Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Archives • Page 2 of 5 • TotalWeb Partners

November 21, 2021

Why Good Content Isn’t Always Enough To Compete In SEO

Not long ago, if you wrote good content on a regular basis, you had a decent chance of trouncing your competition in search engine results pages (SERPs), attaining a higher search ranking and therefore getting a higher share of organic traffic. These days, good content is still a major boon for your website — but it’s not enough to compete on the national level.

What do I mean by this? And how can you adjust your strategy accordingly?

SEO Basics: The Importance Of Content

I’ll start with some basic search engine optimization (SEO) background information. SEO is all about increasing your website’s rankings in relevant search results, most commonly targeting Google. For Google to rank your site highly, you need to establish both relevance (i.e., addressing the subject of a user’s query) and authority (i.e., proving that your site is trustworthy).

Written content is valuable because it accomplishes both — sort of. Good content lets you establish relevance for different keywords and phrases, while also building the trustworthiness of your site. If your content is good enough to attract inbound backlinks, which serve as major indicators of authority, it can assist your site even more.

So why isn’t good content enough to compete in SEO in 2021?

The Changing Landscape Of Consumer Content

First, the very nature of “content” is starting to change. Back in 2011, in the wake of the Panda update, written content was not only the norm — it was the only practical way to optimize a site for search engines. For today’s consumers, written content is often an afterthought — they want images, videos, podcasts, audio content and other mediums to consume.

If you want to stand out to both search engine algorithms and human content consumers, you need to diversify the types of content you’re creating and appeal to a broader audience.

User Experience And Technical Factors

Lately, Google has been making more of an effort to prioritize user experience and technical factors in its ranking algorithm. The company’s philosophy has always been to make the web a better place for search users, so websites that provide fast, reliable and technically polished platforms have always had an edge over their counterparts.

In 2021, Google is rolling out page experience, a new set of ranking signals for websites, based on “Core Web Vitals” that measure website performance. Good content can still anchor your site and provide you with opportunities with keyword optimization, but if that content is unreliable, slow to load or otherwise bothersome to users, it’s not going to have the same impact.

November 16, 2021

by TWP Publisher

13 SEO Tricks That Don’t Result In Google Treats

If you’re tempted to use search engine optimization (SEO) tricks in an effort to get organic search performance faster, cheaper, and easier, don’t do it. You’ll only end up scaring your rankings away.

But what if you don’t know if a strategy you’re planning is a trick at all? The simple litmus test is this: Are you doing something for your customers’ benefit or to get better rankings? If the answer is better rankings, you might be about to engage in the kind of SEO trickery that Google and other search engines take a dim view of.

Google in particular publishes clear webmaster guidelines on the types of strategies that constitute bad behavior, including the following 13 SEO tricks.

Automated Content: Using shortcuts like spinning content — a process that runs existing content through a software program to create “new” content — or using other automated methods to generate content typically produces garbage. Poor-quality content is one of Google’s pet peeves. Searchers hate it, and as a result, Google doesn’t rank automated content highly.
Link Schemes: Increasing the number of backlinks from high-quality sites is key to SEO. Buying or bartering for links, reciprocal linking, link rings, and overly optimized guest posting, press releases or articles with embedded links are all examples of link schemes that violate Google’s guidelines.
Thin Content: To earn the right to rank, your site needs to have valuable content that contains relevant keywords. Creating pages with little content or content cobbled together from different sources just isn’t good enough.
Cloaking: Don’t show keyword-rich content to search engines, and then show humans a clean page of images, videos, or other streamlined content. Humans and search engines must always be shown the same content when the page loads.
Sneaky Redirects: Similar to cloaking, sneaky redirects are used to show search engines one highly optimized page of content while sending humans to a different page. The same tactic can also be used unethically to send desktop and mobile visitors to different, spammy pages of content.
Hidden Content: Text and links need to be clearly visible to both humans and search engines, not hidden from human view. Common tactics include using white text on a white background, hiding text behind images, and other ways of deceptively serving richer content to search engines than to humans.
Doorway Pages: Highly optimized pages of content created to rank for similar keyword variants that then funnel searchers to one page rather than providing value on their own are known as doorway pages.

