What Are Research Keywords?

Research is vital when you’re choosing keywords for your content strategy. Research is also the first step people take in the buying process. Think like a user researching the types of products or services you offer: what information are they looking for? What words or phrases would they use in their initial queries? When you answer those questions, you are better able to develop a content strategy that includes relevant content people are looking for using the broad keywords and phrases people use. Research keywords are more difficult to rank for, however. According to Chapter 9 in the SEO Diet, research keywords are usually broad and generally ask for a review or comparison, so they are pretty competitive to rank for. Sites that are ranking for well for those broad terms are generally large, established companies that people already trust.

But just because research keywords are difficult to rank for doesn’t mean they should be excluded. Instead, “choose a handful of research keywords that you would like to optimize your site for.”

What Are Shopping Keywords

After a person has passed the research phase of their buying process, they’re a little bit more informed so their search terms will be more specific and include a qualifier or modifier such as a particular brand or product. These are the shopping keywords to consider for your content strategy.

Just as the research keyword market is competitive, so are shopping keywords. Since shopping keywords are a little more specific, it might be more difficult to optimize and their search volume might be low but you have a better chance of generating the kind of traffic you want in order to achieve the goals you have set for your site. It might be a little tricky to naturally include shopping keywords in content sometimes but they are an integral part of your organic search optimization campaign that should not be overlooked.

What Are Buying Keywords?

When people are closer to a buying decision, they’ll search even more specific queries that might include the model number, color, size, year, location and other descriptors of the product or service. These will be your buying keywords to consider for your content strategy.

Buying keywords generate the most desirable kind of traffic for your website because they are the most likely to convert since they are ready to purchase. Of the three different types of keywords discussed, buying keywords are the lowest hanging fruit, so to speak, so they will be easiest to rank for, especially if you’re in a niche market. The traffic generated by these keywords is more likely to result in a lead or a sale, depending on what your goal is for the site.

If you want to learn more about the different kinds of keywords to consider for your content strategy or you’d like to generate more traffic to your website, you can pick up a copy of the SEO Diet book here.

Sources:

SEO Diet – Chapter 9: Different Kinds of Keywords

Related Readings:

 How to do SEO

A Beginner’s Guide to Choosing Keywords

The post Keywords to Consider for Your Content Strategy appeared first on The SEO Diet.

It Costs Nothing

In a world where everything costs money and businesses have tight budgets, it can be hard to find anything that is free that can improve your business. The good news is that Google Analytics is free, meaning it costs nothing for you to start using this useful resource and is a good place to start for business growth.

It Helps You See Your Best Content

One of the reasons why you need Google Analytics for business growth is to monitor how that content is performing on your site. According to the SEO Diet, the bounce rate will allow you to view the percentage of users who leave the page without any interaction or further exploration of the site. You can also look at changes in the search pattern by using the search feature and analyze how inbound links are growing.

Know if Your Business is Achieving “Goals”

Google Analytics also has a tool that allows you to keep track of goal completions. The goal for each site varies, but the business owner defines their goal(s) when they set up Analytics tracking on their site. Google Analytics can then keep track of how many users are following through to goal completion. You can also set up numerous goals to study each one. This is an excellent resource for business growth. Once you complete that you will be able to develop campaigns with that information because you’ll see what visitors are interested in.

Google Analytics is Simple and Easy

The real question is: why aren’t you using Google Analytics for your business? Google Analytics might look confusing at first, but once you understand how the system works, you can use it to your advantage. You don’t have to be tech-savvy or know how to do SEO, all you need is practice and research. If this is something that does interest you and you want to know more about why you need Google Analytics for business growth, pick up a copy of the SEO Diet here. In this book, SEO expert, Joe Laratro provides helpful information on everything from Google Analytics to how you can grow your business online.

Sources

SEO Diet – Chapter 31: Testing & Tracking

The post 3 Reasons Why You Need Google Analytics for Business Growth appeared first on The SEO Diet.

The Benefits of a Google My Business Listing

When someone searches for your business on Google, the information that’s used in the setup of your GMB profile is pulled from your GMB page and shown in the search results. There are several reasons why your business can benefit from a GMB listing.

• Visibility in SERPs. Your information will populate in relevant search queries.
• Visibility in Google Maps. Localized searches will place your business on Google maps, which will allow people to find the location of your business, as well as directions to it.
• Business Information Consistency. As the owner of your GMB listing, you can update and share your correct business information and update it as needed. If your phone number or hours have changed, you can change it in your GMB listing and it will reflect almost instantly.
• Review Management. You can communicate with people who review your business by being able to respond to negative reviews or thanking the customers who have praised you.

Verifying Your Google My Business Listing

To be able to manage your business listing, you have to verify it first. The verification process helps Google make sure that the right person has the access to edit the information. You cannot update the information on your business listing until you’ve completed the verification process.

You can verify your GMB listing by:

• Postcard
• Phone
• Email
• Instant verification

If you need additional help with verifying your GMB listing, you can visit the Google My Business Help page.

Updating Your Google My Business Listing

Be sure to update and complete your GMB as much as possible, including the interior and exterior photos of your business.¹ You want all the information portrayed on your listing to be up-to-date and accurate. You should also be responding to reviews on a regular basis, whether they’re positive or negative reviews. This not only exhibits your engagement with customers, but it also serves to improve customer experience with your business.

If you want more local SEO secrets and SEO tips that are sure to improve the organic rankings of your website, get the SEO Diet book and start working on your SEO strategy today.

Sources

1. Laratro, J. (2018) SEO Diet – Chapter 7: Submitting Your Site. Fort Lauderdale, Florida

The post Why You Should Have a Google My Business Listing appeared first on The SEO Diet.

A few things you need to keep in mind in order to create relevant content:

Keep It Useful and Informative

You’ll want to keep your content valuable to your readers. You can do this in several ways, but one of the best ways you can keep your readers engaged is by answering questions they have. You can also include the questions themselves in your text. Answering questions in your content is a huge part of content marketing success.

Show Expertise, Authority, and Trust

Show the credibility of your site. Use information that’s backed by research, include citations, links, reviews, testimonials, and more. You should also include author bios linked to the person who provided the information being shared on your site. Doing so can help boost your site’s trustworthiness and online reputation.

Add Images – But Keep it Simple

Add images of your products, your team, or yourself to bring life to content. Keep your content clean with fonts and colors that are easy on the eyes. Include fun infographics that give readers an easy-to-understand overview of the topics you’re presenting.

While those are only a few of the many ways you can create relevant content for your website, content is an incredibly effective aspect of SEO. For more SEO secrets and ways to improve your SEO strategy, take the advice from the SEO expert, Joe Laratro. Get the SEO Diet book today!

The post How to Create Relevant Content appeared first on The SEO Diet.

Fresh Content vs. Stale Content

The more frequently your site is updated with new blogs, articles, and webpages, the more frequently your website will be indexed by search engines. Fresh content is engaging and up-to-date. This not only has the potential to obtain better rankings, but also higher search traffic and lower bounce rates.

Opportunities for More Keyword Rankings

Traffic to your site will come from words other than your target keywords. Larger websites with more content have more long-tail keywords. The more you post fresh content on your site, the more opportunity you’ll have to rank for new, long-tail keywords. Remember not to keyword-stuff your content. Google looks at top-quality content that’s relevant to users. While your keywords should be within the content, it’s important that they be used naturally.

Increase the Rate of Repeat Visitors

Fresh content can provide new visitors with the information they’re looking for as well as new pieces for repeat visitors to engage in. If you start building a reputation for regularly adding content to your site, you will begin to garner visitor loyalty, which leads to word-of-mouth traffic and repeat visits.¹

While these are just a few of the benefits of regular content marketing, adding a continuous stream of content to your site is a goal that’s well worth the time and effort. Your website will become more valuable to users and search engines alike as it grows in quality content.

