SEO is no longer an esoteric science that only a few companies excel at. In fact, every business today has to invest in SEO — whether it’s a local bakery or an international SaaS company. It might be noted though that there’s one industry that can especially benefit from investing in SEO. Surprisingly enough, that’s the online ad publishing industry. This industry, which comprises a network of domains that allow brands to deliver their message to billions of users, can definitely benefit from investing some time and effort in their SEO practices. Many publishers don’t actually focus on their SEO because they feel overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to get done. However, the technical issues that most ad publishers grapple with are actually fairly simple, and fixable. What’s more, just fixing these simple SEO issues can help them realize 79% more revenue. So here are the top SEO mistakes that publishers need to be aware of: 403 and 404 Errors This usually means that there is an issue on the client-side because of which the user, or the search engine bot, as the case may be, cannot access the webpage. A 403 Forbidden error usually happens when people are able to access the link for a webpage for which you have restricted access in your settings. A 404 Not Found error, on the other hand, comes when the page that the user is trying to access either doesn’t exist any longer or didn’t exist ever. You may also have internal broken links — where the user is directed to a non-existent webpage from within your own site. Have certain HTTPs pages Expiry of a certificate may result in particular webpages reverting to the not-secure HTTP protocol. This is seen by Google as a major compromise of the website security and rankings start taking a nosedive very quickly. Similar Titles This is a very basic SEO error, and fairly easy to fix. Your page title is how both users and search engine bots are able to figure out what your page is all about. If you have more than one page with the same title, both users and bots will get confused. This, in turn, affects your search engine ranking, which then means loss of revenue. Generic Meta Description This is another common mistake which is fairly simple to fix. The meta description is the unique description for your webpage that appears under the Google search result. Although the search engine crawlers don’t directly use this meta description to determine the ranking, users do use the meta description to decide whether they want to click on a link or not. This means that a good meta description results in a higher organic CTR (Click Through Rate) which does impact the search engine algorithm and improve rankings. Internal Links and Anchor Text It can be very tempting to use CTA (Call to Action) buttons within the body of a webpage to link other pages of your website. “Check out this post”, “Click Here” and other such generic text will not really help you from an SEO perspective. It’s much better to identify anchor text within your web copy that contains important keywords, and then link your webpages to this text. Even if you think you absolutely need to have a Call To Action, make sure it’s something that includes relevant keywords. For instance, “Click to Know More about our Ecommerce Services” is much better than “Click Here”. Uncrawlable Pages This is another rookie mistake that happens more often than we think. In this case, the search engine bot is unable to crawl all or some of the webpage and index the content. What this means is that there is no chance that your webpage will get a decent ranking. While there are a number of reasons for this, you must make sure that all your pages can be crawled by a search engine. Duplicate Content This is another very avoidable mistake that you can also rectify fairly quickly. Duplicate content means that different webpages across your website have blocks of content that are exactly the same or very similar. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, you decided to copy-paste blocks of text across different webpages, where the message you wanted to convey was similar. While this is tempting and saves some time and effort in the long run, it is a huge no-no from an SEO perspective. So make sure you craft unique content for every single webpage, no matter how similar the context and messaging. The second, more common reason is that there is some issue during the technical implementation and you end up with several webpages with the same content. This can be fixed fairly easily with a quick audit. Backlinks: Quantity over Quality It’s tempting to get a large volume of links to your website. However, that isn’t so great from an SEO point of view. It’s much better to get fewer, high-quality links than a large volume of low-quality links. High-quality links from credible websites help to build your repute in the eyes of the search engine, resulting in higher rankings faster. Also try to make sure that the links you get are relevant to your industry and product and do not have too many outgoing links. Slow Loading Speed via GIPHY Today, users are accustomed to websites that load in a flash. That’s why having a website with even fractionally slower loading speed can become a major stumbling block. It will end up affecting your CTR (Click Through Rate) as well as your search engine ranking. So keep working on your website until loading speed is no longer an issue. We hope this article helped shed some light on a somewhat-neglected application of SEO. If this helped you fix your SEO basics, do let us know in the comments below. If
Month: November 2019
Discover the Top 5 Secrets to Successful Content Creation
