updated: September 9 2024

Even though the Internet is full of articles that praise content marketing, recent research has shown that less than 6% of those who invest in this type of promotion feel they’re doing it right.

With more resources than ever being poured into content marketing, it has become crystal clear to everyone that most people are struggling to get their content to work for them. It’s getting harder and harder for all sorts of companies, entrepreneurs, freelancers and marketers to justify their efforts in this department.

Why is this happening? Why are people failing to get their targeted audiences to interact with their content?

Content marketing is still a tough cookie to crack. Regardless of all the hype that constantly surrounds this practice online, things just aren’t falling into place for most people who invest in it.

Even though most people feel that their success via content marketing is limited by their fierce direct and indirect competition, studies have shown that the cause of this problem can usually be traced back to the publisher.

The Challenges of Running an Effective Content Marketing Campaign

As HubSpot reports, a miserable 32% of all surveyed B2B marketers say they have a documented content marketing strategy, while 55% of them have publicly declared they aren’t really sure what content marketing success looks like.

This is a huge problem. The above mentioned statistics clearly state that a lot of people who invest in content marketing don’t really have a genuine strategy for their efforts. They just produce random articles that they think their targeted audiences will love, and hope for the best. None of their efforts are data-driven, which, of course, is the main reason why they continue to fail with their content marketing.

If you want to achieve success in this department, you need to plan your moves carefully, learn how to analyze your performance, what you need to do in order to improve the overall quality of your content and feed your audiences with what they actually need from you.

Here is a definitive list of KPIs you should be measuring for your content marketing initiatives:

1. Unique Visits + Site Retention + Geography

It’s all about traffic. But not just any type of traffic. If you want to make your content marketing really work for your brand and business, you need to know what kind of audience you really want on your website, where does your current traffic come from, and what type of content generates the most views on your site. Once you figure all that out, you can easily come up with a bulletproof pattern to replicate (and even exceed) those numbers with your future content marketing efforts.

Google Analytics can help you acquire that information. If you’re interested in finding out which page brings the most traffic, head over to Google Analytics > Behaviour > Overview. From there, you can start analyzing your unique visits, site retention, and geography.

These 3 KPIs provide the necessary insight that could help you understand how a specific piece of content is performing. Measuring how many people have viewed a single piece of content in a given time-frame and from what location will help you get a clear view of the actual size of your audience.

Combine that with the average time your users spend on your site per session, and you’ll understand if your visitors are actually reading your content, or are they just scrolling through it in order to find the information they’re looking for.

If you’re a brand, it’s in your best interest to get as many intelligent visitors to your site as possible. If you see that the majority of your visitors comes from a specific location, you should probably think about personalizing your future content marketing efforts for that area.

If you’re a brand, you also don’t want to chase page views or people who don’t have a real potential to become your actual paying customers. Your goal is to stimulate a specific group of people to hop on your pages and follow your chosen path through the site, not stuff your funnel with garbage.

On the other hand, if you are a niche publisher, you may not have a huge audience, but it may show loyalty and engagement by clicking deep into the site and generating page views.

Both examples have one thing in common – having a real, data-driven understanding of just how satisfied your visitors are with your content could help you significantly improve your efforts in this department.

If, for example, as I have already mentioned, you see you have a lot of unique visits to a particular page, but your visitors are just scrolling through your content, because the average time spent on your page per session is low – this probably means something is standing between them and their desired information. Maybe you have a big opening that bores them to death, maybe you have written your content in a tone or voice that doesn’t really suit your targeted crowd – the possibilities are endless.

The important thing to have in mind is that you have something truly good on your hands. All you have to do is figure out a way to make your information attractive to your viewers.

2. Exit Rates

Exit rates are often confused with bounce rates. Unlike bounce rates, which give us an overview of the people who have landed on one of our pages and immediately left, exit rates provide us with the percentage of visitors who have actually clicked away to a different site from one of our pages.

While bounce rates are only based on sessions that begin with the page you’re currently analyzing, exits go beyond that. Exits may have viewed more than one page in a particular session, meaning they have not really landed on that page, but simply found their way to it while browsing through your website.

This KPI is extremely important for content marketers because it helps improve user experience. It helps us locate the problem areas of our site and content. Exit rates are there to help us tweak the pages that should naturally lead to further interactions with our site, but simply don’t. They need to be revised and optimized, yet again.

Even though exit rates could provide great insight about your user experience, pages and content, you need to be cautious with them. If, for example, you write a 10,000-word article about backlinks, but you decide to cut it into 4 different pages, and you see the exit rate on the last page is high, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Your visitors have reached the end of the article, so it’s quite natural for them to exit your site.

3. Heat Maps

Every successful content marketing professional is basically an obsessive person who constantly reviews and fine-tunes his work. Myself included. In order to win big with my efforts in this particular department, it’s imperative for me to constantly analyze and revise my work. I need to take a deep dive into my content and start messing around with the details. This is a delicate business. Even the smallest of errors can really hurt you.

As we have already mentioned in one of our previous blog posts, the average attention span of internet users is constantly decreasing. In 2017, the average attention span of people who frequently surf the Web is down to a miserable 8 seconds. The age of smartphones and instant information has left us with the attention span of a goldfish.

Having all this in mind, one could interpret content marketing as nothing more than the practice of tailoring custom information for impatient audiences. If we want to achieve success in this field in 2017, we constantly need to have a close eye on how our desired audience is engaging with a particular page on our site and its content.

Luckily for those who make their bread and butter by writing and publishing content on multiple domains, there are great tools for that. In addition to Google Analytics that can provide you with great on-page insights and help you track click patterns, there are tools like CrazyEgg, that make it possible for all of us to create heat maps and easily understand what section of a given page is getting the most views, and which are just being skipped.

This information is critical for everyone who wants to maximize their blogging ROI. Once you figure out which sections of your post have a negative effect on your overall page views, you can easily optimize them and improve your overall user satisfaction.

4. CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

We have already discussed the importance of tracking CTR scores on our blog.

You can read more about this metric in the post linked above.

As we have already mentioned, CTR is an important metric for everyone who engages in any type of marketing online, not only those who spend their days clicking and optimizing everything in Google AdWords.

Every successful content marketer tracks his CTR.

If you figure out how to maintain a good CTR score, you’ll improve your impression numbers, which will automatically help you position your creatives at the very top of your targeted search results. Once you do that, you will significantly increase your chances of being discovered by your desired audience, which will certainly have a positive effect on your overall conversion numbers.

5. Backlinks

Backlinks matter. They influence the popularity, relevance, and overall authority of a certain website. The more high-quality backlinks you have pointing back to your domain, the better. Backlinks help improve organic rankings in search and attract great referral traffic. In addition to that, backlinks also help Google index pages a lot faster, which naturally has an insanely positive effect on SEO. Even though they are extremely important for overall success online and everyone wants to get as many quality links as possible to point back their site – in 2017, in the post-Penguin era, backlinks cannot be built – they have to be earned.

This is where content comes to shine. Even though it’s now quite difficult to find a relevant subject that hasn’t already been covered thousands of times on various different websites across the Web, you can still come up with amazing material that has the potential of generating tons of shares and links for your website. All you really need to do is analyze what’s currently trending in your niche or industry, and build your story on that. If you want to earn a lot of links with your content marketing efforts, you’d better do your best to come up with authoritative content that answers popular questions, original research results, content that discusses trending topics with amazing insights, etc.

Summary

I hope this article has helped you understand how to elevate your content marketing efforts to the next level. As you can see from everything written above, there’s more than a few metrics to consider when designing a proper content strategy for your brand and business. Some of them may be more challenging than others, but it’s important to have in mind that every single one of these KPIs is there for a reason. Be sure to monitor them to ensure you’re building your content strategy on the right foundations.

One of the very few things that remained constant about SEO since the earliest days of its development is the frequency with which we are talking about the fact that it never stops changing. We have become so used to this that any kind of consistency is almost surprising, especially when we look at specific areas of Search Engine Optimisation. Wanting to take a closer look at the breakdown of negative local search ranking factors that Moz has been publishing as a part of their yearly surveys of experts on the subject, we decided to compare last year’s results with those in the years before. It came as a bit of a surprise to learn that, despite the significant changes in the local search landscape, things that you need to be weary of remained pretty much the same.

Despite the stack changes, Venice and Pigeon updates, the metamorphosis of Google Places to Google My Business and everything else that has happened in the period that we chose to focus on (2013 – late 2015) local search best practices remain largely the same. We won’t mention each of the negative factors that experts deemed most detrimental to success in local SEO, but instead we will give you an overview of the most important ones and point out some general trends. When we do talk about a particular factor we will also mention what position it occupied which year, starting from 2013 and going forward to 2015, with higher positions being reserved for the most harmful ones.

There are several different ways to classify the factors, so we’ll try to provide you with a short summary of some of them.

Platform Based

The first classification of potential problems that we’ll address is based on the area of the data ecosystem they relate to. In other words, those pertaining to the businesses website itself; its Google My Business page (or Google Places for Business in 2013 and up to mid 2014); and third party websites, like reviews, listings in business directories and similar. Moz’s survey analyzed 30 factors in 2013 and 2014 each and 27 in 2015. While the numbers are somewhat rough, as some factors could be classified under two different categories, each year, the most populous group by far was the one dealing with GMB i.e. Google Places. Every year, there were 4 items in the list of potential on-site issues and 18 in the GMB/GP section. In 2013 and 2014 there were 8 potential external problems, while this was reduced to 5 in 2015.

It is hardly surprising that Google managed to make their service quintessential for success in local search, but for those who can’t wait to call them out on it, it must be said that most of the factors that experts believe to have recognized make absolute sense. For the most part, they deal with data accuracy and consistency. For instance, presence of multiple Place or GMB pages with same or similar business title and address has occupied 5^th position in the overall list in 2013, and 13^th in the years 2014 and 2015. Along the similar lines, experts also listed mis-matched NAP or inclusion of tracking phone numbers in Places or GMB landing page (6, 4, 6); presence of multiple Place or GMB pages with same phone number (11, 9, 8); and choosing to hide Place or GMB page address (23, 19, 20). For the most part, as long as you’re not out to game the system by giving out false information, trying to manipulate the search engines by creating fake listings with incorrect data, or rushing through the setup process, you should ace your GMB page just by following simple common sense.