November 12, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Five Ways To Supercharge Brand Awareness With SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) search engine optimization (SEO)

Whether you’re a CEO of a large enterprise, marketing director, small business owner or author, you can and should use search engine optimization (SEO) to build your brand. Personal and business names alike can improve their online presence by standing out and gaining recognition.

SEO focuses on improving the user experience for consumers. Your website’s speed, design, content, responsiveness and intent all play a role in your visibility and desirability online. The easier your online presence is to find and access, the faster you can build awareness to draw the right people to your brand.

To supercharge your brand awareness efforts, target the right audience with the right content at the right time and place. How? Through SEO.

Using SEO To Build Brand Awareness

By optimizing critical elements of your website for search, you can boost your rankings and achieve greater brand recognition online. Attract more traffic to your website and convert visitors into leads and engaged consumers.

1. Use content marketing.

Publishing quality, valuable content on your website regularly is one of the most effective ways to increase your rankings on search engines, build brand awareness and attract quality leads to your website. Content marketing can help you build trust with people, educate consumers and inform people of your products and services.

To create a foundation of outstanding content, focus on giving your audience what they need. This may include answering common questions, offering unique perspectives on industry-related topics or crafting engaging pieces that people can’t wait to consume.

Content marketing isn’t limited to blog posts and case studies. You can create everything from e-books and infographics to videos, podcasts, webinars and other creative pieces to engage your audience.

2. Identify relevant keywords.

Optimizing your content with appropriate keywords is an essential part of every great SEO strategy. Identifying relevant phrases and longtail keywords can help you rank for the terms needed to enter the conversation with consumers and meet them where they are in the buyer’s journey.

Ranking near the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific key phrases is also a form of social proof. In other words, it can boost your credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of consumers, as organic rankings are typically more trusted than paid ads.

Remember to optimize every piece of content for search intent (or user intent). Give users what they intend to find when they type specific terms into search engines. This will help boost your conversion rates and keep people onsite longer. Focus on keywords that are navigational, transactional, informational and commercial to satisfy intent. And don’t forget to target branded search terms in addition to industry keywords.

November 8, 2021

by TWP Publisher

SEO vs Google Ads – ultimate guide to understanding the two

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO

You might be wondering what the difference is between SEO vs Google Ads. You’ve heard that one is more important than the other, but you’re not sure which one it is SEO vs. Google Ads are both great digital marketing strategies for your business.

It is important to understand the difference between the two to make an informed decision about which one will work best for your company’s needs. This blog post will help you understand SEO vs Google Ads, so you can decide how to spend your marketing budget!

What is SEO, and how it works?

To solve your SEO vs Google ads confusion, we’ll start by explaining what SEO stands for – search engine optimization. Search engine optimization and search results pages help boost your website’s ranking in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!

To rank higher in search engines for keywords related to your business or industry of expertise, many things need to happen, including having quality content with tags on all site pages, link building from authoritative websites within the same industry, and others outside of the industry.

SEO focuses on target key phrases and keywords that target audiences for your site are looking for. Through keyword research, you’re helping your website to rank higher in the search engine results.

By using the right and relevant keywords, you’re directing traffic to your website. While using SEO involves website optimization, content creation, and establishing your company’s goals, you also need to track progress over time.

You need to monitor and check what contents are working and what is not.

Also, if you’re aiming to rank faster or have a specific target time, SEO won’t do that for you.

However, it’s a guarantee that SEO can give you a long-term solution between SEO vs Google Ads. Looking for a long-term solution might work best for you, depending on your business, quality score, google analytics, and marketing models.

In explaining SEO vs Google Ads, it’s important to understand how SEO can help optimize your website’s conversions. These conversions are the actions fulfilled by someone who visited your site.

