Search engine optimization best practices and SEO strategy. Grassroots SEO from the ground up, including local SEO and mobile SEO. #SEO

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10 SEO Trends In 2021

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10 SEO Trends That Will Define the Digital Marketing Landscape in 2021

With a new year comes new search engine optimization (SEO) trends. The practices that encompass SEO aren’t static. They change and evolve regularly. Old practices will fade as they are replaced with new practices. You must leverage the latest SEO trends in 2021 to succeed in digital marketing.

Let’s take a closer look at the SEO trends in 2021 that will influence search results:

1) Voice Search

Although it’s been around since the early 2000s, voice search is rapidly growing. A recent report by Adobe indicates that nearly half of all consumers use it to find information on the internet. In 2021, the number of voice search users will likely grow even larger due to the widespread adoption of smart speakers and smartphones.

Voice search involves the use of a virtual assistant, such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, to perform a web-based search through speech. It offers unparalleled convenience and ease of use compared to traditional searching methods. Instead of typing their search queries, consumers can speak them into a supported device. You can reach these consumers by optimizing your website for spoken, voice-based searches, a significantly growing SEO trend in 2021.

2) Core Web Vitals

Google is expected to update its algorithm in 2021 with a new set of ranking signals. Known as Core Web Vitals, it rewards websites that offer a positive experience. Core Web Vitals introduces three new ranking signals: Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift. These signals focus on speed and usability. With Core Web Vitals, websites that load quickly and are easy to use will rank higher than their slow and difficult-to-use counterparts.

If your website isn’t optimized for speed and usability, its rankings may suffer in the wake of Core Web Vitals. Fortunately, you can measure your website’s Core Web Vitals health in Google Search Console. The search analysis platform has a new “Core Web Vitals” tab that shows which pages on your website are good and which pages need improving in regards to Core Web Vitals. This is a critical SEO trend in 2021 to not overlook, as your performance may suffer if this is ignored.

3) Nofollow Backlinksseo trends

Nofollow backlinks, as well as their variants, will take the stage in 2021. The nofollow attribute has been around for over 15 years. Throughout most of its history, search engines have ignored it when ranking websites. When they came across a nofollow backlink, they would filter it.

Google began taking a different approach in 2019, during which it announced the use of nofollow backlinks as a ranking hint. In this same announcement, Google unveiled two new variants of the nofollow attribute: ugc and sponsored, which it also uses as ranking hints. Backlinks featuring the nofollow attribute or any of its two variants can now affect your website’s rankings, so don’t overlook them in your 2021 SEO strategy.

4) Semantic Search

Another SEO trend for 2021 is semantic search. Search engines have changed the way in which they interpret search queries. Rather than processing each word in a search query independently, they look for connections between words. Known as semantic search, it allows search engines to understand a user’s intent behind his or her search query.

Search engines aren’t going to stop using semantic search in 2021. It allows them to serve highly relevant results by understanding what, exactly, their users are trying to find. Since semantic search is here to stay, you must approach content creation with your website’s audience in mind. Keyword density ratios no longer matter with semantic search. What matters is that your website’s content satisfies the intent of its audience.

5) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are literally and figuratively on the rise. According to Moz, over 8 percent of all Google searches now have them. They are similar to standard organic listings, except that the format is reversed. Featured snippets are formatted with a description at the top, followed by a linked title below.

Aside from their reversed format, featured snippets are restricted to a special placement at the top of the search results. They appear above all standard listings where they typically drive high organic click-through rates (CTRs). If a page on your website earns a featured snippet, it will outrank all other listings for the search query that triggered it.

6) Rich Results

Search engines will continue to build rich results using structured data in 2021. Also known as rich snippets, not to be confused with featured snippets, rich results are enhanced listings. Standard listings contain a title, description and display URL. Rich results simply contain additional information.

Rich results can show information such as reviews, ratings, recipes, coupons, event dates, business information and more. This additional information is conveyed to search engines using structured data. Structured data gives search engines more information about the content on a page, which they’ll use to create a rich result for the page.

7) Video Content

You can’t ignore video content in your 2021 SEO strategy. According to a recent study by Searchmetrics, 62 percent of all search queries on Google contain at least one indexed video. Google includes video listings with its standard listings. Users don’t have to click the “Videos” tab. If Google believes a video is relevant to a user’s search query, it may show the video in the search results.

