You can make all the substance you need; however, you shouldn’t post it if it’s not offering some incentive. It’s significant that each page on your site has fair substance, that is, something like three hundred words in length. Making content conflictingly can likewise hurt you. At the point when guests arrive at your site, they hope to find applicable data and related pieces that offer some incentive. On the off chance that they don’t track that down, they’ll likely look somewhere else.
It is also critical that you only discuss topics that are relevant to what you do. You could expand on a word that is completely irrelevant to your sector in an attempt to build traffic to your site, but you risk alienating your present audience as well as any additional individuals you wind up attracting in.
Some SEO pioneers examine the significance of creating good material over huge amounts of material. Google needs sufficient subtleties to discover what’s going on with your page and regardless of whether you can give the appropriate response individuals are searching for. If you present an incentive for individuals devouring your posts and exhibit authority, you can gather trust. When you have it, you should keep creating fresh material.
Individuals are probably not going to get back to your site in the event that you don’t routinely produce content. However, they are additionally far-fetched to return, assuming you just post around one theme. Groundbreaking thoughts are continually emerging, so regardless of the industry you’re in, you ought to have various things to expound on. Having new content being introduced through your channels can truly draw individuals into getting back to your website.
Each topic you expand on can assist you with growing your possible reach. In the event that you upgrade your substance for search, expanding on various points permits you to target various arrangements of keywords. With each keyword, you add that word’s search volume to your likely reach.
It is important to keep in mind that new firms should maintain a little more involved content process. Because they haven’t developed a substance library, they must guarantee that they handle their primary topics before moving on to related topics.
Streamlining your substance doesn’t end once you remember an objective keyword for your articles. Title tags and meta descriptions are fundamental components of search engine optimization that ought not to be neglected. Overlooking them implies a colossal missed potential for your content. The page title is as yet a significant positioning element for Google, so you need to ensure it’s advanced accurately for each page. It is recommended to add your keyword to the title if that is conceivable and ensure that your page title isn’t excessively long. If your page title is excessively long, chopping it down is inevitable.
Making content is extraordinary; however, search engines battle to comprehend the setting of your substance. You don’t need potential guests to see only 50% of your page title in the search results. These streamlining factors are considered via search engines when slithering your site; thus, they can further develop your content execution whenever done effectively.
Click-Through Rate gives some knowledge of how potential guests can tap on your site in the SERPs. On the off chance that you enhance your meta portrayals with a reasonable and appealing message on what individuals can find on your site, it becomes simpler so that they can check whether the data they’re searching for is on that page. The more probable individuals are to figure your site will give a solution to their search inquiry, the more traffic a page will acquire.
Once guests land on your site, the following objective is to keep them on your site. You don’t need your guests promptly ricocheting back to Google whenever they have perused something on your page. This is the reason you really want to urge guests to navigate your site. The ideal way of doing this is to make a call to action or CTA, which typically is a button that offers an activity to your guest. This can be, for example, a purchase button on an item page or a signup button for the bulletins. Don’t get carried away and attempt to have one fundamental call to action that stands apart from the remainder of your page.
Over the long haul, in the event that you produce top-caliber, important material, others will probably begin linking to it. At the point when that happens, Google noticed that different areas are remembering you as an expert in your space, which supports your search rankings. That is the reason outer links are fundamental to your SEO methodology. One more way of keeping individuals on your site is by adding significant inward links to different pages on your site.
By working out your content procedure, you will ideally acquire authority, and individuals will remember you are talented and reliable in your subject matter. This offers you the ideal chance to reference your own content through internal linking.
This is quite a significant piece of SEO and ought to be essential for your promoting endeavors. By adding internal links, your site guests and Google will realize what pages are identified with one another and can be intriguing when they’re searching for data on a specific subject. On the off chance that you have a library of related content, not referring to yourself is a mistake. Preferably, when guests go to your site, you will give an all-in-one resource to them. Fundamentally, they ought to have the option to visit your space and realize whatever they need to about your topic. So try to invest energy in your inner linking to make an extraordinary web page structure that keeps individuals on your site!
If your site isn’t dynamic enough with loading speeds or versatile while being searched, it is important for you to change your SEO technique, as you risk losing serious money! It is imperative that websites these days are mobile-friendly.
