Long tail keywords are more specific keyword phrases that searchers use when they know what they want. These keyword phrases usually have low search volume, but they often convert well. They can be really valuable if you know how to use them.

Why are long tail keywords important for SEO?

Long tail keywords are very specific and super-targeted. This makes them important for your business success.

With smart implementation of a long tail keyword strategy, you may pull in less traffic, going purely by numbers, but the return on your investment will be proportionally much higher. You can attract exactly the audience you’re looking for, and that audience will be far closer to point-of-purchase than those who are attracted by short search terms.

Long tail keywords are important for your SEO and your business, because:

• Long tail keywords convert well. By targeting specific search terms, you can know exactly what your searches need, so you can easily convert them into buyers.
• Long tail keywords are usually very low competition. Most website owners try to get high rankings for more broad search terms, while not thinking about how much traffic low-volume, less popular terms can bring.
• Long tail keywords are valuable for PPC. They convert well, but cost less, since there’s less competition.
• You can build specifically optimized pages to turn searches into customers. As with all SEO, it’s the long game that counts.

How to find the best long tail keywords

Obviously, not every overly long phrase is going to be a good keyword. If you want to find the ones that will work for your website and bring in useful traffic, you must take a few important things into consideration.

The most important of them being user search intent – as in, a keyword’s ability to attract users with the right mindset.

There are multiple types of user search intent. Once you can tell the difference between them, finding the right long tail keywords will be a breeze.

• Commercial: when users are looking for something to buy or comparing different products. Example: the best wireless headphones.
• Transactional: when they want to spend money on something specific (not to be confused with commercial!) Example: order sushi.
• Informational: when they want to learn something. Example: how to learn Python.
• Navigational: when they want to find a site or a page. Example: Robert Downey Jr. Twitter.
• Locational: when they want to find a place. Example: café near me.
• Seasonal: when they want something related to a time period. Example: best places for summer vacation.

And the other thing you want from your long tail keywords is low competition. You can easily measure a keyword’s competitiveness with the right SEO tools.

For example, here’s what you’ll see if you punch a keyword into WebCEO’s Keyword Research tool:

The Global KEI column is usually enough: a high value is better because it means more monthly searches for less competition. If you want details, you can also look at the Average Cost Per Click and Bid competition columns to see the exact competition levels and how much people bid for any given keyword.

Bottom line is: user search intent + low competition = good long tail keyword.

How to find long tail keywords using free tools

Long tail keywords are often very low competition, because others do not think about them. However, there are some tools that you can use to generate a list of long tail keywords for free.

1. Google related searches (autocomplete) and Google query suggestions

When I explained how to use LSI keywords on your site, I could have mentioned two sources that can be a good source of long tail ideas as well as LSI (semantic related keyword) ideas.

1. Google autocomplete: Enter your search term in a search query field, and Google Autocomplete will automatically fetch and show the keywords related to the particular query.
2. Google query suggestions: Enter a keyword and go to the “Related searches” section at the bottom of the search engine results page. These “related searches” are a good source of long tail keyword ideas.
3. People also ask: Similar to the above, this section contains questions asked by users (with collapsible answers). The more answers you collapse, the more questions appear.

2. Quora and other Q&A sites

People use Quora and other Q&A sites to find answers for questions that are really important for them. You can use Quora to see how your prospects communicate their needs and to find out what language you should use.

Go to Quora and enter your search term in a search field. Quora (like Google) shows previously asked questions related to your search term.

When you click on a question, you can see an even bigger list of related questions. It is on the right of the page.

3. Answer the Public

Another great and absolutely free tool is Answer the Public. This tool scrapes the auto suggestions of Google and Bing and draws a beautiful diagram of long tail keywords. This tool helps to create content that’s useful, funny or inspiring.

To start, just enter your keywords and select a country. You will get a list of questions your audience needs to be answered and the list will be beautifully visualized.

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is one of the best tools for defining your keyword strategy. You can go directly to Search Console, Search results -> Queries. Scroll down to see a list of actual keyword phrases people are typing into Google to find your site. You can sort them by Clicks or Impressions to pick the ones they use most often.

