White Hat & Black Hat SEO: What’s The Difference? (And WHY You Should Care)

White Hat and Black Hat SEO take their name from an old Western movie trope. One is good. One is bad.

 

Both are capable of getting you results. But the differences between the two can mean the difference between success and failure for your business.

 

Search engines like Google and Bing are constantly changing their ranking algorithms in secret. And nobody knows for certain how they function.

 

Search engines change their algorithms for two main reasons:

 

• It provides fair competition
• It delivers users the most relevant and trustworthy content

 

Search engines have general guidelines, that when followed, help them find, index and rank your site using bots that perpetually crawl the internet in search of new and updated pages.

 

What is White Hat SEO

Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare?

 

“Slow and steady wins the race,” was it’s moral.

 

For this analogy, White Hat SEO is our tortoise. Slower on the go, thus requiring more time and effort to reach the winning post. But a victory by way of White Hat SEO tactics is always more virtuous and rewarding.

 

White Hat SEO puts search engines second to the human experience. But still follows the general guidelines of said search engines to the letter. No shortcuts or shenanigans.  

 

White Hat SEO respects the algorithm. And utilises legitimate SEO techniques to increase search traffic organically. Like offering site visitors original, high-quality content that they can’t find anywhere else.

 

It starts with creating a content strategy. Before you write or film anything. Building pieces of content one on top of the other will present opportunities for mutual linking. It paves a clearer path for users to navigate your site. Eventually converting them into loyal visitors and regular customers.

 

You’ll need to identify the best keywords to use. Appropriate use of the right keywords across your content, especially in titles and headings, is a sure fire way to catch the attention of search engines. Conducting a little research using tools like Google Keyword Planner is a great way to uncover the best keywords for your article or page.     

 

Try using intriguing title tags that include your main keyword(s). Title tags are displayed in your content’s URL, search results and when a page is shared on social networks. So it’s important that yours are attention-grabbing.

 

Don’t forget to link. Linking internally is an effective way to guide visitors through your site. And links to high-authority external sites will boost your own credibility with search engines and trustworthiness with users.

 

How easy is it for visitors to find what they’re looking for on your website? Improving navigation, simplifying site architecture and increasing page-load speed creates a better user experience that keeps people on your page for longer.

White Hat SEO strategies promote fair and honest competition for better ranking on search engines. With its emphasis on customer satisfaction, optimised user experience, quality content and always abiding by search engine guidelines, White Hat SEO is a proven route to better rankings. And staying in the good graces of Google.

 

What is Black Hat SEO

The vengeful gunslinger. The boastful hare. Black Hat SEO cheats to achieve better rankings on search engines by using aggressive techniques that target and influence search engines directly. At the expense of the human experience.  

 

They’re tricks like using spam blogs or publishing low-quality, duplicated content not intended to attract real people. Or scraping and plagiarizing content.

 

It’s using software for link farming that connects you to other sites with low-quality content for the sole purpose of increasing visibility.

 

Keywords are good.

 

But keyword stuffing, the practice of overloading your content with keywords in an unnatural way, or using tiny or hidden text, is bad.

 

Using unrelated or irrelevant keywords is also frowned upon. “Kim Kardashian” is probably a popular search term. But plastering her name across your content in hopes of winning a couple of extra clicks is cheating.

 

Gateway pages bursting with keyword phrases, but no real meaningful content, that use JavaScript or meta refresh tags to redirect users to a different page without their knowledge, are definitely not best practice.

 

It’s important to compete fairly. Don’t publish negative campaigns against your competitors. Or report them as Black Hat practitioners when they aren’t.

Some Black Hat SEO agents will even go as far as hacking other sites. And after gaining access, place their own content there. Often without the site owner being aware of it.  

 

Search engines do not appreciate any of these dodgy practices. They’re unethical and punishable offences that could ultimately end up crippling your site.  

 

We are not smarter than the algorithm. While it might be possible to get away with using certain Black Hat SEO techniques to steal some quick gains in the short term, search engines will eventually recognise these tactics for what they are. And be quick to meet swift digital justice.   