Around 4 years ago, Google changed to a system of mobile rankings. This implies that Google currently checks out the mobile rendition of your site to conclude how high your ranking should actually be. So if the desktop adaptation of your site is set up splendidly, yet your mobile site isn’t responsive by any means, this will be reflected in your rankings. Adversely, if that is the situation, make a point to deal with mobile search engine optimization. Today, over half of all traffic comes from cell phones. Also, that is the reason Google will, in general, lean toward versatile websites.
To set up your site for natural traffic from cell phones, you’ll need to guarantee that your site is responsive and that it loads in less than a couple of seconds. Versatility and page speed are significant positioning variables.
An extraordinary way of testing if your site is adapting well to mobile devices is to utilize Google’s test. This provides you with a sign of how effectively guests can use your page on cell phones.
In any case, don’t stop in the wake of really taking a look at this. The best exhortation is to visit your site on your own cell phone. Peruse your own site for some time and attempt to tap on each link, tab, and picture to perceive what occurs. Make sure that you do not stop testing the website until you are delighted. The Where, Why, What, When, and How, all should be satisfactorily answered! The bottom line is straightforward. Do not disregard mobile optimization in the event that you really need to expand your natural site traffic.
Conclusion
Generally speaking, it’s simple to foster these unfortunate SEO quirks and not put any time or consideration into further developing them. Notwithstanding, if you are growing positive routines and, as of now, setting a portion of the strategies discussed above in motion, it ought to be simpler and more viable to embrace the SEO flaws.
You don’t need one of the mistakes to cost you your rankings. Accordingly, by following SEO best practices, you can fuel results all the more effectively. On the off chance that you join these components into an undeniable SEO procedure, it can have a fantastic effect.
Indeed, even well-versed individuals can commit numerous normal SEO errors. It’s better to get familiar with the difficulties others have encountered and stay away from them in your promoting endeavors. You need an essential comprehension of SEO and to pose inquiries about specific strategies to guarantee your SEO techniques aren’t about attempting to deceive Google.
FTx 360 offers a full suite of marketing solutions, including affordable SEO services and online reputation management, at competitive prices. Whether you’re interested in our consulting services or would like to hire us to manage all of your SEO marketing needs, our team of experts can help your online presence grow. Contact us to learn more about our content marketing, social media marketing, and SEO marketing services.
Increasing the search engine ranking of your website is probably one of your top priorities if you’ve landed on this blog post.
Did you type “increase organic ranking” into Google’s search bar, discover our blog title, and click its blue-hyperlink title to learn more? If so, then you are a part of our website’s “organic traffic,” and the fact that you’re here will help to naturally increase our website’s “organic ranking” on Google.
So, thanks for that!
Your website’s daily visitor count is impacted by two factors, which are organic web traffic and traffic from paid advertisements and other lead generation strategies. Interestingly, Google values and rewards organic traffic more than any other form of traffic. This means that your website’s Google search engine ranking is actually based solely on organic traffic.
But we don’t need to convince you of the importance of increasing your organic ranking on Google and other search engines. We know why you’re here, so we’ll cut to the chase right after we try to convince you that if you really want to increase your organic ranking, you should contact our digital marketing specialists and we’ll tailor a customized SEO and SERP strategy for you that works. FTx 360 is a transparent digital marketing agency that serves both B2C and B2B businesses of all industries at affordable prices. Don’t believe us? Use this Build Your Own Quote form and see for yourself! Chances are, we’ll get back to you with a personalized quote before you even finish reading this article!
Now, let’s get down to SEO business… Here are 8 tips to increase organic ranking…
Google uses mobile-first website indexing algorithms, which means that if your website is not mobile-friendly, we have some very bad news for you. Your site isn’t getting ranked. Yikes! Drop everything right now and take the time to turn your desktop-configured website into a responsive, mobile-friendly one. Google has published an extremely helpful Mobile-first Indexing Best Practices Guide you can use. The same guide will help you confirm that Google bots will be able to crawl and index your website without issue.
You’re probably aware of the importance of using outbound links, also known as external links, in your web content. But what are you doing to increase the number of backlinks to your website? Backlinks are when other websites use your web page URLs as their own outbound links. When other websites link to your site, it elevates your standing with Google, and if those other websites hold a high Google ranking, then it can benefit your site’s ranking even more. Think of it as popularity by association, which is another form of “social proof.”
Let’s get down to brass tacks. The more backlinks you have to your website, the greater the chance that Google bots will presume you’re an authority in your field and should therefore be elevated in the SERP ranking. In the spirit of popularity, you’ll need to get social if you want to increase your backlinks. Meaning, you might need to send a few emails or—gulp—pick up the phone and ask reputable, non-competing websites, bloggers, and other influencers if they would like to exchange links with you wherein they hyperlink to your URLs on their sites and you do the same for them.