They sometimes say that great ideas are a dime-a-dozen. And there’s probably some truth to this. Having a brilliant idea isn’t very hard! It’s the journey from idea to execution that’s challenging. It requires a framework, craftsmanship, discipline, and persistence. In today’s world, where content is being thrown at us from every direction (as an example, a whopping 2 million blog posts are published every day), creating successful content becomes all the more tricky. In the past decade, we’ve seen many clients struggle with content creation services — there are those who face such inertia that they never get a content plan in place while others create a few brilliant pieces and then just stop. But the good news for all is that, here are some of the best-kept content creation secrets that we’ve discovered over the years: Build the right content creation model As a brand, you have to figure out the content creation model that will work best for you in the long run. If you have the bandwidth and the resources, you can hire an in-house content creation team. This is the best option if you need to produce a high volume of content or create content for multiple platforms. If your subject matter is highly technical and requires you to educate your audience, consider hiring subject matter experts. If you don’t have the resources for a full-fledged in-house time, hiring specialist freelance writers or content agencies is a great, cost-effective option. If you have a B2B product with a strong community, you can even consider guest posts from contributors as a viable engine for great content. Whichever model you opt for, it’s important that you find what works for you before you start executing a full-fledged content plan. Read Also: Here are 25 of the most amazing content creation tools ever Build your audience persona and work with it This is the most important rule when it comes to creating effective content. You need to understand your target audience and build effective buyer personas. This means you have to define everything you know about your ideal audience member — how educated they are, where they live, how old they are, what kind of work they do, which gender do they belong to, what their interests are, and so on. Sometimes, if your audience is a bit diverse, one persona won’t be enough. So, you might have to create a set of personas. Fleshing out these details about audience members will help you understand exactly who you’re addressing, and your content will be much more relatable as a result. Zero in on a content niche Do you know what they say about stand-up comedy? You’re more likely to become successful in the long run if a small group of people consider you to be hysterically funny, rather than if a large group of people think you’re mildly hilarious. The same is true for content. When you’re starting out, you don’t want to invest all your energy and resources across multiple channels and different content formats. Zero in on a viable content niche where you can become the master of the domain and build your following from there. Identify your unique content prowess by asking yourself some important questions. These include: Is your audience longing for this kind of Content and not getting it anywhere else? Can you become an authority in your industry within this niche? Do you have the time and resources to create valuable content within this niche and in the right content format? Create shareable content It’s not enough to just create brilliant content. It’s important that this content is focused on topics that will help you generate shares and backlinks. For this, you need to research keywords to make sure you’re choosing the right topic. To start with, get on Google and search for keywords in your niche. Remember to use informational keywords rather than product-based keywords. For instance, you should use keywords like “how to make good coffee at home” rather than “mocha pot” or “coffee maker”. You can then enter the details of the websites of the top results into a backlink checker like Ahrefs.com or Open Site Explorer. This will give you a list of the top-performing content. Now what you need to do is build a piece of content around the same topic, but one that’s much richer and more valuable than the existing content on the subject. Remember, the pieces that rank high have been around longer than what you will produce, so you need to make sure your content is far superior, or you’ll find it harder to rank higher. You can do this by making sure that the content is more relevant to your audience, that it has better design, is more current, or has more details. Use long-form, evergreen content for sustained traffic There are two rules of thumb that every content creator should keep in mind. The first is that long-form content works better in the long run. If you look at Google’s search engine rankings, the top 10 results are usually of 1000 words or more. So, while consistency is the key to better SEO, 400-600 word blog posts writing simply aren’t enough. Try to create more in-depth content (anywhere between 1000-3000 words) to eke out a position as an authority in your niche. Another great trick is to use evergreen content. This refers to content which doesn’t change significantly with time. Writing high-quality, in-depth beginner’s guides or how-to articles are great examples of evergreen content as they don’t really come with an expiry date. Having great evergreen content also helps you to attract traffic to your blog in the long run. The last word These are some of the secrets to effective content creation that we’ve discovered along the way. They should work as a great framework for you. If you have any more questions, or if you think there are some
Google BERT — The Algorithm Update Everyone is Talking about and How it Will Affect Your SEO