While most are hardly surprising, there are several items that someone with only a cursory knowledge of optimization for local search might fail to consider were it not for the survey. For instance, even though it is consistently at the bottom of the list, which is to say that it’s not considered a major threat to your local search rankings, having multilingual listings for the same Places/GMB business (30, 30, 26) is apparently still frowned upon by Google, even though it might make perfect sense in some instances. Similarly, it might not be obvious to everyone that listing an 800 number on Places/GMB page (20, 16, 16) or choosing a service area instead of in-location visits in your Places/GMB (27, 22, 24) will get you in Google’s disfavor, but even though these items are relatively low on the list, they still found their way in there.

Outside Vs Inside Influence

One of the more heartening conclusions that we have reached through the analysis of negative factors is that the majority of the problems addressed in the survey is under your direct control. In 2013 and 2014 there were only 4 outside negative influences, while the 2015 survey lists 5 of them, all of them boiling down to user reviews on various platforms:

• Reports of violations on your Places/GMB page (8, 8, 5)

• Low numerical ratings in Places/GMB by Google users (24, 25, 18)

• Negative sentiment in Place/GMB reviews (25, 28, 23)

• Low numerical ratings of your Places/GMB page by third-party users (26, 26, 22)

• Negative sentiment in third-party reviews (/, /, 25)

While the numbers indicate that these factors are gaining in importance as time goes by, which is hardly a surprise considering the rising influence of social signals and reliance on actual user input, this still means that a lot of your success in local search will depend on how careful and conscientious you are when creating your GMB page, getting listings on third party websites, and generally, tending to your backyard.

On-site Negative Local Search Ranking Factors

One of the things that has stayed almost perfectly consistent during the three year period that we decided to analyze is the way you set up your business website. Each of the three surveys lists the same four items, with the only difference being their perceived severity:

• Keyword stuffing in your business name (2, 7, 14)

• Presence of malware on site (9, 6, 4)

• Absence of crawlable NAP on your website (10, 11, 9)

• Address that includes suite number similar to UPS Mail Store addresses (17, 15, 10)

While there are only a handful of factors mentioned in this category, most of them are quite high up on the list, and while the first three might be more than obvious, not everyone would think twice before disregarding the fourth, oblivious to the potential consequences. What might seem surprising is that keyword stuffing seems to be taken less seriously as each year goes by, but that might just stem from the fact that even the most ardent black hatters have had to realize by now the futility of trying to manipulate the results by the age old copy/paste technique. A general decrease in the number of people resorting to this ‘tactic’ could have resulted in its drop in notoriety.

Conclusion

While some of the mentioned factors might not be the first thing you think about when considering potential dangers to your local ranking, most of them are spectacularly unspectacular. The story of optimizing for local search is daily getting new chapters, but its tone remains largely the same. By far the most prominent issue in each survey was NAP inconsistencies, regardless of their origin – GMB, your website, or third party websites. In fact, one of the only items that hasn’t shifted in the period we were tracking is mis-matched NAP or use of tracking phone numbers across the data ecosystem, listed as the third most detrimental factor to your local SEO in all three surveys, in close proximity to other two major offenders – your listing being detected at a false business address (1, 1, 2), and incorrect business category (4, 2, 1).

Naturally, simply focusing on negative factors and their changes over the years is far from providing you with the entire picture, but it should at least help you dodge some of the more glaring and easily avoidable issues. As long as you ensure that your site is malware free, that your NAP is consistent and that you don’t indulge in some scampishly devious attempts at manipulation, such as keyword stuffing, crating multiple GMB listings with different data or providing false information, you should have a solid base for upon which to elaborate on your optimization efforts.

• Basic Keyword Research guide
• URL Structure
• Page Titles
• Meta Descriptions
• Social Metadata
• Schema
• Headings (h1-h6)
• Textual Content
• Internal Links
• Images
• Videos
• Ideal End Result

Basic Keyword Research (KWR) guide for content optimization

First – we need to decide what the article/page is about and start by typing that phrase in Google and hit “Enter”. This will allow us to take a look at the search results page and realize what kind of content is ranking for a given term.

For example – we need to write an article about an agency providing online marketing solutions. Let’s try typing “online marketing solutions” in the Google search bar (we shall use the Incognito mode while searching on Google – we need to hit Ctrl+Shift+N on the keyboard, while in Google Chrome, to access Incognito mode).

Next – let us take a look at the amount of the results ranking for that given phrase:

More results can mean that it will be harder to rank for that phrase. Now, we will try typing the phrase without hitting “Enter”. We shall get something like this:

This is called Google Autocomplete. It includes terms people usually search for, and is based on our given phrase.

Next – we need to focus on the user search intent – understand what a user searching for this phrase wants to achieve, and try to adjust the initial search phrase. For example – we’d want to avoid “online marketing solutions scams”, as this is not the initial goal. Let us also take a look at the bottom of the search results page:

These are the searches related to our search phrase.

Next – we will combine the results gathered from the Google Autocomplete list and the above-related search phrase list. We need to aim for the phrases that have the lowest amount of the results shown on the search results page.

Bingo! We got this:

As you may see – there are 47,200,000 results, and we’ve started by having 591,000,000 results.

Now – let’s try searching like a real person (remember that we need to focus on user intent).

“Digital marketing solutions meaning” sounds too formal. We will try “What is a digital marketing solution?”.

We can also add the following words as a prefix or a suffix:

How (to), What (question form), Step-by-step (tutorials, courses), Best (comparison, reviews), Proven (based on data), Top (similar to Best) – let’s take a look at the “People also ask” section illustrated above, to get some ideas on user intent.

E.g. – “Top Digital Marketing Agencies” – and add the location (e.g. the USA) – So: it would be “Top digital marketing agencies in the USA”

Here is the search result page:

We are now down to the 29,000,000 results. Did you notice how our original phrase “online marketing solutions” switched to “digital marketing agencies” – because this is what users search for, according to Google. It also aligns with our goal, because we want to write an article for an agency offering online marketing solutions (let’s make sure to always keep an eye on an initial goal).

Next – we may want to add some more delimiters to differentiate from the rest of the pages ranking for this phrase. This will further narrow the number of results. Our phrase will be focused based on what the company has to offer.

For example – “Top SEO and PPC service providing agencies in the USA” – brings us down to 19,300,000 pages ranking for a given phrase.

Tip – We can use all or some of other terms (mentioned above) as subtitles in the article/page. For example, our title can be What are Top SEO and PPC service providing agencies in the USA

Then, the first subtitle, can be “What is SEO and PPC? “ followed by the “List of top 10 SEO & PPC agencies in the USA”, and so on.

To make sure we are on the right track, let’s use the Ahrefs tool to compare the search terms (keywords) we’ve discovered by following the above strategy.

Let us log into Ahrefs and open the Keyword Explorer https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer

Let’s insert all the search terms, separated by a comma, and click on the search button:

On the left side of the search button is a drop-down menu where we will need to choose the country where we want to rank for given keywords. Please make sure to use this correctly going forward.

Then – let’s click on the Metrics tab:

We will see the comparison table with all these keywords included:

Tip – Pay attention to the KD (keyword difficulty) and the Volume columns. Aim for the keywords with the lowest difficulty that have a high Volume.

In this particular case, we’d want to avoid SEO agency, but take PPC agency and digital marketing agency into consideration. If we search Google for Best PPC agencies in the USA we will see that it has only 4,350,000 pages ranking for that phrase

Pro tip – While in Ahrefs, do click on the Content explorer option https://ahrefs.com/content-explorer. Once there, you can type in the keyword of your preference and it will provide the list of the most popular content out there, that matches your keyword. The most popular content score is calculated based on the total amount of shares across social networks tracked by Ahrefs (e.g. it includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,…)

We suggest using this option to help you craft the title of your designated article/page. By doing this, you will increase the possibility of your content getting viral and shared on popular social media networks – this specifically goes for blog article titles.

Note – for the purpose of this KWR guide, we have chosen very competitive keywords and topics that have millions of search results, thus making our task very difficult.

Another note – don’t worry if you repeat all the above steps, and get different numbers of the results shown on the Google search result page. This is because Google serves different search result pages based on the location, IP address, etc.

URL Structure

• Decide on and keep URL structure consistent. URLs should be as concise as possible while containing all the right words so that the page’s content can be guessed by just looking at it. This also makes URLs more memorable and easier to search for in search engines. 
• Avoid using underscores, spaces or any other character in URLs and when necessary, separate words using hyphens. Also, note that overuse of hyphens in URLs can be seen as spammy, so it’s best to use caution and limit hyphen use in URLs when possible.  
• Try putting important keywords in URLs as well so if there’s a service like “Netflix” do not make URL like https://www.mybusiness.com/netflix, rather https://www.mybusiness.com/netflix-video-on-demand 

• Avoid the use of parameters, if possible. If parameters need to be used, they should be limited to two or less. 
• Avoid using file extensions like .html or .aspx, these are unnecessary and can be safely omitted is possible.

Page Titles

• The page title helps search engines and users identify the content of a page before looking at it. It should include the primary keyword for the page to improve ranking while considering usefulness and readability for the user to improve click-through rates from search results.  
• Titles should be no longer than ~60 characters or 600 pixels in width in Google results. Since there’s no precise character number (pixel length is counted) preview desired page title here or always keep it below 600px to be on a safe side. 
• To make page titles look attractive, use CamelCase as in example image above (each first word has uppercase except for conjunctions such as ‘and, for, to, in, etc`) 
• Titles should include important keywords at the beginning of a snippet followed with branding segment separated with the | (pipe) character. For example, Blue Widgets for Sale | Widgets Factory
  Construct page title snippet wording as the one you would personally click in search results.

Example: https://www.orange.jo/en

Mobile Phones & Wireless Internet Services | Orange Jordan

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions help search engine users to decide whether the page suits their needs and match their intent. This is why it’s important to have precisely described page that relates to search engine users’ search query, they’ll click the result more often. It doesn’t affect SEO directly, rather click-through-rate (CTR), or clickability which are indirect ranking factors.