For more SEO secrets and ways to improve your SEO strategy, take the advice from the SEO expert, Joe Laratro. Get the SEO Diet book today!

Sources

1. Laratro, J. (2018) SEO Diet – Chapter 14: The Importance of Search Engine Real Estate. Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The post Why You Should Be Adding Content to Your Site appeared first on The SEO Diet.

Different Types of Keywords

Words and phrases that have a considerable number of searches in a month qualify as keywords. There are several different types of keywords to consider: 

• Head Keywords – The main drivers of traffic to your site, that are popular among searchers and highly competitive. For example: marketing agency.
• Torso Keywords – Similar to head keywords, but with fewer clicks per keyword. For example: digital marketing agency.
• Long-Tail Keywords – More specific keywords, usually three words or longer. For example: SEO digital marketing agency.
• Geo-Targeted Long-Tail Keywords – Long-tail keywords with local search in mind. For example: SEO digital marketing agency in Fort Lauderdale.

Helpful Keyword Tools

Keyword research is an important step in finding the right keywords to use. There are several different keyword tools you can use to find the best keywords for your site. Many tools are available that can help you see and identify search trends, keyword popularity, keyword competitiveness, and much more.² These keywords research tools include, but are not limited to:

• Google AdWords
• Google Trends
• SpyFu
• SEMRush
• Moz
• Answer the Public
• Raven Tools

When it comes to optimizing the content on your site with keywords, it’s important to remember that relevant keywords are more valuable than the density of them in your writing. A common mistake amongst people who are new to SEO is keyword stuffing. However, in SEO, quality trumps quantity, for readers and search engine crawlers alike.

Sources

1. Chapter 8: An Introduction to Keywords – Joe Laratro – SEO Diet
2. Chapter 12: Tools to Help You Find the Best Keywords for Your Site – Joe Laratro – SEO Diet

The post The Importance of Keywords in SEO appeared first on The SEO Diet.

Best Practices for Writing Title Tags

• Title tags should be no longer than 70 characters.
• The priority of the keywords and branding should go in this order: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Branding
• Write title tags for humans (as opposed to search engines).
• Every page should have a unique title tag – do not duplicate them.
• Title tags should not be keyword-stuffed.
• Make your title tag different than your header tag.
• They should be easy to read and should make sense.
• Avoid using too many stop words.

Writing good, optimized title tags is worth your time and effort when it comes to implementing SEO on your website. This part of meta data is the most obvious element in search results, and it plays a part in a potential visitor’s decision regarding whether or not they want to click on your site.

Examples of Good and Bad Title Tags

If a webpage is about adopting a dog from an adoption center called Pet Rescue USA, here are good and bad examples of title tags:

• Bad: Pet Rescue – Rescue and Adopt a Dog That Needs to Be Rescued – Pet Rescue USA
• Good: Rescue Your Pet – Adopt a Dog from Your Local Shelter | Pet Rescue USA
• Good: Rescue A Dog from A Shelter | Pet Rescue USA

If a webpage is about where you can find the best fishing rods from a brand called Fishing Forever, examples of title tags include:

• Bad: Fishing Rods – Find a Fishing Rod for Fishing | Fishing Forever
• Good: The Best Fishing Rods for Saltwater Fishing | Fishing Forever
• Good: The Best Fishing Rods for Bass Fishing | Fishing Forever
• Good: The Best Fishing Rods of 2019 | Fishing Forever

If the webpage is the home page for an air conditioning company called Stay Cool in Los Angeles, title tag examples include:

• Bad: Home – Stay Cool
• Good: AC Services, Installation, and Repair in Los Angeles | Stay Cool
• Good: Los Angeles HVAC Experts – AC Installation & Repair | Stay Cool
• Good: Air Conditioning Installation & Repair Services | Stay Cool

The proper placement of keywords within your titles and title tags will make a difference in the success of your SEO efforts, so it’s important to take advantage of the different SEO ranking factors. For more SEO secrets and examples of good SEO, dive into the SEO Diet by Joe Laratro.