 

If you’re caught attempting to deceive search engines with Black Hat techniques, you can count on a poor ranking at the very least. In many cases, non-compliant or offending sites are temporarily, or even permanently, de-indexed altogether.

 

This means that no matter what search phrases are used, the de-indexed site will not appear in any search engine results. And the lack of a searchable online presence is a death knell to just about any business.

The temptation of securing some fast and easy results with Black Hat SEO may seem inviting. But you’re never going to beat the house. The search engine is the dealer. And the dealer holds all the cards. So why gamble with your business’ future?

 

Be the tortoise instead. Plan. Scheme. Plod. Put on a White Hat and take your time when practising SEO. Because “slow and steady” wins the rankings race every time.

 

Article first published here: White Hat & Black Hat SEO: What’s The Difference? (And WHY You Should Care)

What’s best for SEO: Squarespace or WordPress?

Let’s say you’re business isn’t getting the results you’d like. So you decide that it’s time for a website refresh.

 

But you’re also not a website developer. So ‘ease of use’ is going to be huge when it comes to deciding on a content management system (CMS).

 

You’ve done your homework. Narrowed it down to Squarespace and WordPress. But which CMS is going to deliver the best SEO results?

 

Who has the better, easier to use, features? Which system will get you ranking higher in search engines like Google?

 

We broke down the perks and pitfalls of both. And put together an objective comparison that will help you decide which one is best for you and your new business.

 

WordPress and SEO

WordPress is an open source platform. Which means its source code is available to anyone wishing to develop their own templates, themes and plugins. And because these elements can be shared or sold to users by their creators, it means an almost infinite number of functions and design options are at your disposal.  

 

That makes WordPress a very flexible platform where much of the code can be modified to suit your needs.

 

Combine that with its simplicity of use, and it’s easy to see why the platform has become so popular in recent years; powering close to 30% of the internet.

 

WordPress users make 41.7 million new posts and 60.5 million new comments each month. Every six months, WordPress registers 1.1 million new domains. And there are currently more than 44,600 WordPress plugins available.

 

But the enormity, accessibility and simplicity of WordPress doesn’t come without a few conditions and concessions.  

 

Take those 44,600+ plugins for example. They’re available with little to no quality control. So in the unregulated landscape of WordPress, the mileage really can vary when it comes to user-created content.

 

The best way to know whether or not something like a plugin is worth your time, or worthy of your site, is to check its customer reviews. When 92% of consumers are trusting peer recommendations over advertising, it’s hard to argue against the fact that social media marketing is more important than ever.

 

In terms of SEO, selecting the right plugins can be crucial to your site’s success. SEO specific plugins like Yoast, All In One and The SEO Framework feature automated tools that can be very useful to users not well-versed in SEO techniques.

 

Even if you already have some SEO experience, there are less-general plugins that focus on particular SEO elements which can still be of use to your site.  

 

But there’s more to WordPress than just plugins that give it a leg up on a lot of its competition.

Rich snippets are structured data markups that can be added to a site’s HTML. Adding rich snippets to your WordPress site will give search engines a better understanding of precisely what information each page on your site contains; which results in improved rankings.

Search engines take into account the loading speed of a website. And because WordPress gives you the opportunity to choose your hosting, it gives you greater control when it comes to optimising your site’s load speed. Another factor that has a significant impact on search engine rankings.

 

WordPress also offers a caching plugin that creates static versions of your content and applies other techniques that achieve a higher load speed. Which will allow you to set your speed code according to Google’s PageSpeed recommendations.

 

Squarespace and SEO

Unlike WordPress, Squarespace is not an open source platform. Only their developers are able to build tools for your use.

 

While this limits the sheer number of available tools, it maintains a consistent level of quality across all their offerings.

 

Elements like plugins are well tested before they’re made available. And if you do encounter a problem with a particular tool, their support team should fully understand your question due to their familiarity with the product.

 

The compromise with Squarespace is flexibility.

 

While its drag-and-drop interface is easy to use, even if you have zero tech or design experience, Squarespace is less responsive than WordPress.

 

On the other hand, Squarespace’s drag-and-drop model lets you see what your finished site will look like in real time as you’re building it. Unlike WordPress where pages need to be previewed or published before you can see how they’ll ultimately look. With Squarespace, your every move is automatically saved and shown to you in its ‘live’ version.

