Beginner’s Guide to Creating Quality Content Using SEO Practices in 2019
What did you last type into Google? Chances are whatever the question, it recommended a blog or article on the topic.
In 2019, search engines like Google care about solving the intent of the searcher. This means that the viewer’s attention must be grabbed, the information was helpful, and the article had steps in place to engage with the company.
Do you want to learn about how to write a quality blog post that helps your relevancy on search engines?
Here’s a beginner’s guide to everything SEO to optimize your next blog post.
Creating Effective Content
Your goal as a writer is to keep people on the website.
Content that is overly complicated or boring will cause readers to abandon your page. The experience that your audience has is an important one.
You aren’t the only one writing a blog today. Countless blogs are posted every day, so how do you grab people’s attention?
Well, it all starts with creating meaning content that educates or inspires your readers. How do you do that?
The first thing to do when creating compelling content, is to find a compelling topic to write about.
Choosing A Topic
The best thing to write about are things that both relate to your services and educational topics. Simply put, people find blogs by searching for questions they have. So, answer them!
The easiest way to identify this is to think like your audience and ask the following:
- What do they want to know about?
- What will they identify with?
This isn’t to say you should never write about your own business when it makes sense. Your company just won an award or was featured in a major new article? Perfect opportunities to write about what your company can do for the masses!
But for most blog posts, it’s best to focus on the industry’s questions. This is largely due to the fact that the people you are hoping to reach don’t know about you yet! If you only talk about your business or yourself, people won’t be able to find you by searching.
Are you stuck for ideas or have writers block? Consider talking to other people in the company in different departments or that have unique perspectives. They could be a gateway to ideas!
Here are some questions to ask regarding potential leads to topics:
- What are frequent questions from customers?
- What does our audience need help with?
- What do people wish they knew regarding our industry?
- What are others in our industry talking about?
It may be beneficial to start with a very broad topic. As you research and write, you’ll likely find subtopics that could be expanded on. Try to approach the broad topic in different ways to create different avenues for expansion.
Keyword Research
Keywords are the words or phrases that are commonly typed into the search engine. They are the main words people are looking for information on.
What are the words that your industry uses all the time? If you run a company that repairs air conditioners, your keywords could be “air conditioner repair.”
The concept of keywords is not to completely overwhelm your content with a keyword every sentence. It actually negatively impacts your search engine optimization because it’s considered stuffing.
Think about incorporating them naturally in the headlines and body, as if they were a conversation.
Language allows us to say the same thing differently. Maybe your keyword can be said a different way. Instead of repeating “air conditioner repair”, use a synonym. This can also help search engines to pick up on different nomenclatures because not everyone searches for the same thing the same way.
Develop a Long-tail Keyword and Title
Long-tail keywords are very specifically targeted keywords.
They typically are 3 or more words and contain a head term combined with more generic search terms. The head term should relate to what you want your company to be known for and what topics you want to provide knowledge on.
A good practice is to develop and focus on a single long-tail keyword.
Why are Long-tail Keywords Useful for Titles?
Often times the title is the opener for a question to be answered. Those who search for long-tail keywords will be the most likely candidate to read your post in its entirety and pursue your company further. They are the ones who will click down the conversion funnel.
Make a Working Title from a Long-tail Keyword
Everyone reads the title before committing to the rest of the blog. That means you have to make sure people are interested enough to continue by catching the viewer’s attention.
A working title is something you base the direction of your post off of. For example, using the broad topic of “video advertisements”, the working title could be “How to Optimize Your Video Advertisements in 2019”. We took the very general idea that could have been pretty much anything and made it specific.
Once you finish the post, go back to your title and rework it to align better with the end result. Your title should help people as well as search engines to decipher what the post will contain specifically. Readers will identify what they can get out of spending their time viewing your post.
Shorten Your URL Slug
A post slug is typically a viewer friendly URL name of a post or page.
They ensure clarity of the topic. For example, website.com/blog/our-first-blog.
Your slug doesn’t have to be the title of your blog. When slugs are overly long or complicated can be confusing and not memorable for users to find later.
It is also useful to have a consistent slug if the title changes. For example, if you intend on trying to better optimize your title to gain traffic, you don’t have to then also change the slug.
Best practice is to exclude years or numbers in general, this way you don’t have to change it if you update the page.
It’s important to keep the URL slug as short as possible without losing key information.
Optimize Image Alt-texts
It’s crucial to incorporate images throughout your blog to provide a visual interest.
Search engines can’t see images like we do, so you can’t optimize for actual images. What you can optimize is the alt text or name.
An alt name is information regarding what the image is about. From a search engine perspective, the best descriptions will better the results.
It’s an easy thing to forget but can ultimately help if you include them. Consider creating an alt text for your images based on your long-tail keyword or working title.
Additionally, including these will help with accessibility for impaired users and allow you to increase your reach.
Create an Interesting Meta Description
What’s the next thing users see after they read the title? The meta description.
The meta description is the brief synopsis of your article found right below the title. It is used by both viewers and search engines to provide information regarding what you intend to talk about.
Meta descriptions don’t directly affect your SEO; however, they are useful for including keywords. Searched information is often bolded if your article uses the keywords or the meta description does.
They should not mislead people into clicking on something they weren’t looking for. It’s good practice to use words that indicate what you want viewers to gain from reading further. This could be words like:
- Get
- Use
- See
- Learn
If you’re ever stuck on what to write to think of it as a headline. How would you get the attention of the viewer?
Including Strategic Blog Links
With more traffic, you’ll be able to develop better relationships with your viewers. You want users to feel that they can trust you.
So how can you create that trust with an informational blog? By being credible.
Including links to your sources throughout the blog will showcase that you have researched the topic and know what you’re talking about.
Now, including a link for every paragraph is not what you want to do. It’s best to sprinkle your sources only where it makes sense.
Likely at this point, you’ve got a few topics in mind for what you could write about, so plan accordingly! You can incorporate hyperlinks, Call to Actions (CTAs), to other blog posts of yours on related topics.
Have you already explained a topic that you mention? Link to it! This is good practice because if someone finds your content useful, they could find your services right within the blog.
Don’t Just Use Text
Plain text that all looks the same is frankly just boring.
By offering other types of media like images or videos will greatly increase the amount of time people spend on your article.