Video listings are different than standard listings. They typically have a screenshot thumbnail with an overlay play button, whereas standard listings only contain text. The presence of a thumbnail makes video listings stand out and attract more clicks. Of course, you must create video content to rank in a video listing.

8) Mobile-First Indexing

Mobile-first indexing will be in full effect this year. If your website has a desktop version and a mobile version, only the mobile version will affect its rankings on Google. Google will still crawl the desktop version, albeit less frequently than before, but it will only use the mobile version to determine your website’s rankings.

Google has been working on mobile-first indexing since 2016. In September 2020, it finally began rolling it out. With 2021 being the first full year of Google implementing it, you can’t ignore mobile-first indexing in your SEO strategy. It changes how Google’s algorithm indexes and ranks websites by disregarding their desktop version in favor of their mobile version. To ensure your website’s search rankings don’t get slapped, make sure the mobile version is properly optimized and contains the same content as the desktop version.

9) Author Expertise

Author expertise is another SEO trend in 2021. Google is now placing more weight on the expertise of content creators. It recently rolled out the Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) update, which improved the ranking value of content pieces written by experts.

How do you show Google that you are an expert exactly? For starters, you must attach your name to your content pieces. Google tracks expertise primarily by author names. If you don’t include your name on an article or blog post, Google won’t know who wrote it. Writing high-quality and detailed content pieces can of course build your expertise. Don’t rush when creating content. Take your time to create fewer but better content pieces.

10) Smaller Search Engines

While nothing suggests Google will be dethroned in 2021, it may forfeit some of its massive market share to smaller search engines. Bing and Yahoo collectively account for roughly 10 percent of all U.S. searches, according to data collected by StatCounter. There’s also DuckDuckGo, which is now the fourth-most popular search engine in the United States and the fifth-most popular search engine worldwide.

With smaller search engines continuing to gain notoriety, they’ll become more valuable targets for SEO. They may not drive as much as traffic as Google, but they’ll still bring new visitors to your website.

You can’t stop the evolution of SEO trends. As search engines change their algorithms and ranking methodologies, SEO trends in 2021 will continue to evolve. By adjusting your strategy to include these up-to-date trends, you’ll have an easier time succeeding at SEO in 2021.

google analytics

3 Hidden Google Analytics Tools

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Top 3 Google Analytics Tools That Go Untouched

Have you been analyzing, tracking, and engaging your customers enough on your search engine optimization campaign? Have you been using the right Google Analytics tools to promote and increase your business’ visibility? These are among the top-questions that have been hitting the minds of website owners and marketing specialists regularly. Google Analytics is an essential technique used by content marketers to understand reports and read-out audiences specifications.

Google Analytics plays a vital role in helping marketing consultants understand the links that lead to high conversions, types of content that grabs readers attention, and the most used platforms in online marketing. Statistics have it that more than 70% of companies use Google Analytics to analyze, track, and understand their data. A good number of marketers are well-versed with the commonly used data analyzation tools. Here are Google Analytics features that go unnoticed in the marketing sector.

google analytics1. Website Search Bar

Searching for content on websites has now become easier than ever. Nowadays, all sites have a search bar that narrows down the general search process. Site search bar feature is primarily contributing towards improving business visibility and generating real traffic for websites.

Scroll down the settings and switch on your Google Analytics feature. Turning on the feature will allow you to filter unwanted traffic and data that can negatively skew your reports.

2. Flow Visualization Feature

Tracking down and marking where users bounced from your website and whether there was a record of conversions is essential. You don’t want to lose your frequent visitors by failing to understand their preferences. This feature works by measuring the conversion rate of your website all the time.

3. The Social segment feature

Google Analytics plays a significant role in social media platforms and content marketing. Trackbacks help content marketers track down how social media platforms generate ultimate conversions and drive traffic to websites. Use the Trackbacks feature to analyze visitors who have been linked to the content on your website in a more effective manner.

Some of the tools of Google Analytics go unnoticed and untouched in the content marketing industry. Utilize the above-highlighted features to achieve an all-effective search engine optimization campaign. You don’t want to lose traffic to your top competitors. Try out these simple Google Analytics features to generate more traffic to your website and track down the path followed by your potential visitors.