To maximize click-through rates on search engine result pages, it’s important to note that Google and other search engines bold keywords in the description when they match search queries. This bold text can draw the eyes of searchers, so you should match your descriptions to search terms as closely as possible.

• Meta description should not be longer than 160 characters.
• It has to include a call-to-action element (eg. “Learn more/Try/Buy now!” or similar)
• It should match the search engine user’s intent closely and contain important keyword mentioned in the page title.
• It should “sell” the service/product to the user by describing product/service good enough so that they get interested to click and visit.

Example: https://www.orange.jo/en

“We provide modern prepaid/postpaid mobile network, wireless internet, broadband, fixed-line telephony, and digital TV services. Check our offers now!”

Simply consider the following template while writing meta description snippets: QUESTION + USP + CTA

Social Metadata

Social metadata is a set of HTML tags placed in page <head> section and are responsible for the rich representation of web page link when shared on social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

There are two sets of social media metadata for a regular page (which doesn’t cover any specific product or service, like the homepage), and for pages which cover specific product or service.

The difference is that social metadata for product/service can contain additional attributes to describe what’s being sold better, like providing the price of the service or color of the product. Check last two lines in product metadata snippet to get an idea on this difference. Adjust fields containing variables (eg. $PAGE-TITLE) to contain values already present on the page (URL, page title, meta description).

Regular page (article) social metadata template:

<!– TwitterCards –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image” />
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@something” />
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”$PAGE-TITLE” />
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”$META-DESCRIPTION” />
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@something” />
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”$URL-TO-PRODUCT-OR-SERVICE-SHARING-IMAGE” />

<!– OpenGraph –>
<meta property=”og:title” content=”$PAGE-TITLE” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”$PAGE-URL” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”$URL-TO-PRODUCT-OR-SERVICE-SHARING-IMAGE” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”$META-DESCRIPTION” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”AwesomeCompany” />

Product/service page social metadata template:

<!– Twitter Card –>

<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”product” />

<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@something” />

<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”$PRODUCT-OR-SERVICE-PAGE-TITLE” />

<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”$META-DESCRIPTION” />

<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@something” />

<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”$URL-TO-PRODUCT-OR-SERVICE-IMAGE” />

<meta name=”twitter:data1″ content=”$150″>

<meta name=”twitter:label1″ content=”Price” />

<!– Open Graph –>

<meta property=”og:title” content=”$PRODUCT-OR-SERVICE-PAGE-TITLE” />

<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />

<meta property=”og:url” content=”$PAGE-URL” />

<meta property=”og:image” content=”$URL-TO-PRODUCT-OR-SERVICE-IMAGE” />

<meta property=”og:description” content=”$META-DESCRIPTION” />

<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”AwesomeCompany” />

<meta property=”og:price:amount” content=”150.00″ />

<meta property=”og:price:currency” content=”USD” />

Upon publishing, test metadata on social network’s official debugging tool (please note that you have to be logged in, before testing metadata):

• https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
• https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

Schema

Schema is standard honored by major search engines which when implemented properly should lead to richer search results and increased CTR, it doesn’t affect SEO directly and is not a ranking factor currently. Schema can be used to enrich product/service pages and display additional information such as star ratings, pricing, stock status and product attributes such as color variations and more.

Example search result of page enriched with Schema:

Ideally, every website should contain Organization (if they’re global business) or LocalBusiness (if they are local business) Schema vocabularies along with Product and/or Service vocabularies if applicable. During our work, we compiled several templates for each of these so use them accordingly and adjust necessary data/fields.

• Organization: https://pastebin.com/raw/6HuSsrqz
• LocalBusiness: https://pastebin.com/raw/DjrEmNXe
• Product: https://pastebin.com/raw/b1cSWW1g
• Service: https://pastebin.com/raw/uZp4GNUr
• WebApplication (applicable to SaaS’ for example): https://pastebin.com/raw/JrwU1b6Z

More Schema vocabularies are available on http://schema.org/docs/schemas.html.
After implementation, a must is to check for code validity on https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/.

Headings (h1-h6)

Headings are big headlines in page content which serve to breakdown logical sections of the page/article and make it more readable and understandable to readers. Google might use an H1 heading as page relevance indicator so make this heading the relevant to article as possible. Ideally, this should contain the same text as page title but without branding segment and there should be only one instance of tag present on the page.

Use other, lower-in-hierarchy headings such as h2-h6 to structure the rest of the content with headings of article subsections. It’s best if H1 heading is placed above all content on the page, as the first and most important heading of the page.

Example

Ideally, a page should start with the H1 heading, followed by an H2 heading, which can be followed by an H3 heading should you need a sub-section. For the start of a new section, you should use another H2 heading. Don’t skip a level in the hierarchy; for example, don’t go from an H1 heading to an H3 heading. There should be an H2 heading in between them.

Here’s a good example of correct heading usage:

<h1>This is the title of the page</h1>
<h2>This is the first section</h2>
<h3>This is a sub-section</h3>
<h2>This is the second section</h2>
<h3>This is another sub-section</h3>

How all headings (H1-H6) look like

The following code shows all the heading levels, in use.

<h1>Heading level 1</h1>
<h2>Heading level 2</h2>
<h3>Heading level 3</h3>
<h4>Heading level 4</h4>
<h5>Heading level 5</h5>
<h6>Heading level 6</h6>

Here is the result of this code:

Heading level 1

Heading level 2

Heading level 3

Heading level 4

Heading level 5

Heading level 6

Textual Content

Textual content is an integral part of a web page. Search engines are using it to get the idea on what the page is about. Google officials are saying that the richer and longer the text on the page is, the more valuable they will consider it for their users and offer page as a search result for a broader spectrum of keywords people are using to discover similar service/product.

There is a rule of thumb that pages with 350+ words (for product/service pages) are considered rich in text and should offer the best experience to both visitors and search engine crawlers. For articles like informative blog posts, 1000-2000 words length should be a sweet spot.

• Describe products and services in depth and use technical terms if applicable
• Use only unique content (do not copy from external sites, mark quotes/citations in blockquote tag)
• Use relevant keywords (or ones provided in KWR/KWM document) and their variations scattered through the content naturally
• Use links to other internal pages where necessary

I strongly suggest not using word processors such as Word and similar due to their special character conversion where double quotes, dashes, ampersands, and similar characters might look weird in web browsers. I also strongly suggest using code editor such as SublimeText or Notepad2 to write plain text which can be easily converted to clean HTML while DOC/DOCX/ODT can’t and may not display properly in browsers.

Additionally, for content that is going to be sent out to 3rd parties, I recommend writing articles in Markdown editors which allow for exporting of clean HTML and can be easily edited by everybody, not just those having MS Office or LibreOffice installed. Some good ones are StackEdit and Dilinger. Google Docs also has Export as Markdown add-on which allows you to export entire article written and formatted in Docs as Markdown file which can be shared.

As for readability, Google has readability analysis algorithm built-in which can understand UX of the copy so avoid using large (tall) paragraphs and break text on each 3-5 sentences (use common sense and write the text the way you like to read it).

Internal Links

Internal links are great for multiple reasons: they boost contextual page relevance in Google’s eyes if linked via keyword-rich anchor text and help to Google crawlers to move through the website easily. If keywords are provided in KWR/KWM document, use them and their variations (if viable keywords are not provided, improvise) as anchor text to link to relevant internal pages. Use internal links from relevant product/service pages as well as in blog posts where appropriate.

For instance, use:

“…if you find this product interesting you might be also interested in our blue widgets which are on sale right now…”

The ideal structure

Imagine a website to be a pyramid with the most important content on top. There should be lots of links to that highly relevant, most essential content from topically-related pages in the pyramid, which passes most link value on to those pages. However, you should also link from those top pages to subpages about related topics. Linking internally to related content shows Google what pages hold information about similar topics.

Don’t forget to link from the top too

Besides linking from topically-related posts and pages, it’s possible to make your highly relevant content more authoritative by adding links to it from the homepage or the top navigation. This will give the most important posts or pages a lot of link value and makes them stronger in Google’s eyes.

Linking to taxonomies

If you run a blog it could be beneficial to add internal links to the taxonomies the post belongs to. Adding links to the category and tags helps Google to understand the structure of your blog and helps visitors to more easily navigate to related posts.

More on internal links

No-follow links

There is a probability that you have links that aren’t important for SEO on your website. E.g. If you have a login/sign in link for your clients, you don’t want to pass link value to your log-in page – that page doesn’t need to rank high in the search results. You can do that by adding a no-follow tag to this page.

The link value for the whole page completely disappears when you add a ‘no-follow’ tag to a link on it.

Note that adding a ‘no-follow’ tag doesn’t mean that those target pages can’t be found in Google’s search results. If you don’t want pages or posts to show up in the search results you should give them a ‘no-index’ tag as well. The ‘no-index’ tag means that Google shouldn’t render the page and shouldn’t give the content a place in the Google index to show up in the search results.

Anchor texts

Once you have decided which links should be on a page and which pages should get link value, it’s important to use the right anchor text. The anchor text is the clickable text that visitors see. For example, the anchor text of the internal link in the example below is ‘our blue widgets’:

“…if you find this product interesting you might be also interested in our blue widgets which are on sale right now…”

Be careful and remember that, Google is smart enough to understand that the content around the anchor text says more about the relevancy of a keyword than the anchor text itself. So, make sure the anchor text looks natural in your copy: it’s fine to use keywords but don’t add the exact same keywords to every link’s anchor text.

Images

Google advocates rich pages as this offer most value to its users. By “rich” they do not only consider rich in the text but in multimedia as well. Images and videos are all welcome additions to every page which should make page experience better for users thus Google as well. When possible, provide images on new product/service page in order to make it more interesting and appealing to visitors.

These images do not only serve as something to look at, but they also add up to page optimization as Google use these to rank images when someone search for “mobile phone” photo in Google Images so it can drive traffic to the website in a similar way as regular web search does. This will be applicable to some niches but not all.

To be on the safe side, use keyword-rich both ALT and TITLE image attributes to give images a chance to get ranked and to improve optimal page relevance. Keywords provided in KWR/KWM document might not be completely applicable or natural to use so improvise to achieve a good balance between SEO and appropriate content for these attribute.

