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The Truth and Myths About SEO

frederic — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 04:29:55 +0000

The Digital Marketing world changed a lot ever since the Coronavirus pandemic started. A lot of businesses shifted to online business to make their business afloat. To stay on top of the competition, SEO is one way to achieve it. In this article, the truth and myths about SEO will be discussed. There are a lot of arguments and misconceptions about Search Engine Optimization and people wanted to know the facts for these speculations to be solved.

Sean Si from SEO-Hacker enumerated some truths and myths about SEO. He also provided his insights about it and these are the following:

Myth: On-site optimization is just a small part of SEO.

Truth: On-site optimization plays a big role.

There are very few blog entries about on-site optimization. Perhaps because it is closely tied to having a technical background. On-site optimization can just as easily deal with keywords as much as it can with coding. And with all the new coding required stuff coming out like Schema Markup, Responsive design, Site speed optimization, etc., it’s easier to just go and do off-site and outreach to try and improve rankings.

That being the case, SEO specialists who know how to do on-site optimization well are easily at the best strategic positions today. Lots of people and blogs are talking about link building, link outreach, co-occurrence, co-citation, etc. Some don’t even know what they’re talking about.

Shift focus to on-site optimization. You’ll thank me for it.

Myth: You don’t need technical SEO. Content is king.

Truth: You have no Frikin’ idea what you’re missing.

Technical SEO is just a small part of on-site optimization. However, please realize that Google is a technical engine working a technical algorithm that reads your (technical) website.

Remember, your website is made up of a bunch of codes in the back-end. Whether you realize it or not, having a website is already technical in nature. If you neglect technical SEO as unessential because you can write like Seth Godin, you’re wrong. (Well… maybe not if you can really write like Seth Godin.)

A hard tweak here and there, an update on your structured data markup, a canonical to some duplicate pages, and voila!

Technical SEO is where the magic is.

Myth: Linkbuilding is dead.

Truth: Linkbuilding just got a lot more natural.

Any news that something in SEO died is a lie until proven with solid data. Or at least, until Danny Sullivan and Bill Slawski says so.

What really happened is that link building shifted to a more ‘natural’ way of evaluation. Artificially built links are seen as a taboo – and are deemed to get devalued or penalized.

Of course, building naturally earned links is encouraged. Who are we kidding? It’s way harder to earn links than build ’em up-front.

However, if naturally earned links make it harder to game Google’s algorithm, then it’s going to have to be the way to go.

Myth: Content marketing is the new link building.

Truth: Not really. You can still go with diversified Linkbuilding.

Content marketing has been built up and up and up and up. So many blogs wrote about it – even claiming it to replace link building.

I think you can never replace link building.

People tried social signals. People are trying co-citation. And so on and so forth.

However, links are still one of the main fundamentals of how Google sees the web. An influx of relationships between one website to another.

Links make up the web. Deal with it.

There’s another article entitled “Top Google Ranking Myths” written by Amanda Hoadley of Northwoods. The content is as follows:

Myth #1: Keyword Targeting is Irrelevant

Truth: Keywords still matter! Just not in the same way they once did. Keywords are still showing on search engine results pages (SERPs), and every Google algorithm update is intended to further hone in on search intent. You should still include keywords in your content, but any efforts by content marketers and bloggers to hit a certain keyword ratio became obsolete with Google’s Hummingbird update.

So, keyword ratios are out, but a focus on creating content based on search intent – knowing the motivation behind why particular keywords are being searched – and naturally incorporating relevant keywords in your copy is critical.

Myth 2: Meta Tag Keywords Don’t Matter

Truth: Meta tag keywords DO matter. Meta tags are used in HTML documents to provide structured metadata about a website and appear between the opening and closing tags on a page. The three elements of metatags are:

Title tag
Meta description
Meta keywords or phrases

Google doesn’t use the keyword meta tag for ranking purposes; however, meta tag keywords are still relevant as they indicate to Google what your content is about. Meta tags can also make your search results more appealing, which attracts more clicks from searchers.

