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Roofing SEO

The Roofing Off-Page SEO Checklist

The Roofing Off-Page SEO Checklist

 

Get on top of search engine results, drive relevant traffic and get qualified Leads online with Off-page SEO

In 2020, there will be thousands or millions of active roofing websites over the internet. The figure is so high that new roofers may think it’s hard to rank for a specific roofing keyword on the search results page.

If you think that your roofing blog is unique from others, do you think that Google holds the same opinion? But ranking on top of Google search results is not an impossible task.

That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. As a roofer, you need to optimize your content so that it can rank higher in the search engine results pages.

Two SEO activities can help your roofing business to claim a top spot in the search engine results pages.

On-Page SEO

It involves optimizing the elements of your roofing website that you have direct control over and can help to drive relevant traffic to your roofing business.

Off-Page SEO

Off-site or Off-page SEO describes action outside your roofing website that has an impact on your rankings. It involves improving the perception of the prospects/clients and search engines based on relevance, authority, popularity, and trustworthiness.

It refers to the actions that you and others take to improve your roofing website rankings. For example, when you are commenting on another roofing website or submitting a guest post, you are doing Off-site SEO.

Why Does Off-Page SEO Matter to Your Roofing Business?

Although the ranking factors and Google algorithm change so fast, it is clear that off-page SEO plays a vital role in improving your roofing website authority, relevance, and trustworthiness to rank high in search engines.

Google has been thinking of how they can offer customers/prospects the excellent results on their searches. For them to achieve this, they look at various ranking factors including on-site SEO, Off-page SEO, and other high-quality ranking factors.

Off-page SEO offers excellent insight on how other sites and people perceive your roofing website. A high-quality and relevant roofing website is likely to get a good number of backlinks or references since it is deemed as valuable. Off-SEO related factors carry over 50% weight of how Google ranks websites.

Backlinks

Off-page SEO revolves around creating backlinks. Backlinks assess the content quality for search engines. The more quality backlinks your site has, the more it will rank high in the search engine results.

Most Common Types of Backlinks

Natural links

These are links that your roofing website gets when another site finds your content relevant.

Manually-Built Links

These are links acquired through link-building strategies like running influencer marketing campaigns

Self-Create links

It is built by incorporating backlinking in online directories, forums, and blog comment signature.

Building backlinks is one activity that happens outside your roofing website that affects your rankings on the search engine results.

Other Off-site SEO practices include:

  • -Social media marketing
  • -Guest Blogging
  • -Influencer marketing
  • -Giveaways and events
  • -Visual marketing
  • -Question and Answer.

The ultimate aim of these practices is to create a reference to your roofing website over the internet. The mention can be a reference to your services or products.

Essential Off-Page SEO Techniques That Roofing Contractors Need to Know

Off-site SEO revolves around improving the perception of the search engines and users about your roofing website. It can be attained by getting links from reputable and trustworthy sites, content shares, and positive reviews from other sources.

A lot of roofing contractors wrongly think that Off-page SEO revolves around creating links alone, but it is more than that. Here are some off-page techniques that Google loves more:

Guest post: This will remain a powerful off-SEO technique in 2020. It builds natural links to your roofing website or blog to enhance your online reputation in the industry. When looking for guest posting opportunities, search for ones that are related to the roofing industry.

Infographics: An excellent way to create natural links for your roofing blog or roofing website is by developing infographics. People love visuals than text. An image is worth a thousand words. Always remember to share infographics on your roofing website.

Article Writing:  Make sure that you write posts regularly and submit them to sites related to your industry.

Research Your Competitors:  You can get linking opportunities by spying what other roofers are doing online. Get to know which sites they acquire backlinks from and reach out to those sites for the same if you find out that a site may be interested in featuring your business, reaching out, and pitch them to see if they can link to your roofing website as well.

Forum Discussion: using forums is an excellent method to connect with prospects interested in your roofing business and build a community. Make sure that you use” do follow” links to get backlinks.

However, strict rules must be followed when joining these forums. Provide valuable comments and information related to the topic of discussion.

Social Media Engagement- Every time your content is shared, commented on, and liked on social network platforms, it improves your site rankings on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s).

Local Listings- Listing your roofing website on directories like Google My Business, Yahoo Local, Yellow Page, and Yelp helps to improve your search engine rankings.

Q/A Submission-   Answering questions from prospects is a great way of driving relevant traffic to your roofing website. There are several sites that you can use to answer questions from prospects like Quora.com, Yahoo.com, answer.com amongst others. The traffic derived from these sites is of high-quality because the targeted audiences visit your roofing website.

Off-Page SEO Checklist for Roofing Contractors

Off-site SEO can make or break your search engine rankings. Fortunately, you can fix off-site problems, if you follow carefully the items mentioned in our checklist below:

Identify and Fix Crawl Errors

A “crawl error” simply means that Google is having problems trying to access individual pages on your roofing website.

You can quickly identify such errors in the Google Search Console coverage report. If you find out that Google is having issues accessing one of your crucial roofing website pages, you need to have the problem resolved ASAP!

Know-How Google Views Your Roofing Website Pages

Sometimes prospects/clients can see everything on your roofing web page…. But Google cant.

If Google can’t access your roofing pages, then there is no way they are going to rank!

That’s why we recommend you to use the Google Search Console “Inspect URL” feature.

When you do, you will be in a position to know how Google views your roofing website pages.

Make sure that your Roofing Website is Mobile-Friendly

Google recently launched a Mobile-First algorithm

Which means?

If your roofing website is not optimized for mobile devices, then it is not going to rank on top of Google search results.

Fortunately, you can tell the mobile-friendliness of your site through a Google Mobile-Friendly test.

Check your roofing website loading Speed

Does your roofing website load within the first three seconds or less?

If not, your roofing website will not rank high in SERP’s.

