LSI keyword.
• Latent Semantic Value (LSV) shows you the most valuable keyword to rank. 
• Export your handpicked keywords as PDF & CSV files, no more scribbling down on a notebook or relying on Google Keep.
• Endless exclusive white-label reports give you free rein to customize the report as you like. 
• Project manager for every project and client, so you won’t need to frantically dig through your notebook to recall details for old projects.

To find more keyword generator tools, read this: Climb Your Rank with These 8 Free Keyword Generators

How to choose the best SEO keywords?

What’s next after getting your list of related keywords? Not all the keywords are suitable for your content and business, so you will need to continue sorting out the most relevant ones.

Consider these 4 metrics:

Volume: 

As you can see in our example search, the top keyword suggestion – “desserts recipes” – has an approximate monthly search volume of 90 thousand, suggesting strong commercial intent and solid perennial interest.

Volume is a tricky thing. If you choose a keyword with a low search volume, you can easily rank first, but then hardly anyone is out there looking at it.

On the other hand, if you pick a keyword with a high search volume, you’ll have lots of competition when it comes to trying to rank on the search results page.

In order to determine if a keyword is good for your content, try a mixture of different search volumes to see what works best for you.

Competition:

Competition is a metric representing how competitive a given keyword is. 

Keywords are often ranked as being of Low, Medium, or High competitiveness, allowing you to get a feel for how aggressive to be in your bids if you’re targeting that particular keyword. In some tools like LSIGraph, it will show the percentage of competitiveness.

Relevance:

The whole point of a search engine is to serve the most relevant piece of information for the query. Your content will only show up in the search for a specific keyword if the search engine determines that your content is relevant to that keyword and vice versa.

This prevents people from sticking in random keywords like “bubble tea” in an article about coffee in an attempt to capture that traffic. A good keyword is relevant to your topic and your content and will provide the needed info to the people who are searching that keyword.

The key here is to consider your target audience. After you have made a list of keywords you might want to use, go over them again and think about why people would search for those terms. What are they hoping to find? What stage of the buying process are they at? When you use your keyword on your site, make sure your content provides the information those searchers are looking for.

LSV:

LSV takes into account the search volume, keyword competitiveness, and traffic potential from LSIGraph’s database from over six years of service. They created this algorithm that can tell you precisely how valuable an LSI keyword is. Only LSIGraph shows you the metric about this. The number will range from 0 to 100, with 100 being the best and 0, the worst. Keywords with a high LSV will be relatively easier to rank, relevant, and still draw in a bunch of traffic.

TL;DR

In conclusion, keyword discovery allows you to make business decisions about your campaigns based on what people actually search for, not what you think they might search for. When choosing a keyword research tool, you should look at 3 things: ease of use, the comprehensive keyword result, and the in-depth keyword metric.

Whatever you do, don’t use keywords that aren’t a good fit, even if you think they will be easy to rank for. You should also shortlist your keywords based on the volume, competition, relevance, and LSV metric. Once you’ve got your long-tail keywords, the next step is to create content and optimize them on your pages to get organic traffic.

During the research phase, you can use a keyword discovery tool like LSIGraph to get keywords with sufficient.

You will learn:

• They needed basic information about keywords.
• How to find relevant keywords in a short time
• Know 5 common keyword finders: LSIGraph, BiQ, Moz, Answer the Public, and Semrush.

Whether you’re marketing a top 100 company or a startup, there’s little guarantee that your clients can find you online if you are not ranking for the right keywords.

However, determining which keywords to work with and ensuring they aren’t too competitive is often a bit of a challenge. Here is when the keyword finder can make it as effortless as possible for you. 

Here are some keyword research tips to carry out and a tool that can save your time.

Understand about keywords:

What is it?

Keywords are the terms that search engine users use to find your website, pages, and products. If it weren’t for keywords, there would be no need for search engines in the first place!

Keyword research is one of the first and foremost crucial steps in any marketing stage.

Why do you need to choose the relevant keywords? 

In fact, 0.16% of the most popular keywords are responsible for 60.67% of all searches. And according to Backlinko, the #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7%.

That means if you choose the right keywords to optimize your content SEO and rank higher, you can get a lot of organic traffic. 

When it comes to search engine optimization, the most critical factors determining your overall site performance are the keyword relevancy of your site. It is often the first step of any SEO campaign. By researching and selecting the most appropriate target keywords, you create the opportunity to rank well in search engines for that specific topic.

High rankings in search engines drive traffic to your website, and in turn, allow you to promote your products/ services online.

Two common types: Short-tail Keyword vs. Longtail Keyword

Sorted by length, there are two common types of keywords.

The first one is the  “Short-tail keyword,” also known as head/generic keywords, which are popular, broad search terms with a very high volume of search traffic. These terms are usually one or two words, and they are very competitive to rank for. Short-tail keywords have a tremendous search volume but are also highly competitive. The audiences use short-tail keywords when they are at the very first stage of researching stuff.

The audiences use short-tail keywords when they are at the very first stage of researching stuff.

On the other hand, long-tail keywords are usually much more accessible to rank for compared to short-tail keywords. If your site is new or not highly ranked, it can take years of hard work and continuous improvement to rank for a short-tail keywords like “coffee” or “tea” — these are highly competitive search phrases. 

It’s beneficial to target long-tail keywords like “how to make a cappuccino” or even more specific questions like “how tea brings benefits to health.” Creating high-quality, helpful content around them can also strengthen your website relevancy with the topic, hence helping you to get discovered by the same people who may search for broader, more competitive keywords.

These keywords would be strategically placed in and around your website on your main pages, blog posts, headers, footing text, and other locations.

To know more about other types of keywords, read: 9 Types of Keywords in SEO You Need to Know to Convert

How to find the best keyword ideas with keyword research tools?

#1. Define your ‘seed’ keywords

Seed or the main keywords are the foundation of the keyword research process. Every keyword research tool asks for the main keyword to generate more keyword ideas. Seed keywords usually have one or two words. Thus, these short-tail keywords tend to have high monthly search volumes and high competition.

Seed keywords can be used to sprout other keywords for you to optimize your website. After identifying a few relevant seed keywords for your website, you can build them up with modifiers to generate long-tail keywords.

Because they affect your website’s long-tail keywords, you need to select the right seed keywords. 

Don’t worry too much about competition when selecting seed keywords — their short and generic format makes them more competitive than longer and more specific keywords. Instead, choose seed keywords that reflect your website’s content and that you can build upon with the use of modifiers.

For example, if you sell fishing equipment, then seed keywords might be:

• Fish rope
• Fishing tool
• Gripper
• Hook

#2. See what keywords your competitors rank for.

Looking for the keywords already sending traffic to your competitors is another way to do keyword research. However, you need to first identify those competitors. Then, you can start looking into your competitor keywords.

Here’s a tool that helps you discover your competitors and also see their keywords – RankingGap.

Using this tool, it will be a lot easier to find keyword opportunities that your competitors have missed out on, putting you far ahead of the race.

With the Competitor Discovery feature, you can identify your top competitors. RankingGap shows you the Competitor Graph, with the statistics about total ranked keywords, estimated traffic, and so on.

As you can see below, even if you’re pretty familiar with your industry, you can still find plenty of unique keyword ideas by studying your competitors that you probably wouldn’t have seen from brainstorming alone.

RankingGap is one of the tools with simple UI/UX that any SEO or keyword research newbie can navigate easily.

There are four views:

• Common: You and your competitors are ranking for.
• Missing: Keywords that your competitors all have but you don’t.
• Gap: Keywords that only some of your competitors have.
• Unique: Keywords that are uniquely yours.

It could be a good idea to prioritize high-volume keywords that your competitors are not currently ranking. On the flip side, you could also see which keywords your competitors are already ranking for and try to outrank them.

#3. Use keyword research tools:

Competitors can be a great source of keyword ideas. But there are tons of keywords your competitors aren’t targeting, and you can find these opportunity gaps by using free keyword research tools for SEO.

Keyword research tools often work the same way. You plug in a seed keyword and get to see a list of keyword ideas from their database.

A keyword research tool helps you find the right keywords for your content writing or optimisation. Most keyword research tools also provide accurate search engine data to guide your keyword selection. The key idea here is to select keywords with high search volume but low competition. When the right keywords are used strategically in your content, they can be extremely helpful in boosting your search ranking. Next, let’s take a look at some of my personal keyword tools.

Top 5 best keyword finders:

LSIGraph

LSIGraph Keyword Research is a powerful tool to help you easily find semantic keywords to use for your blog. Semantic keywords are contextually-related keywords like synonyms, co-occurring terms, or implied words that you can use to increase your blog content’s keyword density without falling into the trap of keyword stuffing.  

One reason why I love LSIGraph is how easy and intuitive it is.

Just enter your seed keyword, choose your search location and language, and wait for the result. LSIGraph returns a list of semantic keywords you can use in your writing. 

LSIGraph shows you important metrics for each of the keywords including its search volume, difficulty, cost-per-click, and competition. LSIGraph’s in-house metric, their Opportunity Score, evaluates the keywords and tells you which keywords you can rank for with the least amount of effort.

Those are the keywords you should prioritize in your blog content. 

Besides finding you the most profitable keywords, LSIGraph also shows you how top-ranking pages are structuring their content with LSIGraph SERP Analyzer so you can emulate them.  

Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz is an attractive and well-laid-out keyword research tool. You can put a keyword in Keyword Explorer and get information like monthly search volume and SERP features (like local packs or featured snippets) ranking for that term. 

You can see monthly volume, organic difficulty, organic click-through rate (CTR), and a priority score for each search term. The priority score aggregates the difficulty, opportunity, and volume to show how likely you are to rank for that keyword phrase in a simple score.

Keyword Explorer delivers a long list of top keywords for each term, with monthly search volume and relevancy.

BiQ – Keyword Intelligence

BiQ generates long-tail keywords that are linked semantically to your main keywords. You only need to enter a single seed keyword for BiQ to generate numerous long-tail keywords. 

BiQ’s features include keyword intelligence which helps you conduct local SEO and decipher customer behavior through keyword intent analysis. 

When you get your related SEO keywords, you can evaluate them through the keyword intent (whether informational, navigational, or transactional), volume, trend, and value. BiQ even gives you the content ideas and popular questions people often search for on the SERPs.

Besides, BiQ comes with other useful features like content intelligence, rank intelligence, and rank tracker.

Semrush

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool is one of several free tools offered by SEO giant Semrush. You can always sign up for the paid service down the road if you’d like.

The Keyword Magic Tool starts with a seed keyword. You can sort keywords into topic-specific subgroups, apply smart filters to narrow or expand your search, and quickly export your findings. You can see related keywords by topic and semantically related keywords or by keywords with similar phrasing.