8 Essential SEO Tips for Beginners

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8 SEO Tips That Still Matter

Details matter in proper search engine optimization, as does consistency in doing the same right thing on every page every time.  Search engines like Google or Bing use complex algorithms to rank websites. As an owner of a website, you’ll need at least a basic understanding of search engine optimization in order to get anywhere. You can maximize your WordPress website and get the most out of your investment. These eight SEO tips are risk-free and should be applied to every website you make.

1.Improve your permalinks

Permalinks make it easy for users to navigate your site. A good permalink structure is well organized, easy to understand, and descriptive. Bad permalinks use dates and numbers instead of descriptions. Good permalinks, on the other hand, allow visitors to understand where they are from a glance. Avoid using numbers, dates, and lengthy URLs; instead, make use of hyphens and straightforward keywords that describe what the page is about.

seo tips2.Optimize page titles and description

Seems like a real no-brainer here, take advantage of each and every SEO tactic that adds relevance to a web page. A good page title and its succeeding description can do wonders for SEO. Strong page titles for low-competition keywords can give you a leg up on your competitors. A page’s meta tag in particular is displayed on search results, allowing visitors a glimpse of what your content is about.  Give each page a unique page title that accurately describes its contents.

More importantly, don’t forget to give your homepage its own title and description. Don’t just give page titles and descriptions to blog posts. Remember to keep titles and descriptions brief. Avoid using too many keywords and repeating the title in the description.

3.Practice proper formatting

It may seem minor, but proper formatting can make your pages easier to navigate and easier to index. Remember to use H1, H2, and H3 tags in your content. Use H1 tags for post titles and H2 tags for headings. Don’t forget to use bold and italics to emphasize points across your content, and use a font size that is easy to read. Short paragraphs can also make content more digestible. Remember to check if your formatting is mobile-friendly. Most people use their phones or tablets to view blogs. Make sure that your content can be properly scaled across multiple devices.

4.Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a list of pages on a website. You’ll need to create two types of sitemaps: an HTML sitemap for visitors and an XML sitemap for search engines. While HTML sitemaps are useful for improving user experience, the XML sitemaps that you submit to search engines can make indexing your site faster. This inevitably gives a boost to SEO.

5.Images should be optimized and compressed

Images are necessary to improve user experience. Use high-quality images across your site. Use high-definition images but make sure that they don’t take forever to load. Images should not exceed a megabyte in size. Using alt text to describe images can also provide a boost in SEO. Don’t forget to use keywords in your descriptions as well.

6.Properly configure a 404 page

A 404 page appears when a user arrives on a page on your site that doesn’t exist. You can improve user experience with a properly configured 404 page that explains to visitors what went wrong. A 404 page should also match the design of the website and give visitors an easy way to navigate back into the website.

7.Use breadcrumbs for easy navigation

Breadcrumbs are navigational links that usually appear near the top of a page. Breadcrumbs are descriptive in nature and follow a hierarchical structure.

“Category > Subcategory > Current Page Title” is an example of a breadcrumb. Use breadcrumbs in all your internal pages if possible. CMSs like WordPress have plugins that make adding breadcrumbs easy.

8.Use more internal links

Link sculpting is way old school, but still has a place when done correctly and in moderation. Don’t forget to link to your own content. Internal links can contribute a lot to SEO. Link related articles and content together. Make sure the links stand out for both visitors and search engines. They should be brief and unobtrusive. Remember to keep links relevant; a blog post about weight loss shouldn’t randomly include links about gardening, for example. Avoid using too many links; three to five links are good enough.

Ideally, newer posts should link to old content. But the reverse can be just as good for SEO. If you have the time, revisit old posts and link to newer content. It can be time consuming but the returns are worth it.