That’s why you need to use the Pagespeed insight tool to know how your site is performing for both mobile and desktop users.

Benefits of Hiring Experienced Roofing SEO Company

If you want your roofing business to claim the top positions in Google Search Results and get more qualified leads online, search engine optimization experts can help.

SEO professionals can help to take your roofing business to greater heights. As a leading Roofing SEO agency, Blackstorm Roofing Marketing understands that there are advantages to outsourcing your roofing SEO. In the long term, these advantages outweigh the cost of various savings you might have trying to do SEO on your own, particularly if you don’t have enough time or you are inexperienced.

When you want to hire a roofing SEO agency, you must know what to expect if you invest in their SEO services. At Blackstorm Roofing Marketing, we want to make sure that you get the most out of your SEO plan.

Here is what you can expect when you invest in On-page and Off-Page SEO Services from Blackstorm Roofing Marketing:

  • Roofing Website SEO Audit: When you register for SEO services, our experts will analyze your current SEO strategy. They will examine your roofing website analytics, performance, and more. From this analysis, they will develop a comprehensive SEO strategy that will take your roofing business to the next level.
  • Keyword Research: Key phrases trigger your roofing website to rank high in the relevant Google Search Results. Our SEO professionals will help you find the right keywords that will rank for your business.
  • Page Speed Optimization:  If your roofing website loads slowly, it won’t keep leads in your business. As we have discussed, site speed is a critical factor that affects your roofing website rankings. At Blackstorm Roofing Marketing, our team will help to minimize unnecessary code, optimize images, and reduce redirects so that your site can load faster.
  • Responsive Design: We know that prospects access your roofing website from various devices. Thus, we incorporate responsive design into your roofing website to make sure that all clients/prospects have a positive experience on your site.

Partner with the Right Roofing SEO Experts Today

SEO is one of the best ways of getting free roofing leads online through search engine results. At Blackstorm Roofing Marketing, we have more than ten years of experience creating digital marketing campaigns that drive results.

Our SEO professionals will make sure that your roofing website gets relevant traffic and claims a top spot on Google search results.

If you are ready to create an SEO campaign that will drive more traffic and leads to your roofing business, schedule a free strategy session with our experts to see how Blackstorm Roofing Marketing can improve your online presence.

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Roofing SEO

How to Get Your Roofing Business to the Top of Google Search Results

How to Get Your Roofing Business to the Top of Google Search Results

 

Drive Crazy Traffic, Generate More Leads and Make More Money by Claiming #1 Position on Google

Do you think that your prospects/clients ever click on the second page of Google search results?

No. They don’t do that.

In fact, over 97% of prospects do not open the second page when looking for roofing services.

Almost every week, we receive frantic calls from roofers needing help with their Google search results. Sadly, this is usually motivated by a drop in sales and negative reviews.

Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to scale up the online foundation of your business so that negative reviews are not the first thing that clients see on your site.

Remember it is always easier to combat negative search results if you control most of the first page rankings for your roofing business. This process is known as online reputation management for your roofing business.

There are various methods of getting your roofing business to the top of Google search results, but this post will discuss the tried and proven technique of making it happen.

As a roofer, you need to know that your business can be on top of Google search results in four different areas including; rich snippets, organic results at the bottom, PPC ads at the top, and Google map listings situated at the middle. This means that you have four unique opportunities to get on top of search engine results.

5 Techniques you can Use to Get Your Roofing Business on Top of Google Search Results

1. Use PPC Ads to Get Your Roofing Business on Top of Google Search Results

If you are searching for ways to grow your roofing business faster, then PPC ads (Google Ad words) should be your priority.

SEO and content marketing are both great ways of attracting prospects to your roofing website. The only disadvantage is that these techniques can take some time to build an impressive amount of leads/ traffic.

With PPC ads, your roofing business will be able to reach previously unreachable prospects.

Your roofing business can get on top of Google search results and earn more money with PPC ads because of the following reasons.

You will achieve results faster than from any other form of Inbound Marketing

As we have already mentioned, content marketing and SEO can take several weeks or months before they gain traction with other inbound marketing strategies.

With PPC ads, you can drive prospects to your roofing website within a few hours, not months or years.

The rule of the thumb is that the more you spend on PPC ads, the more prospects/clients you get.

If you want like 5000 prospects, you get the same number of clients within a short period.

With SEO, the aim is to get on top of Google search results for free, because your roofing website stands out from the rest out there.

With PPC ads, you are paying to get on top of search engine results through ads.

Unfortunately, most roofers think that they can throw thousands of their marketing dollars to Google and appear on top of the search engine results. Google makes sure that only the most relevant, high-quality ads claim that top spot.

Therefore you need to hire a reputable roofing market agency to craft high-quality roofing PPC ads that will help your business to outrank the competition.

2. Get Your Roofing Website on top of Google Search Results with SEO

If you want to claim the top spot on Google search results for free, then you need to rely on roofing SEO strategies to get results.

That said, getting on top of Google search results can be an uphill task, especially when you are a new roofer in the block. The best way to get on top of search results is to hire a reputable roofing SEO agency to optimize your roofing website for search engines.

Adding quality content to your site can help to skyrocket your rankings and create a great user experience. Unfortunately, there is much more to SEO than adding high- value content.

 From a technical perspective, you need to ensure that Google can easily index, crawl, and understand your roofing website. This may involve things like increasing your site loading speed, creating SEO-friendly URLs, Creating a well-structured XML site map, designing a responsive roofing website for tablet and mobile users.

At Blackstorm Roofing Marketing, we help roofing contractors to develop a local search strategy so that their businesses can appear on top of Google search results.