Including videos, especially near the top of your article, increases your chance of being on the front page of Google by 53 times. Why? Because people that take the time to watch your video, increase your bounce rate.
In the eyes of search engines, if people just view your page and then leave, it didn’t really help them. When people click to watch a video embedded on your blog, Google sees that as people finding valuable resources on your site. And it is more likely to recommend the article to people.
Most people would rather watch a video than read text, and giving people the option, puts value in your content.
If you’re just starting out on your blog or if you’re just looking to better your blog writing, this is an excellent map to creating quality content.
Make the most of every post on your site by incorporating these tips!
Use Your LinkedIn Profile to its Full Potential by Incorporating SEO Practices
LinkedIn is a powerful search engine that can drive targeted, high volume to your profile. But most people neglect to utilize its full potential and gain better conversions for your profile.
When you think of LinkedIn, you probably assume it is just a social media platform for your resume. But it’s more than that.
How can you optimize your profile to be more SEO-friendly and gain better traffic on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn Optimization
LinkedIn’s optimization allows connections to be built with those who are at the top of your industry. Your ideal clients are attracted to your profile and potentially send messages regarding your services.
By implementing SEO practices, like keywords and copywriting, you could generate more leads and build your brand.
How would this work?
Well, like any site, marketing is dependent on not only traffic but optimizing that traffic to create the best possible conversions. It’s important to make the most of each person that visits your profile.
Building Up Your Profile
Here are several practices in order to bring your LinkedIn profile up to the best it could possibly be.
1. The Look
Most people would say not to judge a book by its cover. But on LinkedIn you have limited space on your profile, so why not make the most of it?
Knowing your target audience, will help you tailor the profile’s aesthetics to them. If it is a very corporate job, you should wear professional attire in your profile photo. If you want to seem more casual, then don’t “suit up”. It’s all up to the audience and what they expect of you.
Take advantage of all the aspects you can expand on your brand’s look, be that the profile photo or the cover photo.
Your profile photo should have:
- High quality image
- Close up of your face (good practice is approximately 60% of the canvas)
- Plain and simple background
- Appropriate attire for your business
Your cover photo should have:
- Unique imagery that attracts attention
- A tagline that relates to what you do or who you do work for
- Call to Actions (CTAs) with your contact information
Since about 65% of people are visual learners, making the visual aspects of your profile
optimized will help give a good first impression. It will also allow people to have a quick
cue to get in touch and get to know you.
2. Finding Keywords
What users type into Google are likely not the same as what they type in LinkedIn. Therefore, you need to tailor your keyword research to how people search on LinkedIn.
Here are some questions to consider when researching your keywords on LinkedIn:
- What do you want to be known for?
- Do these terms get good traffic but with low competition?
- Do these terms fall into your target audience?
Based on these answers, take the shortest and broadest terms associated with you.
Good practice would be to consider the different results based on the degree filter of
your connections.
3. The Content
There are tons of opportunities to incorporate copywrite conversions within the content of your profile. Similar to your profile photos, keep in mind the target audience when writing.
Headline
Your headline should be a combination of copy and LinkedIn keywords. Users quickly understand what you do and more importantly, what you can for them.
Be clear. Don’t include catchy slogans or plays on words as it may leave the viewer confused as to what you do.
Fill the entire space. You have 120 characters for your headline so why not use them!
The main takeaway for your headline should be to appeal to people who are looking for specific qualities that you provide. Include keywords, but don’t make them the focus. For example, “Driving Digital Business Success with Best-In-Class Technology Partnerships.”
Summary
Your summary is the place where you have the most space, a whole 100 words!
This is where users hope to learn more about you, what services you provide and anything else about your industry.
What you shouldn’t do is to just endlessly list everything you’ve ever accomplished. No one needs to know you won the 3 rd grade spelling bee. Make the information relevant.
Think of this section as the About Page on your website. What would people want to know about what you can do for them?
Experience
You may be wondering how you could make the experience section of your profile SEO optimized. While it may be tempting to make this exactly like you resume, there are tons of SEO opportunities here!
Take those keywords and incorporate them within the skills you have. Mention things like how you increased the traffic of a site by a major percentage, or how you developed an uptick in conversions.
Step away from the boring bullet points of everything you did. Try writing naturally and conversationally. Those who seek your services may not know all the complex terms the industry uses. Instead of “CTR” or “KPI”, use the layman’s terms.
Use your experience section to compel your viewers in trusting you are the right fit for what they are looking for.
4. Connections and Recommendations
LinkedIn prioritizes the degree (1st , 2nd , and 3rd ) of connections based on what is searched.
When you connect with people, you are connected to their network as well as your own. This means you should try and keep your connections within your industry for best results. If they search for one of your keywords, you’re more likely to popup with them.
Simple connections are easy to accomplish. Creating meaningful and memorable connections is more difficult. We recommend starting a conversation.
Conversations make people feel important and valued. When composing a message, don’t ever pitch in the first message. It is an extreme turn-off for most people and often feels spammy.
Let the conversation naturally flow. They will almost always bring up what they are looking for from you, rather than you are presenting what you can do for them. Leads will find you and they are more likely to turn into a conversion.
When you work with people sometimes, they will provide you with a recommendation.
A recommendation is akin to a review of your services. They prove that you have the skills! It shows you know what you’re doing, and the results other people can expect of you. Naturally, keywords will be important here.
The goal of your profile is to create leads. Overall, by adapting your LinkedIn profile to a more SEO optimized profile, you’ll get more meaningful traffic. Not only that, but according to LinkedIn, companies who complete their profiles get 30% more views.
If you’re not making the most of your profile, why not start now?
5 Key Ingredients of Effective SEO-Friendly Copywriting
What is the fundamental difference between traditional and web copywriting?
In a word, it’s visibility.
When your content appears in print, it’s already in a place to catch a certain audience’s attention. Your copy is visible to whoever decides to flip through your magazine, unfold your letter or shuffle
open your newspaper.
Putting your ad into print is like fishing in a well-stocked pond. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a bite, but you’ve at least cast your lure where it will be seen.
Writing web copy, on the other hand, can feel like dropping words into the middle of the ocean. How can you possibly hope to reach anyone, let alone your ideal prospects, in such vast waters?