The Keyword Magic Tool gives you access to more than 20 billion keywords from over 120 geographical databases.

Answer the Public

AnswerThePublic is a keyword research tool that aggregates Google autocomplete suggestions and helps you find long-tail keywords related to a topic. It does this by creating word clouds that visually group related queries.

Answer the Public finds questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabetical, and related searches. This free tool populates commonly searched questions around a specific keyword.

You’ll see a visualization by default, but you can switch to a regular list.

#4. Study your niche

Some keywords will be apparent, like “green tea benefits.” But it’s those obvious keywords that are also hard to rank for, as everyone has the same idea, the competition will also increase.

Consider your customers (the targeted ones) to shortlist your best keyword list. You should know what their needs, problems, and pain points are.

A good starting point is to browse industry forums, groups, and Q&A sites. This will help you find more issues that your prospective customers are struggling with. These struggles can then be converted into different blog posts or content on your website to help your SEO.

TL;DR

Once you find out which tools and features are most relevant to your keyword research, you can use them to build a comprehensive content strategy that will increase traffic and boost your rankings. 

Wouldn’t it be great if you used a keyword finder tool that took all that data and helped you quickly create an actionable plan for content marketing improvement?

You will learn:

• The importance of keywords in content marketing
• Know the top 8 best tools for finding relevant keywords.

Content marketing is essential for making your business appear more in front of your customers. 

However, there are several obstacles that you will face, especially when it comes to SEO and finding your keywords.

For example, you want to rank for keyword A. Due to the nature of the semantic web, you need more related keywords in your content to send a stronger signal to Google that you are highly relevant to the topic.

If not, you can’t expect the users to somehow find your website or blog posts on the SERPs. This is especially true if you don’t know what they are looking for and make the right use of keywords. 

Search engines have become more sophisticated and are now able to identify pages that make good use of keywords. As a result, the results obtained from keyword-generating tools have become even more critical.

An incredible keyword generator tool is a solution for getting the relevant keywords (and semantic keywords) to help you rank higher. 

Typically, keyword generator tools allow you to check the search volumes of specific search queries. What more can these tools do? In this article, we have outlined the details of keywords generators and listed 8 best tools for you to choose.

The importance of keywords:

Keyword research will always play a part in a thorough SEO strategy. And, of course, it is an ongoing process that never really ends.

If you want your website to get traffic from Google or other search engines, you need to make sure that your website is sending the right signals to them. This means that you should be utilizing words that your potential audience is looking for.

So what do you often use keywords for?

#1. Use keywords in your blog posts:

Keyword research is an essential SEO task. You can’t compete without content that rocks. It represents a vital part of finding the right keywords to use for your site. 

Keywords are important because they are the linchpin between what people are searching for and the content you are providing to fill that need. Every business goal in ranking on search engines is to drive organic traffic to your site from the search engine result pages. In order to do that, the keywords you choose to target (meaning, among other things, the ones you choose to include in your content) will determine what kind of traffic you get. 

Besides your overall content, there are several places for you to put your keywords:

• In the title, subtitles
• In the meta description
• In the pictures’ ALT
• In the URL

As a result of using the relevant keywords to attract your customers and let the search engine know your content, you can rank higher on the SERPs. When the majority selects the website on the first page, your site ranking will increase along with the organic traffic.

#2. Use keywords as inspiration:

Using related keywords in your blog posts will increase your SEO metrics and also show the search engine what you are writing.

If possible, use one of the related keywords and primary keywords in the post title, subheading, and the page’s meta description and SEO title.

Or, you can use related keywords as inspiration for other content. Keyword research provides rich data about what people (prospects) want to know about your industry, products, and services. If you know what information your prospects are looking for you can more easily develop content on your website to meet their needs.

When you create a list of phrases that relate to a primary keyword for your site, you should look for high-performing, low-competition keywords that can be the primary phrase for other content you create.

Why do you need a keyword generator?

For those who are wondering what a keyword generator is; a keyword generator is an online keyword research tool that helps you generate hundreds of relevant keywords for any topic (or even long-tail keywords). It provides suggestions for paid and organic content marketing campaigns.

Whatever goals you have and whatever business you run, picking the right SEO keywords lays the basis of the foundation for your SEO campaign. So it’s better to ensure you have your SEO toolset with a few of these free and easy-to-use tools.

It is important to note that a keyword generator does much more than simply identify a few words that could be helpful in the copy posted on a given website.

Generally, keyword research tools allow you to check the search volumes of specific search queries.

So overall, it automates the keyword research process and saves you tons of time.

Top 8 Keyword Generators:

There are paid and free keyword generators out there. It is important to know that there are good free keyword generator tools. You don’t necessarily need to pay for one the very first time. It’s all about finding the one that works best for you.

LSIGraph

LSIGraph helps you easily find the best semantic keywords to use for your content. Semantic keywords are contextually-related keywords like synonyms, co-occurring terms, or implied words that you can use to increase your keyword density without the pitfalls of keyword stuffing. 

LSIGraph is easy and intuitive to use. Just enter your seed keyword, choose your search location and language, and wait for the result. LSIGraph returns a list of semantic keywords you can use in your content. 

LSIGraph shows you important metrics for each of the keywords including its search volume, difficulty, cost-per-click, and competition.

LSIGraph’s in-house metric, their Opportunity Score, evaluates the keywords and tells you which keywords you can rank for with the least amount of effort.

BiQ

BiQ has four features: Keyword Intelligence, Content Intelligence, Rank Tracker, and Rank Intelligence. BiQ Keyword Intelligence is simple to use, you just need to type in the website URL, and the tool will run for a few minutes. After that, there will be a list of keywords your website is ranking for. 

It is powered by AI to compare your content and the Top 10 ranking results in your target keyword’s SERP. Keyword intelligence can also help you create semantically related words in real-time. Similarly, it allows you to conduct SEO keyword research in over 50 languages with long-tail key phrases and keywords.

With over 2.5 billion keywords in the database, the tool presents the related keywords of your niche in an easily understandable interface alongside important keyword metrics.

Not only that, BiQ has more exciting features. If you’re looking for interesting ideas for your next blog post, you can head to content ideas for a range of keywords you can target. Besides, if you’re eager to know some of the questions revolving around the content you’re about to create, the popular questions tab can help you out!

You can easily use BiQ to discover the ranking content and search snippets you should be targeting. You can perform all this on a single platform that closes all those additional tabs that make your site stuck.

WordStream

WordStream helps you discover, export new keywords and performance data to lead you to succeed in Google Ads and Bing Ads. It gives you hundreds of relevant keyword results with actionable information like competition level and estimated CPC.

It’s a fantastic alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner. Once you’ve got your keyword list, download it as a CSV file to make it super-easy to upload directly into your Google Ads or Bing Ads account. 

SemRush

There is keyword difficulty and the number of search results returned by the selected search engine for the query. There is a good deal of stats for analysis in each query. SemRush also has the Competitive Density metric that measures the competition among advertisers bidding for the given keyword in PPC campaigns.

Besides, you can see the keyword difficulty metrics or volumes of your keyword. SERP Features support you by identifying keywords triggers and how many URLs are displayed.

WordTracker

By using WordTracker, you can find related keywords for more substantial content that ranks better. The SERP preview lets you see the search results and the difficulty of the competition right in the tool.

The unique point of Wordtracker Scout is that it has a Google Chrome extension. When you’re next on a competing webpage, you can hover over the content and click the W button, which generates a cloud summary of the page’s keywords and insights. 

Ubersuggest

Like many keyword tools on this list, Ubersuggest involves you entering a seed keyword, hitting enter, and viewing a ton of keyword suggestions along with search volume and SEO difficulty stats. 

You’ll get hundreds of suggestions from head terms to long-tail phrases from our free keyword tool. You’ll also see volume, competition, and even seasonal trends for each keyword.

With Ubersuggest, you can see the exact content in your space that people are linking to. You then approach each of these sites and ask them to link to you.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs Keyword Generator is one of the free tools offered by Ahrefs, which is a popular paid service. Enter any target keyword or phrase, and it will pull the top 100 keyword ideas from its database.

For each keyword phrase, the Keyword Generator displays:

• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty from 1 to 100
• How recently this result was updated
• A list of questions related to your search term

Ahrefs Keyword Generator is an efficient and valuable free tool that allows you to do unlimited searches without creating an account. However, it does not allow you to download your results. 

Google Trends

Anybody doing local keyword research knows that search patterns differ between countries. But, surprisingly, the trends also vary considerably from region to region — this is why a precise local keyword tool is needed.

Google Trends is here to help you identify city/location-specific search volume variation. Just have the tool compare two synonymic queries to see how misleading a country-level keyword analysis could be for local biz.

While Google Trends isn’t specifically a keyword tool, it can give you an idea of where to start your keyword research.

This platform shows you a visual chart of the popularity of particular keyword over time to make it easier to decide when to use it.

TL;DR

Overall, keyword research is the foundation of a well-informed SEO strategy. So if you want to understand your audience better, attract more traffic and get a higher ranking, use these free SEO keyword tools to pave the way.

While it’s tempting to jump straight in with expensive monthly subscriptions to a powerful SEO tool, it’s usually better to try out a few first and then see if you want to upgrade your digital marketing tools. An excellent keyword generator like LSIGraph definitely should be your top choice. 

You will learn:

• The importance of keywords in SEO.
• How to come up with the best list of keyword ideas
• Get to know one outstanding keyword generator that can help you find the relevant keywords – LSIGraph.

Many new businesses don’t even consider doing keyword research, and because of this, they struggle to get visitors to their website, no matter how hard they try. Others simply go after keywords that are the most popular (but also very competitive) and fail to rank well in Search Engines.

Still, keywords play an essential role in SEO. And we also understand that generating keyword ideas, especially the one that brings you traffic, is not easy work.

I firmly believe that finding a standard and effective keyword research method is what everyone who has been working in the field of SEO is doing.

This blog can help you to find everything you need to know when researching your relevant keywords. Go through the 5 steps to get incredible keyword ideas with us now, and you can start doing your own quality keyword finding.

One good news: You don’t have to guess whether a specific keyword is the best choice for your organic traffic goals; because there are tons of excellent tools out there specifically designed to help you identify the best search terms and phrases to use in your text.

The importance of keywords in content marketing

Keywords are words or phrases that help search engines identify the topics that your content covers. Algorithms of the SERP have sophisticated systems for analyzing the keywords that users employ in their queries and the terms used throughout a given piece of content. This helps them match the user with the content that best answers their needs.

Keyword optimization is one of the most widely adopted SEO techniques. Within optimizing content, the common goal for businesses is to rank highest on the SERP.

Keyword research and optimization can improve your chances of showing up on page 1 of the search results. Data from 2020 shows that most title tags on Google’s first page contained keywords that were an exact or partial match of that search query.