Myth #3: Target Keywords in Anchor Text Don’t Matter

Truth: Link building has become a crucial part of SEO strategies; however, there is a debate in the content marketing community about whether you should use keywords in your anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink that takes a user to another page.

The main reason why content marketers debate the value of keywords in anchor text is that overoptimization is penalized by Google. Keyword stuffing is seen as a red flag, which negatively impacts site rankings. To say keyword-rich anchor text doesn’t help your site isn’t accurate because anchor text helps Google understand page content and helps determine relevancy when it comes to link building.

So, instead of avoiding keyword-rich anchor texts, just change your approach by diversifying your anchor text to avoid overoptimization.

Myth #4: Having More Links is Better than Having More Content

Truth: There was a time when it was better to focus on creating more links than it was to develop more content, but that time has officially come to an end. Now, it’s all about the quality of links rather than the number. Creating a natural link profile with amazing content is what will help improve your search rankings.

Why the change? In the past, webmasters and SEO pros started to take advantage of link building by creating chunks of links that had no valuable content just to improve rankings. As Google caught on and its focus changed to search intent in order to serve up better content to its users, having relevant, trustworthy, and authoritative links became the name of the game.

Myth #5: Too Many Keywords Will Result in Poor Organic Rankings

Truth: SEO experts and bloggers are always asking themselves how many keywords are considered too many and if Google will penalize a website for over-optimizing. The simple answer is that as long as your keywords are used naturally and your content is helpful, the number of keywords you have doesn’t really matter.

The key to avoiding over-optimization is to make sure you include a variety of keywords in your content, including:

Branded keywords
Product keywords
Long-tail keywords
Short-tail keywords
Market-defining keywords
Customer-defining keywords
Latent semantic indexing (LSI)
Geo-targeting

The bottom line? Focus on creating natural and helpful content for your website visitors instead of counting keywords.

Myth #6: Social Doesn’t Impact SEO

Truth: While it’s true that a “like” or comment on a social post doesn’t directly influence your Google rankings, they do have a positive impact on shares and engagement.

And shares and engagement create social signals, which can have significant SEO value. Sharing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social channels has been shown to increase social impressions and organic click-through-rates (CTR). Check out this social media study on SEO influence for more information.

If you’re successful at creating engagement on your social accounts, then your chances of attracting a larger audience via organic search and also of driving ideal traffic to your website increase – in turn, improving your CTR and impressions.

Myth #7: Local SEO Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Truth: When a user is searching for a product or service in their local area that you provide, you want to show up in those search results. But if your site isn’t optimized for local search, those users may not find you. That can mean lost conversions and potential lost business. In fact, 46% of all searches are conducted by searchers seeking local information, and that’s a significant amount of searches!

To make sure your business is showing up in local searches if you haven’t already done so consider visiting Google My Business (GMB) and creating a GMB page to help promote your business profile on Google search and maps.

Myth #8: Images Don’t Need to Be Optimized

Truth: Google uses file names and URLs to understand images, which makes optimizing your images a necessity. As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to use images that are supported by Google, including these file types:

JPEG
PNG
WebP
BMP
GIF
SVG

Your images also need to be accessible, which requires the addition of alt text. By adding alt text, your images will be accessible and understandable to those with vision impairments or other disabilities and will help Google understand them. (Learn more about website accessibility and WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards.)

Your alt text should be as descriptive as possible without any spammy attempts – for example, “waffles” versus “chocolate chip waffles with powdered sugar and syrup.” The more descriptive your alt text, the better understood your image will be and any chance of being penalized for overoptimizing reduced.

Additionally, to make sure your images can be discovered within Google’s image search, consider using an image sitemap and HTML markup to help Google understand your content.

If you need help with digital marketing services such as website and mobile development, SEO, Lead generation, and other IT Services, Shourai can help. Send us a message here or email us at info@shourai.io

For more articles about SEO, click here.

