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In today’s fast paced and ever evolving digital age, just how much of a necessity is acquiring search engine optimization for your business? Does it come with the most essential benefits that a business owner has always sought for? Is SEO truly worth the investment? And just how pivotal is this so-called SEO to one’s business? Before we answer the litany of queries preceding this sentence, it is important to consider how involved the average human is in online activities and just how much he or she spends time in front of a computer. When those are factored in, it is rather transparent just how beneficial it would be to have your business (especially those which are still at their inception stage) advertised and promoted online.

When one views it from that aspect, it is rather obvious just how vital search engine optimization can be and consequently would answer the string of questions that were written prior to this paragraph. To illustrate just how indispensable SEO can be, companies all over the world have been making a renewed commitment to the investment in solid, reliable SEO Company and web infrastructure. Along with this, it is key to consider how search-engine friendly it is given the engines’ relentless effort in improving their algorithms time after time. In a nutshell, the readily seen benefits one can reap from investing in a good SEO company are raising revenue, increased customer satisfaction, lowered costs. Raising revenue, as an advantage is rather obvious as getting your business advertised online generates more potential clients and customers. As for increased customer satisfaction and lowered costs, these are benefits that can be acquired. Investing in SEO produces an umbrella effect where one would not need to advertise in every single and available media as the power of the Internet does this for you, while customer satisfaction is evidenced by reviews. But the benefits mentioned above barely scratch the surface of how SEO can be truly advantageous to one’s business. This article aims to show you more ways than those enlisted above on how search engine optimization can truly be one of the indispensable and powerful tools a business can have.

So here’s a list of reasons on why your company should be investing in SEO:

 

1.) It still works and effectively at that

Whoever said that ‘SEO is dead’ is dead wrong. Fact is various techniques have been progressing and evolving every single day and the techniques employed and are already existing in order to improve SEO are still working. Data regarding organic traffic from Google might be a recent discovery and innovation but the other techniques themselves remain sound and efficient.

 

2.) Optimal reach to potential clients and customers

It is fairly obvious how individuals nowadays rely on search engines to answer quick queries and this has been proven rather effective for them. It is quick, accessible and convenient and answers are delivered within seconds (depending on the speed of your connection) making people unconsciously trust it. It is common knowledge that when Google places a particular business at the top spot of a search then it has surely earned that placed and by analogy, that place should be good. This particular person doing the search would then advertise his or her find on various platforms of social media, at times leaving a link for them to click as well. This works rather fast as things posted online, most especially on social media, get seen resulting to better revenue. How is this possible? The search engine matched everything perfectly and it all pointed to a particular website with good link building.

 

3.) Compared to other online marketing strategies, SEO is cost effective.

SEO finds stiff competition with other online marketing strategies such as PPC advertising, purchasing leads for an email marketing program, social media marketing and the like, but what gives search engine optimization an edge is the fact that it provides business owners with results. Otherwise stated, SEO provides fairly good return of investment. PPC may drive more revenue and social media may be hip, trendy and relevant (and perhaps great for your image), it is undeniable that your organic SEO remains bedrock of your online relevance and presence.

 

4.)  Gives you optimal insight into your customers

Properly optimized websites have a lot of benefits. Among them is having an increased visibility, usability and credibility in search engines, which would collectively result to a higher traffic for your website. Now that you are driving more traffic into your website and enjoying more visitors, Google Analytics—an indispensable tool all websites should be equipped with—can track valuable information about your visitors. This information would yield their browser preferences, the keywords they use, the geographical location, and the time they spent on a page, among others. This information is relevant as it assists business owners in helping discover your target market and hone your products to relate with them best, plan your marketing strategies to entice them and determine other key marketing strategies based on facts rather than guesses. After all, it is no question that the better you know and relate to your customers, the higher your return of investment will be.

 

5.)  Your competitors are utilizing it

SEO is an invaluable tool when it comes to online marketing, it’s efficacy is fairly obvious and because it is so, it is a reality that your competitors are also using to their advantage. You, as a business owner, should progress along with the times and harness its marketing potential as well. If you are not moving forward and are not doing anything to improve your position, then you are losing ground to a competitor who is doing so. Do not let your competitors outmaneuver you in this business marketing strategy. Business may be hard, but advertising and getting your business known should not be. Let search engine optimization be your answer to your online business marketing dilemmas.