The excellent and reasonable coverage of keywords helps you communicate to Google that your web page is a relevant match for a query. That means keywords can improve search engine rankings by assisting Google in understanding the web page content.

Aside from rankings, keyword research has other benefits that can help you better serve your consumer.

The majority of your advertising and marketing will use keywords as the primary method for attracting customers, and keywords are words or phrases that are used to match your ads or content with the terms people are searching for. These will be the proper foundation of your campaigns. So selecting high-quality, relevant keywords for your campaigns is critical.

In the end, the right keywords will get your content in front of the right people at the right time, thus, driving more qualified traffic to your web pages.

All of these above matter for SEO. To elaborate, keyword research helps you understand the way your target audience might describe and look for your products or services. It also shows you how people ask for more information on your topics when using a search engine.

Yet, there is one emerging problem: The vast majority, up to 92.42% of keywords, have a monthly search volume less than 10. 

So it is significant to see that choosing the relevant keywords is vital yet not easy.

How to get keyword ideas for your SEO content?

Keep reading because the five simple steps outlined below will walk you through how to research keywords for SEO:

#1. Brainstorm to find niche topics and main keywords:

Without thinking about anything else, start your process by writing down all of the things that interest you (of course, it needs to connect to your business). These can be personal interests or professional interests.

Think about what you want to discover or enjoy doing while surfing the internet to learn more about your niche. Imagine what they’re searching for and the terms you’re going to use. Think of specific search words for each product or service category you have available and use personas to get in your customer’s head.

Imagine you have a photography studio and thought photography blogging could be a great niche. You can share photos, learn about camera technology, and provide information about your service. 

Or another example, you have a cooking class business. Your target audience would be people interested in taking up cooking classes. Even if you don’t have the time or budget to start a massive social media campaign, you can create a food blog to analyze recipes online. You could also discuss choosing the perfect ingredients and weighing the benefits of organic versus GMO ingredients.

Another example, you are starting a blog about the gym. The first keywords that come to your mind are ones that you would use in a Google search:

• Gym for beginners
• Gym tips
• Gym skill
• Gym clubs

These would be your seed keywords and broad topic ideas. 

#2. Make sure you know your searchers’ intention: 

Search intent (also called user intent) is users’ primary goal when typing a query in search engines. 

There are 4 main types of searcher intents, and each comes with different goals:

Navigational: people search for a specific page or website. 

You can have product keywords that focus on a particular product category, brand name, or service. People using these phrases are in the early buying stage. For instance:

• Best
• Affordable
• Quality

Informational: people search for detailed information such as definitions, recipes, how-to, or in-depth information about the product/service.

The bulk of keywords online is “Informational keywords.” It’s natural for people to look for information before starting the buying process. Information keywords tend to include words like:

• How to
• Best way to
• Ways to
• Steps to
• I need to

Transactional: people search for something when they are ready to make a purchase. 

Specifically, keywords related to transactional can be the type of “Buy Now” keywords. These are keywords that people use before making a purchase. Here are words that tend to be part of these types of search queries:

• Buy
• Coupon
• Discount
• Deal
• Shipping
• Sale

Commercial investigation: people search for the comparison of products or reviews. This is similar to information intentions, but it goes more to the commercial side.

For the commercial investigation, product keywords tend to include:

• Review
• Best
• Top 10
• Cheap
• Affordable
• Comparison

You will need to determine what keywords to focus on for each intent. Besides, you need to identify a suitable searcher’s intentions for each goal.

If one of your goals is to make money online, you must select commercial intent keywords. 

#3. Find your list of keyword ideas

It’s time for you to get your keywords. There are many ways, but commonly, we will show you the 3 most accessible and fastest methods.

Get keywords from Google.

If you are on the fence about a keyword, run a Google search with it. 

Google has more data on search activity than anyone. Ever noticed as you type a phrase into the Google search field, it begins guessing what you’re looking for? The system is anticipating your needs based on the popularity of past searches and attempting to save you time by offering suggestions. So, you need to see what sites, phases, and words come up. Would your site make sense with those results? Are there ads on the results page? Does it look like there’s a lot of competition for that keyword?

Apply this “Google Suggest” way. 

And also, you can even get more ideas on the related content suggested at the end of the search result pages:

Get keywords from the keyword generator tools.

Without keyword research tools, finding the correct terms to incorporate into your blog or online store content to help it rank on search engine results pages would be like throwing darts in a dark room. 

You can get serious with our favorite tool. You have more tools that you can use to find more keyword ideas. Some of them are free, freemium, or paid.

LSIGraph is one of our favorite paid keyword research tools. LSIGraph’s Keyword Research offers plenty of data on what people search for and how competitors rank for similar terms.

A simple search returns tonnes of semantic keywords. Semantic keywords are contextually-related keywords like synonyms, co-occurring terms, or implied words that you could use in your content to increase your keyword density while avoiding the trap of keyword stuffing. 

LSIGraph shows you important metrics for each of the keywords including its search volume, difficulty, cost-per-click, and competition. Their proprietary Opportunity Score evaluates the keywords and tells you which keywords you can rank for with the least amount of effort.

Besides finding you the best keywords, LSIGraph also shows you how top-ranking pages are structuring their content with LSIGraph SERP Analyzer so you can structure your content page after them.

You can also use LSIGraph to find long-tail keywords–keywords that contain at least three words, and questions and sentences that could be used as title inspiration.

LSIGraph is intuitive to use even if you do not have a background in SEO.

Get keywords from your competitor:

Another way to find valuable keywords is to spy on your competitors.

Investigating your competitors can be a great way to come up with ideas that you never would have thought of in the first place and can inform the rest of your keyword research later on. We’re typically referring to keywords that your competitor ranks well in search results, as well as the keywords of top competitors that are targeting but have failed to rank well for.

Of course, you can not do this manually. You can use a tool to support you, and RankingGap can be the one for you. 

RankingGap is one of the latest and unique keyword gap analysis tools that were made to let users conduct our keyword gap analyses quickly and efficiently.

The 4 keyword views, Common – Missing – Gap – Unique, were specially designed to help users claim their competitive advantage.

To read more about competitor keywords analysis, read this: SEO Competitor Analysis: A complete guide you need to know.

#4. Shortlist your keyword buckets.

The fourth step is to analyze the data to choose your best keywords group.

The tip here for you is to organize by theme. Group all of your keywords into tightly related themes, and as you look at that list of articles, see if you can break them up into sub-themes. And again, the more thematic, the better results that you’ll have. 

So if you have an ad group for women’s bags, you would want to get more granular and create themed keywords such as women’s handbags, women’s backpacks, women’s clutch, women’s fashion bags, and so on.

The above tip is based on the meaning; however, the most important are search volume, CPC, or cost-per-click. 

The search volume shows how many users search for each keyword per month. The higher the search volume, the more users are interested in that particular keyword.

The cost-per-click is data pulled in from Google AdWords or Google Ads that represents how many advertisers are trying to place ads for that keyword. 

So when discussing how to find keywords, the ideal keyword would have a high monthly search volume but a low cost-per-click. This means that many users are searching for this information, but not many websites are trying to rank for it.

Even though a keyword may have a lot of search traffic, you always want to ask yourself if that keyword will bring you quality traffic. 

For example, “Glass Tile” might have a ton of search volume, but if you only sell ceramic tile, your chance of making a sale from those visitors is low. Make sure that the keywords you target result in conversions and revenue.

#5. Apply keywords in your work:

Now, you can use your keywords in your content. 

• Include Keywords in Titles

When your page shows up in search results, the page title is the first thing someone will see. When the keyword they’re searching for appears in the title, it indicates that they’ve found what they’re looking for. And most importantly, Google pays attention to those page titles as well!

Try to use your keyword at the beginning of the title for maximum effectiveness.

• Include Keywords in Meta Descriptions

When someone searches for “content marketing for beginners,” they not only see it in our title but in the meta description as well. This is to get an overview of the page content without click reading.

• Include Keywords (Often and Naturally) in Content

You provide relevant content that answers questions and assists visitors in purchasing. Engaging, easy-to-understand content will hook visitors and keep them on your page, but you also need to include keywords so that Google can show them your page.

It’s best to assign a keyword to a single page and then do everything you can to optimize your page for that keyword.

TL;DR

Using the correct keywords is critical for you to attract the right audience. You don’t want to drive opposing traffic to your site, in other words, an audience that is misdirected and not interested in your products.

You can now use many SEO keyword generator tools to generate tons of keyword ideas. Try out the incredible one like LSIGraph to quicken your process.

There isn’t a lot of news worth mentioning this week, aside from the SEMrush’s acquisition of Backlinko (we’ll get to that in a minute). Here’s the list of news this week:

1. Desktop Page Experience reports are now available in Google Search Console
2. Google Map appears to test review snippets
3. SEMrush acquired Backlinko.com and their 500k monthly visits

Let’s dig in:

18/1/2022 – Desktop Page Experience Reports Are Now Available In Google Search Console

As promised by Google, the desktop version of the page experience report is now live in Google Search Console. The desktop version is quite similar to the mobile version.

Since the page experience update algorithm is coming to desktop next month (February 2022, to be exact!), you would also have a report which you can view how well you are performing.

Google tweeted, “To support the upcoming rollout of page experience ranking to desktop, Search Console now has a dedicated desktop section in its Page Experience report to help site owners understand Google’s ‘page experience update’ criteria.”

To support the upcoming rollout of page experience ranking to desktop, Search Console now has a dedicated desktop section in its Page Experience report to help site owners understand Google’s ‘good page experience’ criteria. Read more about the rollout https://t.co/FQvMx3Ymaf

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) January 17, 2022

On your Google Search Console, you can view the report by clicking on “Page Experience” on the left. As Google wrote, “the Page Experience report now includes desktop data in addition to mobile data (yay!).

Here’s a chart of all the factors that are included in this update.

18/1/2022 – Google Map Appears To Test Review Snippets

Google Maps seems to be testing displaying review snippets. So far, these snippets have been short, selected reviews. These snippers are found directly under the name of the business or organization on the map interface, right below the pin.

Allie Margeson tweeted, “seeing review snippets get some prominence directly on the map and I like it!”

Seeing review snippets get some prominence directly on the map and I like it! Another reason to get keywords in your reviews – find out how: https://t.co/khK5WW4cmS. pic.twitter.com/u1VIwLkRKK

— Allie Margeson (@SeoAllie) January 17, 2022

Allie added, “Another reason to get keywords in your reviews”

Here is the screenshot she posted on Twitter.

What do you think about this? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

19/1/2022 – SEMrush Acquired Backlinko.com And Their 500K Monthly Visits

A couple of days ago, SEMrush announced the acquisition of Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) training platform, Backlinko.