The post How to Write Good Title Tags: A Checklist appeared first on The SEO Diet.

1. Keywords

Not just one lonely keyword will do. If you want to receive any return and improve your analytics, long-tail keywords will be become your best friend. Think about it, when you do any Google search, more often than not, you are using more than one word, for example “Media Buys” or “Twitter Reputation Management.” If you were to just search “Twitter” on Google, you would be nowhere close to what you were searching for. In addition to using more than one word, don’t be afraid to target specific locations. After all, most searches use four or more words, so get specific. If you are in Fort Lauderdale, include that in your keywords like, “Digital Marketing Fort Lauderdale”. We call these geo-targeted long-tail keywords.

2. Good Content

Content is not enough anymore. You cannot just post to get a post on your site. Good, high-quality content is necessary. Include your keywords and make your content useful. Going back to Google searches, how many results pop-up for any given topic? Who’s at the top of those searches? The websites with the best content.

Google loves informational, straight to the point, no fluff content. Those who use search engines are looking for answers now, they don’t want to sort through a bunch of bogus fillers to find what they’re looking for. Just because content is informative does not mean it’s understandable by everyone that reads it. Content may be written at a very high level, but if half of your content doesn’t make sense to the average reader, you’re losing major points and there goes your high rank in searches.

3. Meta Descriptions & Title Tags

With content comes meta descriptions and title tags. Your title tag is the first piece of wording users see for each search result, a book title essentially. Keep it under seventy characters and keep it simple. Where you want things to get interesting and informative is the meta description. This is the wording under you Title Tag. Include details, get specific, and make your content attractive. This is your little piece of information that is going to make someone want to click your link.

4. Add an Image

Imagery is the face of your content, a first impression, a little piece of physical information that can really grab someone’s attention. Although, images within searches have now evolved. Optimized images are now what matters to assist in high ranking content. To optimize your content’s image, add a description, alt tags, titles, anywhere you can attach information to the image you are using on your site, do it. Your high-ranking content will thank you later.

5. Building Backlinks to Content

With all our search engine user-related tips out of the way, we head to the backend, more specifically, backlinks. Backlinks are your road to building up your reputation. When other websites link to yours, they are endorsing you. Not to mention, when other sites link to you, maybe in a blog, they are driving traffic directly to your website or linking directly to a piece of content. The more backlinking you have, the better the reputation and the higher the rank for content on your website.

6. Secure Your Site

The next tip is a must, all other SEO efforts could be wasted if the proper action is not taken. Implementing an SSL Certificate on your website is crucial. You can have an amazing website, the best content on the web, but without an SSL certificate, Google will not trust your site, nor will it be protected. Do yourself a favor, get an SSL certificate and change your http:// to https://. You will need to redirect all http URLs to https to ensure proper implementation.

7. Mobile-Friendliness

Now that we have come to our final tip for building an effective SEO strategy, the question is, have you been reading this on a desktop or a mobile device? According to Google, year after year, searches are moving away from desktops and vastly increasing on mobile devices, which brings us to the importance of mobile friendliness. How does your website look on a mobile device? Are your webpages AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) configured? Did you know that if your website takes too long to load on a phone you are potentially at risk of losing a tremendous amount of traffic to your site? Don’t give users a reason to not choose your content – be mobile-friendly!

As a premier Fort Lauderdale marketing agency, Tandem Interactive specializes in keeping those with a marketing presence at the top of search engines. We want to help you shape up your SEO strategy as well. Go to www.seodiet.com for a FREE eBook with insider tips to help you get to the top of searches and stay there.

The post 7 SEO Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Website appeared first on The SEO Diet.