References:

https://seo-hacker.com/bitesized-truths-myths-seo/

https://www.nwsdigital.com/Blog/SEO-Myths-and-Facts-2020

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15 Tips For SEO Success

frederic — Sat, 06 Feb 2021 01:49:23 +0000

Search Engine Optimization could be difficult for starters. You can make a lot of mistakes by not understanding even just the basics. To prevent that from happening, here are 15 tips for SEO success written in an article from spyfu blog:

#1: Create Content that People Love to Read and Share
One of the best SEO tips for beginners is to prioritize creating quality content. You need great content to increase your organic traffic and engage your visitors. You also need it to guide the search engine crawlers and help them understand what your website and business are all about. So content isn’t just important; it’s necessary.

#2: Re-Engineer Your Competitors’ SEO Strategies
Among the top SEO tips for beginners, the best way to master SEO is by learning from your competitors. Identify which keywords they’re ranking for, which websites are linking to them, and what opportunities they’re missing out on.

#3: Perform Exhaustive Keyword Research
You might have come across a lot of SEO tips for beginners that advise you to conduct keyword research. This will always be a necessity, but you can’t just rely on basic keyword research anymore. You’ll need to get a comprehensive look at how each of your potential keywords is performing, so you know what’s most profitable for you.

#4: Optimize On-Page Elements
On-page optimization is one of the essential SEO tips for beginners since it involves very small elements that are overlooked. This includes elements like page title, meta description, URL, and header tags. While these elements may be small, they are far from insignificant and can have a significant impact on your page’s search engine ranking.

#5: Fix Technical SEO Issues
One of the most crucial SEO tips for beginners is to identify and fix any technical issues on your site that could be affecting your SEO efforts. These technical issues will include broken links, indexing issues, etc. Our SEO audit checklist can help you get a complete picture of the significant technical SEO issues you should be looking out for.

#6: Enhance User Experience
User experience is a crucial element in SEO because, as mentioned earlier, dwell time significantly influences your search engine ranking. The better your site user experience is, the longer your dwell time will be.

Besides this, a bad user experience increases the bounce rate, which negatively affects your site performance. That’s why enhancing user experience is one of the most effective SEO tips for beginners.

Improving your page load time is one of the essential SEO tips for beginners that can help you improve user experience. If a visitor has to wait for a long time for your page to load completely, they may not stay to engage with the content. This can significantly increase your bounce rate, negatively affecting your page rank in the long run.

#7: Improve Your Backlink Profile
You’re probably already aware of the importance of your backlink profile in your search engine rankings. It speaks volumes about the credibility of your site and information when authority sites link back to you.

#8: Leverage Social Media
Social media is one of the best and most affordable places to promote your content and drive more traffic to your site. You can use it to reach a massive audience and various interest groups, even if they’ve never heard of you before. You can turn people into loyal followers with the right engagement tactics, thus ensuring your credibility within your target audience.

#9: Build Valuable Connections Using Outbound Links
While you already understand the value of inbound links, outbound links are equally important for your SEO strategy. They help guide your readers to relevant and credible sources that they can refer to for further reading. They help you improve your credibility by backing up your claims. So they’re highly effective in helping search engines assess the credibility of your website and your content.

#10: Improve Internal Linking
Your internal linking strategy is another important factor that influences your search engine rankings. And optimizing it is an essential SEO tip for beginners. An Oncrawl study published in Search Engine Land found that pages with more internal links pointing to them get crawled more often.

#11: Optimize Your Anchor Text
The anchor text you use to link to other pages and domains also influence your website’s SEO. They help search engines in understanding the purpose of the page you’re linking to. This also helps them assess your content quality and relevance to certain search terms. So optimizing your anchor text is another one of the most effective SEO tips for beginners.

#12: Increase Your Website’s Mobile-Friendliness
Mobile-friendliness is another crucial factor that influences your search engine rankings due to its impact on mobile SEO. And with the ever-increasing amount of mobile searches being conducted every day, you could lose out on potential visitors and drag down your visibility if you don’t prioritize mobile SEO.

#13: Optimize Your Visual Content for SEO
Optimizing your visual content is just as important for SEO as optimizing your text content. Visual content could include in-post images, featured images, and infographics.

#14: Promote Your Website Aggressively
Of course, you want to make sure that your website content gets as much visibility as possible if you want it to attract more traffic and rank higher in search engine results.

That’s why content promotion is such an important part of the SEO tips for beginners. In addition to organic promotion on social media, you could also pay to promote your content to a new and relevant audience.

#15: Follow Top SEO Blogs and Stay Updated
One of the biggest issues with SEO tips for beginners is that the SEO landscape evolves every year. Algorithm changes and policy changes affect your SEO strategy and rankings. So, all of the SEO tips for beginners that you discover today may no longer be applicable 3-4 years down the line.

These are just a few of several tips that you can use. If you want professional guidance, contact us at info@shourai.io

For more articles about SEO, click here.

References:

>https://www.spyfu.com/blog/seo-tips/

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7 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

frederic — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 03:36:29 +0000

It is always important to make sure that your business exists for more than just making money. One way of making people see your business online is by working on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

“If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.” ~B.C Forbes

What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing using relevant keywords or phrases to what the site is offering.

There are several factors why business owners can’t afford to ignore Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Here are the 7 reasons according to one of the articles from web ceo website:

“1. SEO is not a fad
When you don’t fully understand something, it often feels like the easiest thing to do is ignore it. Hope that when the craze settles, it will disappear and you can continue as normal. Whilst there’s been some debate around whether SEO is dead, the truth is that whilst the nature of it might be changing, it’s still very relevant to the business.

Joshua Guerra, CEO of marketing firm BIZCOR commented in Forbes: “As long as you are focusing on optimal user experience while performing methodic SEO strategies, you will be rewarded with higher positioning and organic traffic.” And it’s unlikely that SEO will cease to be effective any time soon because search engines depend on users typing in keywords. As long as keywords exist, SEO exists.

2. It’s way easier than you think
You don’t have to understand Google’s ridiculously complex algorithms to create a successful SEO strategy. In fact, often the simplest strategies are the most effective because you’re aiming at the masses (the majority of which are not technological geniuses), who just want to be able to search a simple term and receive appropriate, relevant, and valuable results. So on the most basic level, all you need to do is regularly publish good quality and authoritative content that appeals to your audience and contains keywords that people will be searching for.

It helps to have quality inbound links pointing to your site too, but even that’s fairly easy as you can put links to your site in guest blogs, forum comments, and interviews with external publications. They need to be relevant to the topic of course, but as entrepreneurs tend to link most conversations back to their business, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

3. It could save you money and stress
Compared to online advertising, email marketing, or even social media marketing, SEO is a cost-effective way of promoting your brand and generating leads. Even if you have to hire a specialist, costs are relatively low as SEO experts aren’t usually required to work in-house so you don’t have to pay for their office space, HR, obligatory national insurance contributions, software licenses, and all the other extras that pile on top of a permanent employee’s salary. You pay them by the hour or at a fixed monthly rate, and they take care of your business’s SEO plan whilst you can concentrate on the strategical development of your company.

4. We’re all at the mercy of a restless generation
Our lives operate at a much faster rate than they used to. Communication is constant and immediate and the demands on our time are endlessly increasing. Unsurprisingly then, we’ve become a restless generation who can’t afford to waste their time searching for the best company to use, and testing out different services. Most people will go for the top-rated on Google because it’s easier and faster.

In Forbes, Steve Olenski wrote that “Somewhere between 80-90% of customers now check online reviews prior to making a purchase, and this number is only expected to increase.” In other words, if you’re not immediately visible online, your customers won’t find you.

5. It can be a good indicator of growth
When you start a new business, it’s sometimes difficult to monitor how well it’s being received and even harder to make convincing predictions to potential investors. However, organic traffic increases can be a really effective indicator of future growth. The better the idea, service, or product, the faster the news spreads on social media and on external sites, which means more inbound links to your business, brand mentions, and even hashtags on Twitter, resulting in a better search ranking. It’s a good way of demonstrating success to investors in the early stages and can also help entrepreneurs to see trends so that they can develop their business in the future.

6. Your competitors use SEO
If your competitor jumped off a cliff, would you do it? If it was going to drive more organic traffic to my business, potentially increase sales, and boost my reputation, then yes I’d do it. If you’re not doing everything you can to promote and develop your brand, you’ll quickly fall behind your competitors and right now, SEO is one of the most basic and valuable tools we have for online marketing so use it and not just for your business, but to promote yourself too. As an entrepreneur (especially if you own multiple businesses), your public reputation is crucial. If people like you and respect your opinion, they’re more likely to trust what you’re selling. It pays to get your name out there.

7. It could open doors to new opportunities
The more people that see you online, the more opportunities you have for potential partnerships and building valuable business connections. It’s a bit like networking without you having to attend any events or meetings. Other CEOs and businesses will be attracted to your online credibility and will want to be associated with your business, which could lead to some exciting discussions, innovations, and maybe even a new business idea.”

There are ways to take advantage of SEO and it’s up to you whether you should give it a try or just ignore what SEO can do to help your business.

For more SEO topics, click here.

References:

*https://www.webceo.com/blog/7-reasons-why-entrepreneurs-cant-afford-to-ignore-seo/

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SEM vs SEO: What’s the difference?

frederic — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 07:04:14 +0000

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search engine optimization (SEO) are essential marketing strategies in the world of online business. These two might be confusing for some people because they sound synonymous but the fact is they are exactly different from one another. So, SEM vs SEO: What’s the difference?

First, let us discuss the similarities between these two.

Both SEM and SEO …
Both help a brand appear in search results.
Both are designed to drive more traffic to a website.
Both require knowing your audience.
Both use keyword research to uncover popular search terms.
Both target specific keywords.
Both require testing and continual optimization.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) vs Search engine optimization (SEO) Definitions

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword.” A definition from Neil Patel.

According to an article in WordStream, “Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (or SERPs). Advertisers bid on keywords that users of services such as Google and Bing might enter when looking for certain products or services, which gives the advertiser the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.”

Now, let us differentiate these two marketing strategies to find out which one is better to help you reach your marketing goals.

Below is an infographic from Delhi School of Internet Marketing showing a comparative study of SEO vs. SEM:

Search Engine Optimization

Organic
Cost-effective
Steady
Time Consuming
Difficult to Measure
User Friendly
Dependent
SEO = Google

Search Engine Marketing

Paid
Expensive
Inconsistent
Instant
Easy to Monitor
Lack of Trust
Independent
SEM = Google + Bing

Another image from Alexa Blog shows the differences between SEM vs. SEO

In Radd Interactive website, they differentiate these two as “In simple terms, SEO focuses on just optimizing for search results traffic – usually by optimizing website content. SEM involves the entire range of search marketing opportunities available including those that go beyond SEO, like paid-ad spots on search engines and paid social media marketing.

SEM involves using the full range of search marketing tools including SEO, Pay-per-Click advertising, social media advertising and Google or Bing shopping campaigns. SEO is still considered a part of SEM since it’s a valid method of marketing in the world of web search. One that exploits search engine algorithms to naturally rank higher on search results pages.”

Overall, the main difference between SEM vs. SEO is that SEM is a paid strategy and SEO is an organic strategy.

For more articles to read, please click here.

References:

https://neilpatel.com/what-is-seo/
https://www.wordstream.com/search-engine-marketing
https://raddinteractive.com/seo-vs-sem-marketing-infographic/
https://dsim.in/blog/2017/01/31/infographic-seo-vs-sem-comparative-study/

https://devrix.com/tutorial/sem-vs-seo-in-depth-review/ (Grabbed Photo)
https://blog.alexa.com/sem-vs-seo/

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