As of December 2021, it is rumoured that Backlinko.com attracts more than 500,000 visits a month (non-paid traffic only). Backlinko is one of the highly soughted resources when it comes to training material, strategies, and guides for digital marketers and SEOs.

The desire to acquire Backlinko was mostly spurred by SEMrush’s commitment to inspiring both the current and next generation of digital marketers. 

“Brian Dean is considered one of the digital top marketing professionals, and we are thrilled to bring him and his team into the SEMrush family. Together with our own SEMrush Academy, we now offer one of the most robust digital marketing and SEO training resources on the web,” said Andrew Warden, Chief Marketing Officer of SEMrush.

Brian seems to think it’s a perfect fit as well. “SEMrush is focusing on building up their marketing education. And I have a massive library of SEO and content marketing material.”

“With SEMrush’s massive resources and expertise, we can get that content in front of more people.”

Brian said he would still be working on Backlinko for the foreseeable future on a part-time basis.

Closing it up

And that’s all the SEO news we have for the week!

If you have any thoughts of comments, do leave a comment below!

See you next week!

You will learn:

• Understand SEO keywords, from what it is to their importance
• Know how to use an SEO keyword generator effectively

Whether you’re a big business trying to dominate the competition or an SEO agency working with small businesses, finding the right keywords is essential for improving a website’s rankings. Keywords and SEO are directly connected to running a successful search marketing campaign.

However, sometimes this work is not easy, especially when you started off from a blank canvas.

Getting the right SEO keywords is a delicate process involving trial and error, but the basics are easy to understand. This article will show you all the information needed to find the relevant keywords for your content marketing.

We will also show you how you can save time using a keyword generator. Let’s get started today!

Understand SEO keywords

What is an SEO keyword? 

“Keyword” is a popular term that we’ve all heard. If you’re new to SEO, you might be confused about what keywords are and why they’re so important.

SEO keywords are the words and phrases in your content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines. They are what your readers type to search for in the search engines.

The importance of SEO keywords:

In fact, according to Zero Limit Web, the first 5 organic results in the SERPs account for 67.6% of all clicks. 

When you align your content creation and optimization with the words, topics, products, and services your target audience is looking for, you have a better chance of showing up in the search results.

It’s true that SEO has many more elements than a keyword, but it arguably plays the most essential role throughout the process.

You need to know how people are looking for your products, services, or information and make it easier for them to find you. Otherwise, they’ll land on one of the many other pages in the Google results.

To drive search engine traffic, whether, through organic search or paid search advertisements, you need the right keywords. Do you know that 15% of all Google search terms have never been searched for before? 

While we certainly can’t optimize for that 15%, what we can do is to ensure that we show up for the rest of the 85%.

To rank for that 85%, you need to help the search engines understand what your page is about.

For example, if a blog post has a title tag with the keyword “best coffee shop,” and a list of the best coffee shops in your city, it is telling search engines that it’s a relevant page to show for people looking for a coffee shop in your city.

As a result, SEO keywords give you a better chance of showing up in the search results.

It’s time to use an SEO keyword generator

What is it?

When creating website content, you need a tool that can help you write the most relevant content. An SEO keyword generator is one of these tools since it automates the keyword research process and shows you all the keywords that you should use in your content.

An SEO keyword generator is a tool that helps you come up with more keyword ideas based on exact match keywords and phrases. Some tools also show data like search volume and trends to help you analyze the effectiveness of keywords.

What can you do with an SEO keyword generator?

A keyword generator has a number of great features that give you information to do SEO better. For example:

• Traffic estimations 
• Keyword search volume and competition
• Best keywords for a selected language or country
• CPC
• Historical data

What do these data mean?

• Search Volume: The number shows how frequently people searched the phrase in the last months. This is important to make sure the keywords are something people are actively looking for. If a keyword has 0 search volume, you probably want to look elsewhere.
• Cost-per-click: When you run a marketing campaign, you also need to consider your budget to run ads. The CPC data is extracted from Google AdWords so you can be sure of how valuable a keyword is. Keywords with higher CPC are usually more valuable, but they are also more expensive to target.
• Competition: This shows you how difficult or easy it is to rank for this keyword.

A good keyword generator can also help you find new trending keywords before the competition as their keyword suggestions are constantly updated based on search trends and topic popularity.

There are several SEO keyword tools that you can use to find keywords related to your business, both free and paid. To determine which you should use, you should consider which features you’ll need and your budget.

To help you shortlist the best tools, we introduce you to our 3 favorite generators: LSIGraph, BiQ and RankingGap. Let’s see what you can do with these SEO keyword generators.

LSIGraph

LSIGraph is a powerful tool to help you easily find semantic keywords to use for your content. Semantic keywords are contextually-related keywords like synonyms, co-occurring terms, or implied words that you can use to increase your keyword density without falling into the trap of keyword stuffing.  

LSIGraph is one of our favorite keyword research tools due to how simple and intuitive it is to use, even for users with little SEO knowledge. 

Just enter your seed keyword, choose your search location and language, and wait for the result. LSIGraph returns a list of semantic keywords you can use in your content. 

LSIGraph displays the important metrics for each of the keywords including its search volume, difficulty, cost-per-click, and competition.

What’s unique about LSIGraph is their proprietary Opportunity Score which evaluates the keywords and tells you which ones you can rank for with the least amount of effort.

BiQ – Keyword Intelligence

BiQ allows you to conduct SEO keyword research in over 50 languages with long-tail key phrases and keywords. All these words are linked semantically to your main keywords. You only need to enter a single seed keyword for BiQ to generate numerous long-tail keywords. 

BiQ’s features include keyword intelligence, content intelligence, rank intelligence, and rank tracking, which helps you conduct local SEO and decipher customer behavior through keyword intent analysis.

As a result, you can also easily use BiQ to discover the ranking content and search snippets you should be targeting.

RankingGap – Identify the gap in keywords between you and your competitors

This keyword gap analysis tool can identify specific keyword gaps against your competitor. In the end, you can establish a laser focus strategy to reduce the gap and outrank them.

RankingGap isn’t just a keyword research tool but also a rank discovery tool. You can have a massive list of common (keywords you share with your competitors), missing (keywords you don’t have but all your competitors do), and unique (keywords only you have) views.

What is the next step?

You might wonder what you need to do after finding out your list of relevant keywords. Now you can make these SEO keywords work for your content and get SEO results like search-driven traffic, conversions, and so on.

Choose your keywords group.

Based on metrics and data from tools (such as CPC, volume, competition, latent semantic value, etc.), you can sort out the most valuable keywords for you.

Read more about search volume here: What is a Good Keyword Search Volume? The Ultimate Guide 

Then, keyword grouping is a step you must apply here to get the best use of these keywords. By dividing your keywords into small, manageable groups of related keywords, you’ll cut down on your workload.

To kick off this process, you can start thinking about the topics you want to rank for in generic buckets. About 5-10 topic buckets, essential to your business, are enough for you. Each of those topic buckets will have your related keywords.

Apply to your content

On the one hand, SEO best practices recommend that you include relevant keywords in a number of high-attention areas on your site, these are places like titles, headings, URL, and more.

For a more comprehensive list of where to use your SEO keywords, here are our suggestions:

• Using the keyword in the title of the page
• Using the keyword in the URL
• Using the related keyword, and variations, throughout the page copy (when relevant)
• Using the keyword in the meta tags, especially the meta description
• Using the keyword in any image file paths and the images’ alt ext
• Using the keyword as the anchor text links back to the page from elsewhere on the site

However, do not spam your keywords every part and do not force these words into your content. 

TL;DR

So now you have learned basic information about SEO keywords. Using the right SEO keywords can help you communicate with the SERPs and rank higher. You can also catch your target audience and gain more traffic to your sites. Although the finding keyword process can be complicated, an SEO keyword generator is vital for you to do online marketing work.

Remember that choosing the correct keywords is essential for a blog to succeed, but this is just one of the aspects to work on, and you cannot neglect other important factors. Be sure to re-evaluate these keywords every few months — once a quarter is a good benchmark. 

• Possible Google Search ranking update on 11th January?
• Google still says to disavow whole domains if necessary
• Google: Links have to be on indexed pages to be counted and not all indexed links are counted
• Google page experience update coming to desktop soon

So, let’s get started.

12/1/2022- Possible Google Search ranking update on 11th January? 

A lot of people and tracking tools picked up what looked to be an unconfirmed Google Search Ranking update on 11th January.

There was a fair bit of chatter on SEO forums where people said they saw some big changes in their rankings and traffic over the day. Some reported some good news such as their rankings going up but others weren’t so lucky and experienced the opposite. 

Tracking tools also tracked some big movements on the day itself. 

There’s no confirmation on whether there was an update but I hope Google can be a bit more forthcoming about things like this happening.

10/1/2022- Google says to disavow whole domains if necessary

Google’s John Mueller said to “disavow the whole domain if you know there’s an issue with some of its links. No need to be exact when everything on a site is bad from your POV.”

Keep in mind that Google has mentioned that they’ve seen the disavow tool hurt sites because they’re used too freely. Some people end up disavowing links that were actually helping them. If you disavow an entire domain where the links aren’t helping you, it’s fine but if you disavow a single link that was helping you, it’s going to hurt.\

13/1/2022- Google: Links have to be on indexed pages to be counted and not all indexed links are counted

Someone asked on Twitter if a link that is toxic is counted if the page that link is on, is not in Google’s index.

John Mueller replied that “If they’re not indexed, I wouldn’t assume the links do anything.”

John then explained two important points:
(1) Links that are on indexed pages can be ignored by Google anyway.
(2) There is no API for testing if a page is indexed

John explained that there is no way for a tool to know if a page is indexed “without breaking our TOS.” Of course, most of the tools break the TOS anyway, and Google looks the other way.

14/1/2022- Google Page Experience Update coming to desktop soon

The Google Page Experience Update is coming to a Google search ranking algorithm soon.

Here is a chart of the factors included in this update compared side by side with desktop to mobile:

For the desktop page experience update this includes:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• HTTPS Security
• Absence of intrusive interstitials

Google also said to not worry about this update impacting rankings although people are still skeptical 

I have… and if you think about it, aren’t they redirecting viewers attention away from the blog posts to other websites?

Well, they do and website owners are well aware of this. However, website owners still add links because some types of links matter for search engine optimization. Yes, you read that correctly… LINKS MATTER FOR SEO.

These are the 5 types of links that will be discussed in this article:

1. Internal Links
2. External Links
3. Natural Links
4. Manually Obtained Links
5. Self-Created Links

Today, we shall understand further about the types of links and the links that matter for SEO. Excited and eager to learn? Great, that’s the attitude we want!

