seo strategy

Apr 10 2020

6 Foolproof Strategies to Find Keywords for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) experts eat keywords for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and munch on them in between snacks—metaphorically speaking, of course—for the simple reason that keywords are one of the main tools of the trade. When someone types words or phrases into a search box and the search engine returns relevant results, that’s keywords at work!

Keywords range from single, standalone words to more complex key phrases that you place in your copy to drive organic search traffic to your website.

Simply put, keywords are words that people use in their web search whenever they’re looking for information, images, ideas, products, or services. Since you’re into SEO, you’ll want to target these keywords, which is why you may also think of them as your target keywords.

Apart from this definition, keywords have other identifiable qualities that can help you better understand their nature and how you should use them to drive business success.

In the context of SEO, keywords serve as some sort of directional signs that point search engines like Google to your website. When your website contains keywords that match what users are looking for, it’s a signal for search engines to show your brand name in the search results. This makes your website visible and accessible to internet users.

You could also look at keywords as content markers. Statistics say that the number of websites has reached the billionth mark, and that there are billions more of individual web pages. Based on these numbers, you can just imagine the amount of content that the internet holds. Through keywords, search engines have a way of telling which web pages from among the billions out there have the most useful or relevant answers for content searchers.

Keywords Are the Heart of Every SEO Strategy

The potential value of using target keywords to grow your business makes it imperative that you get keyword research and keyword mapping right from the get go. Remember that keywords give your business the online visibility that it needs in the digital marketing space. On the other hand, failing to optimize your website for search engines and end users through organic or unpaid search is nothing short of a missed opportunity to bring your brand closer to your target audience.

Since content is one of the criteria for ranking websites, you have to make your content understandable to Google and other search engines. And this can only be possible if you give proper context to your content by placing keywords into it. These keywords serve as clues for Google and company, telling them what your page or post is all about. Without this kind of understanding between search engines and your website, there’s simply no way that your brand or content will land on search results.

It’s worthy to note that you should be using keywords not only to get on Google’s radar but perhaps more importantly to attract customers to your website. When planning your keyword strategy, your goal should be to focus on the users or visitors of your site. Think about the words or language they’re using whenever they have something to find on the internet. Once you figure it out, you can decide on what keywords to target so that people using those search terms will find their way to your website.

It goes without saying that an ineffective keyword strategy will not be helpful for your business. There are a couple of ways this may happen:

Using the wrong keywords. If you don’t know what keywords customers are using in their search, you might end up with the wrong keywords in your text. If this is the case, how will you be able to answer visitors’ queries or solve a problem they’re experiencing? Not getting the traffic you want or need for your site affects your search rankings and the chance for your business to earn revenue.
Keyword stuffing. Keywords provide you with a means to gain website traffic as future customers use those words in their search queries. Once they land on your website, you then have an opportunity to show them more information about your business, product, or service. However, cramming your target keywords into a single piece of text results in Google penalizing you for keyword stuffing, since this doesn’t ruins the user experience. Just as you need to be careful in choosing your keywords, you also need to be mindful when and where to place your keywords.

Types of Keywords to Target

Keywords come in different forms, each of which serves a specific purpose. Keywords are categorized based on who or what they’re targeting as well as based on length.

Targeting keywords are phrases and terms that are geared toward your industry, business offerings, or audience. Targeting keywords include:

1. Market-defining keywords. These are keywords that your target audiences use when talking about your business or industry. Often, these terms will be broad and generic, but you can also define them into something more specific for your niche.

2. Customer-defining keywords. These are key phrases that relate to a specific subset of customers within a larger audience base. For example, someone might add the search phrase “for teenagers” to define the age bracket of the book shopper or reader.

3. Product keywords. These keywords contain specific descriptions about what you’re selling, such as brand or product name, type or model, and other relevant specifications.

4. Competitor keywords. These are keywords that competing businesses, products, or services use to attract their target market. Using competitor keywords gives you an opportunity to target a similar audience with the same interests or preferences.

5. Geo-targeted keywords. Geo-targeted keywords are tied to location-based searches. Searchers use these terms to find products or services that are near them or in other adjacent areas, so you’ll want to optimize your site for this type of keyword to boost your local rankings.

Types of Keywords by Length

The length of a keyword is generally tied to search volume, which pertains to how many searches are being made using those types of keywords.

There are three types of keywords in this category.

1. Short-tail. Also called head or generic keywords, short-tail keywords are often made up of one to two words only. Search terms using these keywords are rather broad but very popular among searchers, so the potential to get more traffic to your site is quite high. However, this means that the competition for this type of keyword is also high.

2. Mid-tail. These search terms are slightly more descriptive than short-tail keywords, since queries in this range may now be two to three words long. These keywords may be the perfect middle ground between short-tail and long-tail keywords since the search terms are more specific and attract a large search volume.

3. Long-tail. This type of keywords targets very specific searches, topics, or audiences understandably because searchers put in as many terms as they can to define their query.

Generally speaking, the longer the keywords, the lesser the search volume. However, this may prove to be helpful since there will be fewer pages trying to compete for ranking for this type of keyword. Moreover, you can get higher conversion rates from long-tail keywords since it logically follows that when you’re able to provide an answer to the most specific of searches, it means you’ve satisfied what the user exactly needs.

More About Keyword Types

It’s worth mentioning that aside from matching the context of a search, Google also wants you to use keywords that match the users’ search intent. In order to use keywords effectively based on this criteria, you should track at which stage of the buyer journey your target audience is.

Someone who’s using informative keywords, for example, means that the customer is trying to know more about a certain topic or idea, so it will be impossible to attract this type of customer with keywords that relate to making a sale (also known as transactional keywords).

How to Use Keywords for SEO

The keyword research process involves identifying and filtering the list of search terms that you should be targeting. This is important, so you’ll be successful in ranking for a particular keyword.