The answer is a lot simpler than you’d think.
Why SEO Copywriting Matters
Ask yourself: how do you find stuff online?
The most common answer is Google.
Search engines are the single biggest source of B2B and B2C website traffic, responsible for 61% of all website hits worldwide. Nothing else even comes close.
Incredibly, only 10% of that is paid search advertising – meaning 51% of all website visits come from the search results that occur ‘naturally’ (known as organic search traffic)
When you drill down and look at where all that traffic is coming from, you’ll find that most of it happens on the very first page of search results. In truth, experts estimate that 71% of all Google users hardly ever venture past page one.
What does all this mean to you as a writer? Simple: if you write content that Google loves, Google will put it front of an audience.
Instead of drifting aimlessly in the middle of the sea, you’ll be back to casting into a pond that’s full of potential catches.
What Google Wants to See in Your Copy
The challenge is convincing Google that your copy is worth showing people.
That means crafting copy in a way that impresses the search engine algorithm – the digital mastermind that decides where your webpage should rank for different search queries.
Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? Traditional ad copy plays on the whims and emotions of warm-blooded humans. Search engines are cold, heartless machines.
But Google doesn’t crawl and rank webpages all for itself. Google works for us. It was built to deliver accurate, relevant information and answers to every imaginable query.
Of course, search engines don’t look at a webpage the same way as you or I. Your copy and the webpage containing it needs to look a certain way for Google to know what it’s about.
Google loves copy that is:
- Unique.
- Enriched with relevant keywords and phrases.
- Organized with logical headings, bullet points and numbered lists.
- Surrounded by relevant images or videos.
- Comprehensive, complete and accurate
Here’s how that translates to practical SEO copywriting.
1. Make Your Copy One-Of-a-Kind
Imagine you’ve bought three books by three totally different authors – only to discover that beyond the unique covers, each book treads over the exact same content. Such a waste of time (and paper!)
You’d feel the same way if you clicked through three search results and found largely identical content. To avoid this annoyance, Google strives to fill its search results with pages that provide unique, distinct information.
If a site has two extremely similar pages – for example, ‘regular’ and ‘printer-friendly’ versions with the same copy – one of them is going to get filtered out. You can tell Google which version you’d prefer to show off in the search results using canonicalization.
But what if your website uses copy that appears elsewhere on the web? Say you’re running an online store that sells other brands’ products. You might’ve considered ‘borrowing’ some copy from the brand’s website on your own product pages to save time.
Resist the temptation. Duplicate copy can hurt your site’s search ranking. Google loves original content, even on the most well-tread topics.
2. Lock-On to Your Target Audience with Keywords
Search engines are great at picking up patterns. It’s one of the primary ways they process and understand what a webpage (and a website at large) is about.
When a particular word or phrase appears repeatedly throughout a webpage, the crawler clues in. If these terms are also surrounded by quality and relevant copy, it increases the odds of that webpage ranking for search queries that use the same important word. Hence the term keyword.
Keywords are at the core of SEO copywriting. Enriching your content with well-researched keywords is one of the best ways to help it reach the right audience.
3. Use Headings, Bullets and Lists
Have you ever had to speed-read part of a textbook moments before class?
No shame – we’ve all done it at one point in our lives.
Take a second to think about how you read a page when you’re down to the wire like that. You tend to flip through quickly, skim over paragraphs and focus on things that stand out:
- Heading and subheadings
- Lists, tables and diagrams
It’s not too different from how Google parses a webpage.
Search engines are increasingly fond of copy that can be turned into quick ‘snippets’ – and we know for a fact that your layout is key to creating snippet-friendly content.
4. Compliment Your Copy with Awesome Images and Videos
Think your web copy can stand alone? Think again.
Visual content is so powerful when it comes to SEO that it’s practically mandatory.
To date, Google Image Search has indexed over 10 billion images and stands as the second-biggest search engine (earning about 23% MORE searches than YouTube) Incredibly, images also account for about 3% of all Google search clicks via image blocks.
The stats on video are equally enticing. One research firm estimates that having a video on a page increases its chance of a top Google ranking by 53%! Another has found that video boosts your organic traffic by as much as 157%.
Video and image files also serve as another clue to the topic of your page in the eyes of the algorithm. You might not give a second thought to your file names and metadata, but this information can really help reinforce the keyword or phrase you’re targeting in your copy.
5. Be the Authority on Your Subject Matter
Above all else, Google wants to make its users happy.
Why? Because more users mean more advertising revenue.
The people behind Google Search (and competing search engines like Bing) work tirelessly to develop a search engine algorithm that delivers the most accurate, relevant answers to your queries. As a result, the system tends to favour content that is more thorough, accurate and digestible than other pages on the same topic.
This doesn’t always mean your copy needs to be longer than your competitors’ pages. Rather, it should deliver more information and/or better information (ideally, it does both).
Smart keywords, quality visuals and good formatting are all valuable assets when it comes to writing for SEO – but they’ll fall flat if the copy doesn’t deliver. In fact, Google can even penalize your website if the copy doesn’t live up to the hype.
Start Writing Copy That Google Loves
Of course, getting people to your landing page with search-friendly copy is only half the battle. You’ve still got to turn those eager prospects into customers. That requires a calculated blend of persuasive writing, pitch-perfect web design and proven sales tactics.
It’s well worth your effort to get the ingredients right from the start.
How Long Does It Take for SEO to Start Working?
One of the most frequent questions from clients of a digital marketing firm is “When will my search engine business rankings increase?”, or “How long does it take for SEO to start working?”
Business owners know the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as part of their online marketing strategy. They also understand that SEO strategies make it easier for search engines to find them, rank them higher, thereby increasing traffic to their website.
So how long do you have to wait before you see results? The short answer is “it depends”.
There are many variables to optimizing your website, however three specific criteria play a significant role: competition, inbound links, and content.
Competition
Depending on your product or service, there will be varying degrees of demand. The more competing webpages you’re up against, the longer it will take to see results. Depending on how well your competition’s SEO strategies perform, the longer it will take for you to rise in rankings.
If you are spending a great deal of time and effort developing and implementing your SEO strategies, you can be sure your competitors are doing so as well. Every time you post a new blog, your competitor may be doing the same.