Search engines actually look at links on websites to help them decide which website to rank on top and on the first page. It is only one of the many factors that search engines consider when evaluating a domain. A search engine can tell whether a website is of good quality through links.

Links transfer values and equity from one page to another and they are called link juice. Link Equity is measured in a few dimensions, mainly, trustworthiness, topic relevance, value and authoritativeness of a page.

In the past, when Google first started, the quality of a website was determined through the number of links a particular website receives. However, many individuals took advantage of it and created several websites that link to their own main website.

These individuals tried to deceive Google that their websites are important, popular and relevant. You guessed it right… as a result, most of them ranked on the first page of the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

Today, things are not how they used to be. Google search engine introduced Google Panda in February 2011. The aim was to remove lower-quality sites from the top page and place higher-quality sites to the top. Search engines now tell the quality of a website by evaluating the website thoroughly using many criteria.

You can read more about the criteria that Google considers when ranking a website here. For those of you who do not know, the underlined “here” in blue is an external link. What is an external link, I hear you ask? I’ve got you covered, read on to find out.

By the end of this post, you will understand more about the different types of links on and off a website and also know how to utilize each of them.

What is a Link?

Link is the relation between two things, or in this case, pages. It is what connects web pages to one another. A very simple way of putting it is anything that leads you to somewhere after you click on it is called a link. It could be in the form of text, image, and even videos.

The Two Types of Links On A Website

The links you see on your website are called Internal Links and Outbound Links.

What is an Internal Link?

Internal links are links you see on a webpage that navigates you to another web page of the SAME domain. These links allow viewers to stay on your page longer as they are redirected around your website. As a result, it increases your website authority which contributes to ranking.

What is an External Link?

External links, or what we like to call “outbound links”, are links that bring you to another domain while surfing a particular website. This type of link is usually used to provide viewers with further explanations done by other website owners.

An external link is considered as the most important criterion that will help you rank. Why does an external link matter? It is believed that external links cannot be unfairly controlled.

The Different Types of Links Off A Website

Now that we are done with links we can see on your website, let us move on to links that are not on our own websites. These links are called backlinks and they include natural links, manually obtained link and self-created links.

What Is a Backlink?

Backlinks are also known as inbound links. They are links and connections created by another website to your website.

Let’s refresh, what is outbound and inbound links (from our perspective)?:

• Internal Links: We send our readers from one of our webpage to another.
• Outbound Links: We send our readers to another website.
• Inbound Links: Other websites send their readers to our website.

The more backlinks a website receives, the more relevant, useful and important it is. These backlinks will contribute to your ranking on the SERP. The 3 types of backlinks will be explained as we go on.

What is a natural link?

A natural link is a link that you receive from other website owners without you asking for it. In other words, it indicates your page has great content. Think of it this way, if you are an athlete and perceived as cool, people give you attention without you asking.

It’s the same goes for a natural link; your content is too good that people are willing to feature them. Other website owners redirect their readers to your page because your page contains content they think is worth sharing.

What is a manually obtained link?

Manually obtained links are links you obtain through efforts. What do I mean by that? You have to put in time and energy, contacting other website owners and bloggers to link and feature your page.

These manual links building technique, asking around for links, is common among small businesses where they are still unknown in the industry. One does not simply feature another website as it will affect the quality of another.

In order for you to get links, you should show bloggers and other businesses that your content is worth sharing and featuring. Keep in mind that the websites you want to be featured have to be relevant to yours otherwise the link will not provide much authority and value.

So.. why do natural links and manually obtained links matter?

It is the same concept as external links. If you get links from other websites, it tells search engines that your website is relevant and of good quality. Both types of web links are considered as good links. What do I mean by good? Do I mean there are bad backlinks as well?

The answer is yes. It is called the self-created links designed to fool search engines.

What is a self-created link?

This is the only link among the 5 types in this article that does not matter for SEO. As the name suggests, self-created links are links that are created by a website owner themselves to fool search engines that their links are relevant and important.

The difference between good and bad backlinks is obvious now… good backlinks are links created by other people while bad backlinks are links created by owners themselves. There are many types of self-created links such as adding a backlink on forums and blog comments.

The anchor text to your links also matters

Something that is just as important to the nature of your links are the anchor texts that you’re using. Without a proper strategy, your links can appear spamy and hurt your SEO and your rankings!

A great tool that can be used to inspect your on-page SEO and make sure that your anchor texts are properly optimized and not too spammy is the BiQ SEO Suite.

There is a content checker built into the tool that can quickly scan your content for any important SEO rule of thumbs that you should be following. And one of them includes checking your anchor text to make sure that it’s not appearing too spammy as to not discount the quality of your links.

Now that you know links matter and the way they work, you can use them effectively and correctly.

As mentioned, good quality content is what leads other website owners to link your page to theirs. As we’re talking about good quality, just a heads up, you will want to make sure that your website does not contain any broken link. If your website contains broken links, it is nothing different compared to bad quality content.

Broken links give users a bad experience. Imagine this, a viewer found your site with hope to understand better on a particular topic. You have great content but somewhere in the middle, you decided to create a link to redirect your viewers to another page as you think they have a better explanation on that particular area.

Your viewers clicked into the link and find out that the link is broken. They’re disappointed and feel that your website isn’t updated and will not bother to read on as well because they do not want to be redirected to another broken link.

Just like that, a piece of good content was ruined just because of another website. I’m very sure you wouldn’t want this to happen on your website. It is not even your fault to start with…

As website owners, we all strive to provide our readers with the ultimate experience, don’t you agree? You must be thinking about how you can get more links to your website and how you can make sure your website does not have any broken links.

Well, how about a free backlink checker tool?

BacklinkGap is a free backlink checker tool that lets you check your backlinks for.. well, for free! You only need to sign up for an account (with no catches, mind you), and insert your domain into the search bar, and hit “check now”.

You’ll gain insight to various analytics like your total number of backlinks, referring domains, anchor texts, and your friendship score as well.

Fret not, we have the solution to these two… just by using a single plugin.

SEOPressor Connect is a tool that allows you to fully optimize your content by providing you optimization suggestions, errors, and alerts. Ultimately, it increases your chances of ranking higher for quality content and receiving backlinks.

As for broken links, do you need to spend your precious time manually checking your websites for broken links? No. Not anymore. SEOPressor Connect has “Link Manager” as its feature. Link Manager is a dashboard that will show you all the broken links your web pages has.

All of us need a little help sometimes and SEOPressor Connect has been a great help since I first used it. I believe you will love SEOPressor Connect as much as I do!

We’ve come to the end of this article. These are the 4 types of links that matter for SEO. Isn’t it surprising that there’s actually so much to learn for something(links) so simple? If you’ve read it this far, I have a surprise for you.

That’s not it… There are actually many more to learn about links.
Here’s something that you should learn next (It’s for your own benefit): Link Building.

What will you learn?

• Understand SEO and local SEO, as well as the importance of local SEO
• Take a look at the top 14 best local SEO tools and which one is our favorite.

The percentage of clicks will consistently drop as you go further down the search engine results page because logically, sites with a more relevant result will be positioned at the top of the search engine results.

So, businesses need to try their best to climb the ranks. This is especially true when it comes to Local businesses when there are only 3 prominent spots (Google 3 Packs) for near me searches. Local SEO is an essential part of your SEO strategy to help you increase CTR, traffic and rank higher on the SERP.

However, optimizing local SEO is complex and can take a lot of time. In this situation, the best local SEO tool will be the secret weapon for businesses to prosper.

In this guide, we’ll keep things organized for you with SEO and local SEO information. We also recommend the top 14 best local SEO tools to boost local rankings. 

Get-to-know SEO and Local SEO

What is Local SEO?

SEO is critical to your online marketing efforts. Because of this, a lot of marketers choose to implement various SEO tools, including free local SEO tools, to track, measure, and analyze their SEO efforts. You may already be using some of the top local SEO tools, such as Google Analytics. However, you mustn’t forget about your local SEO efforts as well.

The use of Local SEO

Local SEO is an essential part of your SEO strategy, especially if you’re a minor to mid-sized company that relies on the business of local customers. There are many different local SEO strategies that you can implement, from optimizing your content using local SEO keywords to submitting your NAP (name, address, and phone number) to various local directories. To help organize and streamline your local SEO efforts, you should use these crucial local SEO tools.

Why is local SEO important? 

Do you know that 72% of consumers that did a local search visited a store within five miles? 

97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else in this digital era. That’s where another benefit of SEO comes into use — it can promote your business 24/7, both online and offline.

As consumers move through the buying funnel, they conduct many different searches. As you use local SEO efficiently, you can also increase your brand visibility online. 

What is a local SEO tool?

A local SEO tool helps you to organize, streamline, and track all of your local SEO efforts.

With a local SEO tool, you can easily track your rankings, spy on competitors, develop SEO-optimized keywords, monitor your performance, encourage customer engagement, and much more.

Top 14 best local SEO tools

The following are 14 different local SEO software that you might find extremely useful, some of which are available at a small cost and some of which are free local SEO tools.

1. BiQ Cloud

BiQ is an SEO suite that democratizes the pricing model and lets you scale as your needs grow. BiQ can help you with most of the challenging parts – finding the right keywords to include on your location pages.

This tool isn’t like the traditional SEO tools you see in the market, thanks to their approach to granular cost control. From products such as Keyword Intelligence, Content Intelligence, Rank Intelligence, and Rank Tracking, you’re sure to benefit from it in one way or the other.

Let’s look at how BiQ can help you do your local SEO keyword research without further ado.

After entering your keyword, you can choose from more than 100,000 locations and 35 languages.

Finding local keywords with Rank Intelligence – discover the content gap between your business and your competitors.

Once you have selected your preferred location and language, the keywords returned would be more specific to the targeted people searching for your business. The tool would help you in creating more localized content. Thus, increasing your site’s visibility locally. 

At BiQ, not only will you be taught how to dominate your niche wherever you are located, but you’d also be able to find the most valuable keywords.

If you are not sure which keywords to choose, sort the value of the keyword. It’s simple: The higher the value of the keyword, the more traffic it can potentially bring to your website. 

2. Grid My Business

Grid My Business is a grid-based local rank tracker specifically designed to track and compare your Google My Business ranking performance against the top 20s in the local SERP through a specific search query. 

You can find all the locations the same as on Google Maps.

Grid My Business can track and monitor your business’ and competitors’ local search rankings. You need to use that data to your advantage and craft your local SEO strategies around it. 

There are 5 outstanding features of this tool:

• Customizable grid parameters: This local rank tracking tool is a relatively new strategy for local businesses. With just a 15 by 15 grid, you can quickly identify close to 300 rank positions in one search query.

