All posts tagged: SEO importance

Categories and Tags in WordPress? How to Use Them Properly

As any experienced content writer can tell you, simply writing good texts is not enough. In order to get some traffic on those texts, you need to know what SEO is and how to work with it. And you cannot talk about SEO without talking about categories and tags in WordPress. Categories and tags are, in fact, so important for content writing that properly using them can make the difference between your posts having high traffic, or having no traffic at all. So, without further ado, let’s look into what WordPress categories and tags are all about and how to use them.

July 14, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

The best free SEO tools to increase your rankings

SEO tools help you complete a set of tasks as fast as possible and with as close to perfection as you can get. Up until recently, there weren’t many free SEO tools that you could use. If you were working on a tight budget and needed to perform a limited set of tasks fast, you had to pay the full price. But now, there are dozens of free tools that you can and should use on a daily basis. You can, of course, purchase the whole tool if you figure out you need it but we think you can find your way like this too. Thus, here are some of the best free SEO tools to increase your rankings.

June 18, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

Outdated SEO techniques you should avoid

The potential of using SEO for improving both your search engine rankings and online presence is impressive. However, using the full potential of this powerful means is possible only if you follow the latest trends in this filed. This means that an SEO strategy which used to be effective some time ago, may not be sufficient to provide you with the credibility and reputation you expect. Thus, pay close attention to the following SEO techniques you should avoid. Then, you can focus on advanced SEO strategies instead, start using them and finally reach your goals easily.

1 – Offering quantity instead of quality is one of the outdated SEO techniques which is still in use

Traditionally, website owners used to concentrate on providing their readers with a vast number of texts. The primary aim of this strategy was to offer a variety of content, which, unfortunately, very often lacked the necessary quality. Nowadays, the situation has changed dramatically. The appearance of Google Panda has forced these website owners to stop using incompetent, low-quality content. Instead, readers should be able to find the content of genuine quality and value. Should you fail to meet this requirement and decide to prioritize quantity over quality, you are bound to be severely penalized by Google and also lose your high rank in search engines.

a silhouette of a woman holding the words high quality because one of the outdated SEO techniques is to offer vast number of texts with low quality — Offer high-quality content to your users instead of a vast number of texts which lack quality.

2 – Keyword stuffing

It happens very often that website owners cannot find the balance between the proper optimization and over-optimization of the content. Hence, try your best to steer clear from one of the most frequently used outdated SEO techniques – an evident abuse of the keywords you want to position for. The most promising approach and one of the SEO trends in 2019 is to use keywords naturally. The slightest keyword abuse instantly triggers Google Penguin and you can lose your favorable position on search engine results surprisingly fast.

3 – Spinning the existing content into a new one

Once a legitimate SEO technique, this is now a strategy considered to belong to the negative SEO sphere. The constant changes in technology and the new Google updates have made website owners improve their knowledge of SEO and explore the best ways on how to use it. If you hope to create quality content by simply applying rephrasing and using similar words, the results will be disappointing. As unbelievable as it may sound, no website owner will ever be able to trick the search engine and masquerade incompetence into prime-quality content. Hence, make a serious effort to offer expertise in your field to the readers and your presence on the first page of search engine results will not miss.

4 – Buying links is out of the question

It is essential to earn links toward your website. Those who have problems with this task easily get into the trap of using one of the outdated SEO strategies – buying links. As one of the link building mistakes you should avoid, there is no chance that this approach will provide you with online reputation and credibility you need to succeed in your niche. As soon as one of the Google updates identifies a vast number of low-quality sites which provide an immense number of links to your website for no logical reason, all you can expect is a penalty.

a man in the middle of a lot of links - buying links is one of the outdated SEO techniques you should avoid — As soon as one of the Google updates identifies a vast number of low-quality sites which provide an immense number of links to your website for no logical reason, all you can expect is a penalty.

5 – Overusing anchor texts is one of the outdated SEO techniques you should avoid

SEO updates now require quality linking structure for high rankings without exception. In order to achieve this, website owners have to provide optimized anchor texts that will lead to target landing pages and relevant blog posts. Earlier, it was possible and even advisable to use exact-match keyword phrases as much as you can. This practice used to guarantee favorable search engine rankings. Today, it is an outdated SEO technique that doesn’t bring any results. Instead, you should use varieties of anchor texts – branded, naked, page title, heading, etc. Only this way will you avoid activating Google Penguin and losing trustworthiness among your readers. Also, always bear in mind that these readers are who you write for. Do not write for search engines and expect success.