On 25th October, Google released what it calls the most important update to its search algorithm in years — BERT. Naturally, everyone from business owners to digital marketers has been in a tizzy since then. While some people saw a dramatic fluctuation in their rankings, others saw barely any change and started questioning whether BERT really is an issue in the first place. So, to manage some of the hysteria currently surrounding this update, we decided to break down BERT for you. We’ll talk about what this update is all about, how it’s going to affect search engine rankings, and how you can respond to it in the best possible way. What is BERT really about? BERT is short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. While this may sound intimidating, its implications are actually fairly straightforward. It simply means that the Google search algorithm can now understand the context of words in a search string. Does that sound a bit confusing? Let’s break it down even further. With the BERT update, Google now uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) to understand the importance of transformer words (like “to” and “for”) within the search term that a user inputs. Previously, the search engine would focus only on the keywords, without giving much thought to these transformer words and how they actually affect the meaning of the search query. We can take a look at one of Google’s own “before and after” examples to see how BERT really works. Let’s take a search for “2019 brazil traveller to USA need a visa.” If the importance of the word “to” in this search is not understood, then Google wouldn’t have been able to figure out whether the query is about a Brazilian travelling to the USA or vice-versa. Before BERT, this search term therefore also returned results about US citizens travelling to Brazil. Now, with BERT, the search engine is able to understand that the word “to” is actually very important in this context and changes the meaning of the search query completely. Here’s what the before and after search results look like: Why BERT could have affected your rankings adversely If you’re one of those people who saw a dramatic fall in their rankings right after BERT was released, here are some possible reasons. They may not all apply to you, but one or more definitely will. Your ‘informational search’ game isn’t strong Informational searches are those types of searches where users are seeking specific information about something. A Penn State research study shows that 80% of Google searches are currently informational searches. These searches are the most likely to be affected by BERT because they usually use more transformer words. If you don’t have the kind of content that would rank high for an informational search, you may have lost out on your rankings in a big way. You were ranking high for irrelevant searches Let’s take the example above. Say your website provides information for US citizens travelling to Brazil. Earlier, a query like “2019 brazil traveler to USA need a visa” might have shown your result page in the rankings, but not anymore. This is probably not such a bad thing as you don’t need to rank higher for search queries that aren’t relevant to your content. Local SEO is winning now Local SEO tends to rely very heavily on transformer words like “for”, “at”, and “in” so there’s a chance that these searches are now throwing up more local results, pushing your website down. Keyword stuffing has become even more obsolete For years, SEO experts have been saying that Google is looking more at quality content, than mere stuffing of keywords. This particular update is another step in the same direction. So if you still have content that’s designed more for search engines rather than for end-users, it’s probably time to rethink your strategy. What you can do about BERT today If you have been affected by BERT in a big way, try some of these tips to get back into the game. Even if your rankings haven’t been affected in particular, it might still be a good idea to implement these suggestions anyway because things will keep shifting in the next few months as websites keep evolving to adapt to BERT. Stop pretending it’s 2009 and get rid of keyword stuffing This is probably the most important advice to keep in mind. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, many businesses started churning out poor quality articles that made little sense for readers but were stuffed with keywords and designed to satisfy the search engine algorithm only. In the last few years, most of the Google search engine updates have focused on preventing this from happening, and BERT is no exception. Since BERT uses NLP, it emphasizes more on natural-sounding content that is valuable to end-users, rather than content that is stuffed with keywords in an unnatural, inorganic way. So in case you haven’t done this already, it’s high time you revamp your content in a way that makes it more amenable to readers vis-a-vis search engines. Take another look at how you’re capturing informational searches If your rankings have gone down dramatically after BERT, start by examining which keywords and search terms are no longer performing as well. Search for those keywords and look at the kind of content that is now making it to those high ranks. Find ways to incorporate what’s working for this content into your existing content or create new content which is more geared towards informational search. At the end of the day, BERT is not some crazy, out-there update. It simply builds on Google’s underlying goal — which is to make Search more useful and relevant for users. If you’ve already been building content geared towards end-users, chances are BERT won’t affect you in a big way in the long run. If you’re still in the “create content for