Squarespace does lack many of the SEO tools present inside WordPress. There are no SEO plugins. So you’re limited to captions, descriptions and extracts visible on the page for search engine rankings.

 

Rich snippets cannot be used directly. They can only be used through Google’s Data Highlighter tool. Which undoes some of the platforms surface convenience.

 

Sites created with Squarespace can only be hosted through Squarespace’s shared hosting service. So your hands are a bit tied when it comes to increasing the speed of your website loading; code cannot be adjusted to search engine requirements.

 

But there are benefits to Squarespace that search engines do value.

 

With Squarespace, you can generate the sitemap XML file. Or use the clear HTML markup.

 

Squarespace is an incredibly mobile-friendly platform. The importance of which in today’s climate cannot be denied.

 

With Squarespace, you can create the SSL version of your website; creating the kind of secure HTTPS website that search engines adore. You can also register your web page with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to show search engines that you exist and offer the valuable content.

 

It’s hard to pick a “winner”. And there’s no one platform we can recommend over another. Because user needs and experience levels can vary wildly.

 

If you’re a beginner that can’t be bothered with plugins and prefer simplicity, Squarespace can still earn you positive SEO gains through high-quality content, smart use of keywords and attractive SEO titles.

 

But if you’ve got a little experience, or are patient and willing to learn, the advanced tools available through WordPress truly set the sky as the limit when it comes to SEO for your new website.

 

Article first published here: What’s best for SEO: Squarespace or WordPress?

Why social media marketing is more important than ever

In what feels like the blink of an eye, social media marketing has gone from being “just another marketing tool” to being one of our most crucial marketing tools when it comes to ranking results on search engines like Google.

These days, it’s hard to achieve much without social. And its relevance, significance, and influence is only going to get larger as time goes by.

Need a reason why social media marketing is here for the long haul? Here’s five.

 

The potential of social media marketing is still being discovered

 

The longer social is around, and the more we use it, the more we’re discovering its cache of benefits. And that’s part of the medium’s relentless popularity; that one-two punch that provides access to a wider base of users and a broader base of marketing tools to help you achieve outstanding results.

In the past, social was viewed as something you might use to accessorize your approach to market positioning and search engine rankings. Today it’s the main event attraction. And its full potential is still being unlocked.

Social gives you an already developed audience It gives you the ability to target specific customer categories. Learn to use it the right way, and it becomes one of the most effective weapons in your marketing arsenal.

 

Social media marketing gives you better positioning in the market

 

Without a presence on social media, it’s almost like your business doesn’t exist. It’s more than an advertising tool. It’s the apparatus by which you’re able to improve and influence your overall positioning with the target market.  

Social provides a massive audience to draw potential customers from. But allows you to focus your marketing efforts on the users most likely to be interested in buying what you’re selling.

Go global. Advertise locally. It’s a platform with near endless possibilities.

Social networks let you use a variety of post-types too. From video clips to blog posts or short, sharp advertising lines – there’s something available to attract the attention of different users.

And on top of using to social to create and build a reputation for you or your brand, it’s a useful tool for education and driving traffic directly to your website. Which will help improve your positioning on search engines and increase conversions.

 

Community influence is an important branding factor

 

Word-of-mouth has always had a persuasive impact. And now that social provides everyone with a pulpit to preach from, word-of-mouth is more powerful now than ever before. According to Linkedin, 92% of consumers trust peer recommendations over advertising.

Good and bad experiences alike are shared via social networks. And because the world is now connected through social, news spreads like wildfire.

When reports are positive, it often results in new leads. And an attractive offer on your part can convert those new leads into new customers.  

There’s also the effect sharing can have on your business. When your content is engaging, whether that be words or images, it increases the likelihood that it will be shared by social media users who encounter it.

When your content gets shared on social networks, it improves your digital reputation, multiplies the effects of your marketing efforts and earns you new customers. That all leads to bigger profits and better returns on your investment.

 

Expanding your customer base through social media marketing

 

It’s not just the cool kids anymore. Everyone uses social media today. And most people are active with profiles on several different social networks simultaneously. So the ability to reach even the smallest group of total social media users is still astonishing compared to what was possible in the days before social.