Whether you’re building your first website or your fifth, remember these 8 fundamental SEO tips. Content is still king, but if you want your site to get noticed, you’ll need to do the hard work behind the scenes.

google analytics

Adjusted Bounce Rate – A Behavior KPI

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Use Adjusted Bounce Rate To Monitor User Behavior

Ever wondered how many visitors really pay attention to your site before departing the page? Many of these visits are completely useless, but how many aren’t? When using adjusted bounce rate there’s finally a way to monitor this! Bounce rate in Google Analytics is one of the major key performance indicators that can help to assess the quality of your traffic. A bounce happens when the visitor left the site from the site landing web page, without going to any other page. That is a superb indication on how applicable the content was for the user and how engaged they had been with your site. Bounce rate does not always account for user behavior though, some may use the web page for and address or phone number or simply read the content and leave.

adjusted bounce rateWhile working ideal for web sites, there are groups of websites where this metric isn’t enough. For stated by Google, they apparently doesn’t use pure bounce rate as a rank signal, but that does not mean it isn’t an essential metric to monitor as a relevance signal. Nevertheless, as Google notes, it is more useful for some forms of sites compared to others. As an example, imagine you are promoting a post that explains all the advantages of your company; the visitor may read the entire post and remember your business and really good products – and they may immediately go to hunt for your product or service on one of the search engines straight away.

Since that visitor just looked at the one page they’ll be recorded as bounced visitor. Another example when you have a service description value proposition on the web page, along with your telephone number on the exact same page, the visitor could study the description and then call you for more information and again, that visitor will be registered as a bounced visitor, as only a single page was seen. There are a lot examples, and even traditional web sites can benefit from the adjusted bounce rate KPI described below as compared to the standard unadjusted bounce rate.

Adjusted Bounce Rate Is The Answer

The solution to this issue is something referred to as adjusted bounce rate. You implement a small tweak to your Google Analytics code, which executes an event when a user has spent over a certain amount of time on the webpage. Depending on the website, the time can range from 10 seconds to few minutes – you should decide for yourself the amount of time you consider the user to be sufficiently engaged with your website or product or service.

Once the event is executed (past the time frame) the visitor is no longer counted as bounce even though no additional page view is recorded. This will mean your bounce rate will show users who have not spent a required minimal time on your website compared to the ones who have truly bounced.

Here is the adjusted bounce rate modification to the Google Analytics code that you need to make (on the example of the latest, asynchronous code):

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-XXXXXXX-1’]);
_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]);
setTimeout(“_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ’20_seconds’, ‘read’])”,20000);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

The setTimeout function is the one that requires the adjustment, and you can set it up to whatever delay you wish (in this example, it is 20 seconds).

Now that an event is created after the time expiration (the 20 second lapse), you can create a goal, here defining this event as a goal in Google Analytics, and even import this goal as a conversion to AdWords, provided all of the parameters are met.

Adopting adjusted bounce rate allows you to better understand how people engage with your website. This small code tweak will allow you to track and understand the users’ behavior and quality of the traffic coming to your website more accurately, and help you make more informed business decisions.

google analytics

4 Ways To Forecast Your SEO Investment

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4 Ways To Forecast Your SEO Investment For Business

Internet search engine optimization is one of many digital online advertising approaches a business can choose to concentrate on. Email, ppc, display and affiliate internet marketing are all in many companies advertising approaches, and while the cost per visitor for natural search is zero, in order for you to achieve success within the SERPs, grassroots SEO investment is required. You can forecast SEO impact on your business with a few simple steps.

Black Hat SEO strategies like purchasing links, keyword stuffing and cloaking used to work for all those seeking to get visibility within the search results page. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning like Google’s RankBrain, have caught many of these bad tactics, and now a more human way to on-page optimization, content advertising and connection is required to rank for extremely popular search terms. Consequently, in order to get investment and buy-in for search engine optimization it’s not surprising that marketing leaders demand a sound SEO forecast on how search engine optimization will be pursued.

How to forecast the size of the SEO prize?

Before you can start constructing the tactics for search engine optimization, you should identify the opportunity for organic performance. To do so, carry out an audit of your web site and use your web analytics to comprehend what natural search is presently contributing to the domain. By understanding how much value search engine optimization now contributes with respect to visits, conversions, leads and revenue, you may start to understand where you now are and where improvements can be made.

Building the forcast for search engine optimization investment

free-seo-toolsOnce you’ve completed an audit and so produced a baseline to measure against, you can start putting together a case, with numbers, to exemplify improvements to natural search by using Search engine optimization may affect the company.