7 Ways to Deal with Internet Trolls: The Underbelly of Reputation Management
Pooja, a social media manager with a hospitality brand, had to excuse herself from a friend’s party at 11 PM. Her company’s social channel had erupted with 60 negative tweets from a disgruntled guest who was not ready to stop until the company was taking heed of his demands. The guest was now in the process of instigating and tagging others to fan the spark of dissatisfaction into a forest fire. It was classic online reputation management (ORM) nightmare situation. The main job was to stop this from escalating into a PR nightmare. Now, most of us have faced a similar situation as social media managers. So, taking a stance and dealing with such experiences is a must. It is common knowledge that positivity hardly comes actively on social media. People have to be prodded and probed to extrapolate a positive. Negative, on the other hand, comes with the explosion potential of a ticking time bomb. Some part of it is potent with malice because the attackers are hiding behind an online identity and have a false belief that they can’t and won’t be tracked. While every situation will have to be dealt with differently, here are some best practices to follow: Create a solid policy and fall back on it often As a brand, you have the right to maintain the decorum of your social handles. Don’t give control to the bullying few. Create a social media policy document and share it with all admins of the page. Admins should have the right to remove/hide/delete harassing, anonymous or spam comments. Put up the policies on your own website and use the link as a reference point to anyone crossing the line. Don’t delete posts easily as it only irks the person and may also encourage others to write things they don’t mean. They are likely to come back with worse in the future. Have a standard offline approach for customer care Trolls thrive on the attention they receive over a sustained period of time. Cut off the potential for this by redirecting them to an email id that can have a quick turnaround time (TAT). Let them know that you have heard them and registered their grievance. But keep redirecting them to email or even direct messaging. If you are dealing with an irate customer who won’t wait for an email response, have an escalation process and have a customer care executive call them on a priority basis. Being heard and responded to will destroy the troll’s steam to hurl abuses online or rally others to join them. If you can’t resolve the issue immediately, request a 24 – 48-hour timeline and be sure to keep the deadline. Once you have this, share your response online so that others following the update know that you have responded. Create a specific customer care handle If your brand handle is getting clouded with trolls, create a redirect mechanism with a separate customer care handle which is purely for handling queries. If someone approaches on your brand handle, redirect them to the customer care handle to keep the conversation going without hampering the brand image. Pick your battles via GIPHY There are times when you are right and times when you will have to apologize and move on for a genuine problem at your end. If you know that you are right then be willing to take on the troll on your own terms. People think that they can get discounts or refunds if they escalate the problem to the CEO of the company, leaving the minions scurrying. Don’t be perturbed and follow the standard response procedure if you are right. Respond with facts and proof documents if need be. There are times when one of your staff/processes could have gone wrong. This is especially true for the service industry. If there is clear proof in the pudding, it is best to take the higher road, apologize, and swallow the bitter medicine. At other times, you may hear a simple statement complaint like the food tasting bad or the service not being up to the mark. Reply with a sense of humour and the tension may get diffused. Block that noise via GIPHY It is not an easy thing to do but one has to do it when running out of options. Some trolls can go on tangent and decide they won’t stop until their ransom demands are met. So, it is important to take a stand and eventually block them from engaging in a conversation on your page. This is done in an extreme case when you label the person as a ‘detractor’. Keep maintaining and updating this list so that you can build a case history if required. Identify the difference between a troll and an irate customer. A customer may be making noise to set a wrong right. A troll is making noise to get attention and often do scathing personal attacks. Be stern with trolls and patient with customers. Use analytics to bring the internal culprits to court Errant member-facing staff is also a problem that the ORM team has to deal with. Whether it is someone in the sales team who has gone astray or someone in the customer service team who has in a moment of weakness lost patience, it is important to track and maintain records. The weekly/ monthly report for the particular department is eventually likely to catch fire and attention and bring more discipline in dealing with customers. Amplify your positives to drown the noise What you see is what you believe. If you see 100 positive reviews to one negative, it is easier to believe that the overall experience with the brand is positive. Encourage, and if need be, incentivize positive behaviour by requesting customers to share their positive experience without fail. The more you amplify the positive noise, the less likely you are to be
