5 Easy Tips to Climb Search Rankings
5 Easy Steps to Climb Search Rankings http://localhost/wordpress/blog/surprising-benefits-of-using-artificial-intelligence/We’ve compiled 5 easy tips that businesses can use to climb search rankings with speed. With theses 5 easy tips we aren’t saying that you’ll appear at the top of the search results in a couple days, but we do guarantee that using these tips will help a business climb search rankings on all major search engines over time. Persistence and patience are key factors in search engine optimization. It won’t happen overnight, keeping these 5 easy tips top of mind will help your content rank. 5 easy tips Tip 1: keyword planning It all starts with keyword planning to climb search rankings Businesses with great content on their websites tend to appear at the top of the search results, and great content has a focus on keywords. Before a webpage is created, your business must first determine what word or words you want to rank for. Keyword planning is not simple, especially for businesses that don’t understand how to plan. Your business cannot simply pick a word, type it a bunch of times and cross your fingers to appear at the top of Google search rankings. Search engines are not fooled by this. Keyword density is important, but it’s not the only thing that the search algorithms consider when ranking pages in search results, especially with new progress with Google’s RankBrain. There are many factors that affect local search, and it’s important to dominate the ones you have control of to move into the coveted Snack Pack. 5 easy tips Make target keywords niche, targeted and relevant When keyword planning, be sure to use niche words, and target keywords that are relevant enough to get your business appearing in front of the right people online. If your local company wants to appear to the right local audience, you must be sure to be specific to your community. A local windshield repair company is going to have a hard time appearing for the keyword “windshield.” It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult for local companies to appear in the top few results for broad focused keywords. There is a much better chance to appear at the top of the search results if the keywords are narrowed down. 5 easy tips Keyword planning example For example, a windshield company in Buffalo, New York wants to appear in front of local customers who may have a crack or chip in their window. They’d be much more successful aiming to rank for “rock chip repair in Buffalo” rather than the word “windshield.” 5 easy tips: Tip 2: strengthen meta descriptions Meta descriptions should contain your keywords A meta description is a small description of what your webpage contains, it’s basically a summary of your business’s webpage in ~160 characters. These too must have a focus on keywords, and for smaller businesses such as local windshield repair companies, it’s important to have the right keywords in the meta description. Meta description example To keep this example consistent, “rock chip repair in Buffalo” was set as the Google search terms to see which businesses appear in the search results. It’s always a good idea to look at the business that appears first, see how they are doing it, and try to better their meta description. In this case, this local windshield repair company that clearly knows what they are doing! As you look above, you can see that the meta description contains most of the words that we searched for. This is a fantastic way to target the specific search query of “rock chip repair in Buffalo” and to get frantic drivers with broken windshields through a business’s front door. Help guide customers from page to page Proper meta descriptions not only help in search result rankings, but they also give your prospective customers a summary of exactly what they may be looking for. Customers want it easy, they don’t want to spend a long time browsing for repair shops—they want to find answers easily and the solutions fast. 5 easy tips Tip 3: be unique Climb search rankings by creating unique content It’s tough for your business to be unique from the fifty other local companies that compete in your company’s industry. However, the content on your business’s website should aim to be unique and somewhat different from the rest in order to stand out in the search rankings. The reason being that Google and other search engines search for original content when their bots are crawling sites. This means every site in a specific industry that has similar webpage copy will likely blend in, and the bots won’t declare those pages as original or unique. Don’t expect a local business page to appear high on the search rankings if it sounds exactly like every other local business page! 5 easy tips Tip 4: stay active everywhere online The more online activity, the better for search rankings You business has to stay active online if you want to climb search rankings, make a name for yourself on places other than your company website. Your business can improve your local search by using data aggregators, or you can manually create listings on tons of directory sites. Online mentions increase search engine influence and search rankings One thing many smaller businesses fail to understand is that business pages on reputable websites are so important! Social platforms like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn are an easy way for your business to index your name across various sources on the web. Likewise, review sites are hugely important! The more your business is mentioned online, the greater the influence you will have on search rankings. 5 easy tips Tip 5: blog Blogs help keep web content fresh for search rankings Blogs are not only fun to write, but also a way to continuously produce new website content. Google’s algorithm specifically calls for continuous web content and publishing if your business wants to appear high on the search rankings. Google is pushing web developers and content writers