This is not a fact wasted on different social media platforms either. They’re well aware of their own promise. That’s why many have developed their own marketing tools that can help grow your customer base.

You have to reach people before you can influence them. And tools that allow you to target relevant users with pinpoint accuracy, combined with new features like “live video,” allow you to publish quality content that accomplishes both quickly and at a fraction of traditional marketing costs.

 

Social media marketing achieves better ranking on search engines

 

If the proliferation of viral content has taught us anything, it’s that offering users quality content can result in a much broader customer base. Create a piece of content that goes viral, and you’ll see traffic to your website go up. And your search engine ranking results increase.   

Publishing quality, credible content is the best way to attract attention to your brand or business. Followers are apt to share content they find entertaining, informative or appealing with their friends and social network connections. Which will only increase your popularity and bolster your online presence. Quality content helps define your authority and appeals to the ranking factors that drive search engine results.

When users like your content and share it across the different social networks, it will gain you new followers, drive more organic traffic to your website, and increase the popularity of your channels.

As traffic grows and you continue to gain followers, visitors and customers, your ranking goes up. And as your ranking goes up, traffic increases and you gain more followers, visitors and customers. It’s a cycle.

And that cycle is in large part driven by content.

Social media marketing is more important than ever.

It’s an inexpensive means of achieving incredible reach. Which leads to engagement and causes conversions. It’s an effective way to generate brand awareness and drive more traffic to your site; ultimately converting consumers into passionate brand advocates.

These days, the customer journey more often than not begins online. And social media networks are among the most popular destinations for internet users today who now spend, on average, 135 minutes a day interacting on social platforms.

That’s up from 90 minutes a day just five years ago. And as this trend continues to move in this upward direction, making social media marketing part of your overall marketing mix will become more than just increasingly valuable. It will become downright essential.   

Article first published here: Why social media marketing is more important than ever

Blogger outreach best practices (Easy step-by-step process)

Imagine that you have the help from someone who has an influence on others to persuade them to follow your site. It sounds great and works very well, but to actively achieve that is a fairly complex task. You need to put a lot of effort into blogger outreach but it really is well worth it – the effects on your ranking can be quite spectacular.

 

What is blogger outreach

 

Blogger outreach is the process of attracting powerful influencers to promote your website in order to get higher-ranking positions in search engines results. For online businesses, this brings a much larger knock on business effects in attracting leads, converting leads to customers and increasing income. Blogger outreach can also be understood as the creation of online friendships. As they promote you, it’s best practice that you promote them as well.

 

Step-by-step guide for blogger outreach

 

The Blogger outreach process usually has five steps. First, you need to determine your outreach goals. You then need to make a list of potential influential bloggers and then attract their attention. The next step is to contact them and persuade them to work with you. After that, you need to develop your relationship over a longer period of time.

 

1. Define your goals

Ask yourself, what do you want to achieve with blogger outreach? Do you want to promote your brand by guest posting or you want more social sharing of your posts? Maybe you want to get more links or you want more traffic or to increase the number of subscribers, leads or followers on social networks? Determine your main goal. If you establish strong relationships with bloggers, you’ll find you can often accomplish multiple of these objectives with a single post.

 

2. Make a list of influential bloggers

Now you have defined goals for your outreach it’s much easier to find bloggers in that specific niche or vertical. If you want more social shares, your choice should be influencers with a large number of followers on social networks. If you want guest posts, seek for influencers who want contributors, but also have large traffic and engagement flow to their website. If you want quality backlinks, pick influencers that are experts in your area, that have a high level of authority with their domain and know a lot about your niche. Yet, if you just want to build relationships with others, you can choose those who are still developing and together work on your mutual online growth.

Make an Excel sheet where you will enter collected data. Once that’s setup, it’s time to get researching!

You can use keywords, such as top ‘name of your industry’ bloggers/experts/influencers. You can put a query in quotes for more precise results or use a specific query, such as ‘inurl:write-for-us’ to find all bloggers that want guest blogs.