November 2, 2021

by TWP Publisher

How To Check The Return On Investment Of Your Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization

Normally, you can measure the return on an investment (ROI) by taking the gain generated by the investment and subtracting its cost. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, in the search engine optimization (SEO) world, it’s a bit less straightforward.

That’s because it can be hard to pinpoint exactly how much of your sales or leads are generated by SEO alone. It’s also hard to track exactly which costs have gone into designing and implementing your SEO strategy.

Given this difficulty, I’ve gone ahead and outlined my formula for calculating and monitoring the ROI of an SEO campaign. As the owner of two full-service digital marketing agencies, I’ve tracked SEO performance across countless client campaigns for over a decade. After years of success in the field, I thought I’d share my basic strategy for SEO analytics and monitoring.

Where ROI Meets SEO For E-Commerce

For those who specialize in e-commerce, there are specific ways you can track and manage your SEO performance. Thanks to Google Analytics (yes, including the free version), you can do this fairly simply. Below, I’ve outlined the basic steps involved.

First, open your Google Analytics account and navigate to the “ADMIN” panel within the left-hand sidebar. From there, navigate to the “VIEW” tab and select “e-Commerce settings” and finally “Enable Enhanced e-Commerce Reporting.”

Whether you use Shopify or WooCommerce, your next step is to initialize tracking on these platforms so the data can be communicated to Google Analytics. Here’s a thorough guide on how to do that. Once complete, you’ll be able to view a variety of key metrics, such as:

October 26, 2021

by TWP Publisher

4 ways to use local SEO to attract more patients

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization, SEO

The typical healthcare consumer’s journey often begins with extensive research. In fact, search engines drive 3 times more hospital visits than nonsearch visitors.1

Therefore, if you are not getting enough patients through your door, there is a good chance that your company has a poor local online presence. Not enough patients are coming—they are going to your competitors instead simply because they found them first while doing a local search.

But all is not lost.

With a well-designed health care search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, you can improve your medical practice’s digital presence and attract more patients.

Below are some of the best ways to leverage local SEO and get more patients through your door.

1. Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing

All local businesses, including health care providers, should claim their Google My Business (GMB) listing. Not only does GMB significantly influence search engine rankings, but it is also one of the first things that potential patients see (Google’s Local Pack) after conducting a local search query.

Fortunately, claiming your GMB account is easy and free.2 After signing up and claiming your listing, you will need to provide the following information:

• Name of practice

• Address

• Phone number

• Email address

• Hours of operation

• Photos of the practice

• Short description about the practice

The idea is to bring the GMB listing to life by providing complete information about the practice to potential patients. To optimize a GMB listing, make sure that you frequently update it and answer questions that people may have.

What about multiple locations?

Even if you have a main phone line for answering calls and booking patient appointments, all office locations should have their own Google My Business listing.

Otherwise, when a patient searches for your secondary locations (satellite offices), they are likely to end up finding the Google listing for the main location. This can result in patients

October 22, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Why Do Pillar Pages Matter For SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization, SEO

A pillar page is an organized piece of content on a website that can help search engines see its worth and connection with other pages on the site. If the page is structured well, it can impact the website’s rankings because of the high searched terms or additional highlighted useful information. Our agency has experienced good results with the value of pillar pages for SEO.

Let’s start with the basics.

What Is A Pillar Page?

A pillar page acts as an index of a particular subject that shows (and links to) related information that the reader might want or need. A pillar page cannot have all the information about a single topic, so it has to be spread on other pages.

For example, a blog post focuses on a topic with much information. For SEO, the blog post should include links that create a network for the search engines to crawl the content further. Even a homepage or product or service page can be tied to a pillar page.

Pillar pages are a valuable part of a content strategy. You can write about a topic and narrow down the post with relevant material. A pillar page surrounded by associated content can allow site visitors to dig deeper all in one place—your post.

How Do You Create A Pillar Page?

A pillar page should include a broad range of keywords, be useful to readers and promote taking action. Here are some important things to remember while creating a pillar page:

October 18, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Google: Don’t Remove Old News From Your News Site For SEO Reasons

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO

Google’s John Mueller said he would not recommend that you remove old content or old news from your news site for SEO reasons. He said “I don’t think you would get a lot of value out of removing just old news.”

