Why Content Marketing and SEO Go Hand in Hand

Content marketing and SEO are two frequently used terms and broadly discussed topics in digital marketing. What eludes most is how they work together and the importance of it. First, let’s have a look at both of them separately.

SEO: It stands for Search Engine Optimization. It involves a series of approaches undertaken to improve the search visibility, the ranking and also the traffic coming into a page of a website. The ways to achieve this is by optimizing meta tags, title tags, building links, back linking, using strategic keywords and much more. Most of the website’s traffic begins with a search. Hence, it is important that a brand building strategy includes SEO.

Content Marketing: Firstly content can exist in various forms – blogs, infographic, podcasts, videos and much more. No matter the form, it has to attract, engage, and inform with valuable content. Content marketing is a bigger approach which with SEO forms a part of your digital marketing strategy.

A digital marketing agency should remember that planning a content strategy which effectively integrates SEO as a part of it works not only well for the targeted audience but also for Google and other search engines. Here are reasons why tightly coupling content strategy and SEO guarantees success for your inbound marketing strategy and also the brand strategy:

1. SEO asks. Content answers.

First off, link building – possibly the most important factor to consider in your SEO strategy. Simply put, getting other websites to link back to your website is called link building. How does it help? It drives referral traffic as well as increases the site’s authority and ranking. When a number of trusted backlinks are made to your website, major search engines rank the pages of your website higher. Effective backlinks are made by high quality content. What qualifies as high-quality content? Relevant, interesting content that is share-worthy and persuasive. When your content is compelling, the likelihood of other sites to link back to your website is more. The other strategy to improve your website’s ranking is to create guest posts. These posts are placed on external high-domain-authority sites along with a bio and must include a link back to your website.

2. SEO leads. Content follows.

Important words and phrases that allow people to find your content and your website through various search engines (including Google) are called keywords. They are the most significant component of SEO. Every business or site will have unique keywords specific to their business or field. Keyword strategy involves including keywords and groups of keywords in title tags, URLs and meta descriptions so that people can easily find the business by simply searching for it. Besides this, keywords must be incorporated in the content strategy as part of landing pages and blog posts. Essentially, SEO plans the keywords that are to be delivered and content provides them.

3. SEO is forever. Content continues delivering.

SEO is not a one-time, permanent process. It is an ongoing one. It requires consistent maintenance. This is because Google consistently demands content that is novel. The recently updated pages with quality content are constantly indexed and rate higher on SERPs (search engine results page). That is why most B2B marketers (close to 72%) and digital marketing agencies are producing more content than they had about year ago. The only way to target and engage your audience is to regularly post compelling content.

One might go as far to say that SEO and content are sides of the same coin. One doesn’t work well without the other. Finding a workable balance between the two parts forms an effective inbound strategy. It gets more traffic, ranks your website higher and compels the target audience to keep coming back for more.

7 SEO Techniques You Must Try in 2018

SEO is a development and industry change. Strategies that were effective six years ago, may fail your business today. Some of the best techniques were not introduced a few years ago. So, it’s good to stay updated with time to succeed.

To stay on top it’s advised to do research, learn and test new approaches. An interesting fact about search engine optimization is the desire to share information with the group.

It helps new business as well as experts to learn every day. It allows them to improve with advanced SEO techniques.

Follow these techniques to achieve SEO goals:

Search engine optimization techniques for 2018

1. Deep theme coverage

SEO is a high value-added marketing technique that constantly develops. Focus on keyword search, tag search, and knowledge graph in Google.

These techniques allow Google to understand searches regardless of the keywords used.

2. Improved content

If you are a prolific blogger or your website is constantly creating content you may be sitting on a closed gold mine. When a post is posted, readers forget about it and move on to the next stage.

They do not realize the potential of the current content of their site or blog. Conduct content checks on your site quarterly, annually, or bi-annually. Optimize it to increase traffic.

3. Asset development and promotion

Linkable assets are the pieces of content that capture backlinks from other sites. Create and strengthen linkable assets to improve search engine optimization by getting backlinks. It helps to grow the high visibility of the company.