6 – Creating pages for all keyword variations

Earlier it was possible to rank high easily if you provided the content rich in keywords and keyword variations targeted by your brand. Then, the appearance of certain algorithms significantly changed this SEO practice. These algorithms are able to recognize that these variations of keywords are actually related to the same topic. Consequently, they started eliminating this strategy by introducing penalties. If you want to rank high in search engine results, you have to offer value related to your brand to your users, not just the variation of the same content. Moreover, if this one among the outdated SEO techniques hand continued to develop, we would now have considerable difficulties to navigate websites, since the content would be highly similar. At the bottom line, this would make the user experience very negative.

7 – Targeting exact-match search queries

One of the outdated SEO techniques is by all means targeting exact-match search engine queries in your strivings to rank as high as possible. The Google Knowledge Graph has completely eliminated this tactic as the one that leads to success, credibility, and online reputation. Concerning the number of variables that this practice entails, this was not a big surprise.

a woman working on a laptop and Google search engine on the screen — One of the outdated SEO techniques is by all means targeting exact-match search engine queries in your strivings to rank as high as possible.

8 – Exact-match domains

It used to be an excellent strategy to have keywords of high value in your URL. However, despite this fact, excessive use of this strategy soon caused bad user experience and Google eventually realized that exact-match domains do not mean success. Instead of using this outdated SEO technique, pay attention now to the SEO best practices you should know. Focus on performing your jor job impeccably and offer premium-quality services. Your high search engine results will be guaranteed.

Summary

The use of outdated SEO techniques is still present, unfortunately. They are followed by those who still have not realized that this is the wrong way to the top of the Google ladder. Hence, if you want to create a respectable brand, gain online credibility and reputation, following SEO trends is compulsory. Technology is ever-changing and we have to follow and master these changes. That is the only way to reach our goals.

June 11, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

Make your business goals come true by accomplishing your SEO goals

Do you own your own business, but you don’t know how to reach your business goals? If you do, this article will prove to be very useful to you. Currently, many are more willing to own their own business, then work for somebody else. This is very admirable because if your business fails, you will feel the consequences the most. Rather than thinking about possible failure, let us discuss how can you prevent it. Even better, let us discuss how can you reach your business goals. For instance, consider SEO and start researching it.

May 29, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

The people who deal with Search Engine Optimization know that SEO is always changing. If you want to stay successful, you need to keep up with the changes in order to better optimize your content. If you do not do that, there is a good chance that you will be beaten by the competitors who are aware of the ways SEO has changed. It is an ’’adapt or die’’ kind of situation. So, in order to adapt more easily, read this article on new SEO trends in 2019.

Amazon Search Optimization is becoming more and more important

First of all, people who are interested in buying products seem to be bypassing Google and heading straight to Amazon in order to find the products they are interested in. People have been using Amazon to search for products ever since Amazon came into existence. However, they now do it a lot more often. One study has concluded that a surprisingly large percentage of consumers in the USA, Germany, France, and the UK primarily search for products on Amazon – 72 percent. And there is a good reason for that. Not only can the shoppers buy the product that they like right away, but they can also use Amazon for anything that they might have needed Google. We are talking about things like suggestions for similar products and user reviews.

A picture of a boat on the river Amazon, illustrating one of the SEO trends in 2019.

Maybe the author of this picture bought this boat on Amazon in order to pilot it across the Amazon.

This will certainly have a big influence on Google, as it puts a dent in their income. Searching for products on Amazon affects Google Ads and Google will lose money because of this. That is because shoppers will no longer click on ads for similar products on sites that have Google Ads running. This is one of the more interesting SEO trends because many SEO experts predict a huge rise in Amazon Search Optimization in 2019. SEO will no longer include only Google optimization, but it will also be necessary to optimize your content for other ’’engines’’ as well (Amazon and, later, probably Apple). This means that using all the ’’usual’’ SEO techniques will no longer be enough (by the way, if you are interested in some of the more advanced SEO strategies that you should adopt – we can provide you with some useful information).

Voice search is rising

Another new SEO trend concerns the rise of voice search. The number of users who search the internet by using voice search is increasing every day. So much, in fact, that specialists are expecting that by 2020 half of all searches will be made by using one’s voice. Not only that, but voice assistants of all kinds are becoming increasingly popular. 35,6 million Americans have reported that they use voice-controlled accessories at least once a month. Smart speakers are extremely in demand, as one in six Americans now owns such a device.