Inbound links
The volume of inbound links to your website play a huge role. The quality of those links, the speed in which you gain those links, and historically have gained them also has an effect. The speed at which you earn links should have a relatively stable growth pattern. A sudden increase in links looks unnatural. If your link-building follows Google’s guidelines, that should happen naturally.
A large number of high-quality, high-authority inbound links (also referred to as backlinks) will flag site-crawlers, indicating that your website is an authority in your particular field. It’s almost like gaining a referral from someone for your product or service.
Content
Quality content matters a lot. High-quality content is original, relevant, authoritative, factual, grammatically correct and engaging. Your web pages need have no minimum or even ideal length. They just have to answer the question or solve the user’s problem.
A business blog is a great way to become a resource for information in your field that you add to on a regular basis. Blogs are a great way to increase traffic to your website.
Keep in mind that newer pages don’t rank as well as older ones. This graph shows that the average top 10 ranking page is at least 2 ½ years old.
Despite this, new content should be added to your website on a regular publishing schedule.
This encourages search engine spiders to crawl your site more frequently and speed up your SEO efforts. Also, users will return to your site more frequently looking for new content, further sending signals to search engines of the popularity of your site. User engagement is built and gauged over time.
SEO is An Investment
Ultimately, you need to be prepared to invest several months to a year before seeing the results of your SEO efforts. Why? Search engines take multiple factors into account when ranking webpages. For example, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their search algorithm! The takeaway is this: SEO can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so it is worth the investment of time and money!
4 Reasons to Include Social Media Video in Your Business Marketing Strategy
No matter what size your business or what niche you’re in, you’ll need to take social media video marketing seriously. Though it’s not the only tool in your social media toolbox, it definitely is a major one. The ability for a business to tell its story and engage its audience is a powerful sales tool, and video is helping to tell better stories.
Video content can help businesses reach 4 specific goals:
1. Web Traffic
Social media video content is an effective way to drive traffic to your website. Video content continues to grow and drive the internet. It plays an integral part of the online social lifestyle. Demand for social media video content is continually growing on social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and especially YouTube. A successful social media video campaign will include a CTA (Call to Action), the most popular being “Visit our Website”. Other CTAs include “Learn More”, “Sign Up Now”, “Book Now”, or “Shop Now”.
Gaia.com is an online resource that streams videos about alternative health, yoga and inspirational films and documentaries. This brand knows the benefits of using video on social. Their video on Facebook had 248 shares and 6.3 M views with a clear CTA to visit their website to learn more.
2. Engagement
When social media videos showcase your brand and tell your story effectively you connect and engage with your audience. When that video content is not only worth watching but also worth sharing, you increase your audience reach.
Canadian Tire™ successfully showed its support for the Canadian Olympic team during the summer 2017 Olympics with this inspirational video that only subtly shows its product: tires. It turned out to be one of the most viral videos of 2017. It just goes to show that your businesses’ story is not just about showcasing your product. It’s also about the things your company believes in and supports.
3. Brand Awareness
More and more brands use social media videos to tell their story and give their brand personality. It’s that personality that followers want to see, and what makes your brand stand out from the crowd. Recognition is a key element to your product’s story.
Taking a similar marketing approach as Dove™, Always™ came out with this video as part of their “Like a Girl “campaign. They used a powerful message of empowerment for women to gain attention and respect for their brand. Their campaign went on to win numerous awards including an Emmy.
4. Generate Excitement and Educate
Leveraging the power of short social media video content by creating instructional how-to videos, showing off a new product from every angle, or simply using text to tell your product’s story creates interest and excitement while getting your message across. If you create content that’s both informative and useful, you’ll create trust in your brand, and a set of loyal customers.
Today’s Parent shows off an easy Ikea™ hack using one of their products in this cheerful video with a “Back -To-School” theme so relatable to families that want to avoid the common entryway clutter.
Are you looking to optimize your digital marketing strategies using video? Contact us today and let’s get started!
What are the Essentials of Image Optimization for SEO?
You’re a great writer. You can produce killer content that people connect with. What about pictures? Do you have them on your site, or blog? Are your images optimized for SEO? Or do you just throw up whatever you have on hand at the time?
Believe it or not, there is a technique to posting images that can affect your Search Engine Optimization strategy. Done improperly, it can be a detriment to how Google and other search engines view your website. Part science and part art form, correct image optimization is ultimately about two things:
- Making the user experience a good one
- Appeasing the SEO gods
Achieving the second item depends largely upon achieving the first item.
Whether you’re a seasoned blogger, or just wrote your first post, the following essentials in regard to image optimization for SEO will help your content rank better with search engines.
Do I Even Need an Image?
Um…yes. Always!
Some people would consider posting anything without at least one image. But why? Humans are innately visual creatures. In fact, for those of us who do not have severe visual impairment, sight isn’t just our primary sense involved with assimilating information from the world around us. It is used at a far greater rate than all the other senses combined. And pictures have been shown to be just as, if not more effective in relaying information in certain circumstances.
Including pictorial content with a post achieves several items for the user:
Provides visual appeal: opening a page that is a sheer wall of text causes a brain to immediately tune out. Many people won’t get past the first paragraph, and your websites bounce rate will increase. Spice up your post and break up the monotony with an image.
Visuals can help clarify a topic. There’s nothing like a graph, chart, or even an on-point meme to get a point across.
Besides the obvious visual appeal for readers, search engines not only like to see that you are providing pictures, but that your images are optimized for maximum effectiveness. The metadata and descriptions associated with your picture can help increase your chances of being found in an organic search.
Where Can I Find Images?
It is considered best practice to use your own, original photos. Decent cameras are reasonably priced. Heck, some people have gotten proficient enough with their smartphone’s camera that they use this as their primary picture taking device. The biggest obstacle many people find in providing their own pictures is time. It may take too long to gather the right objects and get the lighting just right, or to go out into the wild to locate that ideal scene.
If you need to gather your visuals more quickly there are online venues designed specifically for this purpose. They come in two flavours – free and paid.
Some of the free sites like pixabay have pictures that are truly free. What’s the difference between free, and truly free? Some “free” sites offer photos at no charge, but they have a watermark on them. You have to pay a subscription, or membership fee to use the photo without the watermark. Might be okay if the mark is generic, but they usually aren’t, which makes the pic kind of useless for posting on a blog.