One of the biggest impactors of your Google ranking is the frequency with which you publish new content. New content, whether it be a new product description page, new landing page, or entirely revised website, provides Google with additional SEO keywords that it can use to recommend your website to search engine users. As users discover your website via Google, Google will assess the inbound traffic and reward your website accordingly by elevating its ranking. If you’re only publishing new web content on your site once a year, your organic ranking is probably going to fall lower and lower down in the search results.
The easiest “fix” to frequently generating new SEO might seem easier said than done, but we believe in you and know you can do it! By simply adding a blog to your website and committing to regularly publishing an article, you will naturally add SEO keywords to your website and the long-term accumulation will positively impact your Google ranking. Ideally, if you published two articles per week that each totaled 2,000 words, your SERP ranking would rise faster than a bun in an oven, but no one expects you to set the bar that high. In fact, regularity is more important than article length. If you can only publish one micro-blog every other week, then do it, stick to it, and the results will speak for themselves.
Elevating your search engine ranking is only helpful if you’re generating the right kind of web traffic. What is the right kind of web traffic? Web traffic that contains interested consumers who quickly convert into paying customers. It’s really not going to matter if you’re #1 on Google SERP if 100% of your web traffic contains twelve-year old French girls who are in no position to buy the used cars you’re selling in Boise, ID. Make sure your keywords and longtail keyword phrases will successfully target your ideal customer by using Google’s Keyword Planner.
A meta description is the readable description about your website that Google users see beneath your website title in the search results. Meta descriptions are elements of the HTML of your website, and typically range from 100 – 160 characters in length, or 22 words. Relevant meta descriptions that include a few targeted keywords tend to perform the best. Because the meta description of your web page is the main deciding factor of whether or not a user clicks or scrolls, you’ll want to make sure that the content is compelling, clear, and also attractive. With that in mind, be sure that your web domain page titles, otherwise called <title> HTML tags, are concise yet descriptive; and make sure that your ALT tags, which are additional HTML elements, include essential keywords.
Finally, after all the work you put into increasing your organic ranking on Google and other search engines, it’s important that you’re able to track your web visitors and tally all the leads your website generates on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This is because elevating your SERP ranking is really only half the battle. The other half involves making sure the results really are benefiting your business in the form of expanding your customer base and increasing your revenue. The Google Search Console and Google Analytics can provide SEO insights that you can leverage to adjust and improve your SEO and SERP strategies.
That concludes our tips to increase your website’s organic ranking, which means it’s time to either roll up your sleeves… or give us a call. The marketing specialists at FTx 360 would love to work with you to drive web traffic and boost engagement!
Smoke shops, cigar retailers, vape stores, hookah lounges, and even hemp wellness retailers within the CBD industry have one major challenge in common—severe advertising restrictions.
The US Food & Drug Administration has controlled tobacco and nicotine product advertising for decades, but it wasn’t until June of 2009 that the FDA clamped down hard on tobacco industry advertising, including advertising that fell within the scope of digital marketing.
These new FDA rules and regulations were imposed on secondary industries that carried nicotine, tobacco-related, and tobacco-simulated products, namely the vape and CBD markets. Can vape stores run TV ads? Nope. Are cigar retailers allowed to place paid ads on Instagram? Not at all. What about CBD stores, can this type of hemp wellness retailer buy a half-page magazine ad? Not even for a million dollars.
With extreme advertising limitations, how can smoke shops, vape stores, and similar retailers actually promote their tobacco, nicotine, CBD, and smoke-simulation products?
How will these businesses reach customers, sell products, and grow?
Though challenging, marketing tobacco, vape, and alternative nicotine products is not impossible. In this article, we’ll show you how to maximize lawful strategies while staying in compliance with the FDA.
Here are the dos and don’ts of marketing your store.
There is a critical distinction to be made between “advertising” and “marketing”. Just because you, as a tobacco retailer, are prohibited from freely advertising your nicotine products does not mean you’re prohibited from marketing your nicotine products. You can think of “advertising” as directly promoting a product to a consumer audience. By contrast, “marketing” raises brand awareness using indirect methods of promotion. Understanding the difference and sticking strictly to marketing is imperative.