Here’s what you need to include in your SEO strategy:

1. Create topic buckets.

At this stage, you can make a list of important and relevant topics surrounding your industry. Depending on the nature of your business, you could come up with 5 to 10 topic buckets, which you’ll be using to dictate your keyword selection as you go along

You might want to focus your buckets on the most popular topics or stories that are being talked about online or on topics that float around during your sales meetings.

Whatever topic buckets you choose, make sure they are subjects that interest and relate to your customers’ needs, while telling them what they need to know about your business.

2. Fill your buckets with topic ideas.

This is the part where you fill your content buckets with keywords that you think customers are including in their queries. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and try to understand how they’re using the web to look for the information they need.

Use your buckets as a dump site of sort for all the keyword combinations you can think of, although you should be able to create a good balance of generic keywords that have a relatively low search volume and those that include more specific terms with higher traffic potential for your website.

3. Research related search terms.

When searchers are not quite happy with the search results they get, they are likely to scroll down to the bottom of the search engine results pages (SERPs) to see if there are searches related to what they were originally looking for. You can use these related search terms to come up with other ways with which users are phrasing their search.

4. Check competition.

Spying on your competitors’ SEO strategy gives you an opportunity to differentiate your brand from theirs, do more of what they’re doing, and get better results for your efforts.

The key is in evaluating the keywords that your competitors are using, without necessarily picking them up if they don’t matter to your business or to your audience.

Just like how you try to have a good mix of generic keywords and more specific search phrases, you should also be able to make wise choices between trying to rank for more competitive keywords versus targeting for terms that are more specific to your brand, product, or service.

5. Use keyword tools.

You’ve come up with a working list of keywords. The next step is to narrow it down using data-oriented tools for keyword research and planning. There’s a wide variety of free tools out there to help you generate keyword ideas, look for search patterns among users, analyze competition, measure keyword relevance, and so on. All of these SEO insights can be helpful as you decide where to focus your time, energy, and investment moving forward.

6. Plan your content.

At this point, you’re ready to execute your keyword strategy, which is why you should be building informative and educative content. The more content you produce, the more opportunities you have to include your target keywords, receive more exposure, and get a higher position in the SERPs. This also ensures that you’re able to avoid keyword stuffing since you’ll have several instead of a handful of pages to put your keywords into use.

A Holistic Approach to SEO Keywords

Keyword research is the discipline that lays down the foundation of SEO and content marketing. Although we can never overemphasize the significance of laying down a solid strategy in keyword research, we can tell you that a lot of it entails serving your target audience and delivering the best user experience.

You’ll want search engines to show your website the moment someone starts a web search. To hit this target, you have to know your audience, speak their language, and make connections with them as they journey through the buyer process.

At the same time, it’s about trying to rank for a good position by establishing your company’s relevance on Google and other search engines through the same customer-centric brand of using relevant and highly targeted keywords for SEO.

If you need help taking your SEO strategy to the next level, SEO Company will match you with an agency that fits your business’ unique needs. Inquire now!

Apr 09 2020

In-House SEO vs. Outsourced SEO: Which Should You Choose?

In this era of growing internet penetration, businesses of all kinds can benefit significantly from having a strong online presence. In particular, search engine marketing—including SEO—has been proven highly advantageous for many companies.

If you’re one of these companies, you may be planning to build your own SEO team, but the question is, should you do it in-house or outsource SEO activities to the experts?

It can be challenging to choose whether to hire professionals for an SEO team directly or to outsource it to a third-party firm. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages; plus, there are a plethora of other factors to consider. So, let’s weigh up the pros and cons to see which is the better option for you.

In-House SEO Teams

Having an in-house SEO team means directly hiring professionals to do SEO work for your company. This sounds like the ideal way to go, but depending on your SEO goals, nature of your business, budget, and many other factors, you might have to think twice about building an in-house team.

Pros

Convenience

Having SEO Specialists in-house means you can easily reach out to them—and in person nonetheless—in case anything needs immediate attention. No need to communicate digitally and waste time waiting for a response.

Knowledge about the business

Your employees should have an intimate understanding of your business even without having to do research, and that comes in handy when your marketers do other tasks related to SEO, like making Social Media or blog posts, bidding keywords, etc. It also helps in making their outputs consistent.

Saves on costs

Cutting out the SEO agency would save your monthly budget, as you won’t have to pay set up costs, monthly retainers, or other hidden charges for hiring an agency. You can always provide an excellent salary package for your SEO specialists and save on your marketing spend as long as your process is efficient.

Fosters collaboration

The best SEO strategies involve teamwork, especially since it relies on different tasks to be carried out by different employees. No doubt this can be made seamless by having an in-house SEO. When your search team is close and understands the business as well as its overall direction, you will potentially discover more SEO opportunities.

Full control of the processes at all times

An in-house SEO team will give you some level of transparency regarding their techniques, procedures, and other information; but, they can also provide control over what strategies you want to implement and how. A third party may not be so transparent with how they do things, and might not follow the direction and guidance of their clients to the letter, especially if operations and practices aren’t easily movable.

Cons

Knowledge decay

This refers to a lack of new information, updates, or improvements to your team’s knowledge about their tasks, and this often happens when they work on the same goals over and over again, always utilizing the same techniques. In-house SEOs can quickly sink into a systematic pattern of work that never evolves with the times, which could make your strategies stagnant.

Possible huge costs

The salary for a full-time, experienced SEO Specialist could easily be more than $3,000 a month, while some agencies offer low-cost packages that start for less than $1,000. You don’t need just one specialist, though, as SEO requires multiple moving parts and it’s impossible to find one who’s an expert in everything. More hires could mean more expenses, therefore further ballooning your payment.

That is why it is essential to look at all the costs and benefits thoroughly if you’re deciding between an in-house or third-party SEO team.

There’s little accountability

When something goes wrong or if the strategy fails, you can choose to fire your in-house SEO expert, though that doesn’t help that much to fix your problems and there’s little accountability beyond that. The worst part is, if you do take that person off the team, you’d have to take on the blame and fix things yourself.