A picture of a phone that is being voice-controlled.

The fact that more and more people are using voice control influences SEO trends.

Of course, it is clear that this will lead to a huge change in the world of SEO. As such, this is definitely one of the most important new SEO trends. The change will occur because of the differences between spoken and written language. There is a big difference between how someone will type something, and the way they would phrase the same query by using their voice. This means that you should be prepared for answering the queries that were posited by using a more natural language.

Mobile-first indexing

Based on the way Google has been acting so far, we can determine that there is one thing that is very important to this IT giant – sites should be easy to use and as comfortable as possible so that the user can quickly browse the specific site and then move on to another one. This ’’need for speed’’ was especially evident in Google’s Speed Updates. These updates are their way of reducing the position that slow mobile sites had in Google rankings (while we are at it, everyone should conduct an SEO audit, and not only because of Google rankings). One can conclude that Google sees the slow-loading pages as one of the bigger problems when it comes to mobile searching. It seems that Google wants to use its popularity to make the site owners improve in terms of loading times. When it comes to SEO trends, this one is especially interesting because, back in March last year, Google introduced what is called mobile-first indexing. This is not surprising, as almost 60 percent of all internet traffic happens on mobile devices. Unfortunately, it is not easy to predict what mobile-first indexing entails when it comes to SEO. What we do know, however, is that you should definitely keep an eye on the speed of your website.

Blockchains round up the list of most interesting SEO trends in 2019

Finally, there is the blockchain technology. In simplest terms, blockchain is an expanding list of blocks (records) that are connected by using cryptography. Blockchains were invented in 2008 because there was a need for a sort of a public ledger that would be used to track the transactions made with bitcoins (a form of cryptocurrency).

Blockchains used to be associated primarily with bitcoins, but now they are also influencing SEO.

While blockchains were most strongly connected with bitcoins, in the future they will have a great influence on SEO too. One of the jobs that Google has had was to be a sort of a middleman between the owner of the website and the entity that is paying to have its ads displayed. That is why it was important for Google to maintain a trust relationship between the involved parties. That is where blockchains come into the picture. Namely, blockchains can verify that a user is not lying about his or her identity. They can determine whether a real person or a computer program (a bot) has viewed the ad. That is useful because website owners will only have to pay for the clicks made by actual people, and not bots, thus securing the trust relationship between all parties. Because blockchains are so efficient when dealing with attempts of online fraud, they will not only influence Google, but they will have an effect on the overall SEO. Microsoft and some other big companies are already looking into ways to utilize blockchains.

Other trends

These four SEO trends will have the greatest influence on SEO in 2019. However, here are some more trends, some old, some new, that are also relevant:

Experts predict that understanding your audience will be more important than ever in 2019. You will need to know exactly what kind of an answer someone is expecting after posting a query. Are they expecting to see a text, a video or maybe images?
AI is becoming more important for Google, and with it, so are the structured data. In the future, Google will want to move to an AI-first world, but in order for that to become reality, AI should be able to quickly process data.
It seems that Google is rewarding the sites that have more quality content. Duplicate texts are strongly forbidden, so using Copyscape.com to check this type of content is a must. Quality was always important, but now Google is pushing website owners to do even better.
Do not forget that negative SEO is still highly unethical. Try to win over your competitors by being better than them, not by unethically sabotaging them.
On-page optimization was important and it will keep being so. You should always keep updating on-page SEO as the rules of SEO keep evolving.

Like we said, SEO keeps changing, but by staying up-to-date and learning all you can about new SEO trends, you will increase your chances of surviving in this severely competitive environment. Stay safe!

May 10, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

In this modern technological era, a road to successful business inevitably leads over the internet. Thus, it is of utter importance to make your brand visible online by creating a safe and high-quality website that will achieve favorable search engine rankings. While SEO techniques can help considerably in reaching this goal, there are those among your competitors who would do anything to create numerous obstacles on your way to the top. Here we come to negative SEO. What does the term refer to? Is it a serious threat or not? We can help you understand. Here is all you need to know about negative SEO.

What does negative SEO refer to?