3. Get Your Roofing Business on Google Maps and Claim that Top Spot on Google

When you search for something online like” roofing marketing agency “or” Roofer near me”, you might have realized that Google uses location information to show nearby businesses. Obviously, as a roofer, you want your roofing business to be in those local search listings (also known as the “the local park”) in between organic listings and PPC ads.

To get your roofing business on Google Map listings, you need to optimize your NAP(Name, Address & Phone numbers) citations throughout the internet. The higher the number of local citations, the better. You also need to have a well-optimized Google My Business profile to get on top of Google search results. As a local roofer, you need to get savvy with local SEO to get ahead of the competition.

4. Use Social Media to get on top of Google Search Results

Social media platforms like Twitter, Google+ and Facebook are excellent sources of backlinks, and search engines are crediting these sources in terms of rankings. As a roofing contractor, you need to develop an effective social media strategy that will help your business to claim that top spot on Google search results. You should also consider joining other social sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, Yelp, and Houzz.

5. Use High-Quality Roofing Videos to Get on Top of Google Search Results

To improve customer’s experience, Search engines like to display videos on their search results. A video has a higher chance of being ranked on top than a landing page on the same topic. Embedding videos on your roofing website or having a Youtube channel is one of the great ways of improving your chances of appearing on top of Google search results.

Get Your Roofing Business on Top of Google with Blackstorm Roofing Marketing Services. 

Claiming that top spot on Google is not easy, but it is not an impossible feat, either. If you follow the five techniques discussed above, you will see your roofing website rankings rise steadily.

But if you want to make most out of your marketing dollars, you should work with a certified Google Partner Roofing Marketing Agency. This partner will be able to deliver topnotch internet marketing campaigns that will stretch every dollar of your marketing budget. That agency is Blackstorm Roofing Marketing!

Here are some of the benefits your roofing business will enjoy when you hire our team for services.

  • We will use our expertise to deliver the best digital marketing campaign to increase your roofing sales and Return on Investment (ROI).
  • As a certified Google Partner, we preach what we do; we test out new methods and develop PPC campaigns that yield maximum benefits to your business, we know which keywords work and those that don’t.
  • We provide great services to improve customer experience and maintain Google standards.
  • We work directly with Google to help your roofing business to appear on top of Google search results.

Blackstorm Roofing Marketing is one of the most respected internet marketing agencies out there.

When it comes to marketing your roofing business online, that is our specialty. We have a team of roofing marketing specialists who work round the clock, to make sure that your business is found online by prospects/clients. So, if you are searching for an experienced roofing SEO partner, we are here for you!

We pride ourselves on staying up-to-date roofing industry standards, latest news, and learning new strategies to make sure that our customer’s campaigns are always successful.

Speaking of customers, you can go through various glowing testimonials on our homepage to see what we mean.

If you would like to partner with us for your Roofing SEO, PPC, Website Design, and Social Media marketing project, kindly schedule a free strategy session with our experts to see how our team can help your roofing business claim that top spot on Google search results today!

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Contractor Roofing SEO

On-Page SEO Checklist for Roofing Contractors in 2020

On-Page SEO Checklist for Roofing Contractors in 2020

 

Get Free Leads, Improve your Roofing sales and Crush other Roofers online with On-page SEO

If you want to optimize your roofing company’s website, on-page SEO is the best place to start. On-page SEO techniques help roofing contractors to get free leads online by appearing on the first page of Google for several keyword phrases. The ultimate goal of on-page SEO is to help search engine crawlers to understand the context and meaning of your roofing pages.

The two essential on-page elements are HTML and content. When using a CMS such as word press, these two elements can be changed. Like any form of internet marketing, On-page SEO has evolved due to the continuously changing Google algorithm. This post will explain the importance, techniques, and checklist of on-page SEO that roofers need to know. Without further ado, let us dive in!

Why Your Roofing Website Needs On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is crucial because it offers search engines with several signals to help them know what your roofing website is all about.

During the ranking and indexing process, search engines try to associate roofing websites with specific search terms and keywords prospects type in the search box.

It is through on-page SEO that roofers can guide search engines on which keywords they want to rank for in the search results.

Furthermore, it is known as “on-page” since any optimization done directly improves your customer’s experience.

Google, with its thousands of sophisticated algorithm, is now good at:

  • Knowing what prospects/ clients are searching for when they type in the query box
  • Providing results that satisfy the user intent (shopping, navigational or informational)

This post will take you through the most crucial on-page SEO techniques/ factors that will guarantee higher rankings.

7 Essential On-Page SEO Factors That Every Roofer Needs to Know

Now that you understand why on-page SEO is crucial for your roofing website, you need to start optimizing your pages to get valuable results. Let us explore the most important on-page SEO factors that will guarantee good results if properly implemented.

Create Valuable Content that will keep Leads on your roofing Website

Any on-page SEO guide will show you that high-quality content is the backbone of any successful internet marketing campaign. Content drives search engine traffic to your site, gets clients/prospects to engage with your page, and keeps them glued to it.

Content comes in various forms like e-books and blogs. You should cover as many roofing topics as possible to drive leads to your business.

When you create roofing content, you must go in-depth and provide your prospects/ clients with valuable information. By creating high-value content that matches your prospect’s search intent, you will drive massive traffic to your roofing page and increase its dwelling time.

These two signals (dwell time and traffic spike) will send a good signal to Google that your page is relevant, and thus Google rewards it with higher rankings. It is a great on-page SEO technique that helps to boost search rankings of your roofing website.

Optimize Your Title Tags to Rank in More Relevant Searches

When prospects find your roofing website in the search results, they first look at the title of your page. The title plays a critical role in determining whether they will click on your page or move to the competitor’s site. Your title optimization is the most crucial on-page SEO technique that will get prospects to visit your site.

As you develop the title for your page, make sure that it is detailed enough to attract prospects. It should explain to the prospect what they will get in case they click your link.