Outsourced SEO Teams

On the contrary, you also have the option to hire a third-party SEO agency. Since digital marketing is now acknowledged as an essential strategy for business growth, firms that offer such services have grown in number. As much as SEO is a quintessential part of any digital marketing strategy, you should first determine if hiring outside help is what’s best for your company.

Pros

Lets you focus on core business functions

When you hire an SEO partner that can genuinely help give you high visibility on search engines, you take that load off your shoulders and will have time to focus on other business functions that need your attention, which is especially helpful if you’re an SMB owner who still needs to plan out different strategies for growth. For larger businesses, it saves time spent on possibly going through multiple interviews to find in-house specialists.

Cheaper cost

For some organizations, hiring an SEO agency may make more sense because it generally costs less than paying for salaries and benefits of multiple professionals. Through an agency, you have access to a whole team of professionals with the right skills set, even those outside of SEO. However, you don’t always have to go for the cheapest one—remember that the cost of service often reflects the quality of work.

Offers a unique perspective

SEO agencies have worked with other clients from different industries, so they are used to going outside of their comfort zone or thinking outside the box. Through this, they get to provide clients with fresh perspectives and avoid the paralysis that can sometimes happen from being too familiar with the brand and its products and services. This experience also gives them a unique outlook to provide insights from their work with other similar companies.

Accountability

To assure accountability from an SEO agency, you need to make sure that you reach an agreement that will oblige them to provide feedback based on what they have done each month. Doing this, and having them report to you regularly, will guarantee accountability, whether they’re doing a good job or not.

Expertise and resources

Experience also plays a big part when it comes to creating an SEO strategy for your business. An experienced agency that has worked with clients from various industries would have relatively more insights that can help you determine the route to take for your SEO. Aside from expertise, tools resources are also vital in SEO. Any established SEO partner should have a considerable toolset that you can add to your SEO arsenal.

Cons

Finding the right one

SEO companies have popped out left and right over the last few years, making it harder to decipher which one really offers the best services for the buck. Merely looking at their websites won’t tell you if the agency is going to meet your needs or if the people working there are truly knowledgeable in the field.

There’s no denying that there’s a chance you might get “scammed” by some agencies, and this underscores the importance of doing your due diligence when looking for an SEO partner to trust. You can always read testimonials, reviews, and any information regarding your preferred company’s performance. Try to meet with them first personally before picking an agency.

Cultural boundaries

SEO is a global industry, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise if you end up setting your heart on an agency based offshore. Cultural differences should not be a turn-off, as long as you understand that there may be dissimilarities between you and the agency in some matters due to cultural boundaries. In some instances, it has led to issues, but it generally does more good than harm.

Additional expense

When it comes to price, quality should always be a factor to consider. Cheap agencies can be good or bad for your business, and so can the expensive ones. And although hiring a SEO agency involves additional monthly costs associated with service fees and retainers, a focused partner will likely have a highly-efficient operational system in place, which means getting more out of each dollar spent.

Less control of the processes

Outsourcing companies have the responsibility to regularly report the work they did for you to keep you in the loop. However, when it comes to SEO agencies, the business owner usually doesn’t have a hand in every aspect and process. A reliable SEO partner will ask for your recommendations and guidance, but ultimately, they may end up using strategies that they themselves deem is fit for your business, even if you don’t necessarily think that it’s the right one.

Outsourcing and Its Implications to Scalability

Every business aims for growth, but that will always be a challenge to do so, especially with the ever-changing market conditions. A thriving business means that clients and their demands will also increase, and if you’re still working with the outdated systems that you started with, you’ll likely fail to keep up with those demands.

No patchwork solution will be enough; instead, you have to prepare by regularly improving your solutions and processes for the future, so that you can also stay competitive. In this case, scaling your business means building a model and putting systems in place that can be grown or shrunk, depending on your needs at the time.

The importance of scalability

When you have solutions in place to handle increases, you maintain your business’ efficiency and the quality of products and services you offer. These, in turn, can reinforce good customer relations business reputation. From a financial perspective, scalability can lower what you’re paying out, and you get more for what you pay.

Small businesses need scalability even more, as they have the biggest potential for growth. Scalability on one or more levels allows them to hold onto and build market share. However, they have to be more careful with their limited resources, as they may fail to foresee what they might need or where the market might go in the future.

How outsourcing SEO can help scalability

One of the solutions you can look at to improve scalability is outsourcing, as this option would allow you to ramp up production without having to go over your budget for recruitment and retention. You’re also assured that personnel adequately trained on what they need to do for you.

It’s also easier to shrink the size of your team with outsourcing, as you don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty of terminating employees, and because you’re only scaling up on an as-needed basis. For example, outsourcing would allow you to scale up during peak seasons or when you’re starting a new project, until such time that you’ve achieved the goal of your project and you can reduce the size of operations.

It goes without saying that you only pay for what you use when it comes to outsourcing SEO. This means that you can retain a significant amount of budget that would otherwise be spent on overhead costs, and still get the expertise you require full time, albeit only temporarily.

Other organizations may also opt to outsource non-strategic tasks in order to optimize their core competencies while bringing in more value to their businesses. These tasks are ideal to contract out because it won’t require you to hand over access to sensitive information, and you can cut down costs and time.

Outsource If You Must

In reality, no single option works for every company. Outsourcing or doing in-house SEO would each work best in specific situations. For instance, a start-up or SMB that has limited budget may find it more beneficial to hire an outsourced agency that offers low-cost packages, but an established enterprise that has more on the line in terms of reputation would want (and afford) in-house specialists.

Keep in mind, building a SEO team isn’t always black and white. For example, some companies may choose to hire small core SEO team in-house to focus on strategic decisions while an outsourced SEO partner handles the bulk of the execution.