 

In conclusion…

SEO remains to be one powerful online marketing tool that business owners who are starting out or have been in business in years still utilize. However, it is important to consider that no matter how optimized your site may be, or how powerful your SEO company might be, or how modern your techniques and tools are, they will be all for nothing if content remains lacking. It is essential that online marketing tools be used in conjunction with creative, powerful and information rich content. This, along with your company’s business marketing strategy is a surefire way to get a decent, if not great return of investment.

Strategically, with the help of any SEO consulting services, we can have higher traffic and ranking than the other sites and blogs. However, even when we seek SEO services,  it is still not a guarantee that we can achieve our desired rank when we have a poor and crappy content. We all know that content is the heart and soul of a site or blog.

 

manobyte.net

manobyte.net

Creating an engaging content for your website can be demanding at times. Implementing a content strategy itself needs our full attention. What more when it comes to creating appealing and engaging contents? Basically, the content must be precise and direct so the readers can easily and clearly understand what you want to tell them.

Writing a content means writing down your ideas. But sometimes, ideas won’t just flow more so when our minds are already tired and empty. A winning content observes and follows a good content strategy. Here are some of the must-asked questions if you want to have a winning content strategy.

  1. Who are your users/audience?

As a writer, you can’t write a content if you don’t know who your audiences are. To whom are you writing for? Who are these people that you want to impart your ideas to? And who are these people who would be interested and willing to read your articles or blog posts? These questions are essential for you to answer to identify your target audience.

You can’t determine the specific traffic on your site if you fail to determine your target audience. Also, you can’t identify what kind of people who usually visits your site or blog in terms of demographics. You may have a lot of target markets which can be difficult to write for, or you may have an ideal target market who you think will be interested in your contents.

Knowing your target market is a prerequisite of focusing more correctly on that particular market. such a process may boost the traffic to your site and let you obtain more qualified leads. Well, that is, aside from having better and higher page ranking on the search engines.

  1. Who are your competitors?

To know and identify your competitors mean that you are up for the challenge in a competitive world of online content consumption. Knowing who your competitors are is one way to being proactive and strategic enough especially when they want to take you off guard and copy your strategies.

If you are smart enough, however, you can get some of the ideas from your competitors. For instance, you may determine how they manage to have a successful content strategy particularly when it comes to letting the people stay and being engaged in the content they made. It is a matter of who gets the idea first and how you act on the idea. It could be you or your rival.

  1. What can you offer?

Since you already know your target audience and your direct (and even indirect) competitors, the next thing you must consider is what can you offer to your target audience that your competitors may not necessarily copy or imitate. That’s your unique value.

Some of the questions worth pondering are: What kind of content these particular groups of people need to know? What else can you teach them that they still don’t know? What kind of content will you give to them that they may be interested in?

Always remember that there are thousands of digital marketers who write and publish the same content as you do. The only way your content can stand out from the others is to make your contents unique, valuable, informative, relevant, interesting, useful and engaging.

  1. What does your target audience need and want to hear?

If you don’t have any ideas on what kind of content you should be writing for your audience, try being active online. It is necessary to socialize online so that you’d know what the trending topics are and for you to fit into the crowd and to your target audience. When you do, you know what kind of topics that they want to know.

You can get ideas by interacting with the other online writers also, perhaps through forums or any other social networking sites. Grab that idea and make an engaging content out of it for your target audience. The more engaging and interesting your topic will be, the more people will be reading, liking, commenting and sharing your content. In short, an engaging content is a magnet for worthy interactions!

  1. What is the purpose of your content?

Now yo know what to write about, the next thing you must consider is to know what is the purpose of the content. Is it purely for traffic and lead generation? Is your content intended for selling? Is it for entertainment? Will it be informative or educational? Is it intended for the kids or for adults?

It is important to know the purpose of your content so you may easily align the topic with the right audience. You may also identify which category your content belongs to and for you not to be confused.

  1. How often should you publish content?

When you start blogging, it is now your duty to give your target market an interesting content that they might not know yet. You must have a schedule on when to publish since you are tapping on your readers’ expectation. Eventually, your readers will look forward to reading your blog on that specific day. Will you publish one article per week or every other week? Or even every day?