Do: Focus on Marketing
Don’t: Invest in Advertising
First, you must educate yourself about the specific search engine and social media platform policies, and obey those policies. Familiarize yourself with Google’s products promotion rules. Pay particular attention to their prohibited content, restricted content & features, and dangerous products & services. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook each have their own policies and restrictions on nicotine product promotion that you should take a look at.
You might be wondering, if marketing isn’t advertising, then what is it? For smoke and vape retailers, examples of effective marketing include maintaining a Google My Business account, using social media to passively and indirectly attract consumers, and launching a blog, all of which we will cover in this article, so keep reading!
Ready to get started with implementing focused marketing campaigns? Take these next steps:
● Identify your marketing audience
● Research the best marketing strategies for your industry
● Consider marketing automation solutions
FACT: In 2019, the global e-cigarette and vape market size was valued at USD $12.41 billion, and this figure is projected to rise 23.8% between now and 2027! This means that consumers want to find your smoke shop, so make it easy on them by focusing on strategic digital marketing! This according to Statista.com.
As we mentioned in the previous section, it’s essentially impossible to advertise your tobacco, nicotine, and vape products via traditional search engine and social media ads, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on the internet. Never discount the importance of your internet presence! Even if you own a brick-and-mortar retail store without a corresponding eCommerce site, you still must promote your brand online using digital marketing strategies that include SEO.
Do: Implement an SEO Strategy
Don’t: Discount the Importance of Your Internet Presence
For the purposes of expediency, we’re going to assume you know what SEO is, but if not, check out our blog What Is SEO? Go ahead, we’ll wait… it’s only a 5-minute read. Keywords are the backbone of effective search engine optimization. Choosing current, “hot” keywords as you build your digital content will cause search engines like Google to recommend your site to consumers who are looking for retailers like you.
Yes, as we touched on earlier, even physical retail stores need to invest in expanding their online presence. You don’t have to go so far as launching an eCommerce site, but if you have a website, we strongly recommend you launch an associated blog. Even if you start a simple WordPress blog, you can then create “posts” on your Google My Business account, sharing the article links. This is a great way to get your blogging feet wet while utilizing effective SEO that will communicate directly with Google.
Ready to get started integrating powerful SEO into your marketing strategies? Take these next steps:
● Launch a scalable, mobile-friendly blog
● Focus on Google My Business & building customer reviews
● Invest in professional SEO solutions
FACT: Popular SEO keywords for tobacco, vape, and CBD industry content are constantly shifting and changing as new products are introduced to the market. Regularly publishing blog articles is the best way to keep up, use current keywords, and ensure search engines recommend your store’s website to consumers. This according to Forbes.com.
Want to hear something excruciatingly unfair? Years ago, Big Tobacco tried to game the social media marketing system using paid influencers and basically ruined the concept for the rest of us. What really happened? In May of 2019, roughly 125 public health organizations issued a “cease and desist” order to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to immediately end the promotion of cigarettes and e-cigarettes from Big Tobacco companies. The resulting ban included prohibiting promotions from social media influencers. Then, in epic Big Tobacco fashion, the biggest names in the nicotine business straight-up ignored the order.
Do: Partner with Social Media Influencers
Don’t: Rely Solely on Influencers
So, why in the world do our digital marketing strategists include “partner with social media influencers” as a “do” on this list rather than a “don’t”? Because of our tenacity! We would never advocate trying to game the system. Our clients are small businesses that don’t possess the kind of legal teams that can defend Big-Tobacco-caliber violations.
When it comes to partnering with social media influencers, you have to think waaaaay outside the box, like we do, and like one of our clients has been since they started working with us. We’re referring to CBD Source, the leading cannabidiol retail chain across Pennsylvania and New York State. In April of 2019, CBD Source launched the CBD Podcast, which expanded their customer reach so much that they had to create an eCommerce store just to keep up with the demand. Naturally, their podcast developed into a YouTube channel, and that’s where the real social media influencer strategies took off like a heat seeking missile!
Ready to get started with social media influencers? Take these next steps:
● Contact influencers to plug and review your products
● Launch a podcast, vlog, or YouTube channel
● Test out a professional SSM strategist and analyze the ROI
Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses of all kinds. When implemented strategically, email marketing campaigns incentivize customers to visit a retail location or eCommerce site, which directly impacts revenue increases. Why is email marketing a definite “do” on this list? Because you can say and promote whatever you want within this private method of communication. That’s right, you can directly advertise your tobacco, nicotine, CBD, and vape products to your recipient list!