John said this at the 50:12 mark into the last video hangout this past Friday. He was asked about removing old news from a news publisher site for SEO reasons. John said it is “not something I would recommend.” He said “from that point of view I wouldn’t do this for SEO reasons.”

I don’t think you would get a lot of value out of removing just old news.

It’s also not something I would recommend to to news websites because sometimes all the information is still useful. So from that point of view I wouldn’t do this for SEO reasons.

If the reasons why you want to remove content or put it into kind of like an archive section on your website for usability reasons or for maintenance or whatever.

That’s something that you can definitely do but I wouldn’t just blindly remove old content because it’s old. The advice is a bit different from a year ago but not totally different.

Read more: Google: Don’t Remove Old News From Your News Site For SEO Reasons

October 12, 2021

by TWP Publisher

SEOs experiencing delays in data on Search Console performance reports

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO, SEO Optimization

“We’re currently experiencing longer than usual delays in the Search Console performance report. This only affects reporting, not crawling, indexing, or ranking of websites,” said the Google Search Central Twitter account on the morning of Tuesday, September 21. “We’ll update here once this issue is resolved. Thanks for your patience!”

Many SEOs have noticed the change in their Search Console reports this morning and have taken to social media to ask if they’re the only ones seeing the issue. “Is there a GSC bug? Apologies if I am late to the party here, but the last day we even have partial data available is the 18th?” asked Tessa Bonacci Nadik, Director of SEO Product at Cox Automotive.

She’s not alone. Other SEOS say September 18 was their last day of data. Aleyda Solis reported that her last day of data was September 17.

We’ll continue to update this piece as we know more.

Why we care. If your data isn’t updated, don’t worry just yet. The glitch will likely be fixed soon, but make sure to inform your clients and adjust your weekly reporting to ensure no misunderstandings or data mistakes. If you’re using the Search Console API, it’s also likely you will see 404s until the glitch is remedied. Google assured SEOs that the glitch isn’t affecting how sites are seen or indexed, just how the data is being relayed back to them. It’s also a good reminder to go into Search Console regularly to check your data and not just rely solely on tools that may pull the data into automated reports.

October 8, 2021

by TWP Publisher

From Google and Facebook, I Learned Why Every Ecommerce Store Should Focus on SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a buzz word over the last few years. Many areas of online business have been implementing solid SEO strategies for a while, but ecommerce is still slow to join the rest. Ecommerce stores have been trained to use paid methods, like Google Shopping Ads, Facebook Ads and other social media ads to get people to click through to their store. However, with the ever-increasing cost it takes to acquire new customers, ecommerce store owners should get on board with SEO and develop a solid content strategy for long-term growth and reduce their cost to acquire new potential customers.

The one-legged stool

As I mentioned earlier, the cost of bringing new customers to your ecommerce store is going to keep increasing. If your store is solely reliant on paid traffic, let’s say from Google Shopping, and Google decides you violated one of the many advertising policies, all your traffic dries up and you’re out of business. No traffic means no sales and no sales means you’re out of business by the end of the month.

Relying solely on paid traffic channels is like having a one-legged stool. It’s a lot more secure for the health and longevity of your business to have more legs under the stool, in case one leg gets taken away from you. SEO is one of those legs you need to apply. Not only is it free traffic, but as long as you provide valuable information for the readers, there’s no risk of being removed in the same way paid channels can shut you out.

The results of a well-executed SEO and content strategy take time. Often, an ecommerce store won’t see significant organic traffic for 6 to 12 months after publishing those first pieces of content. But if you keep implementing and producing solid, helpful content, the effects compound over time.

I got banned from Google and Facebook

I share all this from my own experience as an ecommerce store owner. I relied solely on Google and Facebook ads to get traffic and for some unknown reason back in early 2019 both platforms decided I had violated a policy. After that point, I couldn’t get back in their good books.

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