For instance, using “blue widgets 1”, “blue widgets 2”, etc, consider following approach “blue widgets on sale”, “$BRAND most sold blue widgets”, “blue widget front/side/back”, etc.

Additionally, the image file name is also a good place to put targeted keywords in. For instance, instead of “some_unrelevantstuff_hires.png” use “blue-widgets.png” and similar.

Avoid using GIFs as they’re not quite web-friendly. Yes, they’re interesting but can often be large in size due to plenty of frames and they do not perform well on lower-end underpowered phones and tablets as some waiting time will be needed until all frames are rendered (too much hassle for low benefit). Static, decent resolution images should work the best.

As for image resolution for sharing on social media, there are exact sizes and aspect ratios that should be used. Since it’s unrealistic to create multiple different images to fit each social media network, there are some universal sizes which should fit nicely to all.

• Horizontal image (landscape): 1024 x 512px
• Vertical image (portrait): 800 x 1200 px

Additionally, properly included images (contain the keyword in the filename, contains the keyword in ALT attribute) add to page relevance and make it more valuable to both search engine users and search engines themselves.

Videos

Similar to images, videos are a good addition to a page because they make the user experience better than just plain text (plenty of people are visual learners). It enriches the page content and offers valuable insight into service or product which plain text alone can’t do. Google recognizes this and might offer the page as a search result if it finds it to be more informative in nature than the competition.

When and where possible, record (or take one from Youtube) and include a brief video of a product/service within the page. Humans are visual beings and will most likely watch it which gives you more time to persuade them in trying/purchasing something if it’s presented well. Consider it as just another marketing mean which should compliment page already optimized by all advice in this document. This might not apply to regular blog post-style articles but sometimes it will. Use common sense to decide if it’s appropriate/needed or not.

It is a recommended practice to host your videos on YouTube thus avoiding a bigger impact on your page load speed. Another thing to use (when it comes to video material) is the above-mentioned schema markup – this time uses the video schema markup. Here you may find the example of a correct video schema snippet to use on a page that shows a video content.

Another thing that you may also benefit from, is creating a video sitemap. Here is the example of such a sitemap https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/sitemap_video.xml (please note that you don’t need a separate sitemap file for videos –  you can embed your videos into an existing sitemap).
For best results, host a video sitemap on your own servers and link to it from your robots.txt.

Every entry in a video XML sitemap requires the following:

• Title
• Description
• Primary Video URL
• Thumbnail URL
• URL of either the hosted video file or the source URL of the embedded video
  

Tip: Remember that there should be a difference when creating a dedicated video page. These kinds of videos should be able to stand alone and deliver information or an experience that covers a given topic without the need for further context.
A great example of this kind of content from the SEO world is Moz Whiteboard Friday.

Optimizing a Dedicated Video Page

As the page itself is dedicated to the video, the following elements should be in place and optimized:

• Page Title: Should be the same, or close to, the name of the video.
• Page Description: Should about the topic and approach of the video.
• H1: Should be the same as the name of the video.
• Transcript: Should be included under the video as the text copy of the page. Don’t just include an ugly block of text though. Apply proper formatting to make it easy to digest and skim. Include stills from the video as images for those who prefer to read or are unable to watch.

Ideal End Result

In the end, after a page is modeled around suggestions from this document, the page should look something like this:

Updated 25/10/2024

One of the foundational steps in ensuring that your website follows essential SEO practices is to create a sitemap.xml. A sitemap enhances the indexability of your website, making it easier for search engines like Google to crawl and understand your website’s structure. Having this sitemap file reduces the time needed for new content to appear in search engine results, giving your site an SEO boost.

What is a Sitemap and Why Do You Need It?

A sitemap is an XML file that outlines the structure of your website, mapping the hierarchy of your website’s pages and connected files. This XML sitemap is a crucial component of modern SEO strategies. Initially created in 2005 to assist search engine crawlers, sitemaps helped early search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo efficiently scan and index millions of websites, making the process much faster and more accurate.

Thanks to sitemap files, search engines can now crawl a complete site structure in seconds, ensuring quicker and more reliable indexing of your website’s content. Even though search engine systems have evolved, indexing websites in real-time, having a sitemap is still crucial, especially for complex or large websites. For smaller or newer websites with few external links, a sitemap submitted to Google Search Console or other platforms like Bing Webmaster Tools can speed up the indexing process.

But does this mean that you don’t need a sitemap anymore? 

Although some SEO experts say that sitemaps are redundant nowadays, having them is beneficial for you, especially if you own a large or a very complex website. Also, if your website is relatively new and/or small, with little external links leading to it, creating a sitemap and submitting it to the search engines will speed up its indexing.

Tangible SEO Benefits of Using Sitemaps

A well-structured sitemap offers tangible SEO benefits, ensuring search engines find and index all your website pages. Whether you have a small site or manage multiple websites, creating and maintaining an effective sitemap is always among the top recommendations in any technical SEO audit.

Helping Crawlers Determine the Importance of Your Pages

Using sitemap formats, you can prioritise certain pages by assigning them higher priority levels. This helps site crawlers understand which pages are more important and how often they should return to scan them for updates. Considering that search engines are continually scanning over 1.7 billion websites globally, making the crawling process as easy as possible increases the likelihood of search engine crawlers visiting your site more frequently.

Faster Indexing & Crawl Budget Optimisation 

An efficient sitemap.xml helps optimise your crawl budget, which refers to the time and resources search engines allocate to indexing your site. By submitting a sitemap index, you can define which website pages and files should be indexed, ensuring that your new content, such as blog posts or news articles, is crawled and indexed faster. This can give you a competitive edge in ranking for time-sensitive content, as your updates will reach search results more quickly.

Duplicate Content Prevention

A well-maintained sitemap also helps avoid penalties related to duplicate content by directing search engine crawlers to the preferred version of pages. In some cases, a txt file or canonical tags in your CMS handle this issue, but the XML sitemap file also plays a role in optimising the crawl process by excluding unnecessary duplicate pages.

Another important function of the sitemap is to point crawlers to pages that are not linked from any other page on your website, making sure they get indexed too.

Easier Navigation 

For larger websites, it’s beneficial to create both an XML sitemap for search engines and an HTML sitemap for human visitors. The HTML sitemap serves as a visual sitemap or site map, providing a secondary navigation tool that helps users quickly find relevant pages. For site crawlers, this HTML sitemap assists in navigating the website’s structure more effectively, complementing the traditional sitemap protocol.

If your website is extremely large, containing more than 50,000 URLs, you may need to split the sitemap files into multiple sitemap files. For even more complex sites, like news portals or eCommerce platforms, creating news sitemaps, video sitemaps, and image sitemaps helps ensure that all your content, including video content and images, is properly indexed.

How to Create a Sitemap?

Creating a sitemap is straightforward and doesn’t require extensive technical knowledge. Most website builders and CMS platforms like WordPress or Squarespace provide plugins that can automatically generate a sitemap for you. Popular tools like Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO will create and update your sitemap every time you add or edit a page, requiring little to no manual intervention.

To check if your website already has a sitemap, type www.(yourdomain).com/sitemap.xml in your browser. If you encounter a 404 error, it means your site doesn’t have a sitemap, and you’ll need to create one.

For websites that don’t have a built-in sitemap generator, tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs can be used to generate one. These tools not only create a functional XML sitemap file but also offer insights into your site’s SEO health, such as identifying duplicate pages or broken links.

If you prefer manual creation, you can use a text editor to create a sitemap.xml and upload it to your root directory. However, this process is more labour-intensive and prone to error, especially for larger websites.

You’ve Created a Sitemap. What Comes next?

If your website is brand new, you should create an account in the Google Search Console for this website, and submit the newly created sitemap to it. You need to do this only once, as all further updates are done automatically in random intervals. Only if you have a new page that is extremely important to you, can you re-submit the sitemap to GSC, hoping that it will get indexed faster. But with the latest Google algorithm and crawler updates, this has become a largely obsolete practice.

And if you have a very large site, a news portal, any other site that adds a lot of content daily, or an eCommerce site that frequently changes the available products, then you should consider creating Dynamic Sitemaps. They contain rules that automatically update the sitemap structure as new pages are added, changed, or removed.

Wrapping Up 

As you’ve seen, creating a sitemap is an essential SEO task that’s both easy and beneficial. Whether you’re using an online generator, a free tool, or an advanced plugin, ensuring that all your website’s pages are properly indexed is key to improving your website’s performance over time.

The long-term benefits, such as faster indexing, optimised crawl budgets, and easier navigation for both users and bots, will continue to boost your site’s visibility in search engine results. Don’t overlook the power of a well-crafted sitemap—it’s a small task that can lead to significant SEO gains.

We have some excellent news for Aussie businesses and websites that are looking for experienced digital marketing experts to help them dominate the online world! Four Dots is a Digital Marketing Agency with decade-long experience, has finally rolled out “Four Dots Australia.” Our Digital Marketing agency is now officially offering the following services across the Australian market:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Pay Per Click (PPC Management)
• Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
• Online Reputation Management (ORM)
• Google Penalty Removal
• Content Marketing
• Advanced Analytics Solutions
• Link Building

…and other related services that can help you quickly beat your direct competitors. 

Our main objective is to help local businesses of all shapes and sizes improve their online visibility, be more visible to their ideal target audience, and grow their company with the help of our custom-tailored marketing strategies and solutions. 

Some of our most successful clients include Coca-Cola, Philip Morris International, IQOS, Orange, Beko, Crucial, MissAmara, Buro, Domain.me, MobileShop.eu, Gulf Coast Cash Relief, etc. 

Why Australia and Why Now?

Since Four Dots already has offices and clients across the globe – in New York, Hong Kong, and Serbia (Belgrade and Novi Sad) – tackling the Australian digital market and establishing physical headquarters in Sydney was the next logical step. With over 10 years of successfully providing services to hundreds of worldwide clients, we decided to provide this vast and fruitful market with our expertise, as there’s an evident shortage of digital marketing agencies with experienced SEO and PPC specialists. 

Our experts can help you develop highly effective and data-driven digital marketing strategies, designed specifically for your unique needs, wants and goals. Our expert-level digital marketing services and plans are available at affordable rates to our Aussie customers, which is something that most of our competitors often neglect. The right balance between top-tier service and reasonable prices is something we have always been striving for. 