To get even more info, you can go to the WebCEO Keyword Research tool and see Top queries tab.

Look further down the list and you will find long tail keyword opportunities, especially the ones with a lot of impressions.

How to use long tail keywords on your site

Look at the list of long tail keywords you have gathered using the above mentioned tools. Most of them are discussion-style content. Remember, that the content you create should answer those which are in the form of questions and the content should be helpful to searchers.

Unless you have an army of writers, you can’t create a piece of content for every search phrase you want to rank for. You will have to target long tail keywords by including multiple phrases in your keyword bucket throughout the page:

• Vary the Title tag and headings.

Use different search terms in the page Title and headings. This will also ensure that your pages aren’t over-optimized for your primary keyword.

• Use long tail variations in your content.

By researching the variations of a keyword you might want to include in your content, you can be aware of them as you craft content, and you can strategically place modifiers throughout your page’s content. Long tail phrases can help you create more natural content.

• Pay attention to all on-page elements.

Be sure to place all your long tail keywords in your various pages’ headlines, alt attributes, title attributes, etc.

• Vary your internal links.

This allows you to avoid being “over-optimized,” and if you stick primarily to variations that contain the head keyword and append modifiers, rather than synonyms, you’re consistently transferring relevance for your core term.

The best strategy to bring more traffic to your site is to use all possible tactics. With the WebCEO tools you can easily outrank your competitors.

Sign Up for a Free 14-day Trial
and Weaponize Your Long Tail Keywords Now!

The post How to Find Long Tail Keywords That Will Bring Tons of Traffic appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

In just a few years, the best SEO tools have moved online, now performing in the cloud to collaborating users. These users can access their projects from any device, anywhere in the world. This is why online SEO software is so popular. The only serious choice people are making these days is between having free online accounts or mining the advantages of paid subscriptions.

A contemporary SEO tools list would include more than 80 online SEO programs to choose from, but a comprehensive, really good, web agency oriented set of tools can make a big difference – you can work smarter and faster with them. Some users prefer a mix of top SEO tools, while others go for all-in-one platforms. Let’s take a look at the current field:

BEST SEO TOOLS 2019

Keyword Research tools

• Answer The Public
• LSI Graph
• Google Search Console
• Google Keyword Planner
• WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions tool

Site audit and SEO analysis tools

• Google Search Console
• BrightLocal
• WebCEO’s Technical Audit and On-Page SEO Issues tools

Link building tools

• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• Linkody
• Link Research tools
• WebCEO’s Backlink research tool

Rank Tracking tools

• Pro Rank Tracker
• WooRank
• SEO Monitor
• Advanced Web Ranking
• WebCEO’s Rank Tracking tool

All-in-one SEO platforms

• SEMrush
• Ahrefs
• Moz
• WebCEO

First, we can’t ignore Google SEO tools. The best free SEO tools you can get in the niche are run by Google. There’s Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, Trends, Analytics, PageSpeed Insights. All marketing people need to be logged into these on their browsers.

Keyword research tools

those that show you keywords you haven’t thought about but your potential customers have been thinking about:

This free SEO tool provides a lot of keyword suggestions from Google and Bing. They call themselves ‘a goldmine of insight for today’s marketers’. You can see an aggregated view of search queries with hints about the motivations and emotions of the people typing them. This will really help for inspiration and consumer insight in the age of Google. However, to use the full functionality of Answer The Public you will have to pay $99/mo.

Summary: This online SEO tool is really great to find keywords you never thought about; however, the tool may show keywords which are not relevant. Also, it may not work as well with very specific keywords.

Official website: https://answerthepublic.com/

Summary: These keywords won’t drive you to position #1 instantly, but this will help your content ranking over time, when SEO effort has already been put in.

Official website: https://lsigraph.com/

This is a free Google SEO tool and it’s a shame not to use it. Google Search Console will help you find underestimated keywords which people are already using in their Google searches to find your website. You can also analyze your site’s impressions, clicks and each keyword’s average position on Google Search as well. With the help of Google Search Console, you can make your website shine on Google Search results.

Summary: Every list of the best SEO tools includes Google Search Console. Keywords from Search Console will help you understand what people have already been searching for when they visit your website.