Let’s say you wrote an article about siding colors. Which article title would appeal to your prospects most?

“Make your house beautiful with siding colors “or “5 types of siding colors that will improve your curb appeal in 2020.”

Prospects are more likely to pick the second one. This is because, in the second post, prospects are going to explore the five types of siding colors.

The second title also hits the keyword “types of siding colors.” Keyword integration is a crucial part of your title because it makes your post more relevant to searches.

Not only do search engines look at your title to help rank your page, but also your readers look for the keyword to see if your post is relevant to your search query.

Title optimization is one of the best on-page SEO tactics you can use to improve your site rankings and show up in relevant search results.

Use Internal Links in Your Roofing Page to Keep Leads in Your Site Longer

Whenever you create new pages, you want to link up to other sites within your content. These are known as internal links since they keep leads within your site instead of sending them to other external websites.

Internal links help to improve the user’s experience. They offer your audience with important information that helps them to understand the topic better. This improves your dwell time and increases your search engine rankings.

If you are looking for an on-page SEO technique that will skyrocket your rankings, begin by linking internally in the content. You will keep leads on your roofing website longer and thus improve your rankings in Google search results.

Improve Your Page Loading Speed to Keep Your Prospects/ Leads Happy

Everybody wants to get information fast. When prospects perform searches, they want to click on a link and see the page start to load instantly. In fact, 83% of prospects expect your roofing website to load within three seconds or less.

If your roofing website takes minutes to load, prospects are likely to abandon it and turn to your competitors. Recent studies show that 53% of prospects will leave your site if it takes more than three seconds to load. You can lose almost half of your search engine traffic if your site takes too long to load.

To make sure leads remain in your site, try to improve the page loading speed. There are several things you can do to improve your roofing website loading speed;

  • Minimizing the size of the image files
  • Minify CSS, HTML and JavaScript
  • Reduce white space while coding
  • Cut down the number of redirects in your site
  • Use a content distribution network
  • Leverage browser caching

If you don’t have the time to boost your site loading speed, you can rely on a roofing marketing agency to improve your page loading time. At Blackstorm Roofing Marketing, we offer high-quality roofing website design services to help you improve your page loading time and keep your leads longer on the site.

Create SEO-Friendly URLs

Your URL is an important part of SEO. When Google crawls your roofing website, it reads your URL to understand your content. If your URL is vague, search engines will not be able to index your site or help prospects to remember it.

The URL helps search engines to determine the relevancy of your page. It is a great place to incorporate your keywords to boost your site rankings.

Your URL should have a hierarchy and be clear to prospects. Prospects don’t want to find a URL that is mixed with letters and numbers.

Here is an example of a poor URL: www.roofingcompanywebsite.com/46532kjl/

A roofing URL like this is unclear and scattered. The random letters and numbers don’t have any meaning to Google. Your prospects also will not comprehend the numbers and letters for a long time.

Instead, a good URL should look like this: www.roofingcompanywebsite.com/siding/james-hardie-cement/

This URL structure is defined and clear. There is a good hire achy too. The URL goes from siding a general category to James Hardie Fiber cement, a specific siding type. It’s defined and clean; therefore, search engines can easily read your roofing website.

Prospects can also remember it naturally. It is much easier to remember siding to James Hardie cement than to cram a combination of numbers and letters. Your prospects can also see the topic clearly, and thus they are likely to read and convert.

By creating a clear and defined URL structure, you will get more leads on your roofing website and help Google to index your page properly. It is an excellent way to improve your on-page SEO and increase your site rankings in the search results.

Make sure that Your Roofing Website Incorporates a Responsive Design to Keep Your Prospects Happy

Your prospects/ clients will access your roofing website from multiple devices. You must create a great user experience across those devices. If you want to on-page SEO correctly, make sure that your site has a responsive design.

Imagine a prospect trying to access your desktop version on a smartphone. They would have to zoom out and in to read content, and the whole post would look scaled incorrectly and disorganized. That does not give your prospects a positive user experience but instead discourages them from your site.

As a roofer, you must invest heavily in a responsive design to offer prospects/clients a positive experience of your site. Responsive design makes sure that your roofing website adapts to whatever mobile devices your prospects use. Whether it is a tablet or Smartphone, your roofing website will adjust to fit the size of your screen.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions have been a crucial optimization point for roofing contractors. Meta tags and descriptions explain what your roofing page is all about; they are typically displayed underneath the SERP’s beneath your title.

While Google still denies that Meta descriptions don’t help in rankings, there is some evidence that better descriptions help.

Optimizing Meta descriptions properly can help to:

  • Increase Click-through Rate
  • Guarantee of best results
  • Perception of what your roofing website offers changes.

The meta description must incorporate your roofing page keywords. This description is what will appear as the small paragraph under the heading when search results are returned to your prospect. This is the first information that your prospect comes across, so make sure it persuades them to open your site.

On-Page SEO Checklist for Roofing Contractors

Search engines consider more than on-page optimization when ranking your site, but there are definite characteristics of a page that Google looks for when indexing or ranking sites. Here are the most crucial things to look out when you want your roofing website to rank high in search engines:

  • Make sure that you have one page per specific target keyword
  • Make sure that your Meta descriptions are unique and complete per page
  • Your content should be sales-driven and informative at the same time.
  • Use H-tags properly
  • Make sure your content is 100% unique
  • Start a roofing blog and update it regularly with content that supports your service pages
  • Make sure that you have an XML and HTML site map
  • Use a content plan that is simple to digest with images, bulleted lists, and videos.
  • Make sure that all the images on your roofing website have proper alt tags and titles.
  • Don’t stuff your content with roofing keywords
  • Make sure that your Google Analytics is working properly and connected to your Webmasters tools account.
  • Add professional certifications to your roofing website like BBB, Yelp amongst others.
  • Keep your plugins and content management system updated.

Start Optimizing Your Roofing On-Page SEO Today

On-page SEO will help your roofing business to develop a better site for your prospects/ clients and keep them glued to it longer. If you optimize your roofing website, your prospects/ clients will spend more time getting to know your business and the services you offer. Your roofing business will continue to rank higher in search results and reach more relevant traffic/ leads.

At Blackstorm Roofing Marketing, we have more than ten years of experience optimizing roofing websites for On-page SEO. We have a team of SEO experts that will make your roofing business rank higher in search engines. They will help to drive more traffic to your page and generate a steady flow of qualified leads in your business.

If you are ready to improve your roofing SEO through on-page SEO services, schedule a free strategy session with our experts to see how our team can get your business on top of Google search results today.

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SEO

A History of Major Google Algorithm Updates/Changes

A History of Major Google Algorithm UpdatesChanges

latest google algorithm update 2020 latest google algorithm update 2020latest google algorithm update 2020

Every year, Google makes several changes to search. In 2018, they reported an incredible 3,234 updates — an average of almost 9 per day, and more than eight times the number of updates in 2009. While most of these changes are minor, Google occasionally rolls out a major algorithmic update (such as Panda and Penguin) that affects search results in significant ways.
For search marketers, knowing when major Google updates happened can help explain changes in rankings and organic website traffic and ultimately improve search engine optimization.
Below, we’ve listed the significant algorithmic changes that have had the biggest impact on Search.

Recent Google Changes That Impact SEO

Panda Update – February 2011

Panda launched on February 24, 2011. It was aimed at dealing with quality and optimization issues that the search engine identified in several websites indexed at the time. It assigns a quality score to webpages, which are then used as a ranking factor. The Panda Update is also known as the Farmer Update. When this update was implemented, it had a significant impact on a broad range of companies that operated online. Panda was introduced to improve search quality by eliminating prevailing content farms as well as spam sites that were designed to take advantage of Google’s vulnerabilities.
Panda has done excellent at cleaning up low-quality sites that occupy valuable SERP real estate. The update did not come without its share of problems, especially for companies with e-commerce initiatives. Websites, both big and small, started disappearing from the usual keyword ranks they had previously owned for years. Lots of companies were impacted negatively and were utterly unable to recover traffic.
Numerous updates have been made to the Panda Update, with most of them focusing on eliminating obstructive spam sites. These Panda updates have concentrated on getting advertisers to achieve their maximum search potential.

Penguin Update – April 2012

This was launched on April 24, 2012. This update specifically targeted link spam as well as manipulative link building practices. Matt Cutts, head of the Google webspam team, officially announced the update via Twitter as the Penguin Algorithm Update. It was an extension to the Panda Update and was Google’s response to the increasing practice of black hat search engine optimization techniques, which are used to gain higher search rankings in ways that violate search engine guidelines. Many updates were made to the Penguin algorithm since its launch in 2012 including;
Google Penguin 1.1(March 26, 2012)
Google Penguin 1.2 (October 5, 2012)
Google Penguin 2.0 (May 22, 2013)
Google Penguin 2.1 (October 4, 2013)
Google Penguin3.0 (October 17, 2014)
Google Penguin 4.O (September 23, 2016)
With the last update, Penguin became a part of the core algorithm, meaning it evaluates websites and links in real-time.

Hummingbird Update – August 2013

The Hummingbird Update was launched on August 22, 2013. The name Hummingbird came from the speed and precision of the update. This new algorithm allows Google to understand phrases better, providing precise results to complex search queries. It expands the brand content strategy to have more informational content on their site. Also, it gives substitutions as a user enters the query. It also brings out results far more complex search queries. Google’s knowledge graph also appears more often than it did previously, giving more direct answers in search results.
Hummingbird has improved how users are sent to a specific page and directed to the information they are seeking. Hummingbird has also promoted voice-powered searches, helping to create a smarter search engine that can better decipher user intent. Hummingbird update has been branded “the heart of Google’s search engine” as it can filter billions of pages to find the most relevant search results.

Pigeon Update – July 2014

Google’s Pigeon was released on July 24, 2014. This Google algorithm update, unlike its predecessors, was designed to give more accurate and relevant local search results. Google rewarded local businesses that had a strong organic presence with better visibility in traditional search results. Several updates on Pigeon have been made since 2014.
In many ways, Pigeon can be described as not being punitive; rather, it serves a specific group of users best.

Mobile Update – April 2015

This was launched on April 21, 2015. This update ensures that when users use the search engine on their mobile phones, mobile-friendly pages rank closer to the top. This is to provide optimum usability and speed.

Rank Brain Updates – October 2015

These updates were launched on October 26, 2015. It worked like a refresh to Google’s Hummingbird algorithm. It helped Google to understand user queries better than before.

Possum Updates – September 2016

It was launched on September 1, 2016. It basically helped to ensure that locations given to the users were as accurate to the users’ current location as possible

Fred Update – March 2017

This was launched on March 8, 2017, and is one of the latest of Google’s major confirmed updates. It helps to ensure that Google’s webmaster guidelines are adhered to by targeting violations.

Core Update – June 2019

In a rare move, Google announced they would be releasing a new update prior to rolling it out. The update is thought to have affected low-quality news sites while boosting trusted aggregator sites. It may have also affected video carousels, with many YouTube channels seeing 25% increases in traffic.

Broad Core Algorithm Update – September 2019

Broad updates don’t tend to target anything specific; instead, they improve the overall effectiveness of Google’s systems. This can lead to drops or gains in the ranking, and the main advice from Google is to focus on producing quality content. These updates won’t penalize any websites, but they will reassess any new content featured in search results since the last update, and possibly rank quality content higher. Content improvements can aid recovery from any drop in ranking.

BERT Update – October 2019

Allegedly one of the most significant changes to Google search in the past five years, the BERT update focused on better understanding search queries. Google’s official explanation was:
“These improvements are oriented around improving language understanding, particularly for more natural language/conversational queries, as BERT can help Search better understand the nuance and context of words in Searches and better match those queries with helpful results.
Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”
For more info check out- source

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SEO

Tips to Write SEO Friendly Articles

Tips to Write SEO Friendly Articles

Are you looking for ways to make your article writing SEO friendly?

Are your articles are not ranking higher in search engine results pages even after enticing the readers through your content writing?
Well, writing content that is compelling to readers as well as optimized for search engines is the biggest challenge for content writers nowadays. Failing to achieve any of the goals can make your content worthless.
However, making your content SEO friendly is not as difficult as it seems. Just by integrating a couple of simple tips you can greatly enhance the visibility of your content on search engines.
Therefore, let us present these simple, yet amazing tips to make your content SEO friendly.

Here you go!!!!!

Do Your Research

One of the fundamental rules of SEO writing is to think carefully and research thoroughly before starting to write any content. Writing an article without research means shooting in the dark.
Therefore, research facts and figures as well as the important information related to the topic before putting words into the article.

Use Headings

Use of headings inside the article is another important factor in SEO article writing. It not only enhances the readability of the article but also makes it easy to skim, especially long post articles.
Moreover, headings also help search engines to grasp the main topics of a long post and eventually boost the ranking of an article.

Include Keywords

This is the most significant part of writing SEO friendly content. Before writing your article, you have to figure out the words your target audience is actually searching for.
You can use a number of SEO tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahref, Semrush, etc. for executing your keyword research.
Once you are done finding the list of keywords, you have to use them in your article to rank higher in search engine results pages.

Optimize the Article’s Length

Most of the search engines rank the long written articles higher as they tend to have more detailed information and provide a deep understating of the topic.
Hence, make sure your articles have a minimum length of 300 words.
However, do not try to keep it unnecessarily lengthy, as it might scare the readers away. Keep in mind the readers, as well as the search engine, before deciding the length of your content.

Write High-Quality Content

Well, it is pretty obvious that the quality of your content is as important as almost every other aforementioned factor is.
Therefore, try to write your content in an engaging and conversational manner in order to entice and entertain your readers.
Well, as can be seen, just by implementing these tips you can easily make your article SEO friendly and improve the search engine rankings of your content.
Therefore, do not forget to use them the next time you write an article for your potential readers.

Categories
SEO

What If Your Website Could Talk

What If Your Website Could Talk

Have you ever wondered if your website could talk?
And if it did talk what message would it send to your customer?
And when I speak of talking websites I am not referring to the text you have used on the website. There is a lot more to what you communicate through your website than the text. The brand’s message can be communicated in a variety of ways some of which have nothing to do with content.
Back to your website and if it could talk, would it portray your business as an efficient and successful company selling high-quality services and products. Does it portray the company as one that will fulfill the needs of the client or does it tell a story you do not want to be associated with your business?
Every interaction with your website is a huge opportunity to tell the client the right story so that you can convert them down the line or keep them as customers. You need to make sure that any information they need is easy to find on the site, which shows that you care about them. A website that tells a good story will load fast thus showing that you care for the user experience of your clients. Given that mobile has overtaken desktop, a website that loads seamlessly on handheld devices shows that you care about all your customers.
The website is one of the best ways to build credibility, loyalty, and confidence in your brand. A lot of customers judge a business from their website. If your website has a terrible experience, visitors will leave with a negative perception and may never return. In a world where the web is critical in brand building, perception is everything.
While everyone knows that an old fashioned website does not necessarily indicate that a company has terrible products or subpar services, the negative perception cannot be avoided. If you have a dated design, the impression you are giving is that you are a tacky business.
If you have a publicly accessible website, it is always telling a story. Whether your business is a standard brochure site, an e-commerce website or any other online shop, it will always be talking. If it is talking you need it to be speaking in line with your brand’s message and singing your praises.
By sending the right message to the right people, you can improve your business by aligning what your website is saying with the brand.

Categories
Contractor SEO

First 3 Things That Doctors Should Know About SEO Before Hiring An Seo Firm

First 3 Things That Doctors Should Know About SEO Before Hiring An Seo Firm

SEO is the catalyst for all successful businesses online. Not just online but also offline because investing in SEO practices like Google My Business, and Citations also make it easy to scale your offline business. Boosting website SEO rankings for medical professionals is a puzzle that’s not easy to solve.
Well, as a medical professional, you know that over 70% of your potential clients will first search online before reaching out to you. The problem with SEO rank is that the web is saturated with similar contents that pushing yours to the first page so you can funnel these prospects to leads isn’t easy anymore.
Besides doing your job, and managing the business at the same time is a daunting task. To succeed, you will need an external marketer to spur you forward. Here is where SEO for doctors experts come in.

What Is SEO?

The initials S.E.O stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a special process that follows a unique algorithm to rank websites higher or lower in the search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, etc. The ranking here makes you visible, so potential prospects find you faster. This leads to your site getting more clicks. SEO marketers refer to this as organic traffic.
Not all SEO marketers are equal, though. Besides, the ranking algorithms change frequently. Therefore before hiring an SEO marketer, here are the things you should know about SEO.

1. SEO Can Be Tedious

Increasing a website’s SEO ranking doesn’t happen in a second. It can take quite a long time to get you high up in the search results. There are, however, lucky chaps who managed to do it quite faster. The solid reality, however, is that SEO is a gradual process, and in some cases, it can be very costly.
It doesn’t matter whether your a veteran medic or you manage a budding clinic. Increasing your SEO rankings can be slow, and sadly enough, if you’re looking for instant results, you may get disappointed. There’s, however a way out. To get on the same page with SEO, you need to understand your audience, know the basics of website design, and how a website works.
There are other deeper SEO aspects like the meta tags, meta descriptions, and keyword research, etc. that you have to master. After getting all these right, optimizing your website for SEO becomes simple and fun. The process is however extensive with a lot of adjustments here, and there, therefore, it’s likely to take you a lot of time to get the final results.