Who Is Four Dots Australia?

Four Dots Australia consists of numerous accomplished and highly experienced marketers with over 10 years of experience. Four Dots Australia core team includes:

• Radomir Basta – CEO
• Milica Dobrenov – COO
• Natasa Bajic – CIO
• Harry James – CMO

Radomir Basta is one of the founders of Four Dots. Radomir, Milica and Natasa have been helping hundreds of worldwide clients reach their business goals, while Rad is also the mastermind behind several successful SaaS-based marketing tools developed by our company:

• Reportz – A highly functional software for automated reporting and data-tracking.
• Dibz – An extremely effective link building tool for automated link scraping and prospecting.
• Base – A great tool (Chrome Extension included) for streamlined link management and link building.
• Trustmaker – A great social proof tool that can boost your sales and conversions with minimal effort on your part. 
• Kraken Box (currently in development) – a robust and all-in-one SEO platform consisting of 4 stand-alone tools. 

Radomir and Four Dots are always striving to provide cost-effective digital marketing strategies to our clients, but giving back to the SEO community is also something that we find extremely useful and fulfilling. This is why Rad decided to share his SEO know-how with other people interested in our industry and has published a book titled “The Good Book of SEO.” This guide provides insight into the basics of Search Engine Optimization and gives actionable advice to both SEO professionals and those who are just starting out. 

A Brand New Four Dots Team Reinforcement

Four Dots Australia is also proud to present its new CMO, Harry James. Much like the FD core team members, Harry is also a highly accomplished and experienced marketer. He has been focusing his digital marketing efforts on helping small Australia-based businesses gain visibility, build user bases, but also scale and grow. Harry has thousands of digital marketing campaigns in his pocket and has led a team of 75+ SEO Consultants, Paid Media Consultants and vendors. 

He’s been executing successful campaigns for every niche and vertical across Australia, the US, Singapore and UK, so we know Harry will be among the key members of the Four Dots Australia core team. He has worked for numerous acclaimed companies, including Elevate 360 (Operations Manager), Crucial Cloud Hosting (Business Development Manager), Chargebar (Operations Manager), Online Marketing Gurus where he was COO and oversaw numerous agency operations (from Consulting to Delivery teams), providing frameworks and systems to enable all parts of the business to operate as one scalable unit.  

Why Our Unique Approach is Our Competitive Edge 

Four Dots Australia has a goal-driven mindset combined with a scalable and budget-friendly approach to pricing. All our specialists are experienced and feature top-tier skill sets, but we do not believe in a strictly corporate working environment. We think it is often overly unpragmatic, which is why we try to take the best of both worlds and always make sure our client’s goals are achieved in accordance with the highest industry standards when it comes to service quality. 

We approach every issue from several different angles and come up with optimal solutions in the way that is most beneficial for their client – even if it means our teams will have to burn the midnight oil. We have always been capable of developing complete and all-encompassing strategies for both large and small businesses. Given the experience, our experts are very accurate in campaign assessment and will only accept the projects we are certain can be done to the customer’s fullest satisfaction.

Let Us Help You!

Four Dots Australia combines competitive prices with premium digital marketing services. We are here to help young Aussie businesses get off to a great start once the rubber hits the road, while we can also assist accomplished companies course-correct their failed marketing campaigns and reach the success they deserve. 

Four Dots Australia is the latest addition to the Four Dots family and it marks their newest effort to get close to their respective clients as much as possible in order to better understand the market their client intends to target.

Digital marketing is an industry that is extremely susceptible to change. From niches like SEO, PPC, e-Commerce, CRO, social media, to content marketing and advanced data analytics – all these environments, including their best practices and business models, depend on numerous factors and variables. One of the biggest challenges of this dynamic landscape is optimizing your content and pages for the Google search engine as the algorithm that underpins the internet’s biggest search engine undergoes more than a thousand updates every year. 

The great majority of these Google updates are too trivial to profoundly change the way pages are ranked in the SERPs, which is why Google isn’t even addressing their occurrence. 

However, every once in a while, Google search engine algorithm gets a big update – called Core Update – that may potentially cause disruptive changes and forever alter the way we approach SEO. 

Google Core Updates Explained

Core updates, or broad core updates, are algorithm changes that have a deep impact on the way pages and websites are ranked in Google SERPs. They can sometimes take up to several months to fully roll out and almost always affect the search visibility of millions of websites across the web. 

With every Google algorithm update, this search giant attempts to tweak its engine so the end-user always gets the most relevant results for the query they type in. Core updates recalibrate the way Google search engine perceives the relevancy of your pages and does that according to the famous Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) standards. 

Broad core updates almost always have long-lasting and far-reaching impacts on website ranking fluctuations and contextual results for search queries, prompting “weaker” websites to up their relevancy game in order to keep up with the competition.  

Unfortunately, there are no silver-bullet solutions or quick fixes for the pages that are badly hit by core Google updates. The only surefire remedy that actually works is to improve the content quality and provide real substance and value to the user.  

Now, let’s delve into the most relevant Google algorithm updates that occurred during the curious year of 2020. 

January 2020 Google Broad Core Update

The first big Google update that happened in 2020 rolled out on January 13th. It was a broad core update, and the news first came through the Google Search Liaison official Twitter account.

The ramifications were obvious within just a couple of days with numerous metrics and algorithm update trackers reporting significant fluctuations. 

According to RankRanger and various other data sources, this update had the biggest impact on YMYL (your money, your life) niches, which (all fairness) wasn’t too surprising.  

“YMYL niches got hit very hard. This a huge update,” says one data analyst at RankRanger. “There is massive movement at the top of the SERP for the Health and Finance niches and incredible increases for all niches when looking at the top 10 results overall.”

(Image Source: RankRanger)

Folks over at SEMrush also reported significant changes in almost every category:

“The most volatile categories according to SEMRush, outside of Sports and News, were Online communities, Games, Arts & Entertainments, and Finance. But Yulia Ibragimova added that all categories saw major changes and “we can assume that this update wasn’t aimed at any particular topics,” said Yulia Ibragimova of SEMRush. 

Featured Snippet Algorithm Update – January 23, 2020

The second huge Google update was made to prevent the URLs shown in the featured snippet (also known as #0 position) to be shown again within the first page of the SERPs for the same search query. This tweak was logical and quite expected, as it optimizes the first 10 SERP slots, in terms of both UX and SEO. 

According to Google’s Public Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, this somewhat expected algorithm tweak mitigates the cluttering of the first Search Results page:  

“If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show,” Sullivan stated. 

March/April 2020: Algorithm Update?  

There were significant changes recorded in algorithm activity during the weeks following the global outbreak of COVID-19. There was no official algorithm update report coming from Google, and as the pandemic hit hard in March and April globally, many SEO experts relate these spikes (recorded in most Google Algorithm Update checkers) simply to a big change in user behaviour induced by the lockdown. 

However, there are still those who think that these changes took place due to unconfirmed incremental updates, especially as Google confirmed its team had taken numerous actions to mitigate the spread of fake news during the initial weeks of the pandemic. 

This led to the volatility in rankings within the Health and Wellness industry wherein high-authority websites tend to have assisted exposure. For example, here’s a search behavior graph showing the rise of queries related to mental health:

(Image Source: Medium)

As there was no official announcement coming from Google about these fluctuations, we simply have to ascribe these changes to the lockdown-induced circumstances happening across the globe. Or do we?

May 2020 Google Broad Core Update

This huge Google algorithm update was rolled out on May 4th. Danny Sullivan announced the update via Twitter: 

Dubbed the “May 2020 Core Update,” it caused much turbulence and volatility within the rankings and metrics across the globe. Here’s a graph showing the data recorded at that time: 

(Image Source: SEMRush)

The volatility score peaked at 9.4 points, which means this Google update was even bigger than the January one that had a volatility score of 8. Various categories were hit hard, across both mobile- and desktop-based searches, some of which included: Arts & Entertainment (especially in organic), Online Communities, Real Estate, Travel, Events, Health, Pets & Animals, and People & Society. 

Much like it is the case almost every Google search algorithm update, some industries were hit in a positive way:

(Image Source: SEMRush)

Taking into account the influence of the coronavirus outbreak, it is clear that the news and media outlets would have experienced a major increase in search trends even without this broad core algorithm update as a catalyst. 

June 2020 Google Algorithm Update (Unconfirmed) 

Even though this update was an apparent one according to many, Google didn’t officially address this one. The SEMrush sensor, however, recorded volatility scores of 8.6, placing this unconfirmed change within the core algorithm update ballpark. Other ranking trackers caught huge fluctuations as well. CognitiveSEO Signals, for instance, recorded higher volatility scores for this unofficial update than for the official May 2020 Core Update.

The categories that experienced the biggest oscillations include:

• Health
• Law & Government
• Science
• Computers & Electronics
• Finance

Another scenario could be at play here. As some experts claim, there’s a possibility that these scores happened due to May’s core update rollback. The jury is still out on this one. 

August 2020 Google Algorithm Update (Unconfirmed) 

The summer of 2020 recorded another mysterious event as dramatic changes were reported on August 10th. Namely, an alleged system bug (or an algorithm test that went haywire) caused a number of low-ranking websites to reach the top of Google’s SERPs. This resulted in numerous top-tier, high-authority websites losing their hard-earned high positions in the SERPs.   

It took Google several days to reverse the damage. 

Another update was (apparently) rolled out on August 16th. It was a patch-based update that rolled back the algorithm to May 2020 parameters, with a goal to override all the minor changes that happened during the summer. 

December 2020 Google Core Update

On December 3rd, the SEO community received an early Christmas gift – the December 2020 Google Core Update. Although it took several weeks to roll out and fully manifest its overall impact on the rankings, this algorithm tweak showed the average SERP volatility score of 9.4 very early on. 

(Image Source: SEMRush)

The industries that were affected the most across both desktop and mobile searches, include Health, Real Estate, and Law & Government, while Travel and Finance recorded high volatility rates on desktop. Jobs/Education and Pets/Animals sectors were influenced the most on mobile-based searches.  

The SEO community wasn’t too thrilled with the timing of the December 2020 core update. Even though it took place after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the SEOs weren’t happy that Google couldn’t wait for Christmas to pass as well. 