Publishing a new content on a regular basis is also a daunting task. You have to think of a new and interesting ideas. There are instances when you cannot think of anything to write. Just always go back to the basics of why you are  writing in the first place.

  1. How will you distribute your content?

Publishing your content is not enough. You need to let the people know that your website or blog exists. Knowing where to distribute or post your content other than your website is a way to gain more viewers.

Be reminded that in publishing, you must be careful where you are going to post your contents. Not all publishing platforms are created equal. If you want to gain more viewers, you have to post your article on the sites wherein there will be lots of people that may notice and read it. The traffic of your blog also varies on how you should distribute it socially.

Sometimes, we complicate things when, in fact, having a good and winning content strategy is as easy as answering 7 must-asked questions. The secret is in the basics! And the basics that we are talking about are discussed above.

Aside from making our business grow and gaining profit from it, making it known to the people is also one of our main goals. Firms have their own strategies, processes and strategies on how to build awareness for their products and services. However, other businesses seek SEO consulting services so that their business would be at the top of even the leading firms in their respective industries.

seoconsultingexpert.com

seoconsultingexpert.com

As a business owner and marketer, you may think of various strategies. There might be other people in your company who may have other ideas. However, implementing an SEO strategy will definitely help you with your goals especially if you are just planning to launch your website or integrate corporate blog to your current site.

When hiring an SEO provider, the earlier the better. These consultants will give and help in managing your website as well as making your site placed on the top rank in the search engine. Now, here are some of the core services that any consultant can offer.

SEO consultants review the content structure

Before launching your website, an SEO consultant will review and make sure that the planned contents of your site is engaging enough for the people to read and stay longer on the site and its pages. They will not let you launch your site when you are still not sure about what the content of the page will be about and more so, of the quality of the contents of each page.

SEO consultants will make sure that everything is written clearly and coherent enough for the people to grasp what the company wants to impart to them.

In terms of the content structure, the SEO consultants will make sure that the structure itself is reader-friendly. The contents should be easy to read from the standpoint of the visitors.

SEO consultants develop an engaging content

One of the duties of an SEO consultant is to create and develop engaging and informative contents for your website. They have to know and understand what your company is about for them to write contents that people will love to know about.

Creating highly-engaging contents for your business may be a difficult task for you. Even when you know your product offerings by heart and yet you don’t know the right words to say, you will still struggle. But when you consider hiring an SEO professional, he or she will make the work easier for you and your company.

SEO consultants know just how to grab the attention of the users with the right headlines, for instance, making the people read and dwell on the site. So, why don’t you just let the creative do their job of making great contents for your site?

SEO consultants manage online business development campaigns

SEO consultants don’t just engage your target users, they will also make sure that your website will be one of the top rank searches in the search engine. They will strategize to establish your brand online. For instance, they will put advertisements on other websites through the use of specific tools. Yes, these consultants are knowledgeable of the advanced SEO tools.

Without any online campaigns, for instance, it is categorically impossible to introduce your brand, products, services or even your website to the online consumers. Everyone seems to be connected to the Internet nowadays, and technologies make it easier for us – online marketers – to put our brand where the most number of people can see it.

SEO consultants ensure strong keyword research

Having a strong keyword structure is an advantage because people will easily find your website. The stronger and less competitive your keywords are, the more people will visit your site, clicking and reading the contents of your site. This is particularly true when the keyword fits on what exactly they are looking for.

Strong keywords can also help your website be rank higher, if not highest, on the results pages. That is, if you are using keywords that people usually use when searching with which SEO experts can also help you with. Again, they are using updated tools in finding business-relevant keywords.

SEO consultants specialize in specific markets and geographies

Have you heard of local SEO? Some of these consultants are also experts in specific markets or geographies. This is critical for companies that provide services to the locals such as dental offices, plumbing providers, carpet cleaning services, hair salons, etc. These are the companies that cater to the need of their immediate consumers.

These consumers are buying or engaging in your business. You have to know what specific target market you want to advertise or sell your products to. Of course, you need to know who among these people are into your products too to better provide them with the right products and better serve them.