• Bulk search queries: Grid My Business also allows you to identify local rankings of multiple search queries by performing a quick and easy bulk scan of up to 5 keywords per scan.  

• Side-by-side comparison view: With this feature, you can compare the two results that are generated on different dates of the same query.

• Monitoring reports: You can find all the previous scanning on the reports page. Details include place, search query, search setting, and monitoring will be provided. The “Active” status means that the tool will keep analyzing data for your query every 3 days, with updated data.

• Scheduled scanning: You can add your scan details; location, search query, grid size, and radius. Then, you can select the date and time of your intended scheduled scan. This feature helps you save tons of time.

To use Grid My Business, you only need 3 simple steps. 

Firstly, enter the company name/location that you want to track. Then, add the keywords which you want to know the ranking. 

Secondly, choose the grid size, and suitable radius based on your preference.

Finally, just click “Scan Now” and wait for the result.

Each grid point is your ranking in that area. So you can see that the above business is doing great with their local SEO work. 

One more incredible thing about Grid My Business is that it can be used for free with basic features and you can access all the features at a very cheap price.

3. Whitespark Local Citation Finder

The Whitespark Local Citation Finder is one of the full-fledged local listing management tools you can invest in. In addition to essential local listing management, the tool allows you to identify where you should list your business to improve local SEO rankings.

It also boasts several additional features, including the ability to collect customer feedback and online reviews, monitor local search rankings by a city, discover and create link opportunities, and more. You can use the tool-free for limited search results.

4. Moz Local

Moz Local is a primary local listing management tool that allows users to manage local listings and claim and verify listing submissions. The tool also works with data aggregators to help push listings, ensuring that your business is visible. Additionally, the tool will scan through your citations and notify you of any errors that it finds, which could be hurting your local SEO.

Last but not least, Moz Local will give you a rundown on the categories and media used for your citation. It’s available for a relatively affordable price (compared to other local listing management tools).

5. BrightLocal  

BrightLocal is a collection of tools available in various packages that start at $19.99 a month. These tools offer the ability to compare rankings against your competition on three major search engines – to find out where your competitors are listed, and monitor online reviews, just to name a few.

6. Synup

Synup is extremely useful for submitting your NAP to local directories. It’s a tool that allows you to easily manage your local listings, review and analyze your listings and NAP data.

It’s one of the most comprehensive directory lists that you can have. Besides, Synup allows you to check listings and examine if you have existing citations on them, should you add your NAP to listings, and fix incorrect data on current listings. It does cost $25 a month; however, it’s a highly effective tool.

7. Yext

Yext is similar to Synup as it also offers review monitoring, analytics, and local listing management (not to mention widgets).

However, what makes it stand apart from many local listing tools is that it’s one of the few – if not the only – automated local listing management tool on the market. Yext allows you to get your listing data populated right away and provides the ability to update your NAP information in real-time.

8. Local SEO Checklist

This organizational tool will help you do everything to boost your local SEO rankings while offering users 40 options that detail specific tasks. It can also help you optimize your site and increase your ranking by developing your blog, on-page SEO, social media, and more. It’s an essential checklist, but it’s free!

9. Schema Creator  

Schema Creator allows you to build schema.org microdata quickly, thereby making it easier for search engines to identify and index your site’s content. This makes it more likely for your content to show up on relevant searches.

10. Google Ad Keyword Planner

This tool works well for strengthening your local SEO keywords. During the keyword research phase, you can identify the traffic for specific keywords and find new local keywords based on local searches.

The Keyword Planner tool even allows you to conduct research based on geographic regions. Not only is it a valuable tool to have for your local SEO keyword efforts, but it’s arguably one of the most useful free SEO tools available as well.

11. Ahrefs

Ahrefs can help with your local SEO strategy by providing you with a detailed backlink profile for any website you want. The tool lets you see who is linking to your site, what anchor text they’re using for your backlinks, and how strong your backlinks are.

It also allows you to check the strength of your competitor’s backlinks. The tool is used by hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, accounting for its steep price point. At its very basic, it will cost you $99 a month, while full-fledged agency plans cost $999 a month.

12. Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is the best way to provide customers with information about your business. Without an optimized Google Business Profile, you’re missing out on your online audience.  

In Google Business Profile, small businesses can set up their official Google business profile, and upload images of their store and products. The tool also helps you to engage with your customers by responding to reviews and posting informative posts about your business on your page.

If you want your business to appear in Google’s local SEO 3-pack, at the top of results, you need to claim and optimize your Google Business Profile listing.

However, also remember that you should be, at a minimum, posting at least one post per week to your Google Business Profile page. This is a great reputation builder and customers will see that you are engaged as a business owner.

13. Google Search Console 

Google Search Console ensures your website remains Google-friendly. You can also use it to check the keywords Google ranks your site for and the number of pages Google has indexed from your site.

Google Search Console can also help you know how your website performs on the SERP in different countries, things like impressions and CTR.

The overview report in Google Search Console featured three main reports: Performance, Coverage and Enhancements. 

The URL Inspection tool might be one of our favorites because you get to see how Google views your website. This tool allows you to test how Google renders your site. If you published a new blog post or redesigned a webpage, you can use this URL inspection tool to signal Google to crawl that page.

14. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a website analytics tool for site optimizations. It tracks and reports web traffic to users. Google Analytics can track session duration, bounce rate, and pages per session and get insights from demographic data to use in your overall marketing strategy.

Google Analytics is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools out there to understand your digital performance, no matter your website’s size. Google Analytics is able to track not just one, but multiple websites that you own. When it comes to local SEO, it can tell you how your website performs when it comes to different audiences coming from different backgrounds. For example, If you are interested in only seeing how French visitors interact with the website, you can apply a geographic filter to only analyze visitors coming from France

Once you have this information, you will be able to optimize your website accordingly and maximize your customers’ experience.

To use this feature, of course, you will need to set up a Google Analytics account (if you don’t already have one). You can sign up for a free account here.

TL;DR 

Using these local SEO tools will make it easier to implement your local SEO strategies and measure their performance by tracking them, thereby helping to ensure that your local SEO efforts are as strong as they can be. 

Although we point out 14 best local SEO tools for your business, you’ll still need to put in the work depending on the tools you use. Choosing the best local SEO tool which is suitable for your work is important. Though tools can help you do a more effective job in local SEO, they are still not a replacement for hard work.

This post was originally written by Joanne and published on April 4, 2017. It was most recently updated on January 04, 2022, by Claire Le.

What will you learn?

• Understand what are good titles and meta descriptions?
• The perfect length for both title and meta description.
• Changes in title and meta description throughout the years
• Tools to help you create great title and meta description

It’s true: title tags and meta descriptions won’t directly help your website magically rise to the top of the search engine results (at least not the way most people imagine). From 2020, Google’s advice is to not focus too much on these, as many of the snippets Google chooses are dynamic and not pulled from your meta descriptions.

However, well-written title tags and meta descriptions are still the number one elements that decide your CTR (and CTR is one of the top-ranking factors, go figures)

A lot of how Google decides what search result snippet to show is based on the searchers’ query and the content on your page. According to Google’s blog, there’s no limit on how long a meta description can be, but the search result snippets are always truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width.

Here’s the average title and meta description length on December 2021

Best Practices For A Good Headline or Title Tag in 2022

We recommend keeping your headline at under or approximately 60 characters to fit Google results that have a 600-pixel word limit and avoid truncation. Additionally, here are some other SEO best practices:

1. Always describe the page’s content accurately. Choose a title that reads naturally and effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content.
2. Create unique titles for each page. This helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.
3. Use brief, but descriptive titles. Titles should be both short and informative. If it is too long or less relevant, Google may only show a portion of it or one that’s automatically generated in the Google search result.
4. The most crucial step is to make sure you carry out keyword research to ensure you use high-value keywords in your title tag

Use tools like title generators to kickstart your ideation process. You can easily get thousands of title ideas with our title generator.

Best Practices For A Good Meta Description Length in 2022

Meanwhile, your meta description length should be kept descriptive and between 150 and 160 characters for optimal length, and this includes spaces. Additionally, you also want to make sure to: 

1. Accurately summarize the page content. While there’s no minimal or maximal meta title length for the text in the description, Google recommends making sure that it’s long enough to be fully shown in Google results (note that users may see different sized snippets depending on how and where they search).
2. Use unique descriptions for each page. Having a different description of meta tags for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain.
3. Include your primary keyword and related keywords naturally

(*Updated in December 2021*)

Before that, more good reads on meta description best practices and the do’s and don’ts with meta description examples. 

Download our title and meta description best practice checklist that got us a 265% increase in traffic!

Brief History of Title and Meta Description 

In case you haven’t noticed, Google has made significant changes to the titles and meta descriptions length on the Google Search Results. More characters for both titles and meta descriptions are displayed in the search results now compared to the previous weeks.

What Are The Changes?

Space of Google Search Results. 

To compare it with before Google made the changes, the latest search result is now 600 pixels wide, which is about 100 pixels wider.

This is not the only change that we’ve noticed. Let’s look into more details on the other prominent changes.

Desktop

Today, Google has finally made some changes and increased the titles to 70-71 characters. I know, it doesn’t seem much, but at least you can still fit in another word or two in your title, which will make a difference.

But if you’re already happy with your current title, you can choose to add your site name at the end of the title for branding purposes.

You’ll still need to monitor the traffic and click-through rate (CTR) of your old titles compared to the new ones as it will affect your SEO. The organic results for your site will probably be higher or lower as well, which is why you have to keep things in check.

If you still can’t really see the differences yet, let me show you.

Here, I have a screenshot of the title before Google make the changes:

Google only shows 54 characters of this title and truncates the rest of it.

And this is what happens after Google make the changes:

Google displays the entire title on the search results, which has 63 characters.

Not only has Google increased the length of the titles to be displayed, but the meta descriptions also showed some changes too.

When writing meta descriptions, we tend to keep it between 150-160 characters because Google usually truncates snippets that are longer than 160 characters. Besides, Google used to display only 2 lines of meta descriptions on their search results page. Just like this:

But look at what I’ve found today:

This has once again proven that Google made some changes to its search results page. And Google not only made changes to the desktop titles. The titles and meta descriptions on mobile search have also increased and are even longer than on the desktop.

Mobile

Google has increased the length of mobile titles from about 55-60 characters to 78 characters. So now the titles on mobile search have 7-8 characters more than the desktop titles.

The same goes for the meta descriptions. Mobile has less room for meta descriptions than a desktop site, with a maximum of 120 characters. 

Let’s take a look at an example from the mobile search results.

Comparing it to the titles and meta descriptions on desktop:

With these changes that we noticed on mobile search results, we think that it may be worth it to optimize your title tags for mobile if you have more visitors from mobile than desktop.