2. SEO Is Just A Fragment Of A Fruitful Strategy

Most clinic owners think that it’s only SEO that does the magic which is not true because lots of other factors need to go into your marketing strategy. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t essential, though. It’s an integral part of any fruitful marketing strategy, but it forms just a tiny fraction of the whole process.
To get it right with SEO, and your entire marketing strategy, it’s crucial that you don’t overlook other essential marketing aspects like;

  • Content Creation.
  • Email Marketing.
  • Reviews.
  • Referral Campaigns.
  • Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing.
  • Phone Call Tracking.
  • Social Media Marketing and more.

However, some of these strategies still use SEO practices. You should make sure that these tactics are used on your website. SEO will just complement what the strategies can achieve.

3. You Should Base On Content Creation Over SEO

Note that, to engage your audience, you don’t need just SEO. Instead, you will require engaging content. Because of that, if you want to come up with a robust SEO plan, it’s prudent that you base on coming up with original contents regularly.
Use the contents to engage with, and showcase your expertise to the potential clients because they want to hear from you. They want to hear your take on trending medical discoveries, and news, they want to know that you’re someone who understands their pain points.
You can deliver these contents in various forms like; videos, social media posts, infographics, and blog posts, etc. After creating these contents, you can now freely focus on creating SEO optimized web pages. With the right mindset, and approach to SEO, your business is going to flourish.
Do you want to learn more about how to utilize SEO to spur client engagement, and increase lead conversion? We got your back. We have all the expertise you need to claim strong niche authority, and boost your lead conversion.

Categories
SEO

5 Ways To Attract High Paying Clients to Your Business

5 Ways To Attract High Paying Clients to Your Business

As an entrepreneur, you want your business to grow, be it in terms of the number of customers or the total revenue. One major way to accomplish the latter is by finding ways to attract high-value customers to your business.
Here are the significant ways you can use to achieve that:

1. Identifying and Profiling the 20%

The first thing you should do is to review your customers. Conduct a simple analysis and identify the customers who bring you more profit to your business. In your analysis, look at the things they all have in common.
Here are some of the most crucial things to look for:

  • The family size of those customers.
  • Their ages.
  • Their income levels.
  • The marital status.
  • The goods or services they buy
  • Their geographical areas.

Having a clear idea of what they have in common helps you come up with a better marketing strategy to target them specifically.

2. Think About the Branding of Your Business

Figuring out what your high-value customers want to hear is a key step in attracting more of them. Some customers will want to see you using more terminology when marketing your good or service.
The best way to accomplish that is to tier the prices of your commodities and services. Gold level products can contribute more to attracting high-value customers.
Ensure that any tactic you use is reflected in your marketing, which includes your social media posts, printed materials, and also how you talk to your customers about your good or service.

3. Get Your Website to Match with Your Message

Your next step is ensuring your online presence portrays the same things as your message. The type of language you use when marketing must also be used on your website.
Make sure your website is mobile adaptive and is not complicated in that your customers don’t find it hard to use it. If you want to attract high-value customers, then make sure your website doesn’t have any technical issues and loads fast.
Improving the technology used in your website can help significantly in enhancing the user experience. You want your potential customers to be impressed when they visit your site for the first time, right?
Ensure your website is SEO optimized. Having a well-optimized site ensures customers see your website first when they search keywords of what they’re looking for.
You can use the free keyword planner provided by Google AdWords as far as you have a Gmail account.

4. Review Your Goods or Services

In the commodities you offer, evaluate, and see which ones are more likely to impress high-value customers. Also, take your time to think of ways to come up with packaging and promoting ideas that will make your products more unique and get more sales.
One major thing you should do to attract high-value customers is to give them what they desire. One way to do this is coming up with offers where they get some privileges like getting a certain percentage of discount when they buy a certain amount of goods.
Offering such an offer will cost you as you’ll have to ensure you provide your customers with very high-quality goods. However, it’s a win-win situation as your customers will get the best quality of products or services and you’ll get more sales in return.
If you want high-value customers, you have to give them the best product they can find.

5. Create A Good Marketing Strategy

Your final step should be coming up with a marketing strategy that will allow you to reach your targeted high-value customers easily.
Here are things to consider:

  • Decide on the best social media site you’ll use to reach those customers and come up with great content that can speak to their wants.
  • Ensure your advertising is targeted to your high-value customers. Set up new campaigns specifically for marketing to them. A good place to start would be the demographic information you collected earlier.
  • Subdivide your mail list. Make sure your high-value customers are in one place as it makes it easier to send the marketing emails, which will boost your sales.

The main factor in attracting high-value customers is coming up with quality goods and services. The value of your services should be seen through your marketing, advertising, and customer care service.
Ensure those things are done correctly, and attracting high-value customers will be a walk in the park.

Categories
SEO

How does Local Search Work?

How does Local Search Work

local search engine

Local search simply involves users getting search results on service, products or whatever else they might be looking for in their specific locality. Every business owner would love to be in the know of what local SEO entails and what exactly makes Google, and other search engine algorithms, tick because a local search more often than not is a strong indication of buying intent. That said, here’s more useful information on how local SEO works.

The past of Local Search

Conventionally, there are generally two ways to scale up the SEO ranking mountain, local or otherwise, with the division generally torn between white and black hat techniques. The latter being the frowned-upon path encompassing SEO engine deception via keyword stuffing and other underhand strategies while the former involves playing by the rules and incorporating acceptable alternatives such as optimization of web pages.
While black hat SEO provided an edge to competitors in the past, internet watchdogs have moved to arrest the situation in a bid to level the playing. And that they have and continue to do so relentlessly.