When you know who and where you want to sell your products, it is easier for you to circulate and expand your businesses, right?

Finally, SEO consultants are trained and experienced

Not all SEO companies can be trusted. If you have issues trusting your company to just any consulting services, you are not alone. Perhaps, you are afraid of being scammed and your business and reputation might be at risk.

With this, you really need to find well-trained, highly-skilled and well-experienced SEO providers. Make sure that the consultant(s) that you are hiring have the skills that qualified as a professional SEO consultant. They will not be able to work as SEO consultants when they don’t have enough knowledge of how they can help businesses grow regardless of what the industry the business belongs to.

Find those consultants who are mindful when it comes to working with just any company. These people make sure that their performances are outstanding so as to achieve the SEO goals that they have helped creating in the first place.

There are many ways by which SEO consultants may help you in growing your business. If you will notice it, a consulting service can be an entire SEO team who will help you from the ground up. Nevertheless, your job is finding a service provider that is proficient and professional.

Wondering if you can produce more content to increase your site’s performance but have been missing a lot because of too much information? You may even have been jammed by a lot of things online and can’t decide how to simply put the marketing strategy. Well, just like any other SEO company that is aiming for the same goal as you, here are some tips on how to boost your content marketing strategy and make those write ups shareable online.

Know your audience

Take time to research the demographics of the different social media marketing platforms you will be using to share. Continue to be updated on what your audience interests are, what they are doing and what their needs and wants are. By this, it would be easier for you to create the information you want to give because you now have the idea of what your audience’s continuing needs and interests are.

 

Keep content relevant

Check also what your customers are sharing on social media. By this, you can base your content on what you have extracted from those social media sharing. You can also keep track on what contents to write and to share. Making your content unique is also one factor to make your content strategy even more effective and worthy to be read and shared because it contains your audience’s interests.

Constant self-reference is a no-no

Direct your message to your readers to stimulate engagement. Make it more personalized by using the word “you.” In this way, your posts will directly address the interest of your community.  As much as possible, make it to a point that what you have as contents will illustrate the benefits your business has to offer and not just something that tells them what you are and what you do.  As social scientist Dan Zarella says, “Stop talking about yourself.” Instead, “start talking as yourself.”

 

Share what works

Content sharing becomes plausibly effective if you know which works or not. And by this, it would mean creating collaterals that are effective and efficient. Consider also your own time schedule and talents. There are different formats wherein you can communicate your message. Some examples are writing short-form articles, infographics, photographs, short product demos or instructional videos, etc. Choose which format is more comfortable for you which will not only reveal what your business is like, but also on how creative you can get in relaying a message to your readers.

Curate

In content sharing, curating can be a necessary way in order to create relevant and shareable articles. It may sound like a lot of work because curating would need a human being to find and read and qualify digital content that is relevant to your readers. There are advantages on why curating is also a good move for a business. It is because in sharing content from others, your audience will look to you as a reliable source for information on a specific topic. Moreover, it would benefit you on broadening the conversation with others within your industry from being a third-party content sharer.

Write headlines

And not just any headline, but unequivocally humane headlines. There is nothing more notable and read-worthy than a very humane content title. By this, it would mean making topics that are interesting for humans to read like lifestyle, food, home, news, business or technology and relationships, the least. These are primarily categorized as highly shared topics because they tend to be very ‘human’ by nature.

Topics that discuss ‘what we eat’ or ‘how we live’ make up a huge portion of what we share online. And that is a challenge for content marketers to begin directing headlines in that direction.

Measure emotional value 

Emotions are what best triggers a human’s interest. Contents that contain such emotion-driven words or images prompt your readers and may allow them to share these to their friends which can be of good use or to let them share the same emotion inflicted upon them. More so, measuring the emotional value of your contents would help you know which and what kind of contents you should focus on and write about.

Content can be properly viewed

Contents, in this case, should be properly viewed in such a way that it can be accessed across different platforms and devices. Most web traffic is now coming from mobile devices, but sometimes—if not all—content does not look good or convert well for mobile visitors. Hence, it should be noted that your website content should be optimized for smartphone and tablet devices, so that readers can effectively consume the content.