Afraid of Competition from the Bigwigs? Here are 5 Ways You Can Compete with Industry Giants
Having worked with small businesses across India on SEO and content marketing for over a decade, there are some questions we hear very often. The one that probably tops the list is – “Is there even a point in investing money in SEO? Especially, when there are huge MNCs who are investing so much more money than me?” Luckily, the answer to this question is a resounding yes. Of course, there will always be businesses in your competitive sphere who will have more resources to devote to SEO, and who might have been in the SEO game a lot longer than you. However, SEO is no longer about money or muscle — it’s really about what webpage is most relevant for the searcher. So even as a small business, you can still rank high on the search results, as long as you’re smart and focused when it comes to your SEO strategy. Here are 5 amazing SEO hacks that can help you stay competitive, even amidst industry giants who have tons of resources. Find a niche This is probably the golden rule for any small business that’s serious about playing the SEO game. You have to pick a specialization and stick to it. Let’s say you’re a content writer running a small freelancing business. You might be able to write all kinds of content but ranking for all categories would be incredibly hard. You’d end up having to compete with almost every content marketing agency out there, and many of them will have better resources. So instead, figure out which areas interest you, what you can write comfortably about, and where there’s a demand. Then pick a niche accordingly. Ranking high for a specific niche — whether it’s to do with SaaS content or healthcare writing— is much easier than being a generalist. Don’t scrimp on the website Google rewards websites that are polished, professional and filled with relevant content. Not only that; users too prefer websites that are clean, easy-to-use, and professional-looking. Ideally, you should get your website set up by a professional. If you already have an amateurish website, focus on making it look and feel more elegant and meaningful, by preferably hiring someone experienced to do it for you. As a next step, make sure you conduct a website audit before you even begin any kind of SEO work. This review would include basic things like keyword density, broken links, metadata, alt text for images, loading speeds, and so on. The goal is to make sure your website is as good as the best websites in your industry, or almost as good for now. Long-tail keywords all the way Similar to finding a niche, using long-tail keywords is a great way for smaller businesses to crack SEO. There are two kinds of keywords that users search with — short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are search terms that usually have 2-3 words and are more generic. Because of this, there tends to be more competition for these keywords, with many companies spending big money trying to rank for these keywords. In contrast, long-tail keywords are much longer (usually 5-10 words) and tend to be more specific. For instance, “fluffy eggs” is a short-tail keyword, while “how to make your eggs fluffy” is a long-tail keyword. This means that while there are fewer people searching for these terms, there’s also less competition from an SEO point of view. So the chance of ranking higher for these long-tail keywords is much more. As a small business, a small but solid stream of customers should be more than enough. That is why using long-tail keywords is a much better strategy in the long run. You can use Google’s Webmaster tools to do research on long-tail keywords that will work for you. Become a recognized expert If you are selling a product that requires you to educate your customers, try to create content that positions you as an authority in your field. For instance, if you’re a small IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) firm, your blog should provide insights for readers in a way that few other blogs can. Since you’ve already figured out a niche and are catering to a focused clientele, you’ll be able to deliver unique content that’s targeted specifically to their problems. Once you’re recognized among your target audience as a go-to entity for valuable expertise, chances are they’ll turn to you when they need professional help. Leverage local search This is another great tool you have at your disposal that big companies usually don’t, so make the most of it. As a small business, chances are that most of your customers belong to a small geographic area around your location. This means you can use local search to great effect. Today, 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information, so ranking high on local searches can lead to immediate business outcomes. Plus, most big businesses will be servicing a much larger area, so they won’t be able to optimize for local search in the same way as you will. To get started, try getting some local reviews and spending time on filling out your Google My Business profile. Another great idea is to have local offline events and use them for online coverage, thereby building your local search ranking. Finally, you can actually create hyper-local content, using neighbourhood-specific keywords. This will help Google pinpoint your locality and give you a head-start on local searches. We understand that SEO can be quite intimidating, especially if you don’t have ample resources to invest in it. At the same time, SEO is no longer just for the big players. As long as you buckle down and find your niche, and use your status as a small business to build a sleeker and defined SEO strategy, you will definitely get the results you need. Watch: 6 SEO Myths that you need to trash today