Official website: https://search.google.com/search-console/about

These are also free and they will help you get plenty of keyword suggestions, so you can research them and narrow your keyword list. You can also get bid estimates, so you can plan your advertising budget. Once you have found the best keywords for your website, you can add them to your advertising plan. You can also add them into a major SEO tool platform like WebCEO. You may finalize a list and launch a marketing campaign any time you are ready.

Summary: Google Keyword Planner is a must; it’s really informative. But you will have to wait until your account is matured to see accurate data.

Official website: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

Well, everything looks good, but when it comes to doing even more effective work, you will face the downside of free keyword tools. They usually have low limitations and really lack statistics data. You will have a hard time evaluating monthly searches, bid competition, search trends etc. – so it might not be so easy to pick the most effective keywords on a free tool. Even the AdWords keyword tool won’t give you precise data when you have just created a vendor account: you will only see huge ranges (for example, 1-10k). Once your account has matured, you will see more precise data, but that takes time and money. Which brings us to

This gives you a definite, not an estimated, number of a keyword’s monthly searches from the get-go and offers additional metrics that most other SEO tools don’t even have: for example, search trends (how a keyword’s monthly searches have been fluctuating throughout the year), a keyword effectiveness coefficient, clicks and impressions. WebCEO’s Keyword Research Tool can also show the number of local searches per month for an area of your choice. You can also estimate your advertising budget with the bid competition number.

Summary: Relevant keyword suggestions, precise keyword effectiveness metrics, accurate and high quality data and good usability are united in the WebCEO Keyword Suggestion tool. I absolutely love it.

Official website: https://www.webceo.com/

Site audit and SEO analysis tools

Google and the visitors of websites love fast loading sites with zero technical issues. So you have to audit your site for errors on a regular basis. Mobile friendliness, page speed and errors – every factor is critical.

This tool allows you to check the mobile friendliness of your website and see if there are SEO issues (like duplicate titles and descriptions). You may even receive email alerts when Google identifies issues on your site. Unfortunately, it won’t show you a full list of technical and SEO issues on your website. An additional site audit tool is a must-have too, so you can see a full picture.

Summary: Good enough for an instant check of a website’s technical issues and mobile friendliness, but it won’t compete against the top SEO tools.

Official website: https://search.google.com/search-console/about

This is a great choice for those who are working for locally oriented businesses and doing local SEO. It will be easy for you to uncover technical issues with the site’s local SEO profile. The most useful thing about BrightLocal is the ability to audit, clean and build citations from the most popular sites. Also, with BrightLocal you will never forget about Google My Business – we all know how important it is to register one’s location and keyword descriptions with search engines.

Summary: Their automated reports look really good! You’ll have to schedule a report and then wait a long time until it is scanned.

Official website: https://www.brightlocal.com/

You should ask yourself if you really need a standalone tool for technical/SEO audits. The big all-in-one SEO programs offer great auditors, so it will be much easier to use a platform instead of a variety of different SEO tools with separate logins.

For instance, WebCEO has Technical Audit and On-Page SEO tools which scan your site for technical and SEO errors, respectively. Both are completely free if you use the free trial and they won’t add to the variable cost of an agency level paid plan.

Summary: A technical audit for webmasters and an SEO analysis report for SEO specialists are exactly what you need to keep your website user- and search-engine-friendly. Scanning is quick so even if you forget to schedule – it will only take a minute or two!

Official website: https://www.webceo.com/

Next in line are the tools all SEO professionals love:

Link building tools

It shows special metrics like trust flow, citation flow, historical index, fresh index, etc. With all these metrics you can see your improvements and progress. You will see must-have data on your backlinks, so you can estimate if they are naturally earned or you’d better get rid of them. Also Majestic is a data provider – and the best SEO tools use their data.

Summary: Majestic is really cool and affordable – the biggest database on the web, with an easy interface and good usability. However, there are SEO programs that show backlinks divided into two columns: natural and unnatural.