On the other hand, Google’s John Mueller didn’t see any problems with the timing for an update this big, regardless of the fact that numerous businesses were greatly damaged conversion-wise as pre-Christmas is the period when sales surge the most. 

Summary: The Core of the “Update Problem”

Google core updates are an inevitable part of the SEO landscape. They are a great way to improve the relevancy of the results for each query made by the end-user and are also useful for testing our adaptive skills as SEOs. Negative impacts on the rankings are simply part of the deal and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for mending or preventing the potential damage. 

What you CAN do during the rollout period, however, is track the KPIs, read raw metrics, perform actionable data analysis and draw valuable insights. You can always keep a close eye on what other SEO specialists are doing and what they have to say on the topic. Google does provide guidelines on what to do if you get negatively hit, but we recommend postponing any dramatic actions for after core updates finish their rollouts. 

Let’s start with some interesting facts and stats. In 2019 alone, Google has accounted for 2.3 trillion inquiries performed across its search engine. Nearly 68% of the clicks that take place on the first page in the SERPs go to the first five organic results, while the results ranked 6 to 10 account for only 3.73% of the clicks. And with 81% of daily users searching for either a product or service, what does this mean for your agency, your clients, and their (as well as yours) direct competitors?

It means we are all in a modern warfare scenario. 

But unlike in Call of Duty where the enemy is a team of Russian forces (who else?) and the objective is conquering a geographical location, we are here battling for a different kind of real estate – the coveted first page in Google results. Top ranking results is the place to be, for both you and your clients. But every once in a while, a digital marketing agency hits the proverbial wall and start threading water with its own productivity, strategies, resources, expertise, and overall success. Or, a company is simply at the very beginning of its digital marketing journey and is merely lacking funds. 

Somewhere along the line, this can happen to anyone. But unlike those businesses that refuse to admit their predicament and tend to turn a blind eye to obvious workflow bottlenecks, an agency that recognizes its own bind is already one step closer to bouncing back than those that don’t. 

This is where white label SEO comes into play as either a quick-fix or long-term solution, depending on your strategy and your overarching goals. 

So, whether you are an SEO agency facing certain issues in terms of resources or you are simply looking to expand your services portfolio by offering SEO solutions to your clients in order to grow as a business – white label SEO is a highly effective solution.

But before we delve into the actual benefits and best practice tips, let’s cover the basics.  

What are White Label Services?

The term “white labelling” comes from the practice in which a manufacturer’s brand (or logo) is removed from the product and/or service so the product/service can be labelled by another brand, a brand requested by the party purchasing the product or service. The purchaser then resells the product/service to the end-user as their own product. 

How White Label Services Work in the SEO Context

In the SEO industry, this notion isn’t too obscure as these deals happen quite often. Most typically, an agency that is lacking SEO resources would partner with an external SEO company that will tackle the SEO work for the clients of the former agency. The concept is also known as “Private Label SEO” and is often used by digital marketing agencies and website/software development companies to either resolve certain workflow issues or round up their service portfolio without increasing their overhead costs.

White Label SEO VS Outsourcing SEO Services

For those of you wondering – How is white label different from outsourcing? – let’s clear this up. Though outsourcing SEO services and offering white label-based SEO may seem like two identical concepts, they are not. Cut from the same cloth, yes. But not exactly the same. 

Essentially, outsourcing SEO services involves hiring a company to do the work for you in a transparent manner, without re-labelling the services or assimilating them with your own brand. Outsourced SEO-based projects most typically happen because the company isn’t ready to allocate any major resources or in-house personnel to these projects at that particular moment. 

Hiring white label services, however, involves purchasing an unmarked product or service and reselling it to your own clients as one of your own assets. Not only do you get the finished product with this arrangement, but you are also provided with all the underlying data,  processes, and resources to back your “work” up. 

Main Advantages of Using White Label SEO 

Opting for a proper white label SEO company and knowing how to leverage it for the most prolific results can do wonders for your agency in terms of building your brand, entering new markets for future opportunities, increasing revenue, and – ultimately – growing as an agency.

Let’s tackle some of the most prominent advantages of hiring white label SEO services. 

More Reach and Improved Client Acquisition Strategy 

White labelling, regardless of the niche, is a two way street in terms of benefits. Both sides of the deal gain some kind of advantage, whether it’s financial or an opportunity-based one. This is especially true in terms of client gain. Both the SEO service provider and the agency reselling the service can use this type of collaboration to grow their client base, boost organic visits, and tap into new demographics for lead generation purposes. 

The vital aspect of gaining new clients is improving your reach across wider target audiences and doing that as diversely as possible. Reaching potential customers outside your target demographic improves your online visibility and helps you further build your brand.

The Single Point of Contact for Your Own Clients 

Your clients will be happy to get an entire set of digital services from a single agency. When they have a single point of contact in terms of hiring all the services they need, they will obviate a lot of hassle that comes with finding the right agency capable of providing them with all-encompassing marketing and SEO solutions. 

As the digital marketing landscape is currently quite saturated, and with agencies and solopreneurs offering a seemingly similar quality of service – finding the perfect SEO agency for your (and your clients’) unique needs and wants can be a tiresome process. The screening process that is involved in choosing an SEO partner can be a tall order in a niche wherein the agencies and solo consultants tend to over-sell their expertise and overall capabilities. When your clients get an all-around service from a single company they trust, this hassle is curbed.  

Improved Cost-Efficiency 

In a brand-driven ecosystem, where we tend to overpay for products and services just because they feature a recognizable logo (a certain biblical fruit comes to mind), it is hard to track down a logically priced product and/or service. The same rule of thumb can be detected in the SEO market where the pricing deals can be overblown, especially when you know the backend of the industry. 

Opting for white label SEO is typically a less costly alternative when compared to the current pricing standard. This is partially because the absence of a brand creates an environment in which you are only paying for the actual services performed in the project, without the added brand value. When you subsequently stamp your own brand onto the finished product, you can sell it at competitive rates to your own clients. 

Marketing agencies are then capable of overriding the need for a dedicated, in-house SEO team of their own, resulting in the opportunity to relocate a huge portion of their resources to other projects.

Better Scalability

As more customers will be coming your way, your business is bound to expand. Buying white-labelled SEO services without doing the actual heavy (and time-consuming) lifting enables you to fix the areas of your business that require more resources, improve on your agency’s strengths that make your brand unique, as well as optimize your other non-SEO workflows. 

Most marketing agencies start at a micro-scale level and aren’t capable of hiring highly skilled experts right away, let alone assembling avid teams in all departments. Choosing to go with white label SEO services elegantly bridges this gap until you have enough resources to build your own in-house team of experienced SEOs. 

How to Create Top-Tire White Label SEO Strategy 

Build a White Label Control Panel in a Spoke-Hub Manner

Quality communication channels are the very basis of a white label deal. We suggest creating a spoke-hub dashboard where you can properly communicate with both – your own clients and the team that performs SEO-related tasks for you. Ideally, the white label company should provide you with the type of workflow where everything is streamlined – from content delivery to metrics tracking and analysis of your client’s data. 

Practical tips:

• Be sure that this control panel is customizable so your agency can stamp its own branding and therefore keep the entire experience consistent and the whole workflow as tight as possible 
• Be sure that the reports are visually consistent with your brand
• Create URLs that act as your website’s subdomains 
• Make sure your reporting tools are white label-friendly for personalized client correspondence 
• Emails through which you communicate with your own clients should have no traces of the “other” company’s involvement 
• Should your agency have its own dashboard, be sure to ask your SEO partner for APIs through which you can easily incorporate vital features 

Choose the Right Pricing Plans for Your Services 

You have to figure out what the optimal price of your SEO services would be for reselling them to your own clients. In order to do that, you must have a clear overview of the SEO market in the white label context. In other words, to have quality insight into:

• How much regular SEO services cost and how the price should be scaled according to the scope of work.
• What the average price for buying white label SEO services is and how the price is typically scaled in the white label context.
• How much you should be charging for the reselling of those SEO services to your own clients so that your profit margin is optimal. 

   Once you’ve done a thorough research and gained sufficient insight into this data, you can tailor your own pricing plans accordingly. 

Deploy High-Quality White Label SEO Tool

There’s always an option to utilize an all-encompassing white label SEO tool like SE Ranking capable of performing and automating all SEO-related tasks for you. This strategy is cost-effective and quite economical in terms of time consumption. A robust and multi-faceted platform can provide you with all the pertinent metrics and help you make data-driven decisions when creating and tweaking your SEO, social media, or B2B strategies. SE Ranking is built for SEOs of all expertise levels with scalable prices for easy cost optimization. 

Bundle Up SEO With Other Services 

If possible, make sure that your agency doesn’t focus on one type of service only. Startups typically tend to put all of their eggs in one basket and then, if that doesn’t pan out the way they planned and as quickly as they hoped, their business soon starts to face serious resource-related issues. 

It is perfectly ok for an agency, especially a young one, to have one main expertise as their primary source of income. However, offering a wider range of services increases your revenue opportunity manifold, which is one of the main reasons agencies opt for white label services in the first place. 

Digital marketing agencies have a great opportunity to provide a wide array of services that complement one another perfectly, thus creating a bundle deal opportunity that will turn your one-off clients into a recurring source of revenue. For example, when a company offers web design services, these are typically one-off deals and are not a constant source of income. Bundling up SEO services into this equation will solve this problem as SEO projects take at least 3 to 6 months in order to produce tangible results. This way, you can snatch long-term clients from the previously untapped market. 

Summary

To take the long view of your agency’s potential and future success, one must pay equal attention to both – assembling an avid and capable team of skilled individuals, as well as mastering your workload- and service-based allocation strategies. Only then will you be able to optimize the utilization of your resources and achieve high ROI. Opting for white label SEO services can be one of the main pillars of this type of strategy.

We’ve updated our list of our top 25 best SEO Chrome Extensions for Digital Marketing  for 2024! Digital Marketing tools are always evolving and changing and this update reflects what we are doing in 2024 and beyond.