Responsive design is one solution to this kind of problem. With regard to website ranking in search results, it is important to take this into consideration because Google is now including this standard for mobile user experiences. So if your site is not providing users with a great cross-platform experience, you may be putting your site at risk of losing Google ranking as well as prospective customers.

Make navigation easy

Users should be able to easily navigate around your website and quickly find what they are looking for. Navigation is one key feature a website could probably make or break its statistics. It enables the readers scan through your website, read from left to right, top to bottom and see what they can benefit from your website content presentation. With just a few clicks, probably made the experience worthwhile for the readers, which means, sales.

Tell a story 

Telling a story may be as easy as 1, 2, 3 but doing so would mean making it interesting. You can present your product by making a brief story of how customers would solve an on going problem with your product by doing it in a creative way.

Provide product reviews

Customers would love to read legit product reviews especially when they are looking out for more details on how they could benefit from your products or services. Provide a platform that makes it easy for visitors to access product reviews and comparisons.

You should be trustworthy 

Your site visitors would want to know that you are a trusted business. By this, it would also mean a lot for your readers if they see customer testimonials on your site that would speak highly about your product and services.

Quality over quantity

This is pretty much explainable. Although sometimes, contents are just being disposed with no further research and are written without pure depth and for content’s sake, which is pretty much a flawed approach. More pages or copy does not equate more traffic, engagement or sales. What’s important is your content delivers value (whether informative or pure entertainment) to your consumers, and therefore your brand.

 

Brand your content 

Your contents should say a lot about you, even if it only means having an infographic or an image or a video that is being shared. Make it to a point that your content associates and at the same time, complements your business’ brand. And with that, it would not only mean having being remembered, but also, allowing your readers, consumers and your audience that it is you they are reading, sharing and talking about.

Let me start by saying whether you are doing SEO in Manila or Cebu, the web is a jungle! The Internet aims to level the playing field in terms of promoting the brand and building a customer list. At times, you’d think that it is not made for small businesses no matter how much it tried to treat all natures, scopes and sizes of businesses equally.

Small business owners usually find difficulties navigating their way to the top, at least online, as they compete with attention. These businesses typically work with a very limited budget. Gaining real traction in both organic and paid results can be daunting. Unlike those giants which seemed to dominate the search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you are a small business owner, what will you do? Don’t lose hope. Ever heard of barnacle SEO? Well, the idea behind such is easy to understand. Let’s take a look at what barnacle SEO is and what it can do to your business.

What is barnacle SEO

Barnacle SEO is not in its infancy. Will Scott coined the term in 2008 to replace a somewhat derogatory term ‘parasite SEO.’ Fundamentally, the concept relies with digital landscape reality wherein larger websites can rank high and obtain traffic while smaller sites often lag behind, getting lost on the sea of results.

Barnacle SEO, while most websites define it as a process, for yours truly, it is an opportunity to attach the smaller website to a larger website. We refer to Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, Yellow Pages, Google+, Trip Advisor, etc. as larger websites. Smaller websites can use these sites as a necessary vehicle so they get noticed and included in the top spots of SERPs.

If someone will search for ‘SEO packages in Cebu,’ an independent site may not necessarily appear in the first page. However, a listing in Yellow Pages may make it on the first page. The independent site attaches itself to a large site thus improving the odds of being found.

Why become a barnacle

Barnacle SEO is mostly applicable to small businesses operating locally. It involves profile or business page optimization on well-trusted and high-ranking sites. This means small business owners like you just need a website – your own website – to make the strategy work for you. There is thereby the strategic fit with your limited digital marketing budget.

Barnacle SEO must be a staple of your local campaign. According to Search Engine Land, Google Hummingbird seemed to favor Yelp and other business directories. In another study, Yelp is a prominent result among mobile search queries wherein 37.3% of clicks go to the profile page in Yelp while 51.8% go to Yelp profile and category.

Sites like Yelp builds brand equity. The sites are well-known and oftentimes, only real businesses are listed on them. They also provide better answers. Consider this, users are looking for information about your business and these might be buried deep into the site (i.e. the Contact Us page). Unlike content listings that straightforwardly include operating hours, menus, amenities, etc.