Social media marketing distributed paid content and other techniques used to upgrade after development.

4. Redirect management

After you refine an old Website, Word addresses are often modified as well. For this reason, there must be a redirect and must be managed carefully.

Redirects, especially 301 redirects, move the link to an old page on a website or blog to a new page. Without redirection management, traffic and ranking can be lost. So be careful.

5. Speed up your mobile page

Most visitors use smartphones to navigate through your website and blog. Accelerated mobile pages are therefore an open source framework for creating fast mobile pages.

Whether simple article pages or complex forms and e-commerce sites, AMP works wonders for everyone. It enhances the mobile experience.

Websites that load faster are preferred by search engines and appear higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s).

6. Facebook Marketing

Use Facebook ads to promote linkable assets. Social media ads are extremely effective when they are executed intelligently.

It ensures business growth and increased traffic to your page. If you want to promote business in a short time, Facebook advertising is essential.

7. Content customization

User experience signals are a factor in SEO ranking when content reaches the first page of Google. Improving the conversion rate (CR) is a high value-adding activity in marketing.

Different messages had different effects on different groups of people. The conversion rates on the site have increased significantly.

By following these seven techniques, it is possible to grow business and get the desired results.

SEO Advice for 2018 You Can not Afford to Ignore

Build a Sitemap

In order for a search engine to display a website in the SERPs, it has to index every page on it. Still, those who are just starting do not know the ways to help search engines index their web pages. There is a probable solution to this. They can build a sitemap that lists all pages on their website, simplifying the indexing process for search engines. This step should always be remembered.

Do Mobile-optimization

At present, nearly all people use their mobile gadgets to keep in touch. Additionally, this is the best way to browse on the web as well. Google is also aware of that. For this reason, the world's search engine giant goes for mobile-friendly websites. If you do not want Google to ignore your website, you should do a mobile optimization for it. Your site should not be filled with ads as well, so it can be easily navigated by mobile users.

Focus on Local SEO

It is good to begin with these figures. People should be aware that 43% of Google, 25% of Yahoo and 25% of Bing searches are location-oriented. In addition, 50% of all searches have local intent.

The best strategy for businesses to draw a lot of consumers and meet their needs, particularly if their site supplies products / services within their locality, is through Local SEO.

A number of tips to consider are:

  • Always use local keywords;
  • Include the name in Google My Business;
  • Write relevant content on the blog;
  • Identify all contacts related to the business;
  • Come up with a local domain name.

Make a Huge Investment in Social Media Presence

Social media marketing is among the most effective, free ways to boost a website. Social media presence is not only about creating an account on different platforms. Rather, it is about the frequency of posting fresh content, and the level of engagement received.

When creating or contributing content on a regular basis, it would help to share them with others through social media. Other articles within the industry can also be shared. Businesses can cover a lot of content, so they have all the reasons to participate in social media.

Moreover, search engines make use of algorithms in determining if the content is worth to be ranked. That is why those who use social media platforms go for articles that they consider valuable. When they discover that a particular content is easy to read and helpful as well, they will share it on social media sites.

Blogging

From an SEO point of view, blogging is critical for any website. It is a very powerful tool that can address the needs of a business. Therefore, these businesses should learn how to set up a blog on their site.

However, in blogging, there are some rules that need to be followed. As a start, since no one likes to read outdated content, it is important to write fresh, high quality content on a regular basis.

Next, the articles should not be limited to formal text-only content. It would be best to combine them with images, video materials and infographics. This way, the blog would look more striking and impressive.

It would be good to share high quality content on social media sites. This is effective in drawing more traffic to a website.

SEO Services Impact On Business

Nowadays people start their day by checking & searching online content. People connect through search engines more than using their browser. 93% of online experiences these days begin with a search engine. Search engine pairs the person's searched word with the most relevant web page. 75% of those 93% people do not even pass through the first page. Research has shown that there are 6,586,013,574 searches per day.

Search Engine Optimization is done to rank your website high on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Some of the best SEO practices are:
1. Make sure that your website is user & SEO friendly.
2. Create unique & attractive content.
3. Utilize your main keyword across various tags of your website.
4. Share your content on different social media platforms.
5. Implement tools like Google Search Engine, Google Analytics etc to help you track your website.

Why should we do SEO for our website?
Once you create your website, you have to drive traffic towards your website. You can do this through social media, email marketing, SEO services etc. Through social media & email, you can target a lesser number of an audience than you can with SEO services.

Your website may be attractive but until & without it is SEO friendly it will not get displayed on search engines. Having a business online & not getting visitors is a drawback on its own. Letting traffic, leads & sales slip through your fingers is a not a good thing for your business.

Research has proved that local searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within a day, & 18% of local searches led to a sale within a day. By doing SEO on your website, your website visitors will increase which will indeed increase your sales. SEO services are one of the best services that digital marketing has provided for local business & entrepreneurs.

Here I have come to the conclusion that these days just having your business online will not give you any sales. You have to make your awareness aware of your website through Social media, emails & SEO services to increase your site visitors which will indirectly get you sales. You have to also do advance SEO to get your site on higher ranking & maintain that rank while competing with other websites. A good SEO score will get your site on top position whereas a penalty will decrease your SEO score which will affect your site ranking.

The Best SEO Software I Have Used So Far

I have more than 10 years of experience in digital marketing and used all kinds of SEO software. SEO is a process of researching, decision-making and implementing. The SEO processes are keyword research, site audit, backlink audit, backlink research and you need to check how keywords are performing in the search engine. There is no end for SEO process, above-mentioned are the basic process. This article is about the best SEO software I have used so far to perform all SEO tasks.

Google Keyword Planner is the only tool I use for keyword researching. I believe that AdWords application can only collect the accurate data from the same company search engine. I am not blaming other keyword research tools, but the data that how many people searching on Google search engine can be accurately given only by Google. I know that nowdays keyword planner only showing accurate search volume to the accounts with running paid campaign. My suggestion is to run some paid campaign and get accurate data as this will help in both ways. There are no free keyword research tools only paid tools you have in the market. Rather than paying only for the keyword research run some AdWords and get the accurate data.

Semrush is my favorite SEO software when working with any task of SEO as it's capable of doing all tasks that required for SEO. Even though it can perform all tasks, I mostly suggest it for SEO audit. Basically, I do the audit on three levels. The first level is site audit to find the overall site technical errors. The second level is an individual page and its content audit to optimize for a keyword. The third level is accessibility audit is to check page loading speed and user experience. I always use the Semrush for site audit as it covers my first and second level of the audits perfectly. On overall site audit, it checks more than 200 audits and it categorized into error, warning, and notes. This gives an idea which makes most effects on SEO. Individual page audit is the most powerful tool to use as it collects our competitor data and suggest us to optimize a page to target a keyword.

Lighthouse is a Chrome developer tool for SEO audit. You can get it when you click inspect by right-clicking on your page. My third level of SEO audit can be done with this free tool. It checks more than 200 audits under categories like Performance, Progressive web app, Best practices, Accessibility, and SEO. You will be surprised at the results it gives you even it is free. The page speed check is included under Performance and it checks how you have used colors in your website. Additionally, it gives a checklist to check manually. This will help people who are new to SEO as they can learn from it.

Backlink research and backlink audit are the very important task of SEO. Even though it can be done using Semrush itself easily Ahref has more fresh data. I have heard that most SEO people Recommend Ahref as it's a dedicated software for backlink research with fresh and accurate data.

Rank tracking is a very important task to know how our targeting keywords ranked in search engines. Google Webmaster Central and Analytics give search analytic data, but it's not live data and accurate. Using paid software to track keyword ranking is the best idea. Paid software like Ahref and Semrush give you accurate keyword position report with historical data. Semrush and Ahref will cost you minimum 100 USD per month on average if you are capable of buying only one software for all tasks I suggest Semrush as it has all the tools for the complete SEO for a site.

There may be more advanced SEO software like Majestic for backlink research, but I decided to write which I mostly like and used, finally there is another software I have used for keyword position tracking is Rank Tank. These are the best SEO software I have used so far. I Hope this article will be helpful to SEO beginners.

Facebook SEO Tips

When I first think about Facebook, I do not think about SEO. Since I spend a lot of time on my personal profile page, updating friends and family, I do not always think about the power behind the platform.

Facebook is undeniably a SEO powerhouse. Digital marketing influencers have long been talking about the marketing capability of Facebook, but this goes beyond just Facebook Ads (which are powerful enough in their own right).

Here are some quick tips to help you get started:

  1. Claim your personal / vanity URL – These URL's are heavyweight on search engines, so take your time and really think about what you want it to be. Be careful though … it's tough to change once you set it.
  2. Keep your Facebook page name simple, specific enough but not too specific that its limiting (ie if you are a marriage counselor, focus your name around love or relationships, so if you go into other kinds of relationship / personal coaching later, your page name is still relevant.
  3. Use keywords strategically, in your about, mission, and company description sections (keep in mind that these sections can be re-ordered, so play around with this while you're there!).
  4. Link everything together. Link your Facebook page to other existing channels (Twitter / Instagram / your website and blog).
  5. Optimize your Facebook business page status updates (your first 18 characters serve as your meta description, choose carefully because they will serve as the SEO title for that update).

But how do I know what keywords to use?

Research is paramount to help you determine the keywords you want to use. Keywords are used in your social media bios, post titles and content, URL's – to use in your description, do not just load your available text space with keywords, create a description that makes sense, while also incorporating keywords. You have more than one opportunity to use keywords, you also use them in blog posts and page updates.

How do I research keywords?

You know your business best. To start brainstorming keywords:

  • What do you sell? Do a search, what other keywords do you see?
  • Review industry publications, Amazon / eBay, other niche sites, online ads, niche forums – what words do you see consistently coming up?
  • And here's an amazing tip – look at what comes up in autocomplete when searching in Google- you can see what's being searched post often by looking at what is suggested, Amazon has a similar functionality, so look there too!

Stay tuned – we're spending the whole month on Facebook! What are your top Facebook questions or digital marketing challenges? We want to hear from you!

4 Critical Things to Do for SEO This Year (2018)

Use Long-Tail Keywords that Have More Content

Almost 70% of all Google searches are covered by long-tail keywords. In addition, a research done by Ahrefs reveals that most of the Google searches contain more than 3 words. This shows that long-tail keywords draw more quality traffic to a site as compared to short keywords.

Why is it important to write long-form content?

Longer content tends to be more creative, and include additional information. It could have images, video material and infographics, among others.

It strikes the interest of people who share content with others on different social media sites in which they have an account. Moreover, longer content enables people to target long-tail keywords in a more effective way. It is among the best strategies to consider.

Prior to writing content, measure keywords metrics.

Keyword metrics used for a site have to be measured and analyzed. There are some basic metrics that have to be followed to know if a certain keyword best fits a site. Using a tool such as Ahref is highly recommended to determine such information.

These metrics include the following:

  • Keyword Difficulty / Competitiveness
  • Keyword Search Volume
  • Rate of Return
  • Clicks

To make sure that a site is found in the search, keyword performance needs to be studied.

Follow Relevant Linking

People should be careful with their actions in terms of linking. Although linking to other sites and content is crucial, when the link is not properly placed, readers may consider a site as filled with spam.

When they do not want to make a big mistake using their linking strategy, website owners should go for reputable web resources. Such resources have high visibility and domain rating, therefore it would be very beneficial to link to any of those sites.

Build Static URLs

The general quality of a website is dependent on the URLs on each page. There are several arguments on whether Static URLs perform better than Dynamic URLs. To set everything right, it would help to review the meaning of each URL.

A Static URL is the URL that lets its content remain the same, granting that changes are not HTML hardcoded. A Dynamic URL is an output of a search within a site, compelled by a database running on a script. Why are Static URLs better than Dynamic URLs? These are a number of reasons to keep in mind:

High relevance and prominence of keywords

High CTRs (click through rates) in emails, SERPs and web pages

They are capable of adjusting to a specific anchor text, which helps the page in ranking higher whenever directly linked to a URL format.

They are more easily handled by top search engines than dynamic URLs (when there are several parameters.

On the other hand, Dynamic URLs have:

  • Lower CTRs
  • URLs that are so difficult to remember
  • Lower relevance and prominence of keyword
  • Higher chance of cutting off URL end that could result in errors like 404

Therefore, for the above mentioned reasons, it is good to keep Static URLs in mind.

Local Business Marketing – 5 Reasons Why You Should Outsource Your SEO

A recent study released in early 2018 by BrandMuscle has disclosed that only 3% of small and medium businesses in the United States are hiring experts or external agencies to do the marketing for their businesses, with over 60% choosing to do the marketing themselves, or relying on in-house "specialists". The study also mentioned SEO, or search engine optimization as one of the popular local business marketing tactics for SMBs because they find it to be one of the easiest strategies to implement. The report's authors however concluded that small and local businesses were getting miserable results and low return on their investment by taking the do-it-yourself route, especially regarding SEO.

So, why is it highly ineffective for local business owners to try and optimize their web properties themselves?

I have compiled 5 reasons why it is not only effective but risky as well for a small business owner to go the DIY route when it comes to optimizing their websites, Facebook pages, Instagram, etc for the search engines.

1. SEO is an ever-changing landscape and what works today may not work tomorrow. In other words it's not for the jack of all trades. As a business owner you would be well advised to dedicate any spare time you have to trying to get better at your business so you can get terrific reviews – not moonlighting trying to learn the latest website rankings tactics or how to beat the latest updates to Google's or Bing's search algorithm.

2. Bad SEO can harm rather than help your search engine marketing efforts. The search engines, especially Google are known to penalize websites for over-optimizing or for using spammy tactics designed to game their system. In fact, for local businesses, not optimizing your website at all may be better than for example spraying spammy backlinks all over the web to your web properties, or overly optimizing them.

3. Choosing the DIY route can get you trapped in a skills spiral -you learn to do one thing today and it leads you down another rabbit hole tomorrow – and a new learning curve. Before you know it you could be spending more time learning the web optimization game than running your business. Almost every month new tactics come along how to rank websites or how to drive traffic to your websites. You want to focus on your business – not run around chasing visitors to your web pages!

4. While your web properties are a good way to attract new prospects into your business, most experts agree that to multiply your profits, your time would be better spent "wowing and wooing" your existing customers. SEO is not the game changer it's often billed to be, especially for local businesses. According to marketing guru Jay Abraham, author of "Stealth Marketing – How to Outmaneuver, Outwit, and Outmarket Your Most Formidable Competitors … Before They Know What's Hit Them", the key to staying ahead in competitive times is to tune up your marketing – "to make sure you're getting new customers coming in, old customers coming back, and customers purchasing more."

SEO will get you new customers but these are in many cases "bargain-hunters" -rearely your ideal customers. You get those through referrals, or by word of mouth marketing …

5. Lastly, even assuming you did the grunt work and learned the routes of search engine optimization, a really good SEO should give you phenomenally better results, plus, outsourcing to a good provider is always a great return on investment because it saves you that most precious of commodities – time. Time you can use to get to know your customers better, to communicate with them, to improve their experience process when they buy from you.

In closing, as a small business owner you should learn what you can about web search optimization, just so you know what's good for you and how to tell a good SEO from a bad one. But you stand to gain more if you outsource this part of your marketing efforts; both in terms of time you can save, as well as costly mistakes you can avoid – and extremely, to ensure you get good return on your investment.

Best Practices of SEO to Increase ROI

>> Off Page Optimization : Techniques and systems used to fabricate the measure of visitors to a webpage by getting a high-positioning circumstance in the indexed page of a web search tool (SERP) – including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other web crawlers.