Situations can differ depending on many factors; that is why it’s vital to have a deep understanding of your business’ nature, goals, and resources before choosing between in-house and outsourced. But, just in case you opt to hire a partner for your SEO needs, SEO Company will work with you to find the agency that matches your needs!

Apr 06 2020

A Complete List of SEO Trends and Statistics to Help You Rank Better

The SEO landscape is continually changing, with search engines like Google updating algorithms on a constant basis—sometimes even as often as three times a day. They generally do this to re-evaluate their methods to provide the best results for their users.

Major updates, meanwhile, are done to implement machine learning to adapt to their ranking algorithm. It is first tested in a limited environment, then rolled out to the live index once deemed satisfactory. Significant changes take some time to settle. That’s why every big update comes with fluctuations in SEO rankings, which SEO specialists have called the Google Dance.

But why does Google feel the need to update relentlessly? The most common reason is it’s their way of detecting and hindering unfair SEO marketers that manipulate their search engine rankings using unfavorable techniques. It’s no secret that some businesses use Black Hat SEO techniques to trick search engines, so Google needs to make it so that only legitimate SEO strategies that improve the user experience have a positive effect on rankings.

It may take you some time before you can see results from White Hat techniques, but doing legitimate work assures you that your site won’t get flagged and penalized by Google, and that rankings last.

With the almost endless algorithm updates, companies have to discover new best SEO practices. Specialists have to be always prepared to face changes and reconsider their strategies and workflow for successful SEO.

SEO Trends and Statistics to Shape Your Strategy

As mentioned, nothing is constant when it comes to search engine optimization. Over the years, many updates have been implemented, which usually results in different SEO trends popping up. Look into these SEO statistics to understand the trends that will dominate the future of search and SEO.

I. General Search and SEO

93% of online experiences begin on search engines.

70–80% of users ignore paid search results and click on organic results instead.

Organic results are deemed 5.66 times better than paid ads by users because of the sense that companies on the top spot bought their way into the position without actually being the best option.

51% of online traffic comes from organic search.

75% of users do not scroll past the first page of SERP.

32.5% is the average traffic share of the first organic search result.

91.5% is the average traffic share for sites on first page of SERPs.

The average page speed of a top ranking site is 1900 ms, 17% faster compared to sites that rank 10th.

81% of consumers do online research before making a large purchase.

61% of consumers research a product online before purchasing.

47% of consumers view 3–5 pieces of content from a company before talking to a sales person.

75% of SEO is done off-page, and 25% is on-page.

57% of B2B marketers say that SEO generates more leads than any other marketing initiative.

72% of marketers say that relevancy is the main factor for improving SEO.

Over 40% of revenue is captured by organic search.

Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate—a huge increase from the 1.7% close rate of outbound leads.

Bounce rates increase by 50% when a website takes an additional 2 seconds to load.

Conversion rates drop by 12% for every extra second that it takes for a website to load.

Voice search currently accounts for 10% of overall searches.

At least 50% of all searches will be voice and image-based by 2020.

The SEO industry is worth approximately $80 billion. In 2018, businesses spent $72.02 billion in 2018 in SEO, with the number expected to jump to $79.27 billion by 2020. One-third of the spending is from large companies, while start-ups and local SMBs spend the rest.

Search engine market share by the device used:

Google: 94.26% desktop, 89.63% mobile
Yahoo: 1.42% desktop, 2.83% mobile
Baidu: 1.31% desktop, .62% mobile
Yandex: .47% desktop, 1.1% mobile
Bing: 1.17% desktop, 3.98% mobile
Others: 1.37% desktop, 1.84% mobile

“What is Bitcoin?” and “What is racketeering?” were the most popular “What is” searches in 2018.

“How to vote” and “How to register to vote” were the most popular “How to” searches in 2018.

II. Google Search

It’s no secret that Google is the undisputed king of search engines today, that’s why SEO specialists carry out campaigns that aim to keep Google and its users happy. Here are some numbers that prove this:

5.8 billion search queries are processed from different parts of the world.

Of 5.8 billion, 15% are new queries that have never been searched before. This shows that there are always new keyword combinations worth exploring for SEO specialists.

71,780 Google queries are made per second.

3.5 billion Google searches are made daily.

More than 2 trillion Google searches are made annually.

The volume of Google searches increases by 10% every year.

86% of users look up the location of a business on Google Maps.

Google captures 90% of searches made on desktops.

Over 1 billion people use Google to look something up monthly.

Google has indexed around 100,000,000 GB worth of web pages.

44% of all website referral traffic is from Google.

8% of Google searches are questions.

An average Google search session lasts just under a minute.

The average first-page result on Google consists of 1,890 words.

The first result for Google’s desktop search results has a 34.36% CTR.

Organic results with 3–4 words in the title drive higher CTRs than those with only 1–2 words

Mobile Google searchers click on organic results 41% of the time.

Desktop Google searchers click on organic results 62% of the time.

80% of Google’s users ignore its ads.

If there’s a video on a site’s landing page, it’s 53% more likely to show up on Google’s first page.

Google search queries share percentage by length:

One word: 21.71%
Two words: 23.98%
Three words: 19.60%
Four words: 13.89%
Five words: 8.70%
Six words or more: 12.12%

“__ to avoid” search queries have increased by 150%.

“Is __ worth it?” search queries have increased by 80%.

III. Mobile SEO

In 2015, Google updated its algorithm to accommodate searches done on a mobile device and to prioritize mobile-friendly sites better. This way, a website that ranks well when looked up on a desktop but has a poor mobile site will not appear on mobile search results. With smartphone use becoming the norm today, it’s no wonder that mobile SEO has accumulated the following numbers since its inception:

Americans spent 3 hours and 35 minutes a day on their phones in 2018.

52% of global internet traffic are from mobile.

Google captures 95% of mobile search in the US.

60% of Google searches are done on mobile; five years ago, the figure was only 34%.

87% of smartphone users look up something at least once a day.