Some have a two-tier system. There is a small selection of free (and sometimes lower resolution) pictures without watermarks, and then if you pay a membership/subscription fee, there is a greater selection of photos which include better resolution.
Then there is truly free. There are no watermarks. There are no membership fees, or tiers. Pictures are offered at varying resolutions. The selection may not be as wide or deep as some of the pay sites, however if you are creative you can find the free sites may be more than enough to supply your needs.
Off-Page Changes
After locating the perfect picture to go with your content, there are a couple of things you will need to do with the image.
- Change it up. When allowed to alter a pic, do it. Chances are you aren’t the only one using this picture, so by adding an effect, or overlaying some text, or cropping the image, you make it different from any other site where users may happen upon this visual. Canva is a great online tool that can help with basic alterations. If you want something a little more robust, gimp is a great picture manipulation program loaded with tons of options – and it is free! (truly free)
- Remove unnecessary metadata. This is the part of the image that the users won’t normally see; things like the title, tags, authors, date taken, etc. In all, there are about 25 attributes that should be removed whenever possible, to help with overall page performance and not get search engines bogged down with irrelevant information.
Off-Page Information
Image optimization for SEO isn’t just about removing irrelevant items. It is also about ensuring the correct attributes are present and correctly formatted. The following items won’t usually be seen by the user but make a big difference for image optimization.
- File name: Never leave an image or photo file name with the default that was set by the camera or program (ie. DSC44553.png or img33224.jpg). Always change the file name to something that is relevant to the content, preferably the focus keyword. This not only helps indicate to search engines the relevance of the image to the text but can help with placing in organic searches.
- File format: There are several file formats that will serve for a content image, with the two main types being .jpg (this has its small size going for it), and .png (which allows for background transparency). On occasion a .gif may even be desired for animations. Remember to keep the file sizes as low as possible; use compression if necessary.
- Alt text: Most CMS’s media libraries will offer an extra field called alt text when uploading an image. Do not treat it as optional and leave it blank. Do not treat it as an extra field for more keywords. Instead, fill it in with a short description of what is in the picture. This field is used by programs for those who are sight impaired to give a verbal description of what the rest of us see when looking at the image. It can also help when a browser runs into problems downloading the image, by placing the alt text directly on the screen, allowing everyone to get some idea of what is supposed to be there, rather than just a blank image or file not found error.
On-Page Information
- Give credit where credit is due. Read the terms and conditions of each site where you procure your visuals. They all have varying rules and degrees to which a picture may be used, and the way credit should be given. This not only lets search engines know you have authorization to use a picture, it can also save your hide legally in case a photographer or graphic designer sees their image on your site and challenges your rights of usage.
- Picture size: as a general rule-of-thumb, ensure the picture is no wider than your content, and it does not fill the entire screen from top to bottom.
- Captions: people scan titles headings and image captions (no not words imposed over the text, but words underneath a pic – relevant to the article), so a short line of relevant text under the picture can help the reader understand something if it is unclear.
Bottom Line
The biggest thing to keep in mind when setting up a picture for your content is the user experience. Is it original? Is it relevant to the content? Is it clearly, and properly labeled? Is it correctly sized on the page? Does its file size allow for rapid loading? With proper image optimization your visuals will be useful for both the reader and for search engines.
Quora for SEO: Is it Worth Your Time?
300 million active monthly users. Engagement with the world’s top thought leaders. Growth that could surpass Twitter and Reddit. Those are the claims Quora put forth to advertisers when it launched new targeting options earlier this year. If they’re right, then Quora must be fertile ground for SEO activity – right?
In reality, the intersection of Quora and SEO is a complex (and often controversial) topic.
Let’s investigate.
What is Quora, and Why Is It So Popular?
Quora isn’t the first question-and-answer site out there, but it might just be the last.
That is to say that Quora has so far managed to succeed in areas where similar sites have failed.
Yahoo Answers, one of the first major Q&A sites, was massively popular but poorly-moderated in terms of questions and answers alike. It never came close to a reputable source of information and was often the subject of ridicule.
Google Answers surpassed Yahoo Answers in the quality of its content, but it failed to strike a chord with internet users at large; and like many Google products (see: Google+), Google Answers was closed due to ailing popularity.
The respective downfalls of Yahoo Answers and Google Answers illustrate the challenge of managing an informational site built on user-submitted content. To grow, the site must continuously attract more users who are willing to submit questions and answers; however, there’s a delicate balance between encouraging user participation and maintaining quality standards.
Set the bar for quality too high and few people will participate; set it too low and the site will attract poor-quality content, spam and trolls.
To date, Quora has managed to strike this balance through a combination of a quality-ranking algorithm and human moderators who monitor the feeds. Quora was originally moderated by volunteers from its user community, but the company has since switched to paid moderators and content reviewers who remove questions and answers as needed.
It’s easy to contribute to, but it’s not a free-for-all, either. This balance has been vital to the site’s popularity so far. Quora has even garnered attention from world leaders like Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama.
What is the Value of Quora for SEO?
Another key to Quora’s success is its powerful presence on Google’s search engine results page.
Google’s RankBrain algorithm strives to deliver the highest-quality answers relevant to searchers’ queries. Quora’s upvote-driven Q&A format, which favours the most precise and comprehensive answers to specific questions, is practically tailor-made for it.
These days, whenever you make a search query in the form of a question, there’s a high likelihood of finding Quora on the first page of the results.
This trend has motivated people, brands and SEOs to try and leverage Quora to drive site traffic.
But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. Using Quora for SEO is not as simple as plopping links into questions and answers – and in fact, that’s a good way to get banned from Quora for life.
Ways to Use Quora for SEO
Here’s the truth: Quora’s prominence on page 1 of Google’s search engine results has made it a magnet for SEO-related spam.
By that we mean users posting low-quality answers solely for the purpose of driving traffic to their (or their client’s) site.
Spammers aside, there are legitimately useful and effective ways to leverage Quora’s popularity and SERP presence to your advantage.
1. Answer Questions to Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Site
All external links placed by Quora users are no-follow links. This means that if you post a link to your website on Quora, it doesn’t pass any authority onto your site.
In other words, Quora isn’t useful for backlinking.