Negative SEO refers to using an unethical group of activities for the purpose of sabotaging and lowering a competitor’s search engine rankings. It can take various forms to impede the functioning of your website, and finally harm your business. Concerning the importance of SEO for small business growth and for reputable corporations as well, exploring the ways to protect from negative SEO is compulsory. However, the real problem is that prevention from these techniques is beyond your control. Also, you cannot detect them until you take conscious steps to analyze your rankings and incoming traffic.

Types of negative SEO

Generally, there are two major distinctive groups of these black hat activities. Each of them can take different forms. Understandably, depending on the type, we use various methods to handle these attacks and provide security to both our website and our business.

Negative off-page SEO

This group includes those activities that affect your website, but yet don’t internally interfere with it. The problem with them is that they are very difficult to discover and almost impossible to prevent. The negative off-page SEO includes:

A boy surrounded by network symbolizing negative SEO . — Negative off-page SEO affects your website but it doesn’t internally interfere with it.

Linking farms – This is the situation when spammers use a group of interconnected sites to build an immense number of links to your website. A Google update, the Penguin, recognizes these manipulative links so you might get penalized.
Copying your content to other websites – In this case, when Google update the Panda recognizes content duplication, it may take punitive actions against your website. Most often, it will identify the source, but sometimes it can also mistake a stolen version for the original and that means trouble.
Crawling – Crawling is when your competitors decide to crawl your website for the purpose of crashing it and causing serious server load. The first signs of this activity are slow loading time or even unavailability of your website.
Fake reviews –Since reviews are very important in doing business, receiving a lot of negative ones can have harsh consequences not only for your website but for your whole business as well.
Creating fake profiles on social networks under your name – The aim of this negative SEO is clear – spammers want to ruin your reputation online.

Negative on-page SEO

This group of activities aims at hacking into your website and making some changes with the data. Luckily, they are highly difficult to conduct and yet they are easy to fix with the assistance of an experienced professional team. The negative on-page SEO includes:

A hacker pointing to the cyber security phrase written on a glass surface. — Negative on-page SEO includes hacking into your website and making some changes with the data.

Modifying the content on your website – Spammers can hack your website and make some changes in your content. Moreover, they do this in the best possible way to stay unnoticed until you finally decide to explore and check your site and then you find the problem. Spammers usually add links which cannot be seen until the moment you decide to analyze the code.
Modifying your page to redirect to a spammer’s page – Most likely, hackers will use this method to attack websites with high reputation and link popularity. Their primary aim when doing this is to try and improve their own rankings. This type of negative SEO can cause serious damage to your website.
Getting your website de-indexed –For this type of negative SEO all a hacker has to do is make some slight changes in robots.txt. Consequently, your SEO strategy will turn into a complete mess.
Hacking the site – Once Google finds out your website has been hacked, they will want to protect their users. Hence, they will add the notification “this website may be hacked” to your search listings.

How to protect your website from negative SEO attacks?

In the spirit of the saying that every problem has its solution, we must admit that there are some conscious steps you can take to protect your reputation and the safety of your website. Here are a few successful strategies:

Constant vigilance and revision of your SEO properties.
Constantly keep track of backlinks published on your website. This way you will notice instantly if someone creates a link or redirects to your website. More importantly, you will be able to repair damage at short notice.
Provide proper protection for your best backlinks, since they will be the main goal your online attackers will want to reach. Thus, when you communicate with webmasters, never use Gmail or Yahoo email address. Instead, use the address from your domain to prove your identity.
If you use Word Press, the best you can do is install Google Authenticator Plugin to create a more complex, verification password in two steps. If not, a strong password is what you need by all means. Use a combination of numbers, letters, and special characters.
Run regular checks for duplicate content. The smartest and yet the simplest choice is to use Copyscape.com. Enter the name of your website or a part of the content you want to verify and wait for results.
Check the speed of your website on a regular basis – A very low loading speed is most often a sign of spammers who are messing up your server.
Finally, make sure your SEO strategies are appropriate. Always strive to choose the best anchor text strategy for SEO. On the other hand, you shouldn’t publish guest posts of low quality on your website or sell links on your website if you don’t use the “nofollow” attribute. Also, buying links for SEO is out of the question.

Is negative SEO a serious threat?

The answer is, unfortunately, affirmative. However, Google is trying its best to protect the users and detect and penalize all those who practice negative SEO. What we can do is use strong security systems and always install updates. In the meantime, your business and improving its visibility online shouldn’t stop. Continue your development, explore the elements of a successful outreach strategy and keep your eyes peeled for malicious websites and hackers.

April 16, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments