Everyone wants to get more leads, but turns out that creating an effective lead-gen site is not as easy as it sounds. Lucky for you though, I’m about to give you 37 actionable tips, tricks, strategies, and tactics to supercharge your lead-gen abilities and drastically get more leads from your site. Let’s get started! 

Perfecting the Lead Capture Page & Form

1. Create a lead capture page. The first step is to create a separate page on your website where people can take the action you want them to take, such as filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, requesting a demo, etc. That way when you are promoting your product or service in other marketing channels (like paid search, email, or social media) you can send them to a conversion-optimized page rather than a more general page, like the homepage.
2. Write compelling Calls to Action (CTAs). Your CTA should be short and to the point. It needs to highlight the benefit of your service or why people should give you their email. We’ll go into a couple of ways you can encourage signups a little later.

Dropbox’s CTA on the homepage is short but effective.

3. Make your CTAs prominent and include them on every page of your site (including blogs!). To increase your opportunities to convert people, include CTAs on every page. Your CTA should probably be slightly different on each page of your website. For example, your CTA on a blog post might be “Looking for more great marketing tips? Sign up for our newsletter to get weekly strategies & tactics!” For your service page though, the CTA might be “Ready to supercharge your SEO? Contact us today for a free SEO audit!”
4. Have your lead capture form on each page, and don’t put it below the fold. If you are going to have a CTA on every page, you’re going to need a lead capture form on every page too. While most websites have lead capture forms at the bottom of the page, in my experience most people don’t make it to the bottom of the page. If it fits your site’s styling you could try having the form on the right side of your page, and follow users as they scroll down the page.

The Quicksprout blog has an email capture form on every blog post, above the fold.

5. Only ask for the bare minimum on your lead form. Acquiring leads is hard enough already without you getting in your own way, so don’t overcomplicate your lead capture forms. Only ask for the essential information like their name, email address, and maybe their phone number. In most cases, any other important information can be acquired later.
6. Use Hello Bar. Hello Bar is a free tool that sets up a lead capture bar at the top of each page of your website. That way, the first thing a user sees on a page is the action you ultimately want them to take…but without it being intrusive. Check it out and see if it makes sense to use on your website.

An example of the Hello Bar in action.

Encouraging People to Fill out the Form

7. Give people a compelling reason to sign up/fill out a form. People are very protective of their privacy, so if they are going to give some company they’ve never heard of before both their email and phone number, there better be a damn good reason. Include that reason in the CTA. At this point, you’d probably like to know what some of these compelling reasons might be. Let’s get into it.
8. Include a free demo or preview. If your product/service lends itself to the demo format, offering a free demo is one great way of encouraging people to fill out a form. At this stage of the conversion process, the burden is still on you to show why you are valuable to the person visiting your site. A demo or preview is the best way to do that. However, if a demo doesn’t make sense for your business, there is still hope.

Hubspot offers a free demo of their platform.

9. Use a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a super valuable resource that people NEED to have, and the only way they can get it is to fill out a quick and easy form. Who wouldn’t want to do that? A couple of examples of lead magnets are white papers, How to Guides, and e-books. Decide what type of lead magnet makes sense for your business and start making it! Here’s a great article on lead magnet ideas and examples you can check out.

Backlinko uses lead magnets to acquire more email subscribers.

10. Host a free webinar. Yet another way of encouraging form completions is to invite anyone who fills out the form to a free webinar. The subject of the webinar would depend greatly on your business, but generally speaking, the most successful webinars seek to help people solve a particular problem, a problem that your company is well suited to assist with.
11. Create an email course. You can encourage signups and nurture leads by creating a free email course for people who fill out a form. For example, if you are an SEO agency you could have an 8-part course on the fundamentals of SEO in 2016, and email one part per day to subscribers over the next 8 business days. I particularly like this strategy because it provides great value for the subscriber and keeps your business top of mind for well over a week (or for however long you choose to do it).
12. Use a trip wire. A trip wire is a paid offering that is incredibly cheap, yet super valuable to the end user. The reason trip wires are so effective is because their value is unquestionably worth more than the asking price. Why would a company offer such a product? The reason is because it helps you get more customers through the door to begin with. From there, you can work on upselling them on your more profitable products or services. Offering people access to the trip wire in exchange for the form submission will likely improve conversions.
13. Give them a discount. People love discounts and love the feeling that they are getting a good deal. A great way of doing this is to offer a discount for signing up. This tactic is of course dependent on your business model, but if it makes sense, it can really improve the quantity of qualified leads you get.
14. Create a sense of urgency. One way to get even more out of the above strategies is to create a sense of urgency so that people make sure to sign up right away. If you’re offering a free white paper, but only for the next hour, people will be much more likely to convert right away in fear of missing out.

Clearly Explain your Product or Service

15. Use images and videos. Raise your hand if you get excited when you get to a page and it’s an endless sea of text that reads like an encyclopedia. Nobody? It turns out that humans are visual creatures and we are much more likely to finish reading a page if the text is broken up with images and videos. Speaking of videos…
16. Use an explainer video. An explainer video is, as the name suggest, a video that explains what your product or service is. There are many examples of explainer videos helping to skyrocket conversions, so definitely consider creating one. For more information on how to create a really great explainer video, check out this article.

The explainer video on Crazy Egg significantly improved conversions.

17. Break up your text into several sections with subheadings. In addition to using images and videos to make your pages more readable, use subheadings to further break up pages. This will make your content flow much better, help people remember where they left off if they had to stop reading in the middle of a page, and allows you to include relevant keywords in your subheadings (which is a minor SEO ranking factor). The more people that finish reading your (engaging!) copy, the more potential leads you’ll get.
18. Design a service page with a clean layout that uses images, videos, and testimonials. Besides your homepage, your product or service page is your most important page on the website. When designing it, make sure that the layout is simple and easy to navigate, with all of the pertinent information clearly explained. Leverage images and your explainer video, and also consider throwing in links to, or snippets of, reviews and testimonials. Make this page compelling enough on its own so that if a user only ever sees this page, they’ll know everything they need to about your unique value proposition.

Establish Trust

19. Display reviews and testimonials prominently on the homepage and lead capture page. Studies have shown that approximately 90% of people read online reviews before visiting a business or making a purchase. Having existing customers endorse your company is an incredibly valuable trust signal to potential customers.
20. Create a case studies section of your website. (Video case studies are great too!) Creating case studies, particularly video case studies, can establish how your company or offering has helped real people. Even more than online reviews, case studies can boost your credibility. If you can, try and use real statistics where possible. Include figures, graphs, and charts. Tell the story of how your business positively impacted someone else’s. You can take a look at Wpromote’s case studies for inspiration.

The La Curacao case study on Wpromote includes real results to tell a better story.

21. Have a fleshed out ‘About Us’ page. When people are considering actually filling out your form and getting into contact with you, they’ll likely want to know more about your company beforehand. That’s why it is essential that your site includes an easy-to-find and thorough About Us page so that prospects can feel more comfortable contacting you. The lack of such a page screams that something shady is going on. Don’t let that be people’s impression of your company.

Yellow Leaf Hammocks has an excellent About Us page, that effectively tells their story.

22. Include picture of your team to establish trust. Another good way of establishing trust is having pictures of key members of your team, that include their job title, possibly a short bio, and a link to their LinkedIn profile. After all, if someone is willing to put their name and face out there, they are probably not trying to hide anything. This is how Wpromote does it. Put your own spin on it!

Wpromote has pictures and short bios for all team members.

23. Focus on positive words (never mention spam). This is an interesting one; Michael Aagaard of unbounce found that mentioning spam in a form submission decreased conversions by 18.7%. That’s not good. The phrase was even a positive one (“100% privacy – we will never spam you!”) but just using a negative word hurt conversions. Make sure you focus on the positives, and also test your changes to see their impact.

Simple word choice can make a huge difference in conversion rate.

Engage with Site Visitors

24. Include a clickable contact number and email. Include your contact information on every page, ideally in the upper-right corner. Your phone number and email address should be clickable so that on mobile devices people can call with a single button tap.

Include clickable phone numbers on every page.

25. Respond within 24 hours after a form completion. This should be obvious, but it needs to be said; a quick response time can be the difference between setting up that first call and losing the prospect altogether. Make sure you have the internal bandwidth to respond to all inquiries in a timely manner.
26. Include live chat. If a prospect wants an answer to a question that they can’t find elsewhere on the site, Live Chat can be invaluable in nurturing the lead.

Live chat can help answer questions.

27. Use pop-ups on user exit-intent. Pop-ups are the worst…but unfortunately they are pretty effective at getting people to submit their information. Set your pop-ups to display if a user is signaling exit-intent, such as moving their mouse to the top of the page. Remember, a pop-up doesn’t have to be spammy; use lead magnets or other tactics to actually provide value to people who fill out the pop-up form.

Pop-ups don’t have to be annoying!

28. Use retargeting to connect with past visitors. You can use various ad platforms like AdWords, Criteo, and AdRoll to retarget or serve ads to people who previously visited your website. It often takes people several encounters with a website before they convert. Make sure you keep your business name front and center in people’s minds.
29. Create a ‘Thank You’ page after the form is submitted. When somebody does fill out a form, you want to immediately reassure them that they did the right thing. Therefore, after form completion, thank the person and let them know what the next steps are. Don’t forget to properly follow up within 24 hours!

Use Keyword Research & Content Creation for Top of Funnel Initiatives

30. Use keyword research to inform your content marketing strategy. There’s a lot of great keyword tools out there like SEMrush, Brightedge, io, etc. Use those tools to identify the keywords your website should be trying to rank for. For more information on how to actually do keyword research, check out this post I wrote. How does keyword research relate to increasing leads? Allow me to explain.

SEMrush is a great keyword research tool.

31. Use keyword research to create relevant, compelling content about your niche. Using the keywords you researched earlier, begin writing blog posts, articles, and guides with those keywords in mind so that you can start ranking for those terms. Focus on a good mix of content for people in various stages in the funnel. You should write content on more general subjects, for people who are new to your industry, and then more focused pieces for the experts. Having this kind of content not only brings in more qualified traffic, but it establishes your company as a thought leader in your industry. New to content marketing? Check out our content marketing basics guide.
32. Build links to your blog, and then use internal links from blogs to static pages. Internal linking is a tried-and-true way of passing the ‘ranking power’ of links throughout your website. A page with hundreds of backlinks will usually rank highly for a keyword, while a page with only 10 or so may not. However, you can use set up an internal link from a page with many backlinks to a page with just a few backlinks. This will help the latter rank better. For more on internal linking, you can check out this guide on online presence management for small businesses. To monitor the backlinks pointing to your website, use the Ahrefs tool.

Use Ahrefs to check and monitor your backlink profile, and much more.

33. Blog well, and blog consistently. A blog can help you rank for keywords your other pages wouldn’t be able to, particularly top of funnel terms. Google also tends to prioritize new (or fresh content), so you want to keep a consistent blog schedule, especially if you are planning on using blog content in a newsletter.

Test & Track Efforts

34. Track your efforts. When you start using the tactics laid out in this blog post on your own site, you’re going to want to measure performance. I recommend using Google Tag Manager, in conjunction with Google Analytics event tracking, to track various user actions on the website, such as links people click on, how many forms are submitted (and which pages see the highest conversion rate), the effectiveness of your pop-ups, how many people call you directly from the site, etc. To get started with Google Tag Manager, you can go here.

Use Google Analytics and Tag Manager to track results.

35. Analyze which pages lead to the most conversions and apply learnings site-wide. Once your tags have been set up to track actions on the site and you’ve accumulated a good amount of data, take a look to see what pages drive in the most leads. Is it your blog? Your FAQ page? The product page? Depending on what you find, you can apply those learnings across the website and prioritize high-converting pages when sharing content via other marketing channels.
36. Use A/B testing frequently. A/B testing is a great way of improving your conversion capabilities. Maybe you have a really great lead capture form, but you’ve noticed that people aren’t clicking on your CTAs. You can do A/B testing to see if the issue is with the CTA itself, its positioning, the color of the button, etc. You can do basic A/B testing in Google Analytics. For more info on A/B testing, check out Wpromote’s comprehensive A/B testing guide.

A snapshot of A/B results in Google Analytics.

37. Use heatmapping. Heatmapping software helps you analyze how users interact with your website by providing information such as where people click most often, how far down the page they scroll, etc. You should definitely be using heatmapping to on your lead capture page as it can help you see what works, and what doesn’t. I recommend using CrazyEgg, Hot Jar, or Lucky Orange.

Use heatmapping to observe user engagement on your site.

Thanks for making it to the end of this monster of a post; I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new today. Let me know in the comments if you think there’s something I missed.

The post 37 Ways to Get More Leads from your Website appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Hey y’all, welcome to another Smattering of SEO news, the only digest of SEO news you really, truly, absolutely need. This week, a buncha stuff happened, like the mobile-first index experiment beginning. WHEEEE. Check it all out below!

Google News

• Study: Possum Update Affected 64% Of Local Search Results – In a study conducted with Bright Local, Search Engine Land columnist Joy Hawkins dove deep into the data of over 1,300 businesses and 14,000 keywords to dissect the affect Google’s recent Possum update had on search results. They found that – while about 35% of keywords didn’t move – around 9% had their businesses appear in Local Finder when they weren’t there previously, 11% of keywords moved up three or more positions, and so on. Overall, around 64% of all tracked keywords were affected in some way. Y’all should read the full article, it’s fascinating reading.
• Google: HTTPS Usage Steadily Increasing – Google has added a new HTTPS Usage portion to their most recent transparency report, and it has some fun information. For example, at the beginning of the report around April of 2015, some 44% of ChromeOS users loaded pages with HTTPS, but as of October it’s up to 68%. Interestingly, those on Linux spend more time browsing HTTPS sites than any other group. It’s interesting reading, so go check it out.

• Google Starts Mobile-First Indexing “Experiment” – Google has begun rolling out an experimental version of its mobile-first index (which will eventually roll out to everyone). This means Google will use the signals on your mobile site before the desktop site to determine the site’s value and authority. Thankfully, a mobile site isn’t NECESSARY to gain good rankings, as they’ll use your desktop site to determine your site’s value if as mobile version isn’t available. Whether this will change, we’ve no idea, but this seems like a prime time to get on having a mobile version of your site, don’t you think?
• Content Behind Tabs to Have “Full Weight” Once Again – Remember a while back when folks at Google (I don’t recall whom and don’t feel like looking it up) said that content behind tabs wasn’t weighed as heavily as fully visible content? Well viva la mobile, because now, if content is behind a tab to preserve a mobile user experience, it now has “full weight,” according to Google’s Gary Illyes, so tab away my friends.

Other News

• Column: Apply Content To The Entire Sales Funnel – Over on Search Engine Land, columnist Joe Goers has written a fascinating article in which he takes those who create content only for the “bottom of the funnel” to task for a variety of excuses, such as “it’ll never rank” or “those pages don’t convert.” He reminds readers that websites are meant for users, not sales teams, and that useful content should be created with a top-down approach. I personally fully agree, which is why I’m including it.

• Interview: Better To Create Content Than Build Links – That’s one of the key takeaways in an interview Search Engine Journal did with Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas regarding the recent Penguin update. Other takeaways include my favorite: of the sites that used to rank in the top thirty results seven years ago, 89% of them no longer rank at all, either via penalties like Penguin or disappearing entirely. That’s just dang amazing.

The post A Smattering Of SEO News – Mobile-First appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Hey folks, welcome to another Smattering of SEO News, the only SEO digest you truly need to keep apprised of the latest in SEO (i.e. I weed out the garbage so you don’t have to read it!). This pre-Thanksgiving had some interesting tidbits, and by the way, we’ll be off next week for the holiday, so I hope it’s a great one for y’all!

Google News

• Possible Google Update On November 10th – Matt Southern over on Search Engine Journal noticed that not only his own site saw severe fluctuations in search engine traffic via Analytics on November 10^th, but the volatility tools that scour the SERPs, such as Mozcast, noticed something too. Apparently, many webmasters are reporting in that they’ve also seen severe fluctuations. We’ll let you know if we learn more about this spike in volatility.

• Search Console Is Getting An Infrastructure Update – Have you been on Search Console lately and noticed that the data might be a bit…squiffy? You’re not alone! It seems like Google is applying infrastructure updates to Search Console that’s making it all go floooooey here and there. No word on how long the updates will be rolling out, but it’s something to be mindful of if you heavily rely on Search Console.
• Mueller: Google Doesn’t Use HREF Lang HTML Code – Well this is an interesting piece of whatsit, ain’t it? According to Google’s John Mueller, for different language versions of a site, they rely on HREF Lang markup, rather than the older, less reliable, and just downright annoying HREF Lang HTML code, because apparently, “…this language markup is something that is almost always wrong.” Well dang.
• Illyes: External Links Are Important, M’kay? – Well no, he didn’t say those exact words, but mirroring what Matt Cutts said ages ago, Google’s Gary Illyes said, basically, that external links translate to a vote of popularity and endorsement for a website. Yes, I know we all know that and, yes, I know that’s a run-on sentence but it’s a slow week and I need filler, okay?

Other News

• Survey: 70% Of Customers Will Leave A Review When Specifically Asked – In a recent survey from the folks at BrightLocal – in which they surveyed around 1,000 people – they found that around 70% of those people will leave a review when asked specifically to do so. They also found that most customers pay very close attention to reviews and review scores, so this is all important stuff to keep in mind when running a business that can rely heavily on customer reviews.

• FACEBOOK IS KILLING PEOPLE (By Erroneously “Memorializing” Their Accounts) – In a…can we say slightly humorous news story? Of course we can, that’s why I included it. Somehow the social network had a bug in which it incorrectly declared a bunch of people dead, and “memorialized” their accounts as such. This also affected Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (OH GOD NOT THE ZUCK wait he’s fine okay whew). Shortly thereafter Facebook found the “terrible error” (seriously, their words) and fixed it. Whew.

The post A Smattering of SEO News – Is Facebook…a MURDERER?! (No, It Isn’t Really…) appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Investing in SEO for your business is a great way to tap into a huge digital pipeline of leads and sales. In the long run, capturing organic search traffic is low-cost, high-return territory. But SEO can be a vast undertaking for companies with limited internal resources, or small businesses where the owner already wears many hats.

Hiring an SEO agency or consultant can be daunting, though. There are many horror stories of snake oil salesmen and promise-the-world, deliver-nothing agencies.

So, how do you ensure that you make a wise SEO investment for your business? Great question! Follow along…

First Things First

Before we get heavy into the process, let’s set some initial expectations that you should carry into your quest for an agency.

• SEO is not an instant gratification game. Desired results will take time – months, even years, depending on your vertical and competition. If you hire an agency, one year should be the minimum amount of time you are committed.
• Hiring an agency or consultant opens a two-way street. Yes, they are working on your behalf. But you will be asked to do things, too, like implement content, redirect URLs, modify your XML sitemap, etc. You have to have a plan to execute on-site work. If requested changes aren’t made, results don’t happen.
• Communication is everything. SEO can be technical, but it can be fun, too. Be excited and ask questions of your agency or consultant. On the flip side, the SEO consultant should be excited about your business and your success, too.

If you are on board with those three starting mantras, then you are ready to begin the hunt.

Step 1: Know Your Website. Love Your Website.

Ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, said, “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” Setting the stage for a successful SEO partnership begins with a reflection on your business goals and processes. Do some digital soul searching and ask yourself:

• “Are we in love with our website?”
• “Does our site excite us?”
• “Do people who find our current site now convert?”

SEO is a complement to what already exists. The goal is to bring more people to the site so your law of averages can amplify. If your site is lackluster, doesn’t convert, or feels outdated or confusing, SEO won’t provide the results you want. At that point, you should be starting with a site update or redesign.

During a redesign process, though, you should still move forward with looking for SEO agencies. Bringing an SEO expert into the redesign can ensure your site has best practices for SEO in place before launch.

If you love your site (yay!) and are ready to start ongoing SEO, compile as many resources and answers pertaining to both your website and your web analytics platform as possible. Go through this checklist, creating a spreadsheet or document for easy reference:

• What platform is our website built on? (e.g. WordPress, Shopify, Magento, custom, etc.)
• What is our content management system (CMS) login information?
• What is our Google Analytics login information?
• Who makes changes to our website, such as technical changes to site code?
• How does our company prioritize and manage website work, such as a web support ticket system or Basecamp?
• Do we have the ability to add new pages or sections to our website?
• Can we customize our page metadata, or is it dynamically created?
• What would a content / site update approval process look like, and how long would it take?
• Is our website mobile-friendly/responsive, dynamic serving, separate URLs?

Take away: Knowing all this information will ensure you are on solid ground to begin on-site SEO work. Any SEO agency you work with will thank you for being prepared. This info helps both teams align expectations and execute efficiently.

Step 2: Internally Define Your Business Goals & Audience In Context Of The Web

You should clearly define what the outcome of ranking higher in search engine results, and subsequently sending more traffic to your site, will mean to your business. A great way to approach this is to understand the actions on your website that hold the most value. Having more than one is OK. Examples are:

• Newsletter signups or email list opt-ins
• A PDF download
• Purchasing a product or subscription
• Scheduling an appointment or making a reservation
• Driving phone calls

Further, having accurate information about your audience demographics is crucial. Age, gender, and interests are excellent starting points. To go further, understanding how they find you online – referrals from affiliate sites, strong brand name, large social media presence – will help your agency-of-choice develop a more targeted strategy. Having data to work with at the start will create a stronger launch.

Take away: Knowing who your customer is and what actions you want them to take will help you align your goals with your selected agency, creating both focused work and measurable objectives.

Step 3: Have An Idea Of What SEO Work You Need

By no means do you have to be an expert in SEO before going into pitch meetings or calls, but you should make a concerted effort to understand the basics. Here’s where you should start:

• Understand the differences between off-site and on-site SEO.
• Know if you need national or local SEO campaign objectives, or elements of both.
• Keyword research, such as what keywords matter and which you want to rank for.
• Understand basic SEO elements, like title tags, meta descriptions, and H1 tags.
• Know how your pages look in search results by running a site: operator search in Google. See if title tags and meta descriptions are too long or short, truncated, and/or duplicates.
• Understand what your backlink profile looks like by going to www.ahrefs.com, and do the same for your competitors.

Most SEO firms or consultants will want to utilize both on-site and off-site efforts to push your site to the top. Knowing where you stand in terms of basic weaknesses or strengths will help expedite and focus the efforts of your agency. Being able to point out specific problems, like “our site title tags are a mess,” will help your agency turn your observations into action items with speed and precision, producing results faster.

Take away: Preparedness goes a long way to forging a working partnership. You’ll learn a bit about how SEO works, making you more informed. Your agency partner will have a preview of hurdles or opportunities before an in-depth audit happens.

Step 4: Hear Multiple Presentations Or Pitches From Agencies

After completing your internal research, start looking for SEO agencies.

If you are in a specific vertical, searching for specialized agencies who operate in that vertical is a good starting point. Agencies may specialize in local SEO, medical SEO, B2B SEO, Ecommerce SEO, or other areas, so try weeding out some noise. Another great option is asking for recommendations from respected peers or professionals. This lets you obtain some details about approach, communication, cost, and results before getting in touch.

After you have a few options in play, reach out to set up a presentation from each agency as to why they deserve your business. Don’t tell the agencies that you are hearing multiple presentations. It’s my opinion that each agency should have their chance to present a sound assessment with your business as the focal point, not the lingering presence of being one of many. Now, if you want to turn up the competitive heat, that’s your prerogative.

Here’s what you can expect in the presentation phase:

• The agency will want to do research about your business, your competitive landscape, and your website. This may take several days to one business week.
• You will be asked about your goals, your intended reach, and/or target demographics.
• They will want to know what is working for you now and what your pain points are, and, in a perfect world, what you could snap your fingers and change to align in your favor.
• Your competition will come up, both actual and perceived.
• There will be a discussion about what other marketing channels or strategies you pursue and the effectiveness of those channels.
• They will want to know if you’ve done SEO before and what your experience was.
• You will be asked what your budget is, or how much you are looking to invest in SEO.
• The presentation will be done either in person, via phone, or through video conference.
• You will be shown weaknesses, strengths, a comparison to your competitors, an action plan and timeline for deliverables, examples of reporting, likely a case study, and a quote for the project cost.

Here’s how you should interpret the presentation:

• You’ve done your homework, too. So, how does the agency incorporate your needs and wants into their presentation? Did they listen? Or is it a one-sided agenda?
• How does the consultant or sales rep make you feel – at ease, pressured, etc.
• Do their numbers and key points align with your research or findings?
• Do their action plan and deliverables align with your values and objectives?
• Does the presentation incorporate creative, personalized ideas – or a templated structure?
• How do they present ROI, goals, analysis, and reporting?
• Do they discuss who will be doing the work and who will be communicating with you?
• Does the cost fit your budget?

Take Away: By being prepared, hearing multiple presentations, and knowing what to look for between the lines, you will be able to distinguish who matches up best with your business on all fronts.

Step 5: Don’t Commit Until You Hear The Who, What, How, & Why

After the presentation and consideration phases, you should have a front-runner. Before going all in, arrange one final conversation with either the consultant or sales rep. For this conversation, you should first let them know you are impressed and you think there’s a fit, but would like to know a few more details. Come prepared with a few experiential questions designed to extract stories.

• Who have you produced the best work for, in your mind?
• Who in your client roster reminds you most of our business?
• What did you do for that client to help them?
• If we commit, how do you envision our next six months of progress?
• Who can you introduce me to via email as a reference to your agency’s work?

Take Away: This type of interaction goes beyond a sales process. It’s the essence of human communication. It creates a natural, honest, transparent dialogue. If you feel good after this conversation, you can rest assured that you are embarking on a working partnership.

Step 6: Maximizing The Kickoff – Reset Expectations

The kickoff meeting or call is one of the most important interactions of the relationship. You will typically meet your team for the first time – the people who will be in the trenches with you, executing the work for your business. This is one of the rare times in life both parties have a second chance at a first impression.

As the client, you are able to reinforce the goals and objectives that are most important to you. You are essentially a pro at this point, having completed your research and gone through multiple informative pitch presentations. 

Similarly, the team, or SEO manager, who is on your account will already be briefed by the sales rep and have a thorough understanding of your account – pain points, strengths, competition, keyword targets, and site capabilities. There should be a clear, strategic, technical and creative plan presented for deliverables, reporting, goals, and communication.

In Conclusion

SEO is as many things as it is not. It is highly technical. It is not mystifying smoke and mirrors. It is a methodical, duplicatable process that can lead to measurable results. It is not a magic button to leads or sales. It is a sound, long-term marketing strategy. It is not guaranteed.

If you follow these steps as a business owner or marketing manager, you will first have a firm understanding of SEO, and second, be in a position to make a quality decision about how to invest in an SEO agency to execute work on behalf of your business or company.

The post 6 Steps For Hiring An SEO Agency To Maximize Business Success appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Hey there friends, welcome to another Smattering of SEO, the last for 2016! It’s been a crazy year hasn’t it, and we’ve tried to keep you informed as best we can, like this week! Check it out!

Google News

• Property Sets Expanded Across All Search Console Reports – A little while back, Google added the ability to add properties into sets, but it was only in a teensy part of Search Console. Apparently the feature was so popular that the functionality has now been added across the entirety of Search Console! Nice!
• Google May Be Sabotaging Its Own AMP Efforts By Not Using Direct Links – In an article by Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, research into the apparent speed benefits from using AMP pages revealed that Google returns its own cached URL rather than a direct link to the published content. He found that in many cases, content loaded slower via Google’s cache than from the publisher directly. Google’s response was that it doesn’t plan to change this practice of returning cached URLs, and that has led some publications, such as MacStories, to remove AMP support altogether. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months.

• Searchmetrics Report: Content Is A Stronger Ranking Signal Than Links – In a recent study published by Searchmetrics, in which they tried to study Google ranking factors, they found some fascinating results. For example, sites with the highest content relevance take up many of the position 3-6 results, while backlinks are continuing their downward trend in relevance. It’s a fascinating report that is definitely worth reading.

Yahoo News

• Yahoo Launches ‘Answers Now’ App – A while back, all the players in the space were trying to be “answer engines,” offering personalized answers to specific queries. The biggest among these – so much so it’s still around and very busy – is Yahoo Answers. While many were concerned about the future of this content behemoth, with the launch of Yahoo’s Answers Now app, we get the feeling the service will be around for a while. While Google has done a fine job of catering to answering specific questions, Yahoo Answers provides answers by other users, making it a useful resource. It’ll be interesting to see if this new avenue into personalized answering will take off.
• Yahoo Releases Top Searches Of 2016 – According to Yahoo, many of the top searches of this past year involved the election, Donald Trump, Prince, the Pulse Nightclub shooting, and much more. Interestingly enough, Google wasn’t present on their list of top ten companies.

Other News

• Moz Local Becomes First Third-Party Yelp Management Tool – On Wednesday, Moz announced a big partnership with Yelp, and one of the biggest features is that Moz Local will now offer the ability to claim and manage Yelp listings entirely within the Moz Local toolset. This is the first time a third-party tool has been made available to manage Yelp listings, so it’s kind of a pretty big deal.

The post A Smattering Of SEO – It’s Been Quite A Year appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Welcome to 2017 my friends, and a new Smattering of SEO News! I was off for two weeks, and not a ton of stuff happened over the break, so this is a small digest, but it’s got some fun stuff in it. Hope y’all enjoy it!

Google News

• Google’s Illyes: Mobile Index Isn’t Live Yet – According to a Tweet – which is news in the modern era – Google’s Gary Illyes admitted that the much ballyhooed mobile-first index isn’t aaaaaactually live yet. When will it go live?! WHO KNOWS! They have to keep us on our toes somehow, don’t cha know.
• Chrome To Mark Non-HTTPS Sites As Non-Secure When Collecting Sensitive Info – Apparently by the end of this month, if you use Chrome (and that’s just about everyone these days), you’ll begin to see sites that collect sensitive information, yet are still HTTP, marked as “non-secure.” Yet another reason to jump on that HTTPS bandwagon, y’all.

• Mueller: In 2017, Apply The Same SEO Techniques On Desktop AND Mobile – If you have a responsive site, this isn’t as big a deal, but according to John Mueller, if you have a separate mobile site, you REALLY SHOULD (hint hint) begin to apply the same SEO techniques (you know, content, tags, etc.) to your mobile site that you do to your desktop site. It might be a bit of extra work, but it sounds like it’ll be worth it.
• Mueller (Again): WIX Works Fine For Search – For a while now, many SEOs (myself included) would tell you that WIX sites were just terrible, awful, no good, very bad for SEO. Well, according to John Mueller of Google, “WIX websites work fine in search.” That’s nice to hear, as many folks rely on WIX sites for their primary business.
• SEO Spam Can Make Your Site More Vulnerable To Hacking – Google recently announced that SEO spam is one of the main reasons sites are targeted by hackers. Apparently, it can open up a site to all sorts of malicious attacks that can drive your customers away! One more reason NOT to engage in SEO spam. Period!

The post A Smattering of SEO News – A Slow Start To 2017 appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

SEO success is often considered a difficult thing to track, but it shouldn’t be. There are certain metrics and SEO KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that nearly every site should be tracking to gauge the success of your SEO efforts. Here are the top 7 SEO metrics we think every site should be tracking:

1. Leads &/Or Sales
2. Organic Traffic
3. Keyword Rankings
4. Backlinks/Referring Domains
5. Bounce Rate
6. Pages Per Session
7. Average Page Load Time

Let’s break down each of these KPIs. By the end of this post, you will know exactly what each of these are, why they matter, and how to track them. Before we get started though, make sure you have Google Analytics set up on your site, or many of these metrics will be unavailable.

1. Leads &/Or Sales

Your website should support your business, and in some cases it may be your entire business! Therefore, your website needs to either collect leads if it’s a lead gen site, or sell products if it is Ecommerce. Either way, without leads or sales your business can’t survive, so tracking your SEO campaign’s impact on them is critical.

Leads

Let’s start with lead gen websites. Typically lead gen sites will push visitors to fill out some kind of form that includes the person’s name, phone number, and email address. The business then uses that contact information to qualify the lead and see if they are a good fit for the product/service.

To track leads, you’ll need to measure form completions. If the completion of the form on your site takes the visitor to a unique landing page, like a ‘thank you’ page, you can just setup a Destination goal in Google Analytics to see how many people reach that page.

While this will work most of the time, there are some issues that can arise. One common issue is that websites often don’t de-index these ‘thank you’ pages, meaning the pages can sometimes rank for terms, leading to false positives. Another issue is that if the form can be submitted without filling in all fields, you could get leads that are impossible to follow up on.

To avoid this problem, I would recommend tracking form completions via Google Tag Manager (GTM). Rather than walking you through this process here, I highly recommend checking out this excellent guide on form tracking via GTM from Simo Ahava’s blog.

To see Goal completions in Google Analytics, go to Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels, and then click on the Organic Search channel group.

Then scroll to the right, and choose the Goal completions you want to see.

Sales

To track sales on your online website, you should set up Ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics. There are two types of tracking available: standard Ecommerce tracking, and enhanced Ecommerce tracking. From Google:

• Standard Ecommerce reports in Google Analytics allow you to analyze purchase activity on your site or app. You can see product and transaction information, average order value, Ecommerce conversion rate, time to purchase, and other data.
• Enhanced Ecommerce adds functionality by allowing you to see when customers have added items to their shopping carts, when they have started the checkout process, and when they have completed a purchase. You can also use Enhanced Ecommerce to identify segments of customers who are falling out of the shopping funnel.

Whatever you decide to go with, we recommend implementing via Google Tag Manager. Check out Google’s guide to Ecommerce Tag Manager implementation here.

Once that is set up you can go to Google Analytics and see all of your Ecommerce information by traffic type.

2. Organic Traffic

As you might expect, one of the principal goals of an SEO campaign is to drive more traffic to your site from organic search. After all, traffic from organic search is free. So, how can you see how your organic traffic is doing?

Head back to Google Analytics, Acquisition>Channels>Organic Search and you’ll see Sessions as the first column. That’s the number you want to look at; sessions are defined by Google as “a group of interactions that take place on your website within a given time frame.”

To measure success, you’ll want to compare time periods. I typically look at 3 different time frames when evaluating the performance of my campaigns: week-over-week data, month-over-month data, and year-over-year data.

• Week-over-week data lets you see how your traffic has changed in the short term. It’s useful to look at this when you are doing something major on the website, such as launching a major content campaign, installing HTTPS, or setting up a significant amount of 301 redirects.
• Month-over-month data is useful when you want to see the longer-term effects of your SEO campaign. Because Google’s algorithms change quite often, only looking at week-over-week data can make it hard to draw conclusions. Not to mention, SEO is inherently a slower process than other marketing efforts so most of the time you won’t see the effects of launching a new blog post or tweaking title tags until a month (or several!) have passed.
• Year-over-year data is important because it is the only true “apples to apples” timeframe comparison. It is useful for evaluating the long-term trends of your campaign. YoY data is also important when your business is strongly impacted by seasonality. For example, if your business sells winter clothing, comparing the organic traffic you receive in March vs. February will make it seem like your SEO campaign took a major dive, while in reality the search volume for the keywords your rank for simply declined.

To view this data, go to the top right corner of the Organic Search page and click on the date drop-down menu.

Then you can set the date range that you want to compare.

3. Keywords

We’ve finally made it to the classic SEO KPI (Key Performance Indicator), keyword rankings. Ranking well for important keywords is a critical part of any SEO campaign, as high keyword rankings will help drive more traffic to the website.

There are plenty of great tools out there that will help you conduct keyword research, and then track your site’s rankings for them over time. At Wpromote we use what we consider the best keyword/content platform out there, BrightEdge.

You can also look at Google Search Console to see the keywords that are driving traffic to your website. Because Search Console is a free platform, I strongly recommend setting your website up on it if you haven’t already.

To see the keywords in Search Console, go to Search Traffic>Search Analytics.

While you can do a lot of cool things with this report, if you’re just interested in keywords, tick off the Queries, Clicks, and Position boxes. This will show your average organic position for the queries that drive the most organic traffic to your site.

4. Backlinks & Referring Domains

Along with quality and relevant content, backlinks are the most important ranking factor in SEO. Because of this, it’s important that you track the backlinks pointing to your website. However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when it comes to backlinks.

• The total number of backlinks matters. While it’s not uncommon to see a page with fewer backlinks outranking the competition, if you have 20 backlinks and the number 1 result has 20,000, you’re almost never going to outrank them.
• The relevancy and quality of the sites linking to you matters. If you sell medical devices and you are getting thousands of backlinks from a website that sells concert tickets, Google will likely consider these links to be spammy and may even penalize you for them (in which case you would want to disavow those backlinks). The same is true if you are receiving many links from spammy websites.
• The diversity of the referring (linking) domains matters. Search engines look at both total backlinks and how many different websites link to you. 10,00 backlinks from 500 websites is typically better than 2000 backlinks from 2 websites.

At Wpromote we consider Ahrefs to be one of the best tools for tracking backlinks and referring domains. With Ahrefs you can see all of the websites linking to you, where specifically they are linking to on your site, and the domain rating of these referring domains.

5. Bounce Rate

We’re heading back to Google Analytics! Bounce rate is defined as, “the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).”

Bounce rate is one of the best ways of measuring user engagement on the site. A low bounce rate typically indicates that the user has found your website useful and/or interesting.

A high bounce rate on particular pages, such as top-of-funnel blog posts, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it could just be that the user’s search query was answered on that page and they are satisfied. That’s why setting up event tracking is key, to measure the success of a page even if you expect it to have a high bounce rate.

If you’ve noticed that key pages on your site, such as the homepage, have a high bounce rate, it is a clue that you should do further digging into things like PageSpeed, UX, and navigation.

To view bounce rate, go back to Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels. In the fourth column, you can see the overall bounce rate for each Channel (Organic, Paid, etc.)

To see the bounce rate for individual pages, go to Behavior>Site Content>All Pages.

To see the bounce rate for individual pages from organic search you can stay on this page, you’ll just need to change the segment to Organic Traffic.

6. Pages Per Session

Pages Per Session is another important user engagement metric. The higher the number the better, as it means visitors are going to multiple pages on your website.

The reason we consider this metric to be important is because it is a proxy for both how effective your navigation and site funnel is, and how engaging your content. If your Pages Per Session count is low it usually indicates that your content isn’t interesting enough for people to seek out other pieces. Or, it could show that navigation is poor and users don’t know how to find new content, so they just leave instead.

To see this metric, go to Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels and then look at the fifth column, right next to Bounce Rate. You’ll then be able to see Pages Per Session for each traffic channel.

If you want to see how Pages Per Session changes amongst different groups of people, just change the active Segment, like we did with Bounce Rate.

7. Average Page Load Time

Our final SEO metric from Google Analytics is Average Page Load Time. Like this name implies, this metric looks at how quickly your pages load in the browser. Fast webpages are critical for user experience and SEO, particularly on mobile.

In Google Analytics, go to Behavior>Site Speed>Page Timings. From there, change the second column’s metric to Avg. Page Load Time (sec). You can then see your average load times for all pages, or use the search bar to check individual pages.

Faster load times are always better for SEO (and indeed, all channels), so try and make this time as low as possible. A good starting goal is to get under 10 seconds, and a stretch goal would be 3 seconds, especially for important pages.

To learn how to improve your PageSpeed and average load times, check out our site speed guide here.

Conclusion

While there are dozens of different metrics you should be tracking to evaluate your SEO campaign’s performance, we believe these are the 7 most important KPIs for SEO in 2017. If your SEO campaign needs any help improving any of these metrics, check out our University for helpful guides, or contact us directly here.

The post The Top 7 SEO Metrics & KPIs You Have To Track In 2017 appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

The Sneezing Baby Panda | Gangnam Style | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

What do all these titles have in common?

In their own time, each has reached astounding views on YouTube watched by millions of people across the globe.

Since its modest debut in 2005 when several PayPal employees created a video-sharing website, YouTube has exploded in recognition as the most popular and influential video site in the world—consistently drawing viewers to watch over four billion hours worth of content each month.

However, while many associate YouTube as simply a place to view fun videos about pets, celebrities, bands, and a myriad of other trending topics, YouTube is actually so much more than that. With the right vision, execution, and optimization, savvy users can harness YouTube as an incredible means for digital marketing—getting content noticed by the right users who make up their businesses’ target audiences.

In order to unlock the potential powerhouse that is YouTube, you need to understand what kind of video content can draw in your targets. For the best YouTube marketing there are four main areas of concentration you need to understand:

• Quality Video
• Keyword Optimization
• User Engagement
• Getting Views

Quality Video

You could film a thousand videos about men’s body wash and you could film a thousand videos featuring a hot guy. In fact, people already have. But what sets those videos apart from the famous The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Old Spice video is quality content. It is the quality of this video—not simply the main subject—that has led to the video receiving nearly 54 million views, 200,000 likes, and 615,000 subscribers and counting!

In this example, Old Spice is a well-known brand and the company likely put a good amount of money behind its filming. However, don’t let that fool you. A video does not need to be professionally shot or boast a huge production budget to be awesome. It just needs to be interesting/enjoyable to watch and easy to follow. Those two factors alone are what lead to good user engagement, which we will talk about more later on.

The bottom line to remember here is that quality is key. A person could implement all other aspects of smart optimization to get his or her video to rank higher. But at the end of the day, if the video lacks quality, then no amount of marketing savvy is going to save it.

Keyword Optimization

Like any other aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), YouTube SEO is reliant on the strategic selection of keywords. Naturally, if you have a video about nachos, then “nachos” will be a keyword. But for YouTube, that alone is not enough. It is important to turn regular keywords like “nachos” into video keywords that will get you to show up on the first page of Google’s search results.

Google allocates a certain amount of space on its first search engine result pages (SERPs) for video content. If you aim to show up at the top of Google’s SERPs—not just in the YouTube-specific results or video-specific results—then video keywords must be employed.

What is a Video Keyword?

A video keyword contains verbiage that the search engine would associate with video content, for example “how to.” In this instance, by changing “nachos” to “how to make nachos,” you are sending a signal to the search engines that your content offers some form of video tutorial, increasing your likelihood of showing up at the top of the SERPs.

Conduct keyword research prior to posting a video to learn what video keywords are being searched in relation to your subject. You can search for keywords by Googling related topics that produce video results and by utilizing Google Keyword Planner, which is a great tool for keyword research. As a note, remember that video keywords don’t need immense search volume to be worth your while. Generally, as long as the keyword gets at least 300 searches per month, you’re fine.

Where Do I Put My Keywords?

Video File

Once you have chosen your keywords, optimize them everywhere you can. To start with, use your keywords when naming your video file. For example, if you wanted to rank for “makeup tips” then you would want to name your video: makeup_tips_video.mp4.

Video Title

Next, implement your keywords in your video’s actual title. Best SEO practices recommend that your video title be at least five words long. Like with other aspects of SEO—title tags and blog posts for instance—putting your keywords at the beginning of the title is preferable for ranking factors.

Text Description

After you name your video, you will need to work on creating a fully optimized description. This step is crucial for how your video will rank. Since search engine crawlers can’t listen to or watch your video, they rely on your text description to understand your video’s content and thus decide where to place it on the SERPs. As with others forms of optimized content, be careful not to let your description get spammy. Best practices for optimizing a text description include:

• Including your keyword in the first 25 words of the description (note: put a link to your website at the top of the description)
• Utilizing your keyword 3 – 4 times
• Making the description between 250 – 300 words

Tags

The tags you select will help YouTube and Google better understand what your video is about. They help you rank better for your targeted keywords and increase your chances of showing up in the YouTube sidebar where the platform recommends others videos for users to watch. Basically, if a video that a user is watching has the same tag as yours then your video will be eligible for their sidebar.

User Engagement

Good user engagement is vital if you want your video to show up at the top of the SERPs. It is the result of quality video content and it is the most important ranking factor that Google and YouTube take into account when deciding where to place your video. There are six user engagement metrics that Google and YouTube utilize when deciding your ranking:

• Video Retention – how much of your video do people watch (obviously the greater percentage of the video they watch, the better)
• Shares – how many people share your video on their social media platforms
• Thumbs Up/Down – people that give your video a thumbs up/down rating
• Comments – this signals that people probably liked your video, but at the very least they likely watched the entire thing
• Subscribers – a user subscribing to your channel after watching your video is a huge signal that your video has quality content and subject authority
• Favorites – how many people favorite your video or add it to their “Watch Later” lists

Getting Views

Having solid user engagement is the most important ranking factor because it results in your video giving off trust signals that show you have quality video. But that alone isn’t enough for you to rank highly. The number of views you draw matters just as much, but in a different way.

Think of it this way. If you have a terrific video that has been viewed by five people, it won’t matter if those five people showed great results in all six metrics of user engagement; if the video has only been viewed five times, Google and YouTube aren’t going to place it very high. Here are some suggestions for how you can acquire more views for your video:

• Embed your videos in your own blog posts as well as relevant guest blog posts
• Have a link to your video in your email signature for people to view
• Mention and post a link to your video in Q&A sites like Yahoo! Answers if the subject matter is relevant (but do so conservatively)

A Quality & Quantity Game

Like with all platforms, YouTube has many applications for a variety of user types. What businesses and entrepreneurs everywhere are starting to realize is that by getting your videos to rank higher in the SERPs, YouTube can be harnessed for incredible marketing potential. Of course, how you harness it will make the difference between your videos generating the kind of success you want and plunging into the void with the other billions of hours of video content out there.

To best optimize your videos for SEO so that they fall into the former of these two categories, the quality of your SEO work matters as much as the quantity. Quality video, keyword optimization, user engagement, and getting views are all important aspects of YouTube SEO that are linked to quality and quantity performance indicators.

So if you want to get the most out of a YouTube SEO campaign, sharpen up on all four today. Who knows, with the right optimization someday your video could leave even sneezing baby pandas in the dust.

The post YouTube SEO & You appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Welcome to another week of news! This week was…odd, in that there wasn’t much news, so I kinda had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. I hope you enjoy the scrum I found.

Google News

• Google Releases New Mobile Page Benchmark Report – Did you know most mobile users will leave a page after three seconds of loading time? Well, you do now. That and more are in a new Google research report in which they show that, if a page takes three seconds to load, thirty-two percent of users might bounce. Five seconds? Up to NINETY percent. Yeesh. That is crazy, yet sadly likely very accurate, so work on that speed folks!

• Google, Still Not Fans Of Guest Blogging – A while back, Google pretty much entirely devalued the links coming from guest blogs, and yet, someone still asked John Mueller on Twitter about it. Unsurprisingly, he basically told the question asker (yes that’s a word…now) to use their own site to spread the word on content, not guest blogging. Good to know, but they should’ve known already.
• Google Releases Podcasting SEO Advice – Nowadays everyone and their grandmother has a podcast. I know I do. Yet with all of the content out there, how do you get discovered? Google has some tips! The big one is transcripts. Boy, do they love them some transcripts. Also, however, the big deal is making the podcast episodes easy to find through individual posts for each episode, for example, and so on. Great stuff.
• Fifty Percent Of Page One Results In Google Could Be HTTPS By June – Over on Moz, Dr. Pete Meyers revealed some research in which, due to current trends, he feels that half of first-page results on Google will be HTTPS-enabled in just a few months. This surprises me because I thought we’d already reached that level of saturation.

• One Billion Hours Of Video Consumed On YouTube Each Day – This is less in the “news” and more in the “whoa” department. According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube serves one billion hours of video each day. That is…insane. That would apparently take 100,000 years to watch. Geez.

Other News

• Oh No! DMOZ Is Shutting Down – Yes, my friends, you read right. The classic Open Directory Project, also known as DMOZ, is shutting down on March 17th. DMOZ has been something of a stable of the web since the late 90s, and for a while was the end all be all of getting link equity to your site. It’s the end of an era, and even though it’s lost much of its relevance in recent years, it’ll be missed.

The post A Smattering Of SEO News – The End Of An Era appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

These days, pointing out that “‘Content is King’ is a cliche” is even more of a cliche than saying “Content is King” itself. Still, the sayings persist. Content and SEO are so inseparable that it is near-impossible for a site to perform well in organic search without extensive, thoughtful content.

But, Why?

Search engines “understand” what is on your website by sending bots to scan your site’s code. This means that when a search engine comes to our homepage, it looks like this:

As you can see, all that the search engines can really understand and see is text. This leaves two kinds of context: code and written copy. There are some kinds of code that do a good job of contextualizing a page for search engines (see our guide to Structured Data), but when it comes down to it, your content is your bread and butter. The more you’re able to convince search engines that the content of your page matches a specific search query, the better you’ll rank.

Where?

Essentially everywhere. Any page that you want to rank well needs to have content on it. That means your homepage, category pages, product pages, and store location pages really need to have some amount of content on them.

Exactly how much content is right for each specific page depends on the purpose and the layout. You don’t want to push down your products out of sight with an overwhelming amount of copy, and you certainly don’t want to stuff a page with content for the sake of manipulating search engines. Which leads us to our next point.

Quality VS Quantity

Google has been uncharacteristically transparent about what it considers “quality” content. In order for content to help your cause, it must meet certain criteria. I’ve paraphrased some of the highlights here:

• Content should be written first to help the user (the search engine should be an afterthought)
• Content should not be hidden from the user
• Content should be very natural to read and should not seem forced (for reference, Google’s threshold for low-quality content is when overuse of keywords is even slightly distracting)
• There should be a satisfactory amount of content for the kind of page
• The content on every page should be unique from other pages or sites — duplicate content is deemphasized

Keywords

Gone are the days of cramming keywords into content and expecting results. This ties into the above point that content should be for the user first and for the search engines second. It is still a good idea to target a certain keyword in your content, but the approach should be different than it was in the past.

Use a keyword as a guide rather than gospel. Don’t require a certain phrase be used x times by your writer — keyword density should no longer even be in your vocabulary. Instead, focus on making sure that the piece of content serves as a solution to whatever the searcher is looking for. Using the specified keyword is of course okay to an extent, but make sure to include synonyms and variances as well.