Perhaps, this is also the reason Google ranks these sites high on SERPs as they provide better answers to queries. Business listings and directories are the big ships online, so you should barnacle on them.

How to become a barnacle

Before you can become a successful barnacle, you must know which sites you should be attaching yourself to. As you may know by now, not all sites are created equal and so are the larger sites. Some sites rank higher in specific industries.

Find the most applicable sites to attach yourself to. Start by doing a keyword search. Choose those sites with the most consistent results. Attach your site to these sites. Prioritize those sites that appear higher on SERPs when you search for a particular keyword.

Next, create a business profile on your chosen sites. Claim the profile as if it is the only business on your category or niche. Treat the profiles as an extension of your business. Rule of thumb: make sure that the information on all your profiles is accurate and consistent specifically the contact details. This is critical since a slight difference in the business address, for instance, can confuse Google and other search engines.

Take the time to upload images especially your company logo and others that show off the business like maps, galleries or menus. Some sites allow customization of the profile page. Make your profile appear like your own website. Think about visual branding. These are the major conversion points for your prospects.

Optimizing your profile to maximize the results is necessary. First, you need to submit your information in Google Places. A brief yet compelling description of the business must be apparent including a list of your product and service offerings. Include the basic info and the links to your website. Make sure that the links are working. Test them.

When creating business description copies, the SEO world is divided whether to optimize the description including keywords or not. Basically, small business opts for barnacle SEO because it cannot pay for high-competitive keywords. You may put your primary keywords on the description without being too blatant about it. Simply, integrate the keywords as organic as possible.

Majority of the sites welcome customer feedback. Encourage your customers to provide reviews and testimonials on the site. The review profile leverages your online presence and visibility especially on the results pages.

Barnacle SEO is processual which means results are not immediate. It will take a few weeks or even months before you can observe changes. However, the results are always worth the time, effort and (minimal) money that you have invested in it. Getting noticed may be hard at first. Barnacle SEO presents itself as a high-ROI strategy for small business. Leveling a playing field indeed!

To become a barnacle or not? This is the most pressing issue here. Anyhow, creating with the help of web companies in the Philippines is easier. Your concern should be providing real answers to your prospects when ranking high on search engines is difficult at the moment.

Caveat: There are SEO consultancy firms that can help you decide whether barnacle SEO is appropriate for your business or not. These firms can also provide you with options of strategies so your rank higher on SERPs on the price specifically created for small businesses.

Sources: Search Engine Journal | Search Engine Land | Moz

Search engines like Google love fresh and new content. As they aim to give their users the most relevant and latest results, their crawlers are always on a lookout for new pages on the web to discover and include in their indices.

How To Optimize Blog Content

Contents on a blog attract not just user traffic but those of the search engine spiders as well. Learn the secrets to optimizing your entries. Here are ten tricks to show you how.

1.       It’s all about quality, relevance and uniqueness. Keep them original. Pick trending topics in your industry and breaking news within your niche and you are guaranteed to reach SEO rankings in no time. Make sure that the knowledge you impart is useful and timely. Aim for write-ups that answer common questions or solve people’s problems. Avoid spinning articles for the purpose of quantity.

2.       Maximize snippets. Snippets are excerpts that describe your entire article. These brief descriptions are visible on the SERP. The more compelling and attention-grabbing they are, the higher the chance that visitors will click on the link, arrive at your site, and read the full entry.

3.       Use eye-catching titles. Your title is the first thing that grabs the users’ attention. Make it descriptive so that your audience need not second guess what the post is all about. Avoid over-optimization and inserting awkward words just for boost SEO score.

4.       Apply proper keyword placement and variation. The trick is positioning your key terms near your images to emphasize its importance. Employ varied anchor texts for maximum outcome.

5.       Keep the length standard. Ideal number of words range from 400 to 600. Make them concise and spot on.

6.       Integrate various media types on your posts. Do not be limited with just text. Upload original photos. Create video tutorials. Insert images, videos, infographic and podcasts to impress an interactive content.

7.       Take notice of timing and frequency. The secret lies on posting regularly – 3 to 4 times per week and timing them in where majority of your readers are online. As you do this, the opportunity to get your write-up shared tends to go a little higher too.