There are 4 ways to forecast your SEO investment:

1. Concentrate on Google – for the time being

According to any and all industry metrics, Google remains the largest portal for internet searches.  Google supplies more organic web searches then the next two search engines combined . While it is important not to become too myopic and build your site around only one internet search engine, it is wise to recognize Google as the current market leader in the search area. Start with the biggest opportunity for SEO improvement.

2. Estimate potential search quantity for top terms

Assuming you’ve already conducted a gap analysis that is keyword to identify the terms most applicable to your site, the next issue is to estimate the prospective search volume to the top search terms you want to optimize for using Google’s Keyword Tool or similar keyword research tool. Take every one of the primary important phrases and drop it into the tool. The output from this activity will give you an indication as to the number of searches especially for those phrases each month.

3. Estimate Google Click-through rate percent

You’ll be competing for only a share of the number of searches from the Google Keyword Tool activity we looked at above. So the next task is to determine what percentage of those monthly searches you have the potential to get to your web site.

A great way to do that is to calculate the click-through speed from natural listings on page 1 of Google. An Optify study showed a position 1 ranking attained 36.4% click-through rate, over a 2.4% higher CTR than position two. At the mean time, SEOMoz released research showing average click-through rate percentages for brand, product and general searches, indicating that web sites ranking in position 1 had a 52% CTR.

Additionally, iThinkMedia, provided statistics based on research they conducted having a vast assortment of clients, which suggests comparable results to the studies above with the exception of position 1 rankings. The 18.2% click-through speed for position 1 is definitely more conservative than SEOMoz’s 52% and Optify’s 36.4% but that’s not a bad thing as it’s better to under promise and over deliver when making predictions like these. And definitely there are numerous other reasons to be aware of for example, this strategy fails to contemplate the impact of universal search, local search, mobile search, search intent or the result of rich snippets on CTR. Nonetheless, the concept of potential Click-through speed based on where you rank on page 1 of Google and is a fantastic place to start for anybody considering the effect of rankings on visitors to their web site.

4. Forecast possible traffic and sales from SEO

The final step is to put the data together in a format in which one can show what visitors can be obtained from appearing 1-10 on Google and how this translates to visitors and sales. This last piece in the puzzle is to calculate every primary phrase converts. This is something which may be done when carrying out an audit of your website’s current SEO performance. Working out the speed of conversion of particular sets of phrases will enable you to determine the potential traffic and earnings return by ranking in positions 1-10 for the maximum volume search terms.

Finally, once you know the speed of conversion, you can forecast SEO results when you multiply your ordinary lead or order value to give you a rough indication of how sales may be impacted by improved natural search traffic to your top key generic search phrases.

Business Benefits Of SEO

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Business Benefits Of Search Engine Optimization

Being on-line or a business web site isn’t enough to reap maximum advantages from your online business. Internet search engine rankings for your web site play a major part in determining your visibility on internet. You must look in most key elements to enhance your visibility on-line and realize the critical business sectors to work on. The business benefits of SEO are far reaching and long lasting.

SEO Start With Keywords.

Right number of keywords, fresh, distinctive and informative content could create a path to better internet search engine rankings and good traffic to your web site and in addition to it adequate back-links which will boost up your ranking in search engines. These are examples of some of the benefits of SEO done well.

Fresh Frequent Content.

benefits of SEOMany other activities like Social bookmarking, Article submission and blogs too play a vital role in SEO rankings. New business listings or new content is added regularly to almost all business directories which make them search engines favorite stuff, crawlers come regularly to visit and because of this your business might appear on top of search results.

To discover how grassroots SEO can really help your business, some people begin with a SEO professional consultant, which is very important.  The insights from an internet search engine optimization expert is necessary because internet search engine optimization expert can only do in depth analysis and competitor analysis and will develop an efficient internet search engine optimization strategy for your website based on current web trends.

Every business owner should not dismiss the benefits of internet search engine marketing and local business listings that are the best source of popularity with search engines. Except numerous reasons, some numerous reasons are there, like business directories list all kinds of business with no cost for a particular area. Some essential things whenever you add your company listings into any local business manager is business information and contact information, that should be accurate, ignoring these essential things, might lead to lose your prospective customers.