Do: Include Email Marketing
Don’t: Spam Using Generic Offers
No two of your customers are exactly alike, however. Don’t spam generic emails to every email address on your list. Effective email marketing campaigns are all about “personalization”. The trick is to only recommend the most relevant products to each of your email recipients. Succeeding at personalizing your email campaigns will depend on the CRM software you’re using. You can’t achieve personalization without having collected data about your customers personal browsing and buying histories.
Whether you collect customer data at the POS system within your retail location or have integrated CRM solutions on the backend of your eCommerce site, you can build a quality sales pipeline as a result of personalized email marketing campaigns. First, analyze your customer data and group your customers into segments according to their likes and interests. Then, tailor personalized email campaigns to each customer segment, informing them of sales, deals, and discounts on items they have a history of loving and buying.
Ready to get started launching an email marketing campaign? Take these next steps:
● Provide shoppers with opt-in subscription methods to join your email list
● Develop concise written content that takes recipient personalization into account
● Use email marketing software solutions with CRM capabilities
FTx 360 can help. Our digital marketing strategists have extensive experience working within the tobacco, vape, and CBD industries. If you have concerns about FDA restrictions, we know the law. We know how to stay in compliance. And we know how to grow businesses using marketing automation, SEO solutions, SSM strategies, and email marketing solutions to build awareness for your brand and expand your loyal customer base.
Ready to get started with our tobacco industry marketing strategies? Contact us today!
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At long last, your business website is completely set up. The home page is beautifully branded. Your products and services are clearly indexed. And you’ve even included a few CTAs so that visitors can subscribe to your company’s email newsletter, join your customer loyalty rewards program, and follow your social media accounts.
But how are you actually going to drive traffic to your website?
If you’re unsure how to answer that question, don’t worry. You’re not alone. In this article, we’ll go over proven tactics that will increase web traffic.
The term “website traffic” refers to the volume of users that visit a website. Unlike rush hour traffic, however, that causes bottlenecks, gridlock, and traffic jams, when it comes to web traffic, the more users on a website, the better. The actual number of users that visit your website will depend on the purpose of the site, each visitor’s reason for checking out the site, and how your visitors discovered the site in the first place.
For businesses, organizations, and especially ECommerce retailers, increasing web traffic is crucial to the success of both the website itself and the company at large. If web traffic doesn’t increase, the company probably won’t grow. And if there is hardly any web traffic to begin with, the company will struggle to get off the ground in the first place.
Increasing traffic to your website boils down to correctly using SEO keywords and longtail keyword phrases. SEO is so integral to the vitality of a website that we’ve dedicated an entire article to the subject, What Is SEO? which covers the whys, hows, and wheres of plugging SEO keywords into your web content. Be sure to take a moment to check it out when you have a chance. For the time being, we’ll assume you’re familiar with SEO in general.
The following SEO tips will help you drive traffic to your website organically, and the latter half of this article will walk you through the steps of adding SEO to the images you use on your website, which can have a massively positive impact on the volume of your daily visitors, as well as your website’s ranking on Google and other search engines.
Let’s dive in.
By far the most organic method to drive web traffic to your site involves adding new content to your website on a daily–or even weekly–basis. Generating daily content naturally produces SEO keywords, which Google and other search engines will pick up and use to recommend your website to users who search for businesses, products, and services that are relevant to yours. The easiest way to publish new content frequently and regularly is with a blog. Blog posts don’t have to be lengthy, either. You can publish short articles and reap measurable benefits. For detailed tips to launch a successful blog, read Creating A Remarkable Business Blog. The trick when it comes to ensuring your blog will promote web traffic to other pages on your website is to use internal links. For example, if you’re managing a jewelry ECommerce site, your blog posts can offer inspirational accessory advice on the latest jewelry trends that link to specific products for sale on your website.
Typically, an SEO keyword is strictly that–a single word. Is that how people use Google? Not at all, and Google recognized this fact back in 2013. As a result, Google created a new algorithm called Google Hummingbird that recognizes natural language and questions when Google users type them into the search bar. In practical terms, because Google users will type “where can I buy a cat tree?” or “puppy flea control shampoo near me”, Hummingbird will identify the “topic” or “category” that the search implies and generate appropriate search results that are relevant to local pet supply stores. Hummingbird has rendered old school, single keywords nearly obsolete. If your website content only uses single keywords, Google might not pick up on it. This is where longtail keywords come into play. Longtail keyword phrases are precisely what a Google user might type into the search bar to find businesses like yours. There’s a trick to getting the most out of this type of SEO, however. You’ll need to use high volume, low competition phrases. An excellent tool that will help you identify longtail keyword phrases that fit that description is SEMRush.
But what if you’ve been using longtail keyword phrases in your daily website or blog content and search engines like Google still aren’t picking up your web pages? Search engines might not know your website exists yet. While it takes time for Google’s algorithm to come across your website, identify which category the site falls under, and start recommending web pages to users searching for businesses like yours, there’s something you can do right away if you start to get impatient. Submit your website to the top search engines including Google through your sitemap. If you can’t find your sitemap, you may need to create one under your URL. Once you obtain your sitemap, simply log in to each search engine’s console, hit “sitemaps”, paste in your sitemap URL, and hit “submit”. For other search engines like Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, there’s no need to submit your website, because those search engines don’t have A.I. in place to suppress less popular content.
Social media marketing is critical to the success of any business, but did you know that you can use social media specifically to drive traffic to your website? It’s easy. Whenever you publish new content on your website–and we mean any new content whether it’s a blog article, new product line, revamped landing page content, or new service descriptions–get in the habit of “sharing” the link on social media. For platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you need only copy the URL and the platform will automatically pull up the web page with its headline and primary image. For platforms like Instagram, if you type in the URL within the post’s caption, it won’t hyperlink, but do it anyway, because followers who are interested in the content teaser will still visit the web page. LinkedIn is also a terrific platform, especially for B2B businesses, where you can republish blog articles and press releases.
Similar to promoting your newly published content on social media, you can also use online communities to promote your content. Internet community platforms such as Reddit and Quora, and even niche sites like Dogster.com and Goodreads.com–for bibliophile content!–are great for getting the word out about your business. Every time you share content in an online community, following the community rules of course, you will boost awareness about your brand, drive traffic to your website, improve engagement rates on your site, increase your search engine ranking, and in the long run boost sales and grow your business.
In order to get the most mileage out of the content you share on online community platforms, only use appropriate, relevant platforms. If you’re not sure which platforms are the most relevant to your business, follow these steps:
● Define your target audience
● Research where your target audience hangs out online
● Dig around Facebook Groups and join those that fit your business’ category
● Join LinkedIn Groups that would appreciate your content, products, and services
● Answer questions on Quora and link to the most relevant pages on your website
● When you join an online conversation, be sure that you aren’t providing the same information that another poster already brought to the table
So far, we’ve gone over how to use keywords to improve your SEO ranking, which addressed the written content side of your digital marketing efforts. The flip-side of using SEO to market your website has to do with your images. Every website, ECommerce site, blog article, and products & services web page includes images.
These images have the power to drive traffic to your website, but they’re used in a very different way than content SEO. Let’s take a look…
When we say “images”, we mean photos, graphics, animations, memes, videos… you name it! Any visual element such as these can be used to attract valuable consumer traffic to your website. But how?
Unlike utilizing keywords which Google users type into the search bar in order to find your business, using SEO for images works a little differently. The goal here is to get other websites to link to your images. Yes, it would be far more convenient if Google users could search for your image directly, but in order to do that they would need your image to begin with…which very quickly turns into a catch-22. Instead, if you want your image to rank high within Google and the other search engines, you need that particular image to be so popular that other websites link to it.
Sounds complicated, right? It doesn’t have to be. This is where Pinterest comes in, and Instagram can also help…
The platform Pinterest is a great digital marketing tool. Marketers can “pin” images, collect them into categories, use hashtags and other identifiers, and ultimately help raise the search engine ranking of the images they pin. All of this is to say that you want Pinterest users to “pin” your website, e-commerce, and blog images on their Pinterest pages so that other Pinterest users find them and pin them. This is entirely within your control. Create a Pinterest account and pin your images to your page with SEO keywords as you publish online content.
As an added bonus, search engines like Google also have a “search images” tab on their sites. The search results within the specific images tab work somewhat independently from the general website search results, which means that one of your blog articles could have a below-average ranking while an image used within that same blog article could rank on the first page of Google’s image search.
In order to get this kind of popular traction, you’ll need to make sure your images are something special. Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to driving website traffic and raising your SEO ranking.
Any visual image that’s eye-catching or informative will hold a visitor’s attention, but images with a clear call-to-action tend to rank even better. Use CTAs with all of your images if possible. And remember, the most engaging images according to data analytics use facts, tips, and quotes.