It is definitely interesting seeing Google adding the extra characters to both titles and meta descriptions in the desktop and mobile searches. But the decision on whether to increase the titles and meta descriptions length is still up to you.

Here’s a quick recap of the perfect title and meta description length for your web pages:

Our Thoughts?

These new changes may not be a bad thing, especially for those who were struggling within the title constraints. Furthermore, more characters equal to more semantic keywords that we can include in our titles and meta descriptions for it to be displayed in Google search results.

Because if you haven’t already, you should use semantic keywords in your meta descriptions to help Google know what your content is about.

After all, Google is now looking at understanding the total context rather than the keyword density. If everything is done right, you’ll see yourself at the top of the ranks!

Once again, while we strongly recommend adding in your primary and related keywords to your title and meta descriptions, do avoid spamming keywords and overusing them to prevent Google’s penalty.

Taking this opportunity, we’d like to recommend a keyword research tool that helps you find your best semantic keywords. It’s called BiQ SEO Suite

When it comes to identifying the keywords to optimize your title and meta description, you can find everything you need using BiQ’s Keyword Intelligence. 

You can easily get access to the much-needed keyword data like the total related keywords, search trend, volume, and search intent to identify the most profitable related keywords to include them in your meta description. 

An extra tip when writing your meta description is also to include popular questions as the first line in your description because not only are they relatable but often questions are easy to pique at our curiosity which most likely drives us to click. (You can find them on the same module too!)

Also, it’s important to note that making an edit to your title and meta description is a double-edged sword!

Though editing your meta description can result in an amazing 286% increase in traffic, it can also cause suffering in website traffic when you fall out of certain keywords.

That’s why once you have edited your title and meta description, it’s very important to keep track of your ROI. 

Use BiQ’s Rank Tracking feature and start tracking the movements of your content across the SERP. 

Voila, everything was done on a single platform. Of course, these are just the tip of the iceberg. Sign up for a BiQ free tier account and ALL the features it has to offer. 

Also, check out this meta description of best practices written by the BiQ team that will show you through the whole process using their tool.

TL;DR

Keep your title length around 60 characters.

For your meta description length, keep it around 160 characters.

Although title tags and meta descriptions don’t count as a ranking factor, CTR is.  Optimizing your title and description to increase your CTR is crucial for your ranking. If you prefer to write a unique title in a short time, you can use a title generator like Blog Title Generator to help you. 

This post was originally written by Joanne and published on April 13, 2016. It was most recently updated by Claire on Dec 28, 2021

What will you learn?

• Understand the essence of local SEO 
• Know clearly about the importance of local SEO rank checker

Based on Google’s Small Business Search Trends 2019 report, there is 350x more search interest in “local” + “near me” than 10 years ago.

When looking for a nearby restaurant, you type in something like “restaurants near me.” And then, you will usually only look at the top 3-5 results. Do you find this situation relatable?

The situation makes ranking on the SERP more critical for local businesses. If you are not ranking on the top of the page, you will miss out on this traffic. According to MarketingGuru, 92% of searchers will pick businesses on the first page of local search results. 

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, sometimes you might don’t even know how to check for your local search performance, or even when you do, you do it manually.

This is where Local SEO Rank Checker can help you improve your search ranking across different search engines. It can optimize ranking factors, including customer reviews, contact details, etc., to bring you more leads and customers.

This article will show you more information about local SEO and local SEO rank checker. There will also be an introduction to our favorite tool that we highly recommend to you: Grid My Business.

What are Local SEO and its importance? 

Maintaining an online presence is essential for every business, no matter how small or big they are and how many stores they have at what location.

Local SEO is an effective SEO technique that can improve a local business’s search engine visibility. Local relates to a particular area or region.

A local search is a search that references a product or service that is consumed locally, such as “coffee shop” or “hair salon.” An example of a local search would be “Best Italian Food in Boston.”

The importance of Local SEO

The goal of SEO is to rank at the top of search engine results to get much-desired online visibility. When you type at the top 3-5, you possibly increase the chances of being found online.

Local SEO is a trackable strategy, which means you will always know how your campaign performs.

After all, the Top 3 results are said to hoard almost 75.1% of all clicks. The same goes for local businesses as well. As searches including the words “near me” have increased over the past year, more and more people are looking for an easier way to find businesses close to them.

With more consumers using the search engine to look for businesses in their neighborhood, your potential customers cannot find you if you do not appear at the top of the search results. We all want visibility for people to look for us. With Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, users will be able to see reviews that were given by customers in the past, provide easy access to your website and see the basic information about your business.

In addition, 18% of local smartphone searches led to a purchase within a day, whereas only 7% of non-local searches led to a sale. By making it so easy for users to find you online, you can expect increased website traffic and a higher Google Search ranking. That allows you to show up in search results and attract them to your physical location.

With local SEO, your company can focus on marketing and advertising in the regions that matter.

Understand about Local SEO Rank Checker 

A local search rank tracker is one of the essential marketing and best local SEO tools for monitoring your ranking and keeping tabs on other businesses in your geographic area.

With a local rank tracking tool, you’ll know if your local SEO strategy is working or not.

Does rank checking matter? 

If you are a local business owner, you must know if you are visible in the local search results. This need is vital for businesses that naturally are tied to a location, for example, restaurants, hotels, hair salons, dentists, artisans, etc.

Local search visibility is the idea of reaching audiences in your vicinity when they are searching about your brand, products, or services online. However, the ranking is different from one city to another. That’s why people developed a local rank checker, a tool that can check the website ranking and show you exactly the position in real-time for the targeted locations, either cities or countries.

Its dynamic keyword tracking approach is beneficial, which can help you with the search engine optimization process and marketing activities.

Local rank tracking keeps you updated on how you rank among your competitors, allowing you to respond quickly to these changes and remain visible in relevant searches. It also gives you the information you need to justify your SEO investments or continue to get funding.

How do you benefit from a local SEO rank checker? 

The challenge people often face is that the regular ranking statistics, like those in Google Search Console, are usually country-wide, sometimes even worldwide. Since these statistics don’t tell you whether or not your pages are shown to your actual target audience, it’s best to use a rank tracking tool that shows your rankings as if searched from a specific location.

#1. Local SEO rank checkers focus on a niche market

If you’re taking advantage of local SEO, you don’t need to compete with international companies dominating the worldwide market.

Instead, you’ll shift your focus to only local businesses in your area. You will also start to optimize your content and business towards your niche. The rank checker for local SEO will help you with this work.

Setting up your site for local search success in the areas will have a more meaningful impact on your business because you’re focusing on the area you serve.

#2. Local SEO rank trackers give you accurate statistics

Learning how to monitor SEO rankings can help you identify ranking trends and adjust your strategy accordingly. But when you do manual rank checking, it rarely gives you an accurate view of reality, your search profile such as your past search history and interaction with Google will affect your result.

A rank tracker will give you the most impartial data for even more actionable insights.

#3. Local SEO rank trackers save time by automating the rank tracking process

With rank tracking tools, you can see changes in your position on the searches over time. Automation in rank trackers can help you do the work faster than you imagine. Some tools even have the scheduled feature for users to set up scanning time.

It is much more convenient than sitting in one place and looking for numbers all over your websites all the time.

The best local SEO rank checker – our recommendation: Grid My Business 

There are a lot of local SEO software tools on the market, but the main criteria of this article are the software built for locals from the ground up and not something made from existing SEO software.

We want to introduce you to our favorite tool: Grid My Business.

Grid My Business is a relatively new local SEO tool specializing in monitoring search visibility and providing valuable insights to its users.

In just one click away, you can instantly obtain important information about your local business, such as real-time local rankings and local competitors, based on the search query you aim to rank.

The best thing about Grid My Business is that it also supports all locations that you can find on Google Maps. You can choose to see the search visibility based on the grid size and location you want to see. Other great features are:

• Personalize your search parameters, such as grid size and distance.
• Identify up to 20 of your competitors per grid point instantly for more ranking insights.
• Make the most of your time by analyzing queries in bulk (up to 5 search queries).
• Keep track of your local rankings, monitor the reports, and compare orders.

The above information is an overview of Grid My Business. We will show you a simple way to use this incredible tool. Within 3 steps, you can know your business ranking. 

Of course, before going to the actionable step, you need to set up an account and add your Google Business Profile (Your business information) to Grid My Business.

Step 1 – Insert Your Business Location & Search Query

Firstly, you enter a business location at the field given. Please select the location that best matches your business location from a list of relevant results that appear as suggestions. 

After adding the search query relevant to your business, you can enter a local search query such as “cocktails near me” (or any similar queries pertinent to your optimized keywords).

Step 2 – Select Your Grid Parameters

The grid is one of the essential features in Grid My Business, which makes this tool unique. 

The grid determines the scope and coverage you want to view your results. 

The first one you need to select is grid size. There are seven grid sizes available in Grid My Business, ranging from 3×3 to 15×15.

Next, you need to select a grid radius. The grid radius is the radius between each grid point. You can choose between the imperial (Miles) or the metrics system (Km – kilometers).

Finally, there is the scanning radius between each grid point, increasing at an interval of 0.1. The maximum radius you can select in Grid My Business is 100 (both miles and kilometers).

Step 3 – View Your Scan Results

Click on the “Run Scan” button to run your scan after setting up everything above. 

It might take time for the results to load (Not much! Just minutes away). 

You can wait for the results to pop out if you like. Or you can also choose to run a new scan with a different search query and location for your business. The tool will automatically save all your results, and you can see this information again in “My reports.”

The picture is what you will see when the scanning is finished.

You will see a maximum of 20 business listings on the right when you click on any point. You can find the listings organized based on their current rankings on Google 3-pack.

So, you just need minutes to monitor your ranking with Grid My Business. Very simple, right?

What if you want to run multiple search queries at one time without repeating the same steps over and over again? The “Bulk scan” feature is definitely for you. You can select up to 5 queries simultaneously, wait for the scanning and see the results later.

Or what if you want to set the time for weekly scanning? You can choose the monitoring feature or schedule a scan, depending on your need.

Grid My Business is an incredible local rank tracker, and it can help you with a lot of local SEO work.

TL;DR 

Having a solid local SEO strategy in place is becoming more and more critical for businesses wanting to keep up in an increasingly digital marketplace. Driving traffic online is never a straightforward task.

With the suitable local SEO rank checker, you’ll save yourself time and resources while improving your engagement with your audience.

Remember that if you follow the local SEO process and take the time to put your site in the position to rank, you’ll already be in a much better position than the majority of your competitors. Grid My Business is our recommendation for you. Try it out now!

What will you learn?

• Understand more about local SEO and its importance
• Know more about a local SEO software: What it is, why you need it, and what features it has 
• Get to know more about our favorite tool: Grid My Business

Businesses with a physical location always try to stand out and make sure that their stores are easy to find for customers. The issue is when owners don’t know where they rank on Google.