You can also use different online tools, such as Alltop that will give you a curated list of blogs in different industries. Moz FollowerWonk also works well, giving you a list of influencers instead of their blogs, which is even better. For searching influencers on social networks, you can use Mention. Use your keywords to find what you want, but make it broader, not too focused on your niche. Pick those interesting to you and enter their data in your Excel sheet.

 

3. Draw attention of influencers

The best way to attract the attention of your chosen influencers is to share their content. Mention them as well. They will appreciate this move. If there are some questions on their posts, answer them or make a comment. This will attract their attention even more. You can also subscribe to their emails.

 

4. Persuade influencers to cooperate

The final step is to send them an email. But, before that, get to know them better. Then send them an introduction letter. You can use social networks for that purpose too. Emphasize your goal and what you want from them. Don’t forget to praise their work and tell them that you’d love the opportunity to get involved with what they’re doing online. You can focus on something in which you can help them as well. After that, they can return you a favor. Be careful, yet direct. Bloggers typically receive thousands of requests every month, so you must stand out from the pack with your initial approach.

 

5. Develop your relationship

Once you strike up a relationship with a blogger try to work towards making that relationship stronger at all times. Ensure it’s a mutually beneficial relationship and not all one-sided. After all, if you succeed to be chosen among so many other people, you need to keep that connection. Your goal is to work together as long as possible.

 

The effects of blogger outreach

 

If you succeed in blogger outreach and start to see strong links going live with reputable websites, your rankings will certainly start to increase significantly. Yes, you need to continue publishing quality content and working on your on-page SEO techniques, but your rank position will be higher for longer with a well-executed link building strategy.

With the help of influencers, bloggers or social celebrities you’ll see regularly increasing improvements in your overall online promoter scores. The spiderweb effect starts to really take shape, where online profiles mention you in their speeches and posts and thus attract additional inbound links from others in your niche.

It really pays off to enlist the help of influencers and bloggers to grow your online profile. So, do not give up on blogger outreach, even though link building has changed since the early days of black hat link building. Even if you have not succeeded in your first couple of attempts, this does not mean that you will not succeed in the next round. Be consistent. Blogger outreach is a powerful marketing and SEO tool that you should not write out of your strategy just because it takes some time and effort.

Article first published here: Blogger outreach best practices (Easy step-by-step process)

Does SEO Work for Small Businesses?

Today, who is not present online, it is as if they do not exist at all. This rings especially true for small businesses who are always in need of ways to carve out advantages in an ever-increasing business environment. Does SEO work for small businesses? The answer is – yes! Large companies are not in as much of an advantage when it comes to SEO as many think. It’s actually quite the opposite. Anyone can use it and achieve high ranks on search engines. You just need to know how to use it properly. That’s all.

 

How SEO Works for Small Businesses?

 

No matter whether you are small or large, you have to fight for your customers. Here SEO can help you a lot. It works for all, small and large if you use it properly. Moreover, if you run a small business, SEO is probably the best way to compete with big businesses. It can bring you effects that you would probably never achieve by competing with big, strong companies via SEM or other paid channels.

 

SEO is a long-term oriented marketing tool. Therefore, you need to put a lot of effort and time into it. SEO allows you to equalize with much stronger competitors. Without it, you will not achieve much on the Internet. Through SEO you drive traffic to your website and convert leads into consumers. Here are a few tips on how to use SEO to compete with big businesses and beat them at the punch for your next online customer or enquiry. We at Talk Agency, have implemented them on our Central Coast SEO clients, and attest to their effectiveness.

 

SEO Tips for Small Businesses

 

You probably have already heard of many benefits that SEO brings. Yet, you feel powerless when you look at the number of leads and online visitors of large companies. However, do not lose your self-confidence. Search engines seek the most relevant content for readers. Therefore, give them what they want and you will achieve your goal to rank better and attract more customers.

The presentation below from Rand Fishkin outlines the strategies and ways to leverage small businesses advantages when competing against the bigger and more authoritative businesses:

 

 

Focus on your niche

 

Just as you are focusing on a particular group of consumers, you also need to find your online audience. Choose your niche. Do not waste money or assets in vain. If you cover too many areas, you will lose your focus, you will disperse your brand too much and you will not achieve anything. Customers will not take you seriously. A much better option is to focus on what is most important to you, on what you think will set you ahead of others, both in reality and online.