8.       Allow reverse guest posting. Coordinate with influential bloggers in your field and invite them to write something for your blog. The variety of tone on your posts not only charms new readers but it also increases your credibility as a good resource.

9.       Be mindful of errors. This pertains to wrong spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar. Keep your content error-free.

10.   Use categories and tags. A tag makes it easier for your visitors and search engines to find a specific topic of interest. Hence, do not forget to include this at the end of each post.

Blogging is one of the best methods to improve SEO performance. As each blog post becomes a new page, it then provides fresher and newer content on the website which is exactly what Google wants. Integrating a weblog then is a marketing technique that most businesses apply on their sites.

How To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines

Optimize your pages to improve SEO ranking. Here is a quick guide to show you how.

1.       Keywords. Choosing your keyword set is one of the critical keys to make the optimization work. The terms must be targeted and niche-related, diverse, placed strategically in the content, and fully applied on the most important elements of a blog:

  • Blog title and description
  • Meta data – meta title and description
  • Content – post title, headlines, sub-headlines, headers, sections, introductory sentence, concluding paragraph all with varied anchor texts
  • Images via alt tags
  • Permalink URLs

2.       On-page. These factors are equally important to send favorable signals to the search engine bots.

  • Theme. This comprises of having a neat design that has easy and smooth navigational structure and clean CSS and HTML codes.
  • Loading Speed. The quick speed in which the page loads usually equates to good user experience. Hence, install plugins that will output optimal results.
  • Sitemap. A sitemap is a full map of all your posts, pages and archives. Generating one regularly and submitting it to Google helps the spiders to index your posts better.

3.       Links. This pertains to both internal and external links.

  • Internal. There shouldn’t be any broken link anywhere on the website.
  • External or Inbound. Increased traffic is one of the benefits of SEO and one way to improve the number of visitors coming to your weblog is through building relevant baclinks in a natural way.

 4.       Social Media. Google is looking to social media mentions as an indicator of an article’s authority and relevance. Thus, having profiles in Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest and other major social networking sites plays a huge role in getting your content spread out over the web. Adding share buttons at the end of each post makes a big difference as well.

 5.       Mobile-friendly. In today’s age where almost everyone is on mobile, it has become a necessity to ensure that your articles are accessible on smartphones and tablets too. It is then advised to either create a mobile-version of your entire site, blog included, or go for responsive web design.

Search engine optimization has gone far beyond getting as many links as you can for your website. With the many changes brought by the Google Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird, SEO strategies have evolved as well.

The focus nowadays is on quality content – as it should be. Although quality content has always been emphasized as the more permanent tool for optimizing your website, some SEO specialists worked around this with spammy content, keyword stuffing, and other black hat SEO strategies. With the changes that Google has made on its search algorithm, the spotlight is back on building good reputation within your site’s niche.

Here is where social media comes into play. Social media’s rise in popularity has made it a powerful medium for marketing. Somehow, it has also found a way to affect search engine optimization. Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management programs. If you are more oriented towards SEO rather than social media marketing, is it worth your time to use Hootsuite? Below are some ways in which you can use Hootsuite to boost your SEO efforts.

  • Post to your Google+ business page. Google’s own social network, Google+, is quickly rising to be a serious challenger to becoming the most popular social network. Many businesses will benefit with a well-optimized Google+ business page especially with the increased importance of Google authorship. Hootsuite is a great application that can help make it easier for you to manage your Google+ business page. Hootsuite has the capability of posting to Google+ business pages so that you can quickly and conveniently post across all your social media accounts.
  • Post a link to your website through Twitter or Facebook. Two of the most popular social media networks are Twitter and Facebook. Hootsuite helps you utilize these social networks in promoting any content that you want to leverage on your website. This strategy has been proven to deliver significant traffic to web pages being linked to.
  • Get analytics reports. When you post links to your site through your social media accounts, you can then get insight on what works and what does not for your social media audience. Hootsuite has built in analytics reports that provide a lot of data into which posts are being clicked through, which posts are getting noticed, how many comments and shares particular posts are getting, and many more. These may not seem important at first, but the data from these reports will provide information on the topics that your target audience likes and what would stimulate high engagement.

Optimind offers guaranteed first page ranking on major search engines or your money back.