Reap the Rewards of Thought Leadership

This is up there with the most abstract (but also potentially most beneficial) benefits of having a robust content portfolio. Let’s break it down.

Brand Awareness & Equity

Beyond pure SEO, becoming an authority on a topic leaves your brand in a favorable position in the eyes of consumers. People want to spend money with brands that they trust and connect with. If you can develop content that answers common concerns that your target audience may have, they will return for more (and to shop when they’re eventually ready!).

Once some of your expert content starts ranking well, users who are in the beginning stages of research for a product or service will find you and use your site as a resource for research. Often times, if a consumer sees your content as high-quality, they will associate that with your product or service as well.

Links

Ah, links. Both the bane and fuel of every SEO’s existence. The secret to getting links organically is to be an authoritative source for information in your industry. As people reference your content to create their own, you get the inherent SEO benefit of them linking back to you.

If you’re doing outreach, getting other sites to feature you is far easier when you actually have good content on your site.

In Conclusion

Good content is at the heart of any SEO campaign worth its salt. Not only is it good for SEO, its good for your brand and business as a whole.

The post The Importance of Content in SEO appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Hello there! My name is Brian Rubin, and I’m the Senior SEO Developer here at Wpromote! What does that mean? It basically means I’m old, angry, and have a lot of opinions. I’ve been in SEO since 2004, and my god has the industry changed a boatload since I began. Back then, all ya needed to do was put some gobbledygook, keyword-ridden text in a negative CSS layer so that the user would never see it, but it’d still be read by search engines and poof, rankings!

Nowadays SEO is all about quaaalllllity and authoooority and yadda yadda. This is, honestly, as it should be, since SEO is about making websites better. One thing that really grinds my gears though, is the constant whinging about whether SEO is dead or not. At least once a year, if not more frequently, I see an article asking if SEO is dead or if it’s been weakened or why it’ll never be the same after some Google algorithm update. Yadda yadda yaaaaadaaaaaa. What a bunch of freaking baloney (and that’s me being nice, I’m from Philly, believe me, I could curse up a storm about this if I wanted to).

Since I’m old and opinionated, my higher-ups asked me to write some articles espousing my opinions, so here we are. I’m gonna first tackle a couple of smaller points before getting to my final point, starting with…

Let’s Define What SEO Actually Is

When I tell people I work in SEO, I get an amazing variety of opinions, from confusion to eyes glazing over to outright anger. I’m serious, anger. I once told a dude I worked in SEO, and he began yelling at me about what jerks me and my entire industry are. No lie. I think these varied reactions come from a very simple truth: outside the industry, there’s no a clear picture as to what SEO actually is.

Let’s fix that. SEO is, to be absolutely crystal clear and simple, the act of improving a website for its users.

Wait Brian, isn’t the goal of SEO to try and get better keyword rankings? I hear you ask in my head.

Sure, that’s a nice side effect of generally making your site more user-friendly. Keywords used to be the be-all-end-all of SEO. They determined everything. Nowadays, sure, they’re still useful for a variety of things — such as tracking movement in the SERPs — but they’re not as super important as they used to be.

What DOES SEO entail then? Well, at its core, it’s:

• Helping make a site more content rich for users
• Helping improve a site’s usability
• Removing any technical roadblocks
• Improving a site’s meta foundation via better tags

Along with many other factors that will improve a user’s “stickiness”, or the time a user will spend on a site. Therefore, SEO is, at its core, a series of techniques used to improve a website so its users find it more valuable and authoritative. However, there’s a lot of misinformation out there…

Why SEO Isn’t The Snake Oil Many Believe It Is

With all of that said above, why does SEO garner such a negative reaction by, at least anecdotally, a good amount of people? Like coins, there are two sides to SEO, commonly known as black hat and white hat (so named after typical heroes and villains in old western movies). White hat SEO — the type I work in — is basically what’s outlined above. Trying to improve a website’s authority, usability and so on via visible, useful methods.

Black hat SEO is entirely the opposite. Folks who employ these techniques try to fool search engines into providing them with rankings, such as by things such as cloaking, hiding, redirecting, duplicating and other methods. Usually sites that employ these techniques do eventually get caught and banned/filtered out of the SERPS, but for a while they might steal legitimate rankings from other sites who tried to make their sites more valuable and rank via actually being useful.

To the outsider, however, it all appears to be one in the same. SEO folks are evil people who manipulate tags and crap to get what they want, and don’t care about anyone else. This is why people eat up “Is SEO Dead?” articles. A lot of people genuinely wish it were, or hope it will be soon. Besides giving these people a hearty middle finger and a “f you” for wanting me and others to lose our jobs, I’m now gonna tell ya why SEO will likely never die.

Why SEO Isn’t Going Anywhere

Search Engine Optimization will exist as long as search engines exist. Period. Bar none. Done. As long as we rely on search engines like Google and, hah, let’s be real just Google, folks who run websites will need help getting search engines to notice and rank their sites well. People who are usually good at one thing (making websites, running a company, etc.) aren’t so good at another thing (marketing, writing, etc.), which is where SEO comes in. It’s a type of expertise that fills in the gaps individuals and companies normally lack.

Search is growing into an even larger part of our lives, from local search to voice search and everything in-between. SEO isn’t just about ranking in these varied methods of search, but by helping your site become valuable and authoritative enough that it deserves to be seen by others, so that they’ll ultimately get something useful and awesome out of it. Therefore, as long as people use search engines — or let’s just say Google, if we’re honest — website owners will need help making sure their sites are as feature complete and user-friendly as possible in order to be as easily found in said search engines as possible.

So Google can change their algorithms all they want. They can add Skynet to their machine learning. They can unleash actual rabid pandas into the halls of SEO companies. It wouldn’t matter. As long as search engines are around, the cottage industry upon which it was built, SEO, will also be around.

Conclusion

So the next time you see an article asking “Is SEO Dead?” you can see it for the ridiculously stupid clickbait it truly is. The Buzzfeed listicle of SEO articles. It might as well be one of those excessively stupid paginated listicles for all the good it’ll do ya. God, I hate those so much.

Anyway, SEO isn’t useful just for rankings and traffic — though it is great for those things — but ultimately it’s about making your website the best it can be for its users. Isn’t that what we all want?
Thanks for reading this first op-ed of mine in what I hope will be a series of caustic, annoying and overtly opinionated pieces I plan to write. I hope you enjoy it! If there’s something you’d like me to cover, hit me up below in the comments.

The post SEO is Never Dead appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

It’s another week of news y’all! The big news this week is the unofficial, unconfirmed, and oddly-unofficially-named “Fred” algorithm update Google might have sort of maybe done a little while back. Apparently it targets black hat folks, so yay? I’m still unsure as of yet, but check this out and more if you want to be informed and such!

Unconfirmed Google Algorithm News

• Unconfirmed “Fred” Update Sending Shockwaves Through SEO Communities – There’s been a veritable boatload of chatter floating around various SEO communities – especially those of the accursed black hat variety – talking about a new algo update being called the “Fred” update. While we’re not 100% sure what this is targeting as of yet, some are speculating…

• The Most Recent Unconfirmed Update Might Be Black Hat-Related – Going in a little deeper, chatter amongst black hat communities is soaring about this alleged update, and not in a great way. Rankings for folks using black hat techniques are super bad or super volatile, but as of right now, that’s the only big piece of “evidence” we have in regards to this supposed update. We’ll keep you posted as we find more.

Run-Of-The-Mill Google News

• HTML Rendering Tool Coming To Search Console – In a recent Google Hangout, Google’s John Mueller said that a fully HTML rendering tool that shows what Google sees when it crawls a site will be coming to Search Console. This is AWESOME, and I can’t wait for it to happen.
• AMPs Could Be Causing Issues In Analytics – A known bug in Accelerated Mobile Pages (or AMPs) could cause users to be overcounted in Google Analytics. Apparently, SEO consultant Christian Oliveira discovered that one AMP user could be counted as up to four. Also, visits from AMP to regular pages could seen as a new session. Waaackadooo. Something to keep an eye on in your own Analytics, I suppose.

• Google To Split Hangouts Into Chat & Meet – This is less “news” and more “huh.” Google has never been 100% clear on what it wants in its messaging app strategy. There once was Talk, now there’s Voice, Hangouts, Messenger, Allo, and Duo. Now Google seems to have decided it’s not liking the market share Slack’s been getting, so it’s splitting up Hangouts into Chat (a text-chat thingy like Slack) and Meet (a video/audio meeting thingy). Will this split up work? Only your undertaker will know for sure…

Other News

• Twitter Lets You Get Rid Of Eggs – Also in the “huh” variety, but interesting since it can affect how folks use social media, Twitter is finally adding new filtering options. You can now, for example, filter out users who don’t have a profile pic (i.e. eggs), mute timelines, and more. They also admitted they’ll try to be better about getting rid of abusive behavior, something Twitter is (sadly) known for, and up until now, seemingly doing little about. This will hopefully make a better experience overall for everyone.

The post A Smattering Of SEO – Fred Edition appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

A slower week for news this past week, with all of the interesting stuff being Google-related. This isn’t surprising really, just a bit annoying, as I had to scroll through hundreds of articles of garbage just to foist these nuggets upon you. May you read them with all the glee they deserve.

Google News

• Google Raters To Now Flag Content They Deem “Upsetting-Offensive” – While Google isn’t outright going after fake news, according to senior Google Engineer Paul Haahr, “Demonstrably inaccurate information, however, we want to target.” This helps explain a new section of their raters quality guidelines in which they determine how their rating staff can determine content that needs to go under a new flag, “Upsetting-Offensive.” Examples show two articles that cover a touchy subject like the Holocaust. One article tries to explain why it didn’t happen, which will get the flag, while another is purely factual, and won’t get the flag. There aren’t apparently any penalties to go along with these flags yet, but you know that’s coming. At least I hope it is.
• Illyes: Quality Comments Can Signal A Healthy Website – That’s basically the entirety of a Tweet from Google’s Gary Illyes, saying, “DYK quality comments can be a signal of a healthy website?” Why yes, Gary, I did know that. To me, comments are worth more than freaking platinum, but I digress. One wonders why the random Tweet about comments, but it’s a good thing to show your clients and what not when they get annoyed with having to have engaging content on their site.