 

Specialise yourself in a smaller or narrow niche. This will make it easier to break through the online market. Also, you will uncover keywords that attract your ideal, dream customers rather than just tyre kickers. Consider focussing on one to three areas closely related to your business that will have a broad and cross-network of focused keywords in your web content. This will help in driving a much higher level of visibility in search engines.

 

Create content strategy

 

Do not write just what occasionally comes to your mind. Create a clear content strategy long before you start writing! Start with broader topics and them move consistently to more narrow, specific details. Introduce your visitors gradually to your story. Tell them what you are offering and why you are better than others. Give them a reason to stay as long as possible on your website. Peaque their interest so they continue reading your other articles, become your leads and finally, convert to customers.

 

Use proper, more focused keywords in your content. Use Google Analytics, KeywordTool.io or Keyword Eye, just to name a few, to find the best keywords for your content. Even better is if you use long-tail keywords. You will have fewer topics, but your content value will be much higher. Long-tail keywords are less popular than common keywords, but more focused on your target customers that tend to have a much higher intent to purchase.

 

Leverage local SEO

 

Target your local audience before branching out into bigger areas and search volumes. Local search is more relevant and useful for the end user, so will always convert at a higher rate into leads and/or customers. Imagine that you are the customer. What would you look at first in search result packs? Something that is convenient to you in terms of location is always going to win that race. This is especially important if you have a local business, such as a hairdresser, a local supermarket, or a footwear store, for example. Even if you operate in a larger geographic area, start with local SEO to drive initial results while your larger strategies develop and bed in.

 

To drive engagement and local SEO results, consider attending some local events, like art fairs or popular community gatherings, for example. Inform your potential customers about your offer, give them a discount or free sample of your product. Then write about that on your website. Share your impressions. Invite them to join you. Ensure local, high-authority inbound links with quality content and you will become popular with local audiences that need your product or service.

 

Personalised online appearance

 

The best way to beat large competitors is to ensure a personal approach to customers. Get to know them and let them get to know you better. Personalise your online appearance. Make friends of your audience. Write them in a friendly conversational tone, use common words, make personal, yet persuasive content. Use social media to attract more customers to your website.

 

Use both on-page and off-page SEO

 

Besides on-page SEO, such as title tags, quality content, meta description, keywords and all above-mentioned details, be sure to consider off-page SEO as well. The most significant elements of off-page SEO are link-building that drives traffic to your website, ranks you better and shows search engines if your content is relevant. Therefore, provide high-quality content, useful information, evergreen content or something engaging to encourage others to share your content. Also, it’s very important to leverage your geographical relevancy to Google’s eye. Links from other local entities are extremely powerful!

 

You may not have the big marketing teams and budgets of multinational companies, but you can still compete with them online by using SEO. Be creative, use SEO and soon you will have a much better ranking position on search engines and you’ll start to see the fruits of your labour.

 

Article first published here: Does SEO Work for Small Businesses?

Top 3 SEO ranking factors (2018 Edition)

As we start to approach the end of the year, we wanted to touch on ranking factors for next year – a favorite topic around most digital teams coming into Christmas. We, at Talk, consider that the three main SEO ranking factors in 2018 would be content, links, and RankBrain. So let’s take a deep dive into what these mean for your business and how you can prepare for SERP success in 2018.

 

Content as first SEO ranking factor

 

Content always has been one of the most important SEO ranking factor. You already know that your content needs to be quality and focused on your target audience, but some still struggle with what to offer their visitors and how to write content that will actually improve rankings without old-fashioned techniques like keyword stuffing.

 

They key is to get as specific as possible. Nicheing down is good and drives quality traffic. For example, if you run a fashion business, you can write about the latest fashion trends. You can even write about particular apparel such as skirts, shirts, shoes, hats or their daily combinations. You can also divide these groups into smaller subsets – say, elegant shoes, sports shoes, everyday shoes, etc. The point is to focus on your niche and to provide quality content. Focus on being distinctive when benchmarked against your competitors content. We always say content should be content that ‘can’t be found on Google’ it should be that unique. If you are not sure what to write, start with creating a content strategy that maps out who, what, where, how and why you’re writing. Then you will get an idea of just how many niche topics there are within a topic, and how detailed you can get. It goes without saying you should also be using all familiar SEO techniques such as title tags, meta description, keywords, long tail keywords, etc.