Official website: https://majestic.com/

This platform is also well known for their backlink opportunities. Ahrefs offers its proprietary metrics such as DR (Domain Rating), UR (URL Rating), AR (Ahrefs Rank) which are used to estimate backlink popularity. Also, Ahrefs is not a data provider so you will have to buy a subscription to their platform to have access to their backlink tool.

Summary: This SEO software has a lot of valuable information and you just have to get used to its interface. However, it is not cheap and won’t do for small businesses or solo SEO specialists.

Official website: https://ahrefs.com/

Linkody is an amazing backlink monitoring tool that every webmaster should possess. Its main focus is set on monitoring your backlinks as well as tracking the success of your link-building efforts.

What’s more, Linkody automates the whole process for you! You will get notified when you gain or lose any backlinks and you will have a full overview of the necessary SEO metrics to assess your backlinks. To help you improve your link-building strategy, Linkody will give you insights into your competitors’ link building strategies.

The post 20+ Best SEO Tools in 2019 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Ok Google, why is voice search so popular on the Web? It’s all about the laziness of people. They don’t always want to search the Web using a traditional keyboard search. Most of the searchers want to get the right answer right away without having to explore multiple blue links and digging deep into search results pages. With the explosion of semantic search, long-tailed keywords and conversational phrases have become the primary search queries. More and more people now use mobile devices and inbuilt personal search assistants to get information quickly without typing.

The Death of Traditional Keyword Typed Search

According to Google, 20% of searches on mobile devices are now voice searches and by 2020, 50% of all searches will be committed via voice commands. It’s become a primary search strategy for specific personal assistant-type search needs, such as:

• Fun & entertainment (21%)
• Search for local content and businesses information (22%)
• Personal voice assistance (27%)
• Search for general information (30%)

People interact with voice search mostly on the go, when they are short of time and need accurate info ASAP. Among the most popular means of interacting with voice search are personal virtual assistants: the inbuilt voice recognition tools like Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant which help with everyday tasks, set reminders and answer questions promptly. With this hype of voice search use popularity, it’s about time to change your SEO strategy in order to target all those people who use voice search on their devices. Listen to the following SEO recommendations which will help you make bold steps towards making your website voice-search friendly.

3 Best SEO Practices that Will Help Make Your Website Voice-Search Friendly

1. Optimize your content for conversational search queries instead of standalone keyword phrases

After the release of the Google Hummingbird Update that uses LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) technology, search technology moved us closer to semantic search with the improved natural language processing and a better understanding of a searcher’s intent.  When writing new blog posts or creating new website pages, think of the context behind the search terms you take from your Google’s Search Console search query reports, or keyword research tools like the WebCEO Keyword Research Tool. Here are some tips that will help you properly optimize your content for voice search.

• Size really matters.

I mean the size of your target long-tail keyword phrases. People can speak 150 words per minute vs type 40 words per minute. Long-tail voice search queries are less competitive and are more likely to convert. The longer and more natural your long-tail keywords the more chances your content will appear in top results for relevant voice search queries. Try to imitate as many conversational “keywords” people may speak out via voice search as possible. Start by adding to your keyword list the search queries which already bring you some traffic. Go to the WebCEO Marketing Analytics Metrics tool and dig into the Google Search Console Top Queries report. Make them more complex by adding some descriptive characteristics or geo location landmarks specific to your business.

• Enhance your content with answers to customers’ questions

According to Google, question queries have seen a 61% growth in recent years. First thing you should do is to understand what kind of question-like queries are applied to your niche and your brand and stick to those that apply to your website content. Expand your keyword map by adding 5W (What, Who, Why, When, Where) and How questions which help:

– Find your business

– Understand your business

– Identify the value of your business and benefits for prospects.

Use the Answer the Public tool and Q&A platforms like Quora to generate question phrases from your long tail keywords. Use this list of question phrases to build a FAQ page or write blog posts on specific topics. Such places are perfect venues to host long tail question keywords on your site.

• Provide answers to searchers from within featured snippets.

Well-optimized microdata can be a powerful way to convert your potential customers right from search results. How? According to Jennifer Slegg, an expert in search engine marketing, 43.3 % of featured snippets are used to answer voice search queries. People expect to receive a direct tit-for-tat response to I-want-to-know, I-want-to-buy, I-want-to-do search queries and you can give it to them with the help of optimized structured data markup. Be it directions, business hours, phone numbers or other general info, schema.org and Google Structured Data Markup Helper will help you with any kind of microdata optimization.