• Low Quality Page Search Console Report Not Happening – This is less “news” and more “aaawwwww,” but according to Google’s John Mueller, when asked outright in a Hangout (or is it a Meet? Or a Chat? WHICH IS IT GOOGLE?), he said basically there are “no plans” at all for any kind of report in which Google might give us info on which pages on our site are of low quality. That’s a shame, as such a report would undoubtedly be dang useful. Dang. Useful.
• Report: “Fred” Targets Sites Laden With Ads – Over at Search Engine Roundtable, data gathered about the still-unconfirmed-and-officially-unnamed algorithm update, better known as “Fred,” seems to be targeting sites built specifically to serve a lot of AdSense ads, but with little quality copy to support the ads. Not sure how accurate this is, but like a lot of SEO, it’s fun to theorize about.

The post A Smattering Of SEO – All Google, All The Time… appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

ShirtSpace is the epitome of a challenger. As an intimately sized company, they jumped into the ultra-competitive apparel industry and have had to fight for every inch of ground they’ve gained. ShirtSpace found themselves competing with not only similar companies but also with the brands that they sell on their site.

Jeff and Marlin, the founders of ShirtSpace, are both out-of-the-box thinkers in every sense of the phrase. They teamed up with Wpromote and together formulated an ever-evolving strategy with the aim of unsettling the current pecking order in the apparel industry.

In order to really differentiate themselves from the ‘average joes’ in the industry, ShirtSpace worked on creating an identity for their brand. ShirtSpace wanted to show everyone that when you place an order for a shirt you’re actually getting so much more. To demonstrate this, ShirtSpace ateamed up with some creative souls and created a campaign that showed off ways to “Refashion” a ShirtSpace shirt. This contest was a great way to bring in new traffic to their brand, support a creative initiative, as well as gathering excellent user-generated content!

Their creative campaign worked hand in hand with a technical updates roadmap that allowed ShirtSpace to clean up site issues they had been suffering from in the past due to their custom build. The resounding success that Shirt Space has seen over the past 12 months has been staggering, seeing enormous gains in not only visits to the site but revenue as well.

86% Increase In Organic Visitors

87% Increase In New Users

Jeff and Marlin also decided that it wasn’t enough to just have a successful business: they felt a need to give back. ShirtSpace started their very own charity initiative targeted towards raising money for eight worthy charities. ShirtSpace doesn’t want to just be another faceless company; they want to be the face that makes a difference.

No matter how much ShirtSpace grows this year, one thing is certain; Jeff and Marlin, along with Wpromote, will push to not only challenge the apparel industry but challenge the world to step up and make a difference.

The post How ShirtSpace Thinks Like A Challenger appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

I don’t even know why I read these SEO news sites anymore. Clearly all the news is coming directly from Twitter, right? I just need to stare at Twitter all day in order to get my news. That’s fine, I’ve got nothing else going on…oh…hi there. I didn’t see you! What? Twitter? Oh, forget that, that’s pie in the sky nonsense, the rantings of a tired old man. Hey, look, something shiny! *jingles keys* News! *runs away*

Google News

• More Evidence Of “Fred” Algo Update Targeting Quality – While we still have nothing conclusive on the still-unofficially-named “Fred” algorithm update, Jennifer Slegg over at TheSEMPost has a wonderful article going into detail about what she feels are the biggest factors in whether your site has been targeted. Wow, that was a long sentence. Anyway, the evidence she’s been gathering points more and more to low-quality sites being targeted, such as those with low-quality content, lots of ads, weak links. It’s a great read, so go check it out. No, really, go. I’ll wait.
• Site Command Staying Put – There’s been plenty of speculation going around that the Googs was gonna take away the classic and beloved site: command, especially after a recent poll was sent out to webmasters on the subject. Well, have no fear, Gary Illyes is here! He Tweeted that it’s not being depreciated and that they’d fight for it not to get to that state! Yay!

• 404s Don’t Affect Site Quality – According to a Tweet (yes, another one) from Google’s John Mueller, 404 error pages are not a signal of low quality in the eyes of Google. That’s nice to know.
• Hacked Sites Increased Over 30% According To Google In 2016 – Google recently released its State of Website Security in 2016 report, and on the downside, around 32% more websites were hacked in 2016 than in 2015. Google recommends linking your site with Search Console to get alerts on such hacks, because of course they do. They also reported that, after a hack, 84% of sites that request reconsideration back into Google’s arms are accepted. That’s cool.
• YouTube Killing Annotations In May – For a really long time, annotations were tools video content creators could use to point users to other sites or videos easily. However, they don’t work on mobile. However, end screens and cards do, so these are now getting over seven times the traffic annotations get, which is why Google is going to remove the functionality in May. That’s fine by me, I never used ‘em anyway. Cards forever!

Other News

• DMOZ Is DONE – In sad news, one of the web’s oldest and, for a long time, most useful and popular properties, DMOZ (or the Open Directory Project), officially closed late last week. When I began in SEO grumblegrumble years ago, DMOZ was the thing, man. You needed to get your URL in there. It took months, but once you were in, you’d get a nice boost. This was back when more people saw directories as the premiere way to find things on the web. While it’s value has dropped significantly since then, it was still a great part of the web’s history. It’ll be missed…even though I’ve not visited it in ages.

The post A Smattering Of SEO – So Long, DMOZ appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

So, shocker, Google’s mobile-first index won’t drop this year. I know I was surprised. Were you surprised? I was totally surprised. Some other stuff happened too, like apparently people are still using Ask.com. Next thing you’ll be telling me is folks still use Alta Vista…

Google News

• Mobile-First Index Unlikely In 2017 – In recent remarks at the Next10X conference, Google’s Gary Illyes basically said he doesn’t expect the mobile-first index to drop this year, but more likely in 2018. I am so, so surprised. Seriously though, this is a big deal, so it makes sense that it’d take awhile to launch.
• Search Console Hit With Link Data Bug – Google recently confirmed — via Twitter, of course, which is where everything happens these days — that Search Console is currently afflicted with a link data bug that shows “No data available.” That’s a shame, he was great on Star Trek. Er, I mean, yeah. It’ll come back soon, says Google’s Gary Illyes, also via Twitter.

• Google Cooler Than Apple Or Netflix According To Google – This less “news” and more “hahahahahha,” but Google recently conducted a survey entitled “It’s Lit” (no, seriously, that was the title) in which they asked young folk about the “coolness” factor of various brands, and shock of shocks, YouTube is number one and Google is three?! THREE? Preposterous. Kids these days. Anyway, this whole thing is ridiculous, but fun to talk about, right? Right?
• Google Continues To Crack Down On Fake Map Listings – Google recently released a report in which they detail their continuing efforts to remove fake listings from Maps. Apparently fake listings are down from an all-time high of 70% in 2015. Wowie, good for them!

Other News

• Ask.com Accidentally Leaks Search Data Of All Five People Using It – Seriously though, Ask.com made a serious booboo the other day wherein, via some Apache weirdness, private search queries were visible for a spell. Thankfully, none of the IP addresses for the folks making these searches (who still uses Ask? Seriously?) were leaked, so that’s good at least.

The post A Smattering Of SEO News – Don’t Ask Google About Its Mobile-First Index Until 2018 appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Geotargeting allows Ecommerce businesses to deliver personally tailored content to visitors based on location. Doing so offers multiple benefits, including building deeper rapport with customers, encouraging more conversions, and boosting the site’s local SEO authority. Read on to learn how geotargeted content can help Ecommerce businesses succeed!

Builds Rapport

Geotargeted content can help build rapport with website visitors by highlighting information that they are uniquely interested in. For example, an Ecommerce site with multiple storefronts can use IP address tracking to show the addresses, contacts, and maps of locations nearest them. 

Encourages Conversions

Geotargeting also helps encourage more conversions by highlighting deals and promotions to visitors within a geographical area (think Groupon or Living Social). Location pages also complement geotargeted PPC, social, and email campaigns by providing a highly relevant page to link back to.

Boosts Local SEO

When it comes to local SEO ranking factors, on-page signals – such as NAP and local keywords – take up a big piece of the pie. Creating a unique landing page for each location is an excellent way for a business with multiple locations to rank well for location-based terms.

Image Source: Moz.

How has geotargeted content helped your business improve? Share with us in the comments below!

The post How Geotargeted Content Can Help Your Ecommerce Business appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Man, it was a slooohooooow news week last week. Likely this is because of Memorial Day, but still, dang. Nonetheless, there was some juicy stuff in the news last week that’s definitely worth reading (unlike all the junk I usually send, which you should never read). Enjoy!

Google News

• Google: Don’t Create Content To Gain Links – Google posted a new blog post entitled, “A reminder about links in large-scale article campaigns,” in which they sent out a not-so-subtle warning. While they’re not against things like guests posts if they’re truly meant to inform and educate, they do have a problem with these types of articles being written just to gain links. This sort of content has several factors, such as a lot of keywords or not being super informative, that Google uses to determine whether this is indeed a genuine article or…not. They posted this due to an increase in spammy links, so stop it people. C’mon now.

• Google Updates Rater Guidelines With More Detail On Your Money Or Your Life Pages, & More – In all of my time in SEO, I’ve honestly never heard of “Your Money or Your Life” pages until today. These are, if you’re like me and didn’t know, pages that can have a significant affect on your personal or financial well-being. Google usually rates these pages higher than other, more standard news articles, but in recent rater guidelines, they weren’t super clear as to the difference between these and news pages. Newly updated guidelines make the distinction more clear, and also offer more guidance on offensive results. Go check it out! No, seriously, go, I’m not being facetious.
• Personal Tab Added To SERPs – Some folks are seeing a new tab at the top of the search results: Personal. This apparently now pulls in stuff that has a direct relationship to you, likely via your email. So if I did a search for, say, video games, it might show up under that tab (they’re my life, man). It’s not rolled out for everyone yet, as I couldn’t make one of these things fire, but it looks nifty. Keep an eye out for it.