 

Visual content always attracts the most attention. Don’t forget to include images, video or infographics in your content. It looks more appealing and at the same time attracts more readers. In 2018, one of the key SEO drivers of organic traffic definitely will be embedded images. A picture paints a thousand words, looks nicer and can be a good basis for your link-building, which is the second SEO ranking factor in 2018.

 

Links as second SEO ranking factor

 

Appealing embedded photos in your content will encourage others to share your content within their networks. For example, if you create a nice image where you explain something that you are talking about in the text, others will use that image in their content. They can paraphrase what you said on the image, or supplement it with their own text, or maybe explain a photo differently than you. In any case, they will link your content. Their content will link others and your link-building will grow constantly. The end result is an improved ranking on search engines, a greater authority of your website and a growing number of visitors to your site.

 

If you are linked to authority sites or you have a wide base of backlinks, Google will notice that and will reward you with better ranking. Links drive organic traffic, so use them a lot, as long as they are quality, relevant links (the days of blackout mass link building are long gone). Be sure to also consider links or your internal linking structure. Lead your readers through your content by linking relevant content and creating chains. Keep them as long as possible on your site. This will make them loyal readers of your content (as opposed to your competitors!).

 

RankBrain as third SEO ranking factor

 

RankBrain is a machine learning artificial intelligence system that helps Google to sort content into relevant search results. It is just one part of Google’s search algorithm. As they said, the third-most-important SEO ranking factor for 2018. The video below from Eric Enge draws a clear picture of why Google decided to create RankBrain:

 

 

Google has already improved its algorithm so much that it recognizes various word variations and synonyms, and connects various data. Behind that were people who have made keyword lists and linked different databases. Now, however, the process becomes automated and the machine itself learns from data. This is the latest technological achievement from Google and is still very much developing. It is known that the machine improves itself over time and becomes better and better in its work. This means that search engines will be more precise in delivering proper search results. It also means that it will be harder to determine what should be done for better ranking and even harder to deceive the machine with black hat SEO. Quality content, quality UX and quality online PR are only becoming more important.

 

One of the key metrics in Google’s RankBrain is Click Through Rate (CTR). This is the percentage of users that click on your link at the search results page. The more people click your website link, the more value Google places on your site as an authority in your industry (as is referenced in the term that the user searched initially). In light of this, it’s worth trying to focus in on an emotive copy –  words connected with feelings such as happiness, anger, fear, and the like – they generally attract more clicks.

 

In order to balance search results, RankBrain also has a second metric called dwell time. This is the time that visitors spend on your website after they clicked your link in Google’s search results. How long they stay on your web page mainly depends on the quality of your content and UX, but also on links that provide your visitors additional reading. The longer they stay on your site, the higher your ranking results.

 

Therefore, all 3 SEO ranking factors are related. However, as you see, quality content is the most important. It is a basis for the other two SEO ranking factors for 2018. If you fail in developing your content strategy, you will most likely fall flat in achieving your desired ranking results. If your content is quality, you will be linked by others and certainly will be ranked better by RankBrain through higher CTR and dwell time. Focus on all three as a combination, and you’re set for success without a doubt.

Article first published here: Top 3 SEO ranking factors (2018 Edition)

Top 5 WordPress SEO tips for higher rankings

Out of 1300 CMS’ available online, WordPress is – by far – the most popular CMS in the world. It offers more themes, templates, plugins, and support than any other, so naturally, more websites are built using WordPress than any other CMS. For that reason, is no surprise that WordPress is also the first choice for bloggers or any SEO agency out there. We at Talk are no exception!

 

That then begs the question. If more websites use WordPress, how do you get the SEO edge?

 

First WordPress SEO tip – Improve your Site Speed

 

Since it is important to ensure the best possible user experience, one of the first tasks is to provide a high-speed load of your website. The optimal load speed is below 3 seconds. Visitors will leave your site if it loads longer than that. Google will also rank you lower for that mistake.