The present

At the moment, local SEO prowess is crucially dependent on what others say about you aside from primary traditional sources of credibility. Previously, Google, Yahoo, and Bing would heavily influence website success but in the present-age other third-party sites such as Yelp and Facebook are also getting a share of that cake which emphasizes the importance of social media platforms to your cause.
To substantiate this, a recent study has brought to light the fact that people are thrice as likely to discover information outside your business’ website as opposed to on it. That figure astonishingly rises to ten for those in the hospitality industry. Moreover, the numbers also evidence the pivotal importance of local search indicating that 74% of netizens carry out local searches and that 61% of those who do end up buying whatever it is they were looking up.

What matters today?

Mobile friendliness is a big thing these days and can mean the difference between popping up on the very first page of a local search or being buried amongst the double-figures of SERPs where very few people, if any, ever venture.
Besides that, prominence, relevance, and distance are also dictating how local search engines work with relevance generally referring to related services or products within the niche and distance proving a ranking factor in how local searches are displayed e.g. from the nearest to the furthest one out. Meanwhile, prominence takes into account third-party reviews like Yelp which give an account of your business’ public perception.
This trio of aspects has heavily shaped how local search works presently and consequently holds the key to unlocking local SEO success.

Categories
SEO

Improve Your PPC Strategies by Bidding on Competitors Keywords

Improve Your PPC Strategies by Bidding on Competitors Keywords

Most businesses that have to do advertising also have to deal with competition from similar businesses. Many traditional media publishing platforms made it possible to separate your advertising in time (broadcast) and in physical space (print) from that of your competitors.
The search engines are very different from legacy media as most of your ads will be placed alongside those of the competition. For instance, when someone searches for a particular book, the ads will include listings from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and your local retail business. As such, you will all be competing for the same click, which makes things harder for everyone.
In the world of PPC advertising, bidding on competitor brand names can be a lucrative strategy. However, we at BlackStorm have learned that as easy and as enticing as it may be to take away a competitors traffic, it can create some problems with the quality score.
If you have ever tried to bid on someone’s brand name, then you know that Google will hit you with poor quality scores. Their logic is that someone searching for Walmart stores near me” would be interested in Walmart and not Target. As such, Target would get hit with poor quality scores for bidding on Walmart keywords.
Nonetheless, there may still be a few legitimate reasons to bid on your competition’s brand names. Maybe you just got into the market and need visibility or maybe you intend to capitalize on some confusion between your brand and that of the competition. Regardless of your reasons, you can target competitor brand keywords and manage to get decent quality scores and score some visitors. Here are some of the most effective ways to bid on the competition’s brand keywords:

Bid on Misspellings

If your competitor has an easily misspelled or a hard to spell brand, you need to gather all the possible keywords and place your bids. Most of the search engines do not understand misspellings and it may not be clear to them if you intend to find the real brand or something else. Once there is confusion, your ad has a higher probability of getting a decent score and being listed.
For instance:
If a searcher were to type in “esurance” while looking for the auto insurance company but ended up typing “ensurance”, the company still shows up on the search engine as the number one ad.
However, the second advert is awkward and is probably the result of dynamic keyword insertion. Still, it has used the searched keyword twice and this has made the search engines bold these out, making them stand out from the others. They are also using more site links as compared to the other advertisers. You would have to read the ad carefully to know that it has nothing to do with the company Esurance. However, most users will simply click the bolded result and visit the site rather than the website they intended to.

Bid on Cancel Keywords

This is one of those tips that could completely revolutionize your PPC competitor keyword strategies.
I do not believe you can find a better way of targeting disgruntled clients of the competition than by bidding on keywords they are likely to use when they intend to cancel their subscriptions.
This is not only smart but is also very effective at ensuring that you never get hit with the poor quality scores that you are likely to get when bidding on competitor keywords. For instance:
Most competitor keywords will get you quality scores no higher than 2, which the search engines are highly unlikely to list on the search results.
However, cancel keywords are a different kettle of fish:
You can get have your scores jump from as low as 2 to something between 4-5 and in some instances even 10. What is even better, cancel keywords tend to get above average click-through rates and drive leads.
If you are in the contractual or service industry taking advantage of cancel keyword can significantly improve your strategies.

Employ All the Weapons Available

At Blackstorm we always say that you are never going to be better than your competition if you do not have great ad copy. The best way of doing this is to provide reasons for the searcher to choose you and to always have a better offer. There are many advertisers that have won the battle for clicks by offering super deals and exclusive offers not found anywhere else.
Writing creative ad copy will also go a long way in improving your click-through rates. For instance, in the example below, Olive Garden gets really creative when targeting the keyword Applebee’s.
They have been so clever that Bing ads gave them annotations on the search engine results showing that they have had 100k visitors in the last month and that they have 205,900 twitter followers.
While it is impossible to control ad notations, ad extensions can be controlled. With good ad extensions, your ad will stand out more on the results. Still, you will have to get your ad to the top of the page before the search engines will show your ad extensions. But, having them show on the results can be a game changer.
Take for instance a search “Adgooroo” a search intelligence tool.
Adgooroo has neglected to bid on their brand and Spyfu has jumped in to bid on it. With their Google+ extensions and callout extension, their ad stands out on the page and they must be getting clicks. You could also use location and call extension on competitor ads. Imagine if the searcher learns that the competitor is a better fit for their needs than the company they were searching for.
Always do anything in your power to give the searcher a reason to click or call your business rather than that of a competitor. All being said, competitor campaigns can a solid source of high converting leads, sales or quality traffic.

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