Other News

• Facebook Adds AMP & Apple News Support To Instant Articles – A little while back, Facebook rolled out support for Instant Articles, a proprietary format that was similar to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages in that these pages would show a really fast, cut-down version of an original article for mobile users. Well, now you can have your cake and eat it too (mmmm, cake!), as Facebook has rolled out a tool that allows you to convert Instant Articles pages to AMP and Apple News formats. Now cats and dogs can live together without the mass hysteria! Yay!

The post A Smattering Of SEO News – Slooooow News Week appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

Much like when a professional athlete returns to the basics to continually improve his or her talent, we often advise our clients to evaluate their websites and look at some of the simpler areas that might get overlooked in the hustle and bustle to sell merchandise or services.

One of the most important building blocks of a site — and something that seems to be forgotten about on a regular basis — is a URL. With so many competitors vying for customer clicks, it’s as important as ever to differentiate yourself from the competition – and writing URLs in an SEO-friendly way affords greater opportunity for success.

While a website’s structure can get quite technical, there are some simple principals that can make a world of difference for a site. Many internet issues find their root in URL structure, and there are ways to improve singular URLs as well as the connection amongst them.

Improving URL Structure

If you’re a beginner, Moz has put together a great infographic on the anatomy of a URL, and it highlights some of the components that are important to include.

Customers expect URLs to be clear about what a webpage delivers and what kind of content they will see once they get there, rather than just simply clicking on a jumbled mess of letters, numbers, and characters that make no sense — and are hard to type into a search bar.

Zenni Optical has a clear URL organization and provides a user-friendly experience for visitors to its site. For example, you could expect to replace the word “boys” with “girls” and be led to a page with pre-teen girl glasses, which is exactly the case. On the other hand, the Amazon link is less clear and includes characters that mean nothing to customers. While Amazon may be able to get away with this URL structure because of its size and influence, this practice definitely is not recommended for smaller businesses.

It’s important to note that, while including appropriate keywords in URLs is still a best practice, it’s not necessarily a ranking factor for Google and other search engines. However, having highly readable URLs with natural keywords can improve the chances of someone clicking on your link as long as it’s not stuffed and made to look like spam. There is also a debate over the use of hyphens versus underscores to separate words in URLs, but Google encourages the use of hyphens, and that’s the practice Wpromote upholds as well. Hyphens also make your URL look cleaner, something that can’t hurt a site.

Improving Site Structure

When it comes to overall site structure, websites can have a subdomain in addition to a parent domain. Many companies do this with their blog (blog.domain.com). However, this is like running two sites – and we all know that maintaining one website is usually enough work in and of itself. The alternative is creating subfolders within your site, which is also the best way to ensure that all of your content is working well together, not competing against itself, and helping you collect helpful data. Seabourn, a high-end cruise ship company that recently worked with Wpromote, used blog.seabourn.com to promote its luxury liners and experiences before merging that content into its main site at www.seabourn.com.

You’ll also want to decide a pattern for organizing your posts, products or other offerings, a discussion that often occurs in the initial stages of a site build or in the midst of a migration. While you want to get it right the first time with a solid plan in place, we know that does not always happen.

“When migrating a site, the most common mistakes we see are around URL mapping and proper redirects,” said Andrew McLellan, General Manager of SEO at Wpromote. “It’s important to make sure that all redirects use a permanent 301, otherwise you risk losing site equity. Mapping the old site structure to the new is also extremely important. Google recommends that if you have pages that don’t match up with the new site, let those 404. However, consult a professional before making these kinds of decisions.”

The Takeaway

Next time you visit your favorite websites, take an extra minute to look at the URL you’ve arrived at to see if that company is following best practices. We bet that many of the sites you visit per day have some issue with their URL structure.

What problems have you faced during implementation or migration of your website? Have you come up with any unique patterns for structuring your URLs? We’d love to hear from you. As The Challenger Agency, we thrive on learning while equipping you with the tools to effectively navigate this tricky field and beat out the tough competition around you.

The post Better URLs Will Help You Maximize Overall Website Performance appeared first on Wpromote Blog.

From weekend warrior bloggers to Fortune 500 behemoths, 27 percent of websites on the entire internet use WordPress to power, design, and manage their platforms. It’s easy to use, open source, highly customizable, and best of all, free.

But no matter how many bells and whistles are sprawled across your sleek new site, search engine users aren’t going to discover your products or services if your website isn’t properly optimized. This is where good ol’ SEO comes into play.

While there is a plethora of tools to help you achieve higher rankings, these SEO plugins are personally used by the team at Wpromote. Give them a try and see which ones best suit your needs. And, while these plugins may help you achieve your online goals, seeking the assistance of a professional team can reap you benefits you might not even have thought of.

Yoast

It’s no coincidence that Yoast is mentioned first. Not only is this the preferred SEO plugin for Wpromote, but it’s the most popular SEO tool for WordPress with over 3 million downloads and counting.

Based out of the Netherlands, Yoast has been universally lauded for its all-in-one functionality and key features such as content analysis, XML sitemap generation, and URL redirects.

Wpromote’s Senior Digital Marketing Specialist Tucker Smith is particularly enamored with the preview feature. “Yoast helps me handle what a page will look like in a search engine, so I can easily edit metadata for a site without having to constantly go back to separate pages. It’s a super timesaver when you’re launching a new site or doing a large content refresh.”

AMP Plugin

We’ve come a long way since dial-up, and in this era of 5G and 500 Mbps, online users expect nothing less than blazing-fast internet speed. Our expectations are so preposterously high that 40 percent of people click away from a website if the page hasn’t loaded within 3 seconds.

Over the past couple of years, AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, has been generating buzz around the digital realm as a remedy to appease frustrated internet users and site developers. An open source project endorsed by Google, AMP is designed to consistently deliver fast mobile performance across all platforms and devices.

This WordPress plugin provides AMP functionality to your website or blog, allowing you to seamlessly display your content and provide mobile users a speedy web experience. 

Glue For Yoast SEO & AMP

As you can obviously tell from the name, Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP goes hand in hand with the previous plugins on this list. This plugin essentially “glues” Yoast’s SEO prowess onto your website’s AMP pages. The outcome? A snug position at the top of the search results.

To retain lightning fast load times, raw AMP pages are forced to sacrifice style. Glue fixes this problem so you can smoothly customize your pages to align with your site’s aesthetic.

In addition to these perks, Glue also ensures your mobile pages receive accurate AMP code to work harmoniously with Google.

DuracellTomi’s Google Tag Manager For WordPress

As a digital marketer, it’s imperative to monitor website traffic, customer behavior, and conversion rates, and tags are the building blocks to receiving this data. Tagging is a complex procedure, but thanks to Google Tag Manager, you don’t have to be a seasoned developer to use many of GTM’s features.

Without a tag management system, you must manually hard-code each tag into your site’s source code. It’s a pain in the neck and a massive time waster, to say the least. GTM simplifies the process by allowing you to enter a single container code snippet that will house all of your tags.

This plugin seamlessly incorporates GTM into WordPress, so you can track everything on your site with ease.

Smush 

A blog post always performs better when imagery is implemented. However, if your file sizes are too large, you run the risk of slowing down your site, which will ultimately diminish your SEO value.

Let Smush take care of this predicament. The free plugin compresses your image into a smaller file size by removing unnecessary data without losing quality. Smush’s servers are so powerful that they can even handle up to 50 images at a time.

Super Cache

Harkening back to the last selection, unoptimized images aren’t the only things that can bog down your site. Everything from videos to overloaded HTML code can hinder load times and consequently lower your ranking.

With caching, your graphics, animations, videos, and other website data are stored through a browser such as Chrome or Firefox. So, the next time someone visits your site, the browser can fetch the stored information without having to download every piece of your site’s data again. This results in quicker loading times and better user experiences.

While there’s a handful of cache plugins for WordPress, Super Cache is the most downloaded among the pack for its ease of use and configuration options. It doesn’t hurt that it’s free, either.

Jetpack  

Often dubbed the “Swiss army knife of plugins,” Jetpack is a tool brimming with features including modules for design, data backups, traffic statistics, and subscriptions, among many others.

It’s likely you won’t utilize every single component of this plugin, but you can always enable and disable a feature with the click of a button.

For SEO purposes, Jetpack gives you options to create and edit title tags and meta descriptions. You can even preview how your content will look on Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Wordfence

Enticing consumers to your site is vital, but potential customers will leave faster than they arrived if they come across the dreaded “this site has been reported as unsafe” message.

That’s why focusing on security is just as important as boosting your conversion rate, especially If you consider the fact that roughly 30,000 websites are hacked each day.

Boasting over 30 million downloads, Wordfence is the most popular and most trusted security plugin for WordPress. Its features include a web application firewall, real-time threat defense feed, malware scanner, and more. Have no clue what any these words mean? Wordfence provides plenty of security 101 articles and blogs, as well as personal, in-depth support from its team of experts.

Header & Footer 

When people land on your homepage, the first and last things they typically see are the header and footer. These spots are where you usually display your company logo and embedded links to other important sections of your site. For example, Wpromote’s header and footer contains links to who we are, what we do, our clients, and our social media channels.

This WordPress plugin is a simple and intuitive tool. You can simply copy and paste code from services such as Google Analytics and Facebook into the top or bottom of your page without the need to install separate plugins.

Header and Footer also offers SEO options, including canonical tags on homepages and no-indexing for search results and home subpages.

Search Regex

Sometimes, you need to switch out some text or HTML strings on your website or blog. To avoid the time-consuming inconvenience of manually fixing content, plugins such as Search Regex help streamline the process in a matter of seconds.

Tom Owens, organic search associate for Wpromote, uses Search Regex all the time for his clients. “It operates as a find-and-replace function but for the entire site. If sections of the site have moved or changed URL paths, this tool allows you to find all instances of an old link and replace it with the new one. It’s a little more technical than just straight up SEO, but it has come through in the clutch more than a few times.”

Still not sure where to start? Let Wpromote be your beacon to more web exposure. We specialize in working with challengers, companies that have the courage to go against the grain, take risks, and maintain resilience in the face of defeat. If you believe you possess these qualities, let us know. We’ll be in your corner.

The post Best WordPress Plugins for SEO appeared first on Wpromote Blog.