 

Therefore, first check your website speed. You can use different tools for that purpose, Pingdom for example, or even better Google Analytics. If your speed is too low, you need to speed it up.

 

Here are a few tips how you can increase page load times;

• Install a caching plugin that creates static versions of your content
• Compress large images to improve your website load speed
• Delete all content that is not necessary and thin content to 300 words
• Find a quality hosting provider with data centres that are geographically close to as many of your users as possible

 

Also, don’t forget to optimize your website for mobile devices. Today, visitors more use their mobile for searching Internet than desktop computers, so keep it at the forefront of your mind when designing.

 

Set Permalinks and Create a Sitemap

 

Permalinks are URLs of your web content. They are shown in search results and the address bar. They include the URL of your web page and can include the title of your page or article. They serve for linking the content as well and are a vital part of a sound SEO strategy.

 

WordPress specify they allow you to change your permalink settings according to your needs. You can do that in the Settings menu. Use that option to adjust your default permalinks into ‘Post Name’. In this case, your permalinks will look like www.yoursitename.com/post-name. You can also use the option ‘Month and Name’, where your default permalink will look like www.yoursitename.com/2017/11/post-name. In both cases, your content will be better indexed by search engines, while readers will easier see what your content is about.

 

Another important element to SEO success with WordPress is to create a sitemap. Here you can use WordPress tools, such as the WordPress plugin Google XML Sitemaps. It will help you to easily make a sitemap of your content and thus tell search engines how to index your content. In addition, check your navigation through internal linking. Ensure your sitemap is transparent and has clear navigation. This will help you in your rankings. Those pages or articles that are linked to your other articles or pages get the highest rank on search engines. In this way, you provide additional reading for your audience and search engines like that. On the video below, Matt Cutts (former head of webspam team at Google) sheds some light on the subject:

 

 

However, watch out not to overdo it. Use less than 15 internal links of your most important content. But, make it relevant to the linked text. Do not just link it to make links.

If you want faster ranks for your new content, link it with older content that is already recognised as valuable and thus ranked highly.

 

Use WordPress SEO Optimised Themes

 

WordPress has so many themes that it can be difficult to select just one to use. However, if you want good SEO effects, don’t look just at design, but which is SEO optimised. SEO optimised Such themes have a fast load speed and clear, clean code. Therefore, look for a theme that has an open graph meta tag, a clear and transparent structure, the proper canonical URL meta tags, and clear meta title tags and headings. In addition, use WordPress SEO plugins for better effects.

 

Use Proper Heading Tags and Anchor Text

 

For better WordPress SEO effects, you should choose proper heading tags. You will see that you have different options, from heading 1 to 6. Heading 1 (H1) tag is a good choice for the title of the article. Don’t forget to make it clear, short and intriguing. Heading 2 (H2) is for additional headings, while Headings 3, 4 and others are used for subheadings. Using them in this way, you get much better visibility of your content and better rankings.

 

Also, in line with above mentioned internal linking, you have to check your anchor text. These are the linked words in your content. Search engines use the anchor text and the linked source’s content to check the relevance of the links. You cannot use links just simply to build links on your website. You will be penalized by search engines if you do that. Links must be relevant to your content and you should link words that explain what is linked.

 

Optimise your Media

 

Visual content is more appealing, no doubt. You should use it as much as possible. It also really helps drive SEO results. You can use alt text in your images for better SEO effects. Through alt text in images, search engines determine the type of your web content. It also makes two links to your content, one through the title of the content and the second through alt text in the image. Your images will be ranked in the image search too. With WordPress, you get even more. When you upload the image, you can change its name. Use this! Write a suitable name for the image and alt text to explain search engines what your image is about. You also have an opportunity to add a caption and short description of the image. Hence, if you use media, you get a double effect – visually attractive content and better rankings on search engines.

 

These top 5 WordPress SEO tips are guaranteed to improve your ranking results. They will provide you the SEO edge over your competitors. And if you’re looking for more, be sure to check out 5 free WordPress SEO plugins for even stronger results.

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