Local SEO audit for your business in 12 steps
Local SEO Audit for Your Business in 12 Steps Local SEO is important because businesses on page 2 of the SERP might as well not exist. It sounds harsh but it’s simply the reality of local SEO, that is what we all need to accept. You know the drill—you want pizza so you get on your phone and do a search. Google presents its top 3 local SEO options in the “Snack Pack” and 10 other organic results. You pick one make a call or pop in the pizza joint. If you’re the local pizza joint, you want and need to appear on the first page for those target keywords. So how do you get them there? You’ll need to do a local SEO audit to find out. Here’s how to get it done. Step 1: Audit Keywords for Local SEO What keywords are you targeting? Step one of your audit should be to determine what you’re currently ranking for and identify any opportunities you might be missing. For example, if you’re ranking well for ‘Philadelphia Bankruptcy Attorney’ but are nowhere to be found for ‘Philadelphia Bankruptcy Lawyer’, you’ve identified an area to improve. Start by making a list of services, products, or a page you’d like to drive traffic to. Once you do this you’ll be able to use tools like Keyword Finder to quickly put together a list of high volume local target keywords. With this list in hand, you can proceed through the rest of your local SEO audit and determine how well these keywords are optimized every step of the way. Helpful Local SEO Tools: Step 2: Audit Your Competition’s Local SEO Your local SEO audit should include a snooping session to determine your competitor’s SEO status and tactics early on. If you’re located in a highly competitive area where the other top businesses are doing everything right, you need to document what you’re up against. You don’t need to do a full diagnostic on each competitor, but take a look at the following, and compare that data against yours: In most cases, you should be able to take a look through these items and develop a hypothesis on why your competitor is successful in local SERPs. Helpful Local SEO Tools: Step 3: Audit Google My Business Listing The 2017 edition of Moz’ Local Search Ranking Factors Survey ranks Google My Business (GMB) as the biggest driver of local SEO success. If you want to appear in Google’s ‘snack pack’, your GMB listing should be robust, and well-optimized with your core target keywords. Here are some things to look for: These are the core elements that make up a strong GMB listing. Helpful Local SEO Tools: Step 4: Audit Reviews for Quality and Quantity as this Affects your Local SEO Reviews pack a ton of clout in both the local ranking and reputation building arenas. Search engines regard them as an authentic measure of a local business’s popularity and viability. Potential customers trust reviews as an accurate gauge for that business’s quality level. Getting an abundance of positive, glowing and wordy reviews across multiple review platforms like GMB, Facebook, Yelp, and vertical-specific sites like Houzz, Tripadvisor, and Healthgrades helps you win on many levels. Local SEO Guide notes that Google does pick up on the keywords people use in their reviews: “At a high level, having a keyword you are trying to rank for, and a mention of a city you are working to rank in, in reviews has a high correlation with high ranking Google My Business results.” Helpful Local SEO Tools: Step 5: Audit Links for Quality and Quantity Affecting Local SEO Links remain the bread and butter of Google’s ranking algorithm. Darren Shaw of WhiteSpark notes that, “Google is still leaning heavily on links as a primary measure of a business’ authority and prominence, and the local search practitioners that invest time and resources to secure quality links for their clients are reaping the ranking rewards.” A diverse array of quality links is crucial for any local business’s link portfolio. This means that you’ll need to evaluate your links, looking for links with: Link quality will win over quantity, and quality + quantity will help you dominate the search rankings in your market. On the flip side, if you see a high volume of spammy, off-topic links, you’ll want to make a note of it as a red flag that may be damaging your ability to rank well for your target keywords. Helpful Local SEO Tools: Step 6: Audit Schema-Markup for Local SEO Schema markup is code that goes on a website to help the search engines return more informative results for users. Schema tells the search engines what your data means, not just what it says. This is a key way to tell search engines exactly what a given website is about, which will help them serve it up on SERPs for the correct search queries. One way to check to ensure that your site is using schema markup is to enter your URL in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool You’ll be able to check to see if all the correct info about your business has been included. To add Schema markup, if it’s a WordPress website, then “All In One Schema Rich Snippets” is a great plugin. Helpful Local SEO Tools: Step 7: Audit Local SEO Citations How frequently is your business mentioned online? Auditing your citations will determine how many online mentions exist of the name, address, and phone number for your business. It’s important to look into both your structured and unstructured citations. For structured citations, you’ll audit your business listings across the web, looking at social platforms and directories like Yelp, Yellowpages, Facebook, Superpages, and MapQuest. You’ll also need to check to see if their correct business info is listed on the main data aggregators: Axiom, Neustar/Localeze, Factual, and Infogroup. Next, you’ll need to check your unstructured citations. An unstructured citation can be found on random websites, blogs, event listings, job posting sites, government