However, when done properly, posting links to Quora can be a way to drive good, qualified traffic to your site. That’s because the questions people pose to Quora tend to be specific, with clear intent on the part of the questioner.
For example, the person asking “What are the best tennis shoes?” is likely to be interested in buying a pair of tennis shoes. The same goes for anyone who comes across the question in a Google search. If you happen to sell tennis shoes, these are exactly the people you want visiting your website – so it would be great if you could get a link on that page.
However, Quora is picky about how and when a question or answer can include external links.
According to Quora’s rules on questions and answers containing external links:
- Helpful answers are clear and credible, and sincerely address the question asked. External links to sources can help demonstrate credibility when the answer depends on third-party facts and analysis rather than the poster’s personal experience.
- Answers containing external links must answer the question and summarize how the reference answers the question. They cannot just point users to the link for answers.
- Answers that drive traffic to external sites for promotional or commercial purposes and do not sufficiently answer the question are considered spam.
In sum, if a page on your site is a good source of information for a user’s question, it can be helpful and appropriate to include a link to that page in an answer. When the question is one that your ideal visitors are asking, it can be well worth your time to answer it.
2. Answer Questions to Build Credibility and Authority in Your Industry
One of the reasons why Quora has been popular among tech influencers is how it readily showcases users’ qualifications and achievements.
Right below each user’s name and portrait is their Quora credentials, intended as a way to show the world why your post is worth reading (and an implicit answer to the question, “Says who?”). It can include your education, location, life experience and other personal information. Well-known figures can even earn a verification checkmark next to their name.
This system makes Quora an excellent platform for personal and brand authority-building. It’s a fast and completely free way to publicly demonstrate expertise in your industry.
3. Use Quora to Optimize Your Site Content
Popular answers on Quora can tell you a lot about how to write great content.
The answers that rank best among users tend to be those that provide comprehensive, useful information in a way that’s easy to read and understand. When the question relates to your industry, it can give valuable clues about the information your customers are looking for and how they prefer to receive it.
Think about a question your customers or clients regularly ask. Has anyone asked and answered the question on Quora?
Does your website provide all the information contained in the top answer?
If not, that could indicate an area of your site that needs improvement.
4. Use Quora for Keyword Research
If someone is asking a question about your industry on Quora, chances are some of your customers are searching the same thing.
Quora is an excellent place to explore how people discuss your business in everyday, unfiltered language.
Questions and answers can reveal keywords and phrasing you might not have thought of yet. Plus, with a free Quora Ads account, you can see exactly how many views a question receives each week, which can help you decide if a particular keyword is worth pursuing.
5. Use Quora to Brainstorm Blog Topics
Not sure what to write about? Find an unanswered (or inadequately-answered) question that relates to your business and answer it in a comprehensive blog post.
Freshly-posted questions can be a goldmine for novel blog content ideas. The same goes for a new FAQ page, a customer knowledge base, or a glossary of industry terms.
Better yet, there are several ways find these topics without any work on your part. Add a subject or keyword to your Quora feed to have new questions delivered as they’re published. Or, follow another user who answers questions in your industry to get notified when they post – then, add your two cents.
Quora has been around for almost ten years, but it’s still fertile ground when it comes to growing your online reach and driving traffic to your website. There’s plenty of room for experimentation.
Optimizing Your LinkedIn Company Page to Hook Leads & Drive Traffic
LinkedIn has become an incredible marketing tool, especially for businesses who know how to optimize their LinkedIn company page.
The premiere professional networking platform is a great place to scout talent, network, and nurture sales prospects. But that’s not the only way to leverage it.
LinkedIn also has powerful search engine optimization benefits. Creating a LinkedIn company page is of the fastest ways to rank for branded keywords, and it sends strong signals to Google’s ranking algorithm.
Want to quickly and effectively optimize your LinkedIn company page? Focus on these key areas.
Why LinkedIn is Worth Your Time
LinkedIn is home to over 500 million users from 200 different countries. And those users are impressively active, with over half of them visiting the site at least once a month.
Having a dedicated company page gives you direct access to customers, clients, and talent in your industry. It’s a free platform for showcasing products and services and promoting important news.
Company pages also unlock valuable engagement assets, like how many people see your posts and what they’re saying about your company.
LinkedIn’s not only popular with professionals – Google’s ranking algorithm loves it, too. LinkedIn company pages quickly climb the rankings for branded key phrases, giving companies a free and easy opportunity to get their content in front of more searchers.
Optimizing a LinkedIn Company Page
When we talk about optimizing a LinkedIn company page, we usually have three broad goals in mind:
- Increasing LinkedIn user engagement with the company page;
- Helping the company page rank for relevant queries in search engine results; and
- Helping the company page rank in LinkedIn’s native search engine results.
Each of these goals can be refined and targeted to a company’s specific key performance indicators; if the company is looking for sales leads, for example, the focus will be on user engagement at specific points in the marketing funnel.
Whether you’re focusing on organic engagement or plan to boost your LinkedIn strategy with sponsored content, optimizing a LinkedIn company page should begin with these basic steps:
- Fill out the company profile completely.
- Write a keyword-rich company description.
- Upload high-quality photos.
- Link back to the company website and other social profiles.
- Post-industry-relevant content.
- Have employees connect to the page.
1. Complete Your Company Profile
Start by filling in the blanks.
When a user first enters a company on their profile, LinkedIn generates a bare-bones page for that company to serve as a hub for employees; however, the information that automatically populates the page is far from complete and not necessarily accurate.
Enter all the information someone would need to find and identify your company: its address, phone number, website URL, etc. Make sure it matches what appears on the company’s website and Google My Business page
This step increases the page’s legitimacy in the eyes of users and search engines.
2. Write a Compelling Company Description
What does your company do? What makes it unique? Boil it down into 156 characters.
The first 156 characters of a company’s description appears as the page’s meta description, or the summary that appears below the link on both Google and LinkedIn’s the search engine results page.
It helps to think of the description as an elevator pitch: a concise summary that tells people what your company is all about and entices them to learn more.
The company description can be longer than 156 characters, of course, but it’s important to make those initial words count. Be sure to include keywords and key phrases that people use to find companies in your industry.