One of the best ways to know this is by using local search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. Doing local SEO means businesses need to adapt to the trends, especially when it comes to marketing strategies and customer interactions quickly.

However, a business owner and a marketer also have a lot of things to work on besides local SEO. Thanks to the development of technology and the invention of local SEO software. Owners can now remove the guesswork and develop a systemized way to improve their search visibility.

Using the best local SEO software will ensure that you can do everything you need to guarantee that your business will rank (highly) on the local search engine result page.

In this blog, you can understand more about local SEO and what you need to focus more on when doing local SEO and how to use local SEO tools to optimize the results.

Keep reading to discover the complete list of benefits of Local SEO and its software. Shall we begin? 

What is Local SEO, and why do you need it?

Local SEO is the process of increasing your business’s presence in the local search to attract more customers. This marketing strategy is booming more than ever, and Google Maps are the new gold standard for your rankings.

Local SEO has proved to be a game-changer in the digital marketing industry. As a business owner, you need to find local SEO software to increase your online visibility and help grow your business. 

Local SEO activities include citation building, listings management, and reputation management.

Why do you need Local SEO?

Local SEO is like a game-changer in the digital marketing industry. 

Here are some other benefits of adopting local SEO services and why local SEO is essential:

#1. Local SEO helps your business stand out online.

A key benefit of SEO that many companies overlook is improving your credibility among consumers. Ranking on the first page of search results signals to users that Google trusts your website. Customers can also find you easier.

92% of searchers will pick businesses on the first page of the local search results. So, not having your business listed online is akin to almost not even existing.

Local SEO increases your online visibility on the SERP. Local SEO emphasizes optimizing your Google My Business listing. This listing, which appears in local searches and specific searches for your business, provides users with details about your company.

#2. Local SEO helps to increase your website traffics and lead to sales

One of the most mentioned benefits of SEO is the increased sales, leads, and market share that companies see. As your business appears on the first page of SERP, it means that you have a better level of brand awareness among your most valuable customers. 

If your company continues to appear in their search results, it captures their attention. You’re also a valuable resource for industry information, which increases your value to your audiences.

Do you think that local SEO only affects your online business? It can help you grow your business both online and offline. According to Think with Google, “78% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a physical place within 24 hours and 28% of those searches result in a purchase”.

Firstly, by appearing on the first page of search results for high-value keywords your target audience uses, you’re earning clicks and visits from the consumers that matter most to you.

Secondly, local SEO solutions will also bring more foot traffic to your location, leading to offline sales and more customers to physical stores.

For example, many people will search for a “restaurant near me” to visit a restaurant close to them. This allows you to show up in search results and attract them to your physical location.

3 things you must pay attention to in local SEO to rank higher

There are several ways local SEO can help local businesses be discovered and remain relevant online. Optimized local website content and local listings get your business in front of people searching for products or services online, yet it also has some notes to focus on.

#1. Find underperforming keywords

Underperforming keywords are those that you don’t rank for in the first or second positions on the SERPs.. They’re underperforming because most people click on one of the first two results, meaning if you rank in lower positions, you’re missing out on tons of traffic.

Google Search Console is one tool to help you find those keywords.

To find these underperforming keywords in Google Search Console, go to the “Search Results” report and toggle the average CTR and position data. You can find the low-ranking keywords in the queries report and the middle-ranking position.

To read more about using Google Search Console, read: Using Google Search Console: The Definitive Guide.

#2. Pick a keyword to rank higher for

Keywords are so important that they can make or break your entire SEO campaign.

You can start with a list of keywords, identify the keywords on your list that aren’t super competitive. Then you can see how many people search for the keywords in your inventory, or know Google’s estimate of how much an advertiser generally spends for a single click.

BiQ Keyword Intelligence can help you with this. 

#3. Local rank tracking

You need to track your ranking to know whether your efforts are working.

Rank tracking is the process of checking search engine ranking positions for specific keywords over time. A rank tracker is a software or tool that automates this process for you. 

What is local SEO software, and why do we need it? 

Ever feel like you’re constantly fighting an uphill battle of SEO to try and rank for your business? 

It can be highly time-consuming for digital marketers – that’s why there are Local SEO software tools available to help. These tools help streamline and automate critical local SEO activities, making it easier for digital marketers and small businesses to maintain control over their presence online. 

Local SEO software works on the principle of local SEO to help businesses promote their offerings to local customers. Local SEO software is excellent for tiny, brick-and-mortar businesses like grocery stores, bars, restaurants, clinics, law offices, and many others.

How can Local SEO software help you?

The software offers businesses a solution to being discovered in local search results by customers. If your business is not already listed online, this software can list your business online for free. 

Let’s not forget that local SEO software helps you with your local business listings online but they also help track your progress. It provides you with a range of statistics to know your business performance.

With this software, you can monitor the performance of your local SEO efforts by tracking the clicks, page visits, and conversions that come from the channels in your local SEO strategy.

Local SEO software can also save a ton of time for you. When using local SEO software, you can easily list your business for free, also automatically receive reports about statistics, 

How to use local SEO software? 

Plenty of guides shows you how to do local SEO from start to finish. But they can be daunting, as it’s a complex subject. The following information will give you simple tips when choosing a local SEO software and introduce you to a simple tool.

What features do you need to pay attention to when choosing a local SEO software? 

Here are some factors to consider when choosing the best local SEO software for you. Remember: It is not vital to find software that satisfies all the below features.

• Tracking keywords based on the specific locations:

Specific locations support the process of exploring your rankings on Google Maps. For example: setting your search location from your targeted Zip code, address, neighbor, and city. 

A business’ rank can be seen in different geographic areas to show clients what they’re up against and how well they are doing. It’s also helpful for determining any potential Google Business Profile listing which may have spent money on advertising.

• Managing and updating local business listings and citations:

This feature provides customers with information about your business. Such as a Button to the website, a button for directions, photos of the inside and outside of the location, physical address, hours of operation, website, etc. 

In some tools, you can even see how complete your business profile is on major search engines and determine what areas you need to improve.

• Monitoring online reputation and online reviews: 

You can track the ratings and reviews of your business in real-time and receive alerts for when a new one comes in the tools. Sometimes, you can also respond to all Google business reviews.

• Analyze website traffic and content performance:

Track how well your local listings show up for searches conducted in the area surrounding your retail locations

• Create SEO reports to track local SEO progress: 

There are dozens of businesses in your geographical area who want to be number one on the local 3 pack. Monitoring and reporting are a must! Generate unlimited reports with trackable results for clients!

• Tools for auditing and analyzing competitor

This feature can show you comparisons, like the visitor traffic comparison between your site and your competitors for monitored keywords.

Our favorite Local SEO Software: Grid My Business

There are many popular local SEO softwares on the market; some are specialized, niche tools, while others are more complete software platforms.

Depending on the local search, your needs may require more than one local SEO tool. So you will have to choose the most suitable tool for your work.

In this part, we want to introduce you to one of our favorite Local SEO software that can bring you many benefits during the SEO process – Grid My Business.

The best thing about Grid My Business is that it supports all locations that can be found on Google Maps.

With 5 main features in Grid My Business, you can track and monitor the business’ and competitors’ local search rankings. 

#1. Monitor ranking:

You can monitor your local rankings on a grid. This grid will be placed on top of your business location. 

You can see your local ranking position, as well as the top 20 business listings at every point. The numbers on the point represent your position. 

#2. Bulk Scan

The bulk scanning feature allows you to scan more than one search query at a time. So this saves you a lot of time.

The maximum number of queries you can scan is five. You can only select the 9×9 or 11×11 grid size for this feature

#3. Report

Each scan result that you run will automatically be saved; then, you can find the local SEO report by heading to “My Reports.” 

There are details of every scan you have generated previously on this page, including Place, Search query, Search settings (grid size and radius), Time and date of your last scan, Number of reports generated with similar backgrounds, and Monitoring Status.

#4. Monitor 

On the “My Reports” page, you will see some of your reports being classified as either active or inactive.

Reports with an active status mean that the tool will monitor and update your local rankings every three days.

#5. Location

You can view all locations you have previously added in Grid My Busines when performing scans. You can also see how many scans have been completed and are currently being monitored.

Grid My Business is one of the best free SEO tools to give you statistics and information to optimize your local SEO with various features. Grid My Business will introduce the managing and updating of business listings in 2022.

TL;DR 

Local SEO software is essential to help you know how your business ranks in local and organic search results.

All the information in this blog has helped you to understand the impact of your on-page SEO work and making data-driven decisions through this trending marketing strategy, thus learning more about local SEO tools.

Hello people! I can’t believe that it is the last day of 2021, the time has passed so quickly and it’s honestly scary. I’m here with the last weekly SEO news for the year so here’s a quick breakdown:

• Tiktok overtakes Google’s top domain spot
• Google Business Profile adds an option called “Mark as Special” to Products
• Google Search Console’s Link Report is not a priority for Google 
• Minor Google Search Ranking algorithm jolt around December 27 and 28

27/12/2021- TikTok overtakes Google’s top domain spot

This was actually reported last week but we didn’t manage to report it in last week’s SEO news. 

TikTok has overtaken Google as the most popular domain globally based on annual rankings from Cloudfare. They were ranked 7th last year when Google was 1st.

That being said, this doesn’t mean that they’re the top social media website yet. Currently, they’re only the 3rd largest social media platform. Getting the top domain merely means that they got the most traffic. 

The Top 10 domains were as such:

1. Tiktok.com
2. Google.com
3. Facebook.com
4. Microsoft.com
5. Apple.com
6. Amazon.com
7. Netflix.com
8. Youtube.com
9. Twitter.com
10. WhatsApp.com

28/12/2021- Google Business Profile adds an option called “Mark as Special” to Products

Google Business Profile has added a new check box under Product called “Mark as Special” that will show that product at the top of the page in Google Search. 

This feature is likely still being tested as not many people can see this.

29/12/2021- Google Search Console’s Link Report is not a priority for Google 

Someone asked Google’s John Mueller why the pipeline to get data into the link report within Google Search Console seems slower than other reports. He responded that links are not an area that SEOs should focus too much on which is why the report is not an area that Google thinks they should spend their resources on.

Google has been somewhat vocal about their unfavorable views about links and this is just another thing to add to the list.

30/12/2021- Minor Google Search ranking algorithm jolt around December 27 and 28

There was a slight jolt in Google search ranking algorithms as tons of SEOs are surprised by the sudden boost in traffic and overall numbers. It’s unlikely that Google put something out over the holidays but maybe some random change was made.

The End

I hope everyone has a good year next year and that all your hopes and dreams manifest. By the way, are y’all going to a New Year’s countdown?