At the point when a webpage connects to some other page, it's known as a backlink . Quality of backlinks is as follows:

  • High Domain Authority
  • Trustful
  • Do-follow / No-follow attributes.

>> On Page Optimization : On-page SEO is the act of optimizing single pages with a specific end goal to rank higher and acquire more important movement in web crawlers. On-page shows to both the substance and HTML source code of a page that can be streamlined.

On page Optimization focuses on content and structure of a website. It includes:

>> Meta Title

>> Meta Tags

>> Meta Description

>> Navigation of Page

Best Practices of SEO are as follows:

  • The Content

The content for the website must be unique one & not copied from somewhere else. The content must be reliable and useful for the end user. Proper & useful information must be added to avoid confusion as content is the important part of SEO. Avoiding technical words / sentences allows the engagement of end user on the webpage.

  • Meta-Title

Meta title of your page gives searchers and web search tools a short representation of your webpage. From a SEO perspective, the principal keyword should be at the very beginning followed by the other relevant keywords. Avoid keyword stuffing in the Meta title tag and keep the relevant keywords.

  • Meta-Description

Meta description, in short, is a summary of approximately 152 characters about the content of the webpage. The important and relevant points should be stated in the description which is informative to the customer.

  • Inter linking

From an EO point of view, internal thinking is a best practice to compose your focusing keyword within the anchor text when mentioning a page. Linking important pages helps to get good amount of authority. Over optimizing the page lessens the authority of the page.

  • The Headings

<h1> to <h6> represents heading tags in HTML. <h1> tag referers to main heading tag. The <h1> must be unique and should be exactly one on each page. It should contain at least one targeted keyword.

  • Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

While creating a new URL for website, see to it that it contains the important keywords. Also, keep the URL short and simple.

The above discussed elements are crucial while optimizing the website. Keeping the above points in mind, you are not away from the ROI you are expecting for your company.

What Is White Label SEO and Its Importance?

The name says it all. White Label SEO are the SEO services, provided with a white label, i.e. sans a brand name attached. It is the new generation of Search Engine Optimization Services.

UNDERSTANDING SEO SERVICES

SEO is Search Engine Optimization and it is very important to make a website view-able. Search Engines bring in maximum website-traffic and sales. Thus, Search Engine Optimization directs the viewers looking at them towards your website as the solution-finder for what they are looking out for. It includes and requires various tools and technologies for analyzing websites for traffic and then sort these issues out.

UNDERSTANDING WHITE LABEL SEO PROGRAMS

Let us first understand the ‘White Label’ part. Supposedly you are a company that offers a product or a service to its customers. Your product budget shall then include the product development costs as well as its marketing costs of selling to the users. But, some companies are either reluctant to connect with the users directly or due to budgetary aspects, may be looking out to eliminate marketing costs. In either of the scenarios they could lookout for a ‘White Label’ strategy, wherein, their product or service is made available to a reseller at a discounted price. These services can then further be sold to other customers by these resellers with their own brand tags and earn the premium over and above the price to be paid to the parent company. Rice, Wheat, Sugars, etc. available in renowned supermarkets with their personalized tags are all examples of this market concept.

ADVANTAGES OF WHITE LABEL LOCAL SEO MARKETING

There are many unique advantages to this concept of product development and selling:

• The resellers gain complete freedom on their behavior with the tentative clients. They are able to approach, handle and sell products to a varied clientele base as per their own choice and perspective and earn therein.

• This concept provides an optimum work opportunity for individuals who have a ready client base for SEO services, but are unaware of technicalities involved. Moreover, the final client tends to gain by works of a robust and experienced base

company.

• It helps in promoting scalability of the parent company without involving many funds for expansion.

In this business model the parent company require less of funds as well as no marketing budget. Thus, they are profiteering. The resellers gain SEO services at lower costs and end up earning premium over them. Thus, they too are profiteering. The customer gains experienced services at the end of the day. Thus, everyone gets a sweet pie.

Freelance Web Designer | WordPress Developer | Hong Kong