In digital marketing, using the right Google Chrome extensions can boost productivity and streamline processes like keyword research, link management, and site audits. Many of these extensions integrate seamlessly with tools like Google Search Console, providing instantaneous insights and metrics related to search performance. With the power of Google Chrome, you can enhance your SEO efforts and SEO performance using tools that simplify day-to-day tasks. Here are 25 essential SEO Chrome extensions that every marketer and SEO professional should have in their toolkit:

• Detailed SEO Extension
• SEO Minion
• SEO Search Simulator by NightWatch
• SEO Meta in 1 Click
• MozBar
• SimilarWeb
• Keywords Everywhere
• Check My Links
• Lighthouse
• SEOQuake
• Wappalyzer
• PageSpeed Insights
• Link Redirect Trace
• Hunter
• Ahrefs SEO Toolbar
• FATRANK – Keyword Rank Checker
• BuiltWith Technology Profiler
• Bitly
• SeoStack Keyword Tool
• LinkMiner
• NoFollow
• BuzzSumo
• Rank Math Chrome Extension
• Mangools SEO Extension
• Redirect Path Extension

Why Are These Tools Important?

In SEO, efficiency is critical for search engines. Tools like SEO Meta Inspector are invaluable for inspecting a webpage’s metadata, ensuring that it is optimised for search engines. Chrome extensions provide real-time analysis and allow users to perform essential tasks like internal and external link audits, meta description optimisations, and keyword research without leaving the browser. By using these tools, you can easily:

• Enhance SEO performance by auditing critical elements like meta tags, robots tags, and page titles.
• Simplify complex tasks like fixing broken links, monitoring HTTP headers, and managing redirect chains.
• Track essential metrics such as domain authority, search volume, and page authority, which help shape data-driven SEO strategies.

1. Detailed SEO Extension

The Detailed SEO Extension provides quick insights into a page’s meta tags, headers, and structured data, giving users a full view of their SEO performance. With this extension, you can check for the presence of internal links, identify nofollow links, and assess the page’s meta title for search engines in seconds.

2. SEO Minion

SEO Minion is perfect for on-page SEO tasks like checking meta descriptions, SERP previews, and finding invalid links. It can also export CSV files for further analysis of internal and external links, making it a versatile tool for SEO professionals.

3. SEO Search Simulator by NightWatch

The SEO Search Simulator helps marketers simulate Google search results from different locations, allowing you to track your search engine rankings across the globe without needing a VPN. It’s a great tool for improving search performance and understanding how your SEO strategy fares in various regions.

4. SEO Meta in 1 Click

SEO Meta in 1 Click provides all the necessary meta SEO data, including meta tags, word count, page headings, and meta robots tags. It’s extremely helpful for web developers and SEOs who need to perform quick, in-browser audits of a particular page. Similar to Meta SEO Inspector, this tool provides comprehensive insights into a page’s metadata, aiding in quick, in-browser audits.

5. MozBar

This extension is simply a must-have for every SEO expert or a digital marketer out there. MozBar allows users to create custom SEO searches based on the search engine, city, or country. It also offers users access to SEO metrics while surfing the web and allows marketers to test the difficulty of the keywords they are targeting. MozBar is also rather useful for understanding the SEO of competitor sites and better optimising your own site.

Our Favorite Mozbar Features:

• On-Page Content Suggestions – This is a great feature for those who want more flexibility in terms of analysing the pages and keyword combinations, aside from the ones you are (probably) already tracking within your Moz Pro Campaigns. Moz does this by taking the top results for the keyword you’re optimising for, recognising and fetching the most popular topics, and finally ordering these topics by the level of relevancy.
• Page Optimisation – This handy feature allows you to obtain instant Page Optimisation details for the keyword/page of your choice. You can simply enter the keyword according to which you want to optimise a certain page, and Moz will provide you with Page Optimisation factors and actionable suggestions – all in one view.
• Link Explorer’s Spam Score – Moz users with a paid API subscription have the privilege of seeing Link Explorer’s Spam Score. Quite a useful feature for SEOs.

6. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb provides SEO professionals with traffic data, including site rankings, search volume, and social media platform metrics. It is perfect for assessing your competitors’ website performance and understanding how your digital marketing strategy compares.

7. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere shows monthly search volume, CPC, and competition metrics for any keyword you type into the search bar. This extension is ideal for keyword research and optimizing your content based on related keywords.

8. Check My Links

This tool helps you quickly identify broken links on any webpage. Check My Links scans the page, highlighting valid links in green and broken ones in red. This makes it easy for SEO professionals to maintain a clean internal and external link structure on their websites.

9. Lighthouse

Lighthouse is an all-in-one developer tool that audits site speed, accessibility, and SEO performance. It provides recommendations on how to improve the loading times and website performance, helping with Google search results rankings.

10. SEOQuake

SEOQuake offers detailed SEO analysis of web pages, including HTTP status codes, backlinks, and meta descriptions. It can export data to a CSV file, making it an ideal tool for detailed analysis of competitors’ SEO strategies.

11. Wappalyzer

This extension detects the technologies behind websites, such as CMS, analytics platforms, and social media accounts integrations. Wappalyzer is perfect for those looking to analyze competitors’ tech stacks for a competitive edge.

12. PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights provides real-time insights into how to optimise your site for faster loading times. This extension analyses the source code and offers suggestions to enhance site speed, a critical factor in improving Google search results.

13. Link Redirect Trace

Link Redirect Trace simplifies tracking redirect chains and HTTP headers. This tool helps identify issues with your redirect path, ensuring that your SEO strategy is not being undermined by faulty redirects.

14. Hunter

Hunter allows marketers to find and verify email addresses on a domain. It’s ideal for link-building campaigns and outreach efforts, especially when you need to connect with webmasters for backlinks or guest posts.

15. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

This tool integrates with Ahrefs, offering real-time data on backlink profiles, keyword difficulty, and domain authority. It’s perfect for SEO professionals conducting in-depth search engine analysis and tracking their competitors’ SEO efforts. Additionally, integrating this tool with Google Search Console can provide even more comprehensive data for search engine analysis.

16. FATRANK – Keyword Rank Checker

FATRANK is a quick tool to check your website’s ranking for specific keywords in Google search results. It’s handy for spot-checking keyword difficulty and ranking performance without needing to leave the browser.

17. BuiltWith Technology Profiler

BuiltWith helps you understand what technologies and developer tools a website uses. For technical marketers, this extension provides insights into the software frameworks behind your competitors’ sites.

18. Bitly

Bitly shortens and tracks URLs, offering insights into link engagement across social media channels. It’s a valuable tool for marketers running campaigns on social media platforms and email marketing.

19. SeoStack Keyword Tool

This extension generates lists of long-tail keywords based on real-time data, making it easier to optimise content for related keywords. SeoStack helps create keyword lists for blog posts and PPC campaigns.

20. LinkMiner

LinkMiner allows you to check the strength of backlinks, detect nofollow links, and identify broken links. It’s an effective tool for link-building and SEO audits.

21. NoFollow

This extension highlights nofollow links and meta robots tags, making it easier for marketers to manage internal links and follow search engine best practices.

22. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo helps content marketers track social media engagement metrics and discover popular content in their niche. It’s a go-to tool for monitoring the success of your content on social media platforms.

23. Rank Math Chrome Extension

Rank Math assists in optimising your WordPress site for SEO by providing keyword analysis and suggestions directly from your dashboard. It’s great for SEO tasks like enhancing meta SEO and optimising meta descriptions.

24. Mangools SEO Extension

Mangools helps you analyse keyword difficulty, backlinks, and SEO performance on competitors’ websites. It’s ideal for tracking search volume and improving your SEO strategy.

25. Redirect Path Extension

This tool tracks HTTP status codes and redirect chains, ensuring no issues are present in your website’s performance. It’s vital for marketers optimising sites for better search performance.

Conclusion

Incorporating these 25 Chrome extensions into your daily workflow will streamline your SEO efforts and digital marketing strategies. Whether you’re auditing a site’s meta descriptions, conducting keyword research, or analysing internal and external links, these tools can significantly boost your SEO performance and help you stay competitive in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing.

“SEO is a field that changes over time, and the most successful SEOs embrace change and turn it into an opportunity.”

The 2010 quote by Matt Cutts was an early implication of the extent to which the search ecosystem was bound to change over the next few years.Indeed, the field kept developing, always raising the bar for content quality and online marketing innovation. Correspondingly, as search algorithms advanced, webmasters and their client companies needed to rethink most of their strategies in order to climb the SERP ladder.

Considering such a rapid pace of change, it is easy to see why there is still so much space for making mistakes even in companies that have been focusing on SEO for years. For it is not only black-hat and otherwise manipulative techniques that can take a website down in search; some unintentional mistakes that keep reappearing on the web are frequently a reason websites aren’t seeing any advancements.

When SEO strategy goes wrong

The long history of Google’s updates has brought multiple unfortunate search scenarios even to some of the world’s top websites and these are perhaps the best examples of a damage inappropriate SEO strategies can lead to.

Namely, few years ago, when Google search was mostly a field of exploration, many companies believed they could improve their rankings by trying to outsmart the engine. However, not even the giants such as BBC, Washington Post and Engadget could go away without a punishment for using forbidden techniques. When BMW was given a death penalty by Google and was removed from the face of web for three days, it became clear that even the largest SEO budgets would take you nowhere if they are not directed to the right channels.

Even though this was in the early stages of SEO growth, some companies still believe that using outdated techniques is the right way to achieve better rankings. However, with Google closely watching your efforts, it is virtually impossible to build a reputation in an unnatural way. Therefore, you need to carefully plan your strategy and make sure you never make any of potentially devastating mistakes that can kill your rankings and thus hurt your business. Below, we’ll list some of the most serious issues that require your attention even before you start planning a content strategy.

1. Generating thin content

Thin content is a term search marketers use to refer to the lack of posts and pages that offer value for the readers. Even though nowadays Google can detect such content much faster than few years ago, is still an important issue in the SEO world. In terms of quality, Google defines thin content as the one that provides little or no added value for a reader:

• – Automatically generated content
• – Thin affiliate pages
• – Content from other sources (i.e. scraped content or low-quality guest posts)
• – Doorway pages

Clearly, any attempt of adding thin content to a website would lead to a penalty and even a single page that contains such resources can become a subject to Google’s Manual Action notice, which will push you down the search display. Instead, what you should focus on is providing relevant information shaped in a way that can be easily recognized by Google as a credible source of information. This goes for both internal content generation and any link building activities, as the effort to provide constant flow of valuable content is the major factor of achieving search success. As Adam Audette, Chief Knowledge Officer at RKG notes:

“The days of SEO being a game outsmarting algorithms are over. Today content strategy and valuable, sustainable strategies are essential, not just tricks and links.”