This tip comes in two parts. First, you’ll need to find images, photos, and graphics that are relevant to your website content. Next, you’ll need to use a design program to overlay your own information onto the image. Let’s break this down. Do you currently have a subscription to Shutterstock, Pixabay, or Adobestock? If not, signing up for one would be a worthwhile investment. These sites allow users to license high-quality photos and graphics, which can be downloaded onto their computers for editing. Once you’ve transformed a raw image into a polished final graphic, you can use it on your website and in your social media posts. There are several free online editing sites you can try such as Canva. But we recommend FTx AdPro, which comes with industry-themed templates and pre-made designs.
Integrate your finished graphics with your written content in such a way that both breaks-up the text and supports the content’s information. Doing so will make the overall visitor experience much better when customers read your web pages. Visuals that complement the content itself greatly improve the web page’s “readability”. Visitors are more likely to retain the page’s information, and they’ll also be more likely to act on any calls-to-action they encounter on your website.
You know something’s wrong, but you can’t put your finger on what. Your Ecommerce site has been getting less and less traffic. Your business website takes longer and longer to load. Even the engagement on your blog has slowed down, but you have no idea why any of this is happening. It seemed like only moments ago your business was booming…
If your online brand is experiencing any of these symptoms, it’s quite possible your business has become a victim of negative SEO.
Negative SEO is serious and can be detrimental to a company, but we’ll show you how to spot the effects and what you can do to recover.
With each passing year, it’s harder and harder to establish and maintain a high ranking on Google and other search engines. Google regularly changes its algorithm rules in an effort to identify websites that try to “game the system” with cheap tricks in order to elevate their ranking. One cheap trick is cramming so many SEO keywords and longtail keyword phrases onto a web page that it overwhelms the content. Another cheap trick is creating a website with dozens upon dozens of web pages. When Google’s A.I. “spiders” recognize this kind of spammy behavior, it penalizes the guilty websites.
What this means is that unethical businesses have developed yet another cheap trick in their quest to dominate Google–attack the higher-ranking websites of their competitors. That’s right. If your business website has been rising in SEO ranking, you could have a target on your back.
Devious competitors could attack your website with negative SEO in order to take you down a notch… as if doing such a thing will automatically elevate their own SEO ranking.
Negative SEO can take on a number of different forms, which makes spotting this kind of attack difficult to pinpoint. Read on to learn about the telltale signs a competitor is trying to sabotage your success with negative SEO and what you can do about it.
If you don’t know what negative SEO looks like when it strikes, you won’t be able to reverse it. Here are the biggest indications your website is under a negative SEO attack.
Have you noticed that when you pull up the homepage of your website, it takes an unusually long time to load? Initially, you might optimistically assume this is good news–maybe a ton of visitors have discovered your site all at once? When you check your website hits, you discover that you’ve actually been getting less traffic than usual… hmm.
Your website could be the victim of forceful crawling, which results in a heavy server load, causing your site to slow down and potentially crash. Forceful crawling makes a website inaccessible. When Google can’t access the website as usual, its A.I. determines something is wrong and will automatically push that website down in ranking. If this problem persists, Google could conclude that the site is defunct and completely de-rank it altogether.
You completely understand and respect that “content is king”, which is why you’ve taken particular care to build a well-written website. You might even have an active blog on your site and publish popular content regularly to drive website traffic, validate your company, and establish your brand within your industry.
If you’ve invested in hiring content writers, the last thing you want is for your competitors to plagiarize your website. Having your content stolen not only makes your company look bad–the average visitor will not be able to tell if you were the plagiarist or the other guy–but it also triggers Google to penalize both sites containing the copied content, which will massively impact your ranking. In order to keep an eye on your content, use Copyscape, a free website that will locate duplications of your content for you.
Have you heard of “spammy link farms”? It’s a dirty trick some unethical companies implement to sabotage high-ranking, successful online businesses. A link farm is a website that contains an overwhelming number of hyperlinks to other sites. Link farm websites don’t contain original, traffic driving content–these people aren’t even pretending to be ethical! Instead, link farms use repeated “anchor text” for these hyperlinks… and you do not want these people hyperlinking to your legitimate business website, because it will negatively affect your Google ranking…
Even though Google uses a webspam net to catch these spam farms, their mechanisms don’t catch everything. If you regularly monitor your backlinks, you’ll be able to spot if your website has become the victim of a spammy link farm. Bring a list of any suspicious links to the attention of your website’s webmaster and formally request a removal. Tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMRush are useful for monitoring your backlinks.