1/3 of smartphone searches are done before a store visit.

66% of ecommerce transactions take place on mobile.

40% of ecommerce sales made during the 2018 holiday season came from smartphones.

40% of visitors will leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

50% of “near me” Google searches on mobiles result in a store visit.

42% of brand interactions via mobile involve Google search.

51% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a mobile-friendly website.

Around a third of mobile Google searches are related to location.

IV. Local SEO

In 2014, the first version of Google’s Pigeon update was launched. This gave a platform for local businesses to compete for search rankings on a local level. Google boosted the rankings of businesses in close proximity to the searcher for added relevance.

97% of consumers learn more about a local company via the internet.

46% of Google inquiries are related to local information.

70% of consumers will go to a store after learning information online.

72% of consumers will visit a store within 5 miles of their location after doing a local search.

92% of users click on businesses on the first page of SERPs.

82% of mobile shoppers use the keyword “near me”; “nearby” and “closest” dropped by 23% in use.

28% of the searches for something local will result in a purchase.

1/3 of mobile searches are related to a location.

18% of local searches on mobile convert.

61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business with a mobile-friendly webpage.

78% of location-based mobile searches result in offline purchases.

18% of local searches result in a sale within a day.

34% of “near me” searches done on desktop and tablets result in store visits.

$1.4 trillion in local sales are expected from mobile devices by 2021.

73% of consumers trust business after reading positive reviews.

56% of local businesses have not yet claimed their Google My Business listing.

82% have not yet claimed their Bing listing.

Percentage of local ranking factors

29% – Link signals
24% – On-page signals
11% – Behavioral signals
9% – Personalization
7% – Review signals
6% – Citation signals
4% – Social signals

V. Link building

A mainstay in SEO campaigns and tactics, the rules of link building have also changed over the years with each update of the algorithm. In link building, the number of links is irrelevant—it is the quality of links that are more crucial.

35% of companies spend $1,000 or less monthly for link building.

53% of clients dedicate a quarter or less of their SEO budget for link building.

65% of marketers say that link building is the hardest SEO tactic to do.

41% claim that link building is the greatest challenge in SEO.

VI. Social Media

Social media is not only big on the consumers’ side but even to Google and marketers. Today, there must be clear links between social media accounts and websites to lead one to the other. This network of social signals can have a significant impact on a business’ organic search results.

74% of companies and 82% of agencies say that social media somewhat or highly integrated.

40% of consumers prefer to support businesses that are engaging in social media.

58% of marketers have seen improved search engine rankings after using social media for at least a year.

71% of customers will likely recommend a brand if they’ve had a good social media service experience with it.

VII. Content Marketing Stats

Quality and relevant content can have a profound impact on marketing campaigns, making it one of the key pillars of SEO.

72% of marketers believe that relevant content creation is the most effective SEO strategy.

81% of businesses think their blogs are essential tools.

Producing a blog can give businesses 434% more search engine-indexed pages than not having one.

Better content can drive traffic by up to 2,000%.

Updating and republishing old blog posts can increase organic traffic by 111.37%.

VIII. Video Marketing Statistics

Google is now also promoting video content into its search algorithms as a valuable resource for users.

85% of US internet traffic will surround video this 2019.

Video content is 50 times more likely to drive organic results than text.

A video thumbnail in search results can double search traffic.

CTRs for video emails are 96% higher than those without.

20% of users will read the text on a page, while 80% will watch a video.

Evolving Alongside SEO

There is one fact that you can take away from these SEO statistics: search engine marketing is an excellent way to grow your brand. With consumers going online more and via new device types, it’s a mistake not to cater to these changes. Don’t be left out of the trend.

However, it is also a fact that technology evolves. For Google and other search engines, that means keeping up with the times and protecting their algorithm from SEO practitioners who may be trying to manipulate the system in a way that worsens a searcher’s experience.

SEO may offer your business tremendous opportunities, but specialists should be wary of going over the line. Keep up-to-date with the latest trends; be adaptive and not reactive to avoid penalties. It’s as easy as keeping your website compliant with Google’s standards.

You can do this by churning out content that is the type that people will find informative, and even like and share. In addition, keep your links healthy by checking and make sure your landing pages are working, and that other pages that link to your site are ideally from your niche. Find and fix any unnatural backlinks that you may find.

Need help with SEO? Contact SEO Company today to find the best SEO partner to grow your business!

Apr 06 2020

How Long Does It Take to Do SEO?

Any business creating a digital footprint knows just how crucial search engine optimization is to their online marketing efforts. It’s a proven strategy to boost your brand’s visibility on search results, as well as encourage you to establish your site’s authority and credibility to consumers.

Tons of articles have been published rounding up the best SEO practices and most creative tactics that will ensure you can reap the benefits of SEO. However, the debate remains as to how long you’ll see results after putting in your efforts. Is there a definite answer to this.

The truth is, it depends. It may be frustrating to hear this, as digital marketers live in a fast-paced bubble where instant ROIs and improvements are expected, but there is no correct answer.

There’s also the fact that “results” can mean differently to different SEO practitioners. One could be expecting higher rankings in SERPs, while another could want more organic search traffic. While they may be different, these factors are closely linked, and they will perhaps start to show improvement at different timelines.

There’s no one real answer as to how long SEO takes, but it’s well worth your time to familiarize yourself with the process so you can manage your expectations and gauge the trajectory of your results.

How Search Engines Rank Pages

Search engines like Google and Bing work hard to rank different web pages as accurately as possible properly. This helps users find the most relevant websites that will answer their search queries and reward webmasters who put in the work to make their sites helpful to their readers.

Here’s how they do it.

Step 1: Classify

First things first: search engines classify the search terms entered by a user. This helps them in identifying the information it needs to execute the rest of the steps in page ranking. Before that, they used to rely mainly on keyword volume despite some websites not having proper tags or labels. Some examples of classifications a search engine would give are YMYL, local, unseen, adult, and question.