2. Not integrating content and SEO strategies

The emergence of content marketing can be seen as a natural evolution of SEO techniques that followed the rules Google kept imposing on web masters. Even though content marketing has existed for decades, it only recently started to be associated with SEO as one of the key factors of successful online expansion.

Today, it could be said that content generation is the driving force in the world of web marketing, and is also a strategy that needs to be integrated with SEO efforts. In a 2013 video, Matt Cutts explained why the balance between these two is the greatest possible way to improve search rankings, suggesting that a focus should be on creating compelling content rather than just link building. Indeed, over the last few years, we have seen a rapid growth of inbound marketing whose main idea is first to come up with value proposition and then worry about building links.

This view is supported by a recent research by linkbird, which revealed that a growing number of businesses are turning to a holistic approach to SEO and internet marketing. According to the study, 10% of companies state that combining SEO and content strategy is one of the greatest challenges they are seeing in their online marketing efforts. Certainly, content strategy does involve making different decisions regarding budget planning and implementation and this is what makes it a complex business area. On the other hand, given that most respondents report significant benefits from such an approach, SEO and content integration is definitely an efficient way to do online marketing in the modern age.

3. Building unnatural links

Producing relevant content is not only a way to engage audience and establish authority, but also a path to building natural links. Namely, with an established editorial schedule and occasional industry publications, your website is more likely to generate leads and eventually links from relevant websites.

Therefore, content strategy may be also seen as a key to generating quality backlinks and avoiding potentially spammy techniques. As one of the signals that tells Google what your business is about, your website’s backlink profile should not only look natural, but actually be natural, which you can only achieve by strategic content placement.

Unfortunately, aggressive and unnatural link building is still one of the most frequent mistakes businesses make when trying to improve their online reputation. Here, two specific issues that can harm the website’s reputation are anchor texts stuffed with exact match keywords and aggressive guest posting whose aim is to get links rather than build authority. Both, however, have become techniques search engines are not particularly fond of and should therefore be avoided.

Instead, a recommendation is to combine multiple link building strategies and create content that can be distributed through a variety of different channels. Last year’s survey by Moz gives an overview of strategies that are found to be most effective by 315 people who participated in the survey and these are obviously the ones you should focus on to ensure the best quality of your backlinks.

4. Serving duplicate content

Most website owners are familiar with the fact that duplicate content can not only hurt search rankings but also lead to a penalty. However, even today people are not quite sure what duplicate content really means and how to solve possible issues with it.

Google’s guidelines on duplicate content give an overview of best practices to handle pages with similar or identical content, yet most SEO experts say that the lack of canonicalization for duplicate pages is one of the most frequent mistakes they are seeing. This is because webmasters often tend to forget to include the right tags to pages that point to similar content, especially in cases when a website is transferred to a new domain.

It is important to note here that certain instances of duplicate content on your pages are not likely to get you penalized by Google, but fixing such mistakes is probably the easiest thing you can do. First, you can check the state of your content with tools such as Siteliner or Plagiarism Checker and then consider how you can proceed with handling the issue. Some of the basic guidelines say that you should be careful about:

• – 301 redirects
• – Using top-level domains for handling country-specific content
• – Content syndication, whereupon you should always include a link to the original resource
• – Boilerplate repetitions and “empty” pages

5. Slow page loading speed

Page load speed largely determines how people see your website and is an important factor in website optimization. Although the web has been buzzing about the importance of website’s speed performance for general user experience, recent studies point to the fact that there a worryingly large number of pages still doesn’t perform well in this aspect. As revealed in Portent study that looked at 94 million page views across 16 ecommerce websites, 50% of websites take five or more seconds to load. With an average user leaving a page if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds, it is clear why this is bad not only for ecommerce, but for all the other websites too.

As an aspect that plays a great role in user experience, page load speed does have some effect on search rankings. Even though it is one of 200 of signals Google takes into account when considering your website and not the one you’d be penalized for, optimizing page load time is certainly a way to make your visitors love your website. In relation to introducing page speed as a ranking factor, Matt Cutts points out that this is intended to raise awareness among webmasters about the importance of optimizing for excellent user experience. Besides, this is one of the things that can be improved relatively easily, which is what makes it even more important.

“Speeding up your website is a great thing to do in general. Visitors to your site will be happier (and might convert more or use your site more), and a faster web will be better for all.”

6. Choosing fast results over quality long-term reputation

One of the issues that is still dominant today is the tendency to choose fast results over those that can bring long-term benefits. Most businesses already know that AdWords campaigns can deliver fast and easily measurable results, which is what makes them a dominant priority in online marketing. In a BIA/Kelsey study, 60.6% of SMBs stated they were investing in this type of advertising because it brings instant results.

However, such results cannot always be seen with other forms of SEO that fast. Link building, content creation and developing authority online are all activities that take time and effort. Yet, these are the ones that are more likely to establish a brand as an authoritative information resource across different industries.  This is confirmed in a  HubSpot report that, among other things, revealed that business websites with 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages.  Furthermore, companies that heavily invest in inbound marketing are seeing increased benefits from combining multiple growth strategies, which is another implication that long-term work pays off more.

Of course, to build a website that is a true lead generation and conversion machine, small businesses sometimes need months or even years. This is why often it is a good idea to outsource certain services from a reputable SEO agency and thus define the right pace of development for your business.

7. Not tracking your website’s performance

Analyzing website’s performance is a critical activity, regardless of whether you outsource SEO services or have in-house marketing teams. However, this doesn’t only involve checking Google Analytics once in a while to see how many visitors you have attracted, but also referring to Webmaster Tools to early identify potential errors. Chuck Price from Search Engine Watch made an excellent point about why mot tracking website’s performance can be a deathly mistake for your website:

“In my experience, which includes conducting 200 link audits in 2013, most reconsideration requests are turned around in 30 days or less. That said, it’s reasonable to conclude that 95 percent of all websites receiving a penalty don’t even bother to attempt a recovery.”

Obviously, the fact that only 5% of businesses ever try to eliminate the devastating effects of a penalty is quite alarming and can perhaps be attributed to inconsistent performance tracking. Therefore, regular checks or onsite audits can help you avoid a penalty in the first place because they give you an opportunity to react immediately if you detect any deviations.

Conclusions

To rule the world of Google search, one needs to work constantly and be ready to introduce new techniques on a regular basis. This is essentially important in the era of tough search competition, when only a perfect balance between content marketing and SEO efforts can bring  loyal readership and, therefore, loyal customers. Clearly, making any of these seven mistakes can hurt more than your rankings; it can hide you from the eyes you’re trying to reach and thus impede the progress of your business.

Additional resources:

• https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/
• http://moz.com/blog/link-building-survey-2014-results
• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en
• http://offers.hubspot.com/marketing-benchmarks-from-7000-businesses

Most people won’t make use of services of a particular company or individual without first checking them online, which is why having a negative result on the first page of search results can be terribly detrimental for business. Unfortunately, even if you have an almost impeccable record, with the freedom that internet provides, someone might easily tarnish your name, whether that was their intention or not. This could lead to loss of clients and a huge number of missed opportunities, and is not something that you can leave to chance if you want to run a successful business. Luckily, there are a number of ways to repair, or at least limit the damage negative search results can bring to your company or you personally.

How are negative results created?

There are a number of ways in which your reputation might be damaged without your fault. For one, there are a lot of websites out there that concentrate on user reviews. Some of the more prominent ones can have a great impact on search engines and are often found near the top of the SERPs. It doesn’t matter if you have had hundreds of satisfied customers, if just one negative review on a website of that type shows up on the first page, your web reputation will suffer.

Bad press is another common cause of headaches. You or your company might have been connected to an incident indirectly and with no fault of your own, but as long as you are mentioned in a high profile article that deals with the incident, you will automatically be associated with it.

Naturally, you can always become a victim of intentional slander or negative campaign, run by your competitors, angry bloggers, or just about anyone else, which, if done with enough persistence, could also seriously damage the way you are perceived by the community.

What can online reputation management do for you?

There are a number of things that can be done about this, by you, or by professional online reputation management services provider. Basically, there are two approaches, the first one focusing on removing the negative content, and the second one on creating or promoting enough positive or neutral content to push the negative one down in search results.

The removal of negative content is quite tricky, and almost only possible if you are actually a victim of slander. It usually involves threatening with legal action, and can be quite nasty. Naturally you could appeal to honesty of the people who posted the content, present your side of the story and hope that they’ll realize that they have wronged you. Less reputable companies sometimes even try and engage in a negative SEO campaign, but this is never recommended, and rarely manages to produce long term results. The only thing that this kind of approach could bring you is more negative press, only this time it would actually be well deserved.

The more common and successful approach to handling negative search results is populating the first, or a couple of first search results pages with neutral or positive content about you or your company. There are a number of things that you can do in order to achieve this. The following advice applies to individuals and companies alike. First of all, make sure that you have domain names containing your or your company’s name, which you will use to publish relevant and truthful facts about you or your business. While this used to be much more important for rankings before Google’s Exact Domain Name algorithm update, it still holds some value.

The next thing that you should do is start running SEO campaigns for favorable content that you own, or that is third party owned. You can create a number of websites that shouldn’t have a problem ranking for your name or the name of your company, but that is not where you should stop. Try and get as many mentions as you can on influential websites that are likely to rank well. This includes blogs, press release sites, reviews websites, sites that are giving you a chance to make a personal or company profile, as well as YouTube and everything along those lines.

Finally, you should make sure that you have a profile on all major social networks, especially Linkedin, as they are also quite likely to show near the top of search results and replace whatever it was that got you worried in the first place.

Even though, depending on the amount and type of reputation management that you require, this can be a lengthy and expensive process, the benefits will always outweigh the costs, allowing you to breathe freely once again without having to worry about negative results driving away your potential customers and tarnishing your name.