Oh no, you’ve spotted negative SEO associated with your website. You want to get rid of it as quickly as possible to mitigate damages and recover ASAP. Here’s what you can do immediately:
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If you have a website, e-commerce site, or blog, chances are you understand the importance of SEO.
Inbound internet traffic that results from effective SEO efforts remains the #1 content marketing strategy for lead generation. If you want to increase inbound traffic to your website, e-commerce site, or blog, you’ll need to integrate strong, relevant, and accurate SEO into your content marketing materials.
We’re talking about keywords.
Keywords are the foundation of SEO, but what are they really? You can think of keywords as the words, phrases, or questions that a Google user would type into a search field in order to generate a list of possible websites relevant to that search topic.
Because search engines like Google are the matchmakers that suggest relevant websites to searching users, in order to get these search engines to work for you, you’ll need to use keywords smartly. Hence, keywords are the foundation of SEO.
Keywords won’t help you optimize your website’s ranking within search engine results unless you’re using the right words and phrases. There’s no getting around doing your research in order to determine what particular keywords will yield the best results in raising your search engine ranking and increasing your website traffic.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s imperative for the success of your business that you identify who your ideal customer is and what their primary “pain points” are, in other words, what problems can your business solve for them? Once you identify and really “know” your audience, you can optimize your website using keywords that will attract them. Ask yourself, what does my audience care most about? What topics would they be interested in? How can I convince them my products, services, and informative content will check all of the boxes that these ideal customers have in mind?
Google users are more likely to type a phrase or question into Google’s search bar than they are a single keyword. These phrases are called “longtail keyword phrases”. When developing your online content, it’s important to plug in popular longtail keyword phrases in addition to singular keywords if you want to effectively market your business to consumers. In other words, using longtail keyword phrases will reduce your competition and help you stand out from the crowd. In order to understand this concept, you’ll need to reverse-engineer the idea. For example, if you own a pet supply store and want to promote your customer loyalty rewards program, try using the longtail keyword phrases that your ideal customers would likely type into Google’s search bar, such as “best pet store with loyalty program near me” or “where can I find discount organic dog food in my city?”.
This tip elaborates on our suggestion above to target longtail keywords. Put simply, using one keyword or one longtail keyword phrase won’t be enough. Try brainstorming at least three variations on the most likely longtail keyword phrase that a consumer could type into Google. This way, you’ll cover your bases and make sure that no matter what a potential customer types in, they will see your website listed. Don’t go too crazy, though. The written content will run the risk of sounding awkward if you plug in back-to-back keyword phrases.
We can’t emphasize this SEO tip enough. Keywords should inform content and not the other way around. This means that before you start writing your content, you should already know the keywords and longtail keyword phrases you’re going to integrate into the webpage, product description, blog article, or whatever online content you’re about to write.
This might sound repetitive, but it’s worth emphasizing twice. As we detailed above, using different variations in your keywords and longtail keyword phrasing is critical when you’re selecting the keywords you plan to integrate into your content. Try striking a healthy balance between weaving your keywords into a particular webpage and then using variations of those keywords on additional pages and within the backend of the site’s meta data. For example, if you’ve worked the longtail keyword phrase “all-natural puppy flea control” into your latest blog article, you can use different keywords that mean the same thing, such as “organic flea control for puppies” and “non-toxic fur treatment for pets” on other webpages.
Once you’ve integrated a variety of keywords into your online content, it’s vital to track and monitor how each keyword is doing. Trending keywords can change on a week-to-week basis, even when the subject itself remains the same. For example, last week the keyword “all-natural” might have been ranking high in search results in reference to vitamin-rich kitten food, but this week the buzzword happens to be “organic, non-GMO”. We wouldn’t recommend that you go into your already-published content and swap the keyword out. But it is important to stay informed of trends so that you can use them to your advantage.
The entire marketing team here at FTx 360 is passionate about SEO strategies, as well as all facets of digital marketing. We love sharing the best marketing tool for the job with our readership no matter what the “job” happens to be, so be sure to hit the subscribe button.
Need SEO advice? Contact us anytime! Prefer to have our experienced agency handle your SEO strategy and implementation? We can do that, too! FTx 360 offers affordable SEO services and can work within any budget.
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