There is currently no catalog of classifications available for SEO practitioners to see or infer what kind of category a specific search term would fall into, but it is known that this step starts up the whole ranking process.

Step 2: Context

The next step is discovering user intent and your historical, environmental, and geographical factors that influence that query. After considering the category of the search terms entered, they now have to find the relevant information related to that query. Some examples of these data are:

The user’s location
The current time
Identifying whether or not the query is a question
The device used to enter the query
The format used to perform the query (typed, voice, etc.)
Whether the query relates to previous items searched or not
Whether the question has been asked before or not

Step 3: Weights

Before an engine can determine what pages should rank, they need to figure out which signals are most important to the query. This is where RankBrain enters the picture. RankBrain is part of Google’s core algorithm which helps the search engine determine the most relevant results to a search query.

With the query classification and context at play, the search engine’s algorithm can now understand which relevancy signals have the most weight in influencing the results. For instance, if you were to type a time-sensitive topic such as breaking news in politics, freshness would be a critical factor vs. a general search about home gardening tips.

Step 4: Layout

A few years ago, Google SERPs were pretty straightforward, showing the first ten links to the query entered. It slowly evolved to become a bit more interactive, highlighting the essential information on the page. These additional data points evolved into what we now know as schema markup.

For instance, there could be a short bio page for a celebrity or prominent historical event at the top righthand corner of the page. Google could also display related videos to the topic, breaking news, or other search queries that are relevant to what was initially entered. If you type a search term for an item you intend to buy, then you will see carousels with prices linking to online shops that sell the product. Not all queries will garner the same SERP layout.

Step 5: Ranking

Finally, the search engine can begin ranking. After gathering all the important information such as classification, user intent, relevancy signals, and layout, it can arrange the pages in the order that would most likely satisfy the user. This is actually the “easy” part for search engines—it’s gathering the rest of the information above that takes time and work for it to process.

Videos, developing stories, and other information related to a query may change any time, and so that requires constant updates that can affect the presentation of the SERP of the search query entered.

What Does SEO Speed Depend On?

Since the length of time it usually takes for SEO to produce tangible results is in a range (2 to 12 months), most digital marketers would still likely gun for the shortest time possible in this timeframe. There are plenty of factors that can speed up or slow down your SEO efforts.

Competition

It should go without saying that the rate of difficulty increases in an industry where there are a lot of competitors. There’s always a possibility that your competitors have been doing SEO longer than you have, and the results will show—so it could take a while to dethrone them from the number one spot on SERPs. This is also a huge factor why competitor analysis is essential before starting your SEO strategy. It’s good to be clued in with what your industry rivals are doing and to spot the holes in their campaigns which you can do better.

Inbound Links

It’s no surprise that links have a huge role in SEO, as these are trust signals for search engines to decipher if your website is a credible reference that other sites refer to. However, it’s not all about quantity here, but quality.

A high volume of low-ranking webpages that link to your site won’t guarantee a high ranking—the opposite is true. These links could hurt your web reputation and slow down your SEO progress too. By focusing on sites that have higher domain authority, you can maintain the quality of your backlinks and attain your SEO goals faster.

Lastly, there’s also the topic of how fast you get those inbound links. Search engines would find it quite dubious if you suddenly acquire a considerable amount of high-quality links all at once. This could indicate black hat SEO techniques and could cause your site to get penalized—something potentially challenging to recover from.

Content Quality

Search engines love high-quality content. This has some indicating factors, such as word count, internal links, external links, format, and more. However, there’s no need to spew out 10,000-word articles on the regular. Google has become smarter in identifying the types of content that answer a person’s search query.

There’s also the factor of how regularly you publish your content. Some people have thought that the key to content publishing is to do it as often as possible—but this theory has been debunked. As long as you have great content that’s worth discussing, highly relevant, and helpful to your target audience’s problem, then there’s no reason for volume to trump quality and relevance.

Website Architecture

The effectivity of your SEO efforts also lies on what your website looks like:

Is your text readable?
Do the pages load quickly?
Are the URLs short and related to the page’s topic?

These factors matter when it comes to the speed of SEO. Your website architecture tells Google how much effort you put into your website and how much you care about your users by giving them a great browsing experience.

Having an architecturally-sound website also helps Google crawl your webpages for information more easily. They don’t have to crawl through too much text, code, or too many URLs to identify which data is pertinent to your site. Keep in mind that Google also now prioritizes mobile-friendly webpages versus those that are not optimized.

Website Age

Unfortunately, even if you believe that your website is the answer to the information that’s lacking in your industry, you might find it difficult to rank for the first six months since your website has gone live. This is because Google considers sites that are less than six months of age as a “new website.”

Search engines tend to favor old websites since they’re more established and less likely to spew out non-factual information that could hurt their reputation. However, that shouldn’t stop you from putting in the work for your new website. As long as search engines see consistency in your efforts, you will be rewarded faster—especially after passing the six-month mark.

Google Takes a While to Index Pages

Building upon the discussion about website age, it’s also important to consider that it takes a while for Google to index new websites and pages. The current estimate is around four days to four weeks. However, the exact amount of time will again vary. Google always uses its private algorithms for their actions, so it’s quite tricky to give a definite answer to this process.

Here’s how Google indexes pages:

Crawling begins with a list of websites from past crawls and sitemaps provided by webmasters. This job is done by the Googlebot, an algorithm-equipped web-crawling digital robot tasked to discover new and updated web pages to be added to the Google index.
As the bot visits each new site, it detects links on that page and adds them to its list of pages to crawl as well. It pays attention to new websites, updates to existing web pages, and dead links.
Once it starts crawling the site, it reads the information on the page according to the instructions outlined in the site’s robots.txt file. After Googlebot finishes reading the text and following the links they discovered on the page, it begins the process of indexing the webpage.
The data and content which the bot read are sent back to Google’s servers and added to its vast database. They take note of key signals such as keywords and website freshness, all of which are tracked in the Search Index.
The information collected in the database is then fed to programs that keep track of which sites should be crawled, how often bots should visit them, and the number of pages to fetch.