3. Upload High-Quality Photos
The profile picture is the first impression people have of your company on LinkedIn. It appears in the LinkedIn search results, on employees’ profile pages, and above everything your company posts.
Company pages with profile pictures also get six times as many visits as those without one.
The best profile picture for a company on LinkedIn is a clear, high-quality image of its logo. LinkedIn recommends a minimum profile image size of 400px by 400px and a max of 7680px by 4320px.
You should also personalize the page with an eye-catching header image (recommended 1584px by 396 px). It can be a simple banner, a photo collage, or an image with call-to-action text. Since it always appears alongside the profile image, the header doesn’t need to include a logo; however, it should reinforce brand recognition using relevant imagery and colours.
If your ideal logo or header image doesn’t quite fit LinkedIn’s dimensions, Sprout Social’s Landscape Resizer tool is a quickly modify it.
4. Link to Other Sites and Profiles
Social media pages are most effective when they’re interconnected.
Add links to the company’s other social profiles so LinkedIn users can easily find and follow your company across the web.
In turn, add a LinkedIn button to your company website.
5. Post-Industry-Relevant Content
LinkedIn isn’t just another company listing; it’s a platform from which companies can broadcast their best content to clients, customers and industry colleagues.
Posts are one of the most direct ways to engage with viewers and followers since posts appear both on its page and the home page of each of the company’s followers.
What to post depends on the company’s goals for the social network. LinkedIn posts can be used to:
- Showcase an awesome company culture
- Share company news and updates
- Publish original blog, video and image content
- Spread the word about timely industry issues
Always include some form of visual content – those posts get 98% more engagement than text-only posts.
6. Get Employees on Board
If your business is new to LinkedIn, but your employees aren’t, chances are they’ll have already named the company in the Experience section of their profiles.
But that doesn’t always mean they are connected to the same page.
For example, the user who entered “Company Inc.” may be linked to a different page than the one who simply put “Company.”
Ironing out these inconsistencies is an important step in increasing the company page’s reach, especially for smaller businesses. The more employees who connect, the greater your reach.
About LinkedIn Sponsored Content
Once you’ve done all the above, it’s time to consider furthering your reach with sponsored content.
Sponsoring content puts your company’s posts in people’s LinkedIn feeds, appearing almost exactly like an organic (non-sponsored) post. It’s a great way to reach clients and customers, especially for B2B businesses.
LinkedIn’s advertising tools enable highly specific targeting, allowing you to aim content at specific people, companies, or positions within a company. Insight tags help to define further your audience based on who visits your site and their actions on the page, detailed conversion tracking gives a clear understanding of the value of leads through LinkedIn.
Find Out What Else We Do
Blog Optimization Checklist: 10 Clear-Cut Ways to Boost SEO
When you’ve poured time and energy into a great blog post, you want it to reach as much of your audience as possible. Small changes matter when it comes to boosting blog SEO. Take a run through this blog optimization checklist before you post — it won’t take long, and it’ll help your blog get seen by the right people.
1. Keywords
Keywords are words or short phrases that encompass what the blog post is about (see our blog: What Are Keywords and Why Do They Matter?). When you use them well, keywords can help the post rank for search queries that include those words.
Why Blog Keywords Matter for SEO
Search engine algorithms use repeated words and phrases as clues to what a webpage is about. Placing relevant, natural-sounding keywords in the blog content, title, meta description, and URL can contribute to a blog post’s search engine ranking.
How to Optimize for Keywords
Incorporate your chosen keywords into the blog:
- Title
- Headings (one or more)
- First paragraph
- Meta description
- URL
2. Length
There’s no perfect word count for SEO, but the length of a blog can factor into its ranking.
Why Blog Length Matters for SEO
Search engine algorithms often deem pages with less than 300 words inadequate to rank in the search engine results. However, longer isn’t necessarily better; a 3,000-word post stuffed with irrelevant content will fare just as poorly as a short one.
Optimizing Length for SEO
Aim to write at least 500 words per blog post. Beyond that, the ideal blog length will depend on your audience. Pay attention to how your blogs perform and look for trends related to page length.
3. Readability
It’s in the writer’s interest to make a blog post as easy to read as possible. Spacing, formatting, and writing style all weigh on a blog’s readability.
Why Readability Matters for SEO
Making your content easy to digest will increase the time people spend reading it and encourage them to share it with others. It can also increase the likelihood the content will rank in Featured Snippets, which is a huge boost to blog SEO.
How to Optimize Blog Readability
- Add informative headings and subheadings to make the post easier to skim.
- Format lists or step-by-step instructions as numbered or bulleted lists.
- Break large paragraphs into shorter chunks. Single-sentence paragraphs are common in the blog world.
4. Title
The title is your chance to convince the reader to click in 50-60 characters or less. A good title:
- Is short (search engines cut off titles longer than 60 characters);
- Is compelling (but not clickbait); and
- Promises readers something of value if they click.
Why Blog Titles Matter for SEO
A great title will drive more traffic to the blog, which significantly impacts its rankings. As mentioned above, the title should also include relevant keywords.
How to Optimize Blog Titles
Craft your title around keywords and the value readers receive from the blog. Shorten it 50 characters or less and add compelling adjectives to make it pop.
5. Call to Action
The title succeeds in persuading readers to click on your blog post. What do you want them to do once they’re there? Whatever the goal, readers are more likely to do it if you guide them in the right direction with a clear call to action.
Why a Call to Action Matters for SEO
An effective call to action keeps people on your site and discourages them from bouncing back to the search engine results page (see our blog: Understanding Bounce Rate, Long Clicks and Pogo-Sticking).
How to Optimize Call to Action
Place the call to action prominently on the blog post (the best spot will vary audience-to-audience, so consider testing different placements). It should be relevant to the subject matter of the article and the user’s pain points.
6. Internal and External Links
Internal links are links to content that is within the same domain as your content: other blog posts, product pages, contact pages, and so on. External links are the opposite: they point to other websites.
Why Internal and External Linking Matters for SEO
Interlinking helps search engine algorithms to understand the website’s structure. Links to credible, authoritative external sources help build your site’s credibility within the eyes of the all-seeing search algorithm. Both are an important part of boosting blog SEO.
How to Optimize Links
Be picky about the links you include! Credible external sites will bolster your blog’s credibility, but poor sites will do the opposite. Insert internal links should in a logical way that benefits the reader.
7. Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the clickable text of an internal or external link. On most sites, anchor text is underlined and highlighted in blue.
Why Anchor Text Matters for SEO
Search engine algorithms use anchor text another clue to what a web page is about, both regarding your blog and the page you’re linking to.
How to Optimize Anchor Text
Good anchor text is succinct, informative, and relevant to the target page. Incorporate keywords where it sounds natural to do so.
8. Images
Images are a necessity in any blog post, no matter the length or the topic. Along with their visual appeal, original images can help boost your blog’s SEO.
Why Images Are Good for SEO
Images make the blog easier to read, increasing the chance people will share it and explore the rest of your site. Keywords in image titles and file names can help give the algorithm context on your blog’s topic. Images also allow the site to rank in image searches.
Optimizing Images for SEO
Upload high-quality images with keyword-rich titles and file names. Avoid adding overly-large images, as they can bog down your site’s loading speed (see our blog: Why Page Speed Matters.
9. Meta Description
The meta description is a 160-character summary of the blog that can display below the headline on the search engine results page.
Why Meta Descriptions Matter for SEO
The meta description can be a huge factor in a reader’s decision to click through to your blog from the search engine results page. Like blog titles, meta descriptions are a chance to pique the reader’s curiosity and promise something worth clicking for.
How to Optimize Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions that exceed 160 words will be cut off, so be sure to include the good stuff in the first 160.
10. Proofreading
Spelling and grammar checkers have come a long way, but they’re still not perfect! Take time to proofread your blog before posting it.
Why Spelling and Grammar Matters for SEO
Poor spelling and grammar will stop some readers in their tracks. Few people will share an error-ridden blog with their friends, let alone peruse the rest of the site. Proofreading keeps readers on the page and preserves your credibility.First, give the blog a once-over yourself. Then, pass it to a colleague for a second look. If no one’s available to help, a free proofreading tool like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor beats no proofreading at all.
7 Universal Content Strategies to Increase Audience Engagement
Content is a contest. Whether you’re writing blog posts or cutting videos, there’s always someone else out there who wants to win over your audience as bad as you do. These content strategies can help increase audience engagement across a variety of mediums to help get your message out there.
1. Gauge the Competition
Who’s winning the race for your important keywords?
Finding ways to outrank those competitors will help bolster your share of the audience.
One important step in increasing engagement is finding (and fixing) gaps in your current keyword strategy.
You could be falling behind in areas where your competitors already have plenty of content. There could also be high-volume keywords the competition hasn’t covered yet, leaving an opportunity for your site to fill in the gap.
Conducting a keyword gap analysis requires a strong grasp of your site’s current standing and where you want to improve: how people are finding your site now, which keywords are most valuable to you now, and what your competitors are doing better.
Tools like SEMRush’s Keyword Gap Analysis can help, but it’s only useful if you understand what keywords are and which keywords matter to your business.
2. Optimize Metadata
To most people, metadata is an afterthought.
For anyone with a website, it shouldn’t be.
Metadata refers to two types of information: basic descriptions of digital files (file author, date crated, file size, etc.) and descriptions of webpage content. Both types of metadata play a role in your content’s search engine visibility.
Search algorithms use metadata to help determine what a webpage is about. When metadata contains relevant keywords, it gives the page a better shot of ranking for those search queries.
Optimized metadata may not increase audience engagement alone, but it can help give well-crafted content the boost it needs.
3. Increase Page Speed
Slow loading speed is one of the biggest barriers to audience engagement.
Nearly half of all internet users will not wait longer than three seconds for a page to load. It doesn’t matter how great a blog or video is if it’s dragged down by a slow-loading site.
If you’re not sure of your site’s speed (or can’t figure out why it’s slow), Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can give answers. Beyond that, there are lots of big and small fixes to increase page speed.
4. Boost Presentation
Looks matter, at least when it comes to boosting audience engagement.
The nicer the page presentation, the more likely people are to view the content, share it with others, and link back to it — all important ingredients of attracting and engaging an audience
Overall site design plays a big part in this (which is one reason to redesign your site periodically). But there are also many smaller steps you can take to make your content easier and more enjoyable to consume.
- Break blog posts into short paragraphs with a logical flow, adding bullet points and lists where applicable.
- Add relevant images. Blog posts with images get an average of 94% more views than those without.
- Embed a video. Video increases the average time people spend on a site by 105%.
If you do add supplementary videos and images, be sure to optimize them with keyword-rich metadata.
Speaking of different mediums…
5. Use a Variety of Content Mediums
Radio didn’t bring an end to libraries. Film wasn’t the death knell for radio. And the Internet hasn’t dampened the popularity of video (only changed how we see it).
Why? Because different people like to consume information in different ways.
Some of your audience will always prefer a long-form blog post or whitepaper to a video; others won’t give text the time of day when there’s a visual alternative.
Using a variety of content broadens the appeal of your site to a wider audience. Blogs, eBooks, videos, case studies, infographics, and podcasts can all help to build different segment of an engaged following.
6. Be an Authority
Authority is one of the biggest factors in how search engine algorithms choose which sites make the front page. To increase audience engagement, you’ll have to show that you’re an authority in your industry.
Being an authority doesn’t mean you’re the be-all and end-all for your industry. Rather, it means you have a take on the topic that is more in-depth, more authentic, and more current than the competition.
For future content, focus on quality and relevance over quantity. As for older content that still performs well? Keep it current!
7. Send the Right Content to the Right Audience
Instead of blasting all your content to everyone at once, take a precision approach. Aim for where you know it’ll connect.
There are lots of ways to make sure your content reaches the right people and get them to engage with it:
- Starting an email list is a great initiative for anyone looking to build an army of loyal followers.
- A/B testing provides guidance when it comes to making the best possible first impression on visitors.
- Retargeting visitors with content you know matches their interests brings wayward audiences back into your sights.
The point is, different content will resonate best at different points in the marketing funnel. Once you’ve figured out your funnel, you can begin to weave it into your content strategy.
Getting Audiences to Engage with Your Content
No content creator can produce a viral masterpiece every time, but these steps will help put it on the screens of audiences that matter.
It all starts with strategy. We’d love to help you find yours.