The Google Search Index is the web’s library with hundreds of billions of webpages in its fortress. It’s the index at the back of reference books. As content and links are published every minute of the day, it could take a while for Google to crawl each individual site and add them to their index.

There’s no current strategy to follow to make Google index your page faster. However, it’s worthy to point out that the speed at which Google can index your site will depend on the same criteria that you should look into when auditing your website for SEO: content, website architecture and responsiveness, inbound links, etc.

SEO is Worth It

Although it seems like SEO is a challenging process with no immediate rewards, don’t give up—it’s worth it! While it’s not the fastest channel in terms of results, it’s one of the most important tactics you should implement if you want to hit your long-term goals. A good rule of thumb would probably to check back on your progress around the sixth to twelfth-month mark and see if there are any other tactics you can incorporate or if you should re-evaluate current practices.

If you noticed, the common thread among all the topics discussed is to build an authoritative and helpful website. You can accomplish this by producing great content, establishing credibility through inbound links, and creating a superb user experience for your visitors. The heart of SEO directly lies there, as unbelievably simple as that sounds.

Another thing you shouldn’t forget is that SEO is a process. You will need to update your tactics, maintain your website, and continually scout your playing field to stay on top of the game. It’s important not to get complacent as a lot of companies regularly take their shot at SEO and also expect results.

Make sure you’re always working to secure or maintain that top spot!

Ask SEO Company what we can do to grow your brand with proven best practices!

Mar 31 2020

How to Align Your SEO Strategy to the Buyer’s Journey

Saying that your product is the best in the market won’t cut it in this digital age. Modern-day customers are getting smarter and wiser, and the internet is helping them make better purchasing decisions. These days, they can find out everything they want to know about a product or service before zeroing in on the one that’s right for them.

This is the journey that every buyer goes through.

The buyer’s journey not only helps marketers think like a customer; it also allows search engines like Google to help consumers go through their search process with little to no trouble. True enough, since around 67% of buyers’ research and influence happens digitally. If you want to maximize your SEO strategy, make sure to align it with each stage of the buyer’s journey.

What is a Buyer’s Journey?

In essence, the buyer’s journey is a process that’s composed of specific stages the buyers take when purchasing a product or service.

It has three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Some may begin their journey from the beginning, while others may start in the middle. There are also those that go through the entire buyer journey very quickly, while some take quite a while.

Below is a visual representation from Moz that illustrates the purchasing journey of a customer.

Stage 1: Awareness

This first stage of the buyer’s journey is all about discovery. This is where the buyer recognizes they have a problem but aren’t sure what it is specifically. More often than not, they’ll turn to Google for some answers. In this particular stage, the consumer is eager to find quality, educational content that can help them pinpoint the culprit or cause of their problem.

Stage 2: Consideration

Once the consumer clearly identifies their pain point and gathers enough information and opportunities to solve the issue, they move on to “considering” the myriad of possible solutions.

This is the phase where they have decided to address the problem and look for different methods or partners to help solve their issue. Thus, beginning their search for a service provider.

Stage 3: Decision

Finally, we reach the decision stage. Their search for potential solutions eventually leads buyers to narrow their choices of vendors and find the best company to work with. Typically, consumers are ready to buy at this stage, and they’re just making comparisons and assessing reviews to identify the service provider that meets their needs.

This stage is also where the buyer consumes additional content to support their requirement for a vendor. It is also where they ask the executives or decision-makers to approve the purchase (if they’re not the ones handing out approvals themselves).

Identifying Your Buyer Persona

Understanding the fundamentals of the buyer’s journey helps you identify and fill in the gaps in your marketing strategy. But before you dive head-first into it, you need to develop buyer personas to help you personalize your marketing collaterals and target specific segments of your audience base.

Each type of buyer has different demographic details, pain points, priorities, goals, experiences, considerations, intent, behavior, and buying patterns when they go through their own purchasing journey.

Creating customized profiles of your ideal customers allows you to learn more about what type of content drives them to engage with a brand or motivates them to purchase. This helps in content creation, product development, sales approach, and anything that deals with customer acquisition and retention.

Simply put, buyer personas help you better target and humanize your marketing strategy by perceiving them as real people. Below are the basic criteria that shape a customer profile:

● Job title and responsibilities

● Demographic details (i.e., age, gender, income, location, education)

● Psychographics (i.e., attitude, interests, values, personality traits, priorities)

● Goals

● Challenges

● Buying process (i.e., buying behavior, role in the buying process)

Once you’ve created your buyer personas (3-5 profiles are ideal), you may start studying how to fit your content to these demographics, align it to the buyer’s journey, and finally, use the information and your findings to implement an unparalleled SEO strategy.

Your persona can be short and straightforward or long and detailed, as long as it includes all the necessary information. To help you better understand what a buyer persona looks like, here’s a fictional example:

Michael Schrute – Potential Project Management Software (CRM) Buyer

Background: Michael is a well-put executive who likes to keep everything organized, documented, and transparent. He always finds ways to refine processes to make it easier for the company and employees to perform their work. Michael’s the type of person who’s always in-the-know about the latest gadgets and tech news.

Title: CTO

Decision-maker: Yes

Industry: Digital Marketing

Age: 30-45

Salary: $70,000/year

Education: B.S. in Information Systems

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Goals:

● To grow a productive, strong, and collaborative company

● To keep track of everyone’s work performance, tasks, and time logs

● To boost efficiency and streamline the process

Challenges:

● Needs to improve project management tracking process

● Current software often crashes or goes down

Aligning Your SEO Strategy to the Buyer’s Journey

While the fundamentals are the same, the approach has evolved. To tap your ideal clients and win in this ever-evolving time, you need to keep your SEO and content marketing tactics in harmony with the purchasing behavior of consumers.

1. Awareness

Scenario: Michael realizes that the company’s current project management system brings more inconvenience than usability. He goes on the internet for how-to articles and initiates a general inquiry on how to improve their system.

Objective: Build brand awareness for your product or service and educate the buyer

At the first stage of the buyer’s journey, the goal is to build awareness about your brand. Bear in mind that at this phase, Michael isn’t looking to purchase anything just yet, he doesn’t have anything specific in mind. So, he’s unaware of your business and his particular needs.

As a marketer, it’s your job to create awareness for your company, products, and services, so potential buyers can understand what you do, what you offer, and in what ways you can help him. But, your content materials should focus more on your prospect’s pain points rather than your brand.

This is the part where Michael’s research about the problem begins. The keywords are likely general search terms that are question-based since he’s still investigating the issue and exploring options.

Search terms for this stage are:

“How to improve task creation”

“How to streamline task template [current project management system brand]”

“What causes [current project management system brand] to freeze”

SEO Strategies to Consider:

How-to content – This could be in the form of a blog post or video. How-to content can walk prospects through their conundrum and open their eyes to your product/service as a consideration. Make sure to link your target keyword to relevant pages in your consideration stage materials.

Videos – Promotional videos found on your website or page content can spark audience interest around your product or service.

Pillar page – This covers all topics related to the product, service, or keyword, which the buyer is looking into in more detail.

Whitepapers and eBooks – These materials can provide more in-depth information, which can come with relevant statistics or reports to help the prospects better understand the problem.

Quick tip: Ensure that these resources are readily available on your website so buyers like Michael can access it when doing research. You can use a marketing automation tool to help you keep track of content downloads and gather prospect information. The data can give you more insights about interested prospects and help you refine your buyer persona’s preferences.

2. Consideration

Scenario: After acknowledging that his current project management system has incompetent features, he thinks that replacing it altogether is the best course of action. So, he starts asking recommendations from friends, read reviews, and research more about what’s available out there.

Objective: Nurture and build trust through your content

In this stage, Michael has discerned that he needs more automation and handy features in his project management tool. Since he’s already well-informed about his problem, he starts to seek content that can help him compare features, evaluate his options, and review the different tools and vendors available.

This is also the stage where Michael will start to reach out to the vendors, whether through a sales rep or general email. The move indicates that they’re on a deep dive in narrowing and comparing their options, so they start inquiring to examine the features that matter most for his company.

Simply put, this is the stage where Michael determines whether or not your brand and product are good enough for him. As he moves past the awareness stage, his search keywords change from “how to’s” to “best/top” queries.

Search terms for this stage are:

“Top project management system”

“Company A/Company A product review”

“Company A and Company B comparison”

SEO Strategies to Consider:

Video tutorials – Video tutorials on how to use your CRM tool can help prospects like Michael take a good look at your service for consideration.

Landing pages – Landing pages direct customers to a specific product or service, which can influence them to take action. This is also useful for collecting lead data, like names and email addresses for sending email newsletters/offers.

Blog posts – Blog posts are generally helpful for growing search engine traffic as they target keywords from each stage of the journey, for each buyer persona.

FAQ page – This helps answer the prospect’s burning questions about your offering. It can help in their comparison of products/services and vendors.

Pillar page – Since this discusses topics in depth, prospects can find everything they need to learn about your product or service through this content.

Link building – Acquiring external links from authority websites boosts your site’s domain authority and search rankings, which can help grow your visibility when prospects start searching. Not just for the awareness stage, but for all stages of the funnel.

Quick tip: You can use Google Analytics’ Site Search Reporting to view a myriad of keywords you can use to customize your campaigns for each buyer persona.

3. Decision

Scenario: Now that Michael has narrowed down his search for solutions and vendors, he’s finally ready to make a purchase.

Objective: To close the sale

As a marketer, this is your chance to brag about your product or service. You can create content, like blog posts or product pages, that provides in-depth information about the product and its features. This is how you can address Michael’s doubts, and finally convince him to purchase.

When you’ve successfully implemented the right strategies, and tailored content for both the awareness and consideration stage, prospects like Michael become paying customers.

Buyers have likely done enough research prior to reaching this stage, so chances are they won’t go to Google or other search engines for help. After all, they already have their options. Instead, you can focus on injecting branded keywords in your content to drive buyers like Michael to the right pages (i.e., live demo, free trial page, product/service page)

Search terms for this stage are:

“Company A CRM pricing”

“Company A CRM tutorial”

SEO Strategies to Consider:

Free trials and live demo pages- Pages, email newsletters, and ad copy that informs buyers of a free trial drive warm, qualified leads like Michael to test it out and eventually, commit to purchasing the product or service.

Success stories and reviews – Produce case studies and customer testimonials prove to prospects what past and current clients have achieved by working with you.

Quick tip: When crafting content and copy for your decision stage materials, remember to speak the language of your target audience. In this case, Michael is a top executive. You might want to drop phrases like “creative new approach” and “increase revenue” to attract these leaders.

Important note: keywords are highly crucial in your SEO tactic and most especially, in each stage of the journey. Make sure to perform keyword research for all three stages. That’s how your prospects find your brand, after all.

Make sure to naturally insert your target keywords in your on-page SEO elements for optimization (i.e., H1 tag, page title, image alt text, meta description).

SEO Strategies Must Be Aligned with the Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is a vital part of inbound marketing and successful SEO campaigns. Because of the internet and powerful search engine algorithms, marketing has dramatically changed. From intrusive strategies, marketers now move towards laying out value-based and customer-centric marketing delivered at every stage of the customer’s journey.

Your website is your brand’s best sales representative, and with that, you need to develop tactics and content that cater to the purchasing behavior of your target persona(s).

If you’re interested in implementing SEO strategies mapped out according to your buyer’s journey and buyer personas, SEO Company is just the partner to assist you. Inquire now for a consultation!