2. Make your local business vocal

As being mentioned above, 22% of voice search commands have local intent. So, if you have a physical business location, make it easy to be found when people search for places near you. Here are some quick local SEO tips which will help you make your local business near and dear every time people use their inbuilt voice search assistants for local intent searches.

• Make sure your business citations (Name, Address, Phone aka NAP) are consistently listed on local directories. There are some useful tools like Yext, Placesscout or WhiteSpark to run NAP audits and manage your local citation optimization.
• Earn as many online reviews as possible on Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor etc. Thanks to the Google Pigeon Update, those businesses which have more positive reviews, have higher rankings in local search.
• Spy on your competitors’ local rankings in order to learn where your business misses out. Use the WebCEO local Rank Tracking tool to get detailed insight into the local positions of your competitors.
• Enhance your local business attributes with the help of the Google Business Center.

 3. Go Mobile

As the lion’s share of voice search commands happen on mobile devices (20% of mobile queries are voice), it’s a must to make your website mobile-friendly, if you want it to be voice-search friendly. Another push for you to make your website mobile-friendly is that Google is rolling out a mobile-first index. Make sure your website passes the Google Mobile-Friendly Test and has good Page Speed performance.

The post “Ok Google”: How Do I Make My Website Voice-Search Friendly? appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Today we are going to talk about a crucial component to on-page SEO tactics — keyword optimization. After the Hummingbird Update you were told to optimize for long tail keywords. Then the semantic SEO strategy changed and all they talk about are LSI keywords.

Let’s see what the difference is between long tail and LSI keywords and find out which you need to use, and when, to get higher rankings and get more traffic.

What is LSI?

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. Latent Semantic Indexing is a method used to determine the relationship between terms and concepts in content. It means that LSI keywords are words and phrases that are semantically related to each other. They include not only synonyms or keywords with similar meanings. They are often keywords that are commonly found together.

How the Google algorithm works

We’ve investigated some of Google’s patents and found that the sophisticated Google algorithm expands the received search query and then uses this extended query to search the Google index.

You can easily see this in action: go to Google and enter a rare term that has more common synonyms. Google will highlight either your search phrase or the more popular one. See my example below. I’ve searched for my cat’s color with the term “tabby point siamese” but the more popular search term for this is “lynx point siamese”. As you can see on the image, both terms are in bold and most results do not even contain “tabby point”.

So what’s the difference between LSI and long tail keywords?

LSI are semantically related words, while long tail keywords tend to be lengthened versions of a keyword combination that searchers often use. Long tails are search terms we all use which often show a searcher’s intentions like “top”, “how”, “what”, “why”, etc.
Having long tail keywords in an optimized website provides better rankings for those exact search terms and you will have boost in your website traffic. LSI keywords help search engines understand what your page is about.

Why optimize for topics instead of targeting individual keywords

The proper use of your best keywords is still a core component of good web page SEO, especially when supported with good LSI. It helps Google to know the relationships between elements of your text. It helps Google to understand your content.
Optimizing for topics (LSI keywords) will help you to:

• Remove ambiguity and near homonyms. When you write about python, do you mean a snake or a programming language? LSI keywords will help search engines understand what your python is.
• Create more natural texts. Today keyword-stuffed texts irritate both readers and search engines.
• Get higher rankings. Search engines are looking for relevant content for a particular search query. The better Google knows what your page is about, the more chances to rank well.

How to Find LSI Keywords

1. Google search query suggestions

Google search is one of the best and absolutely free tools to find LSI keywords. When you enter a search term in a search query field, it automatically fetches and shows the keywords related to the particular query, both in auto-suggest and the results themselves.

2. Google related searches

When you search for a keyword, you can see searches related to the term in the “Related searches” section at the bottom of the search engine results page. These “related searches” are a good source of LSI keywords.

3. LSIGraph

LSIGraph is a free LSI Keyword Generator tool. This generator is as simple as “plug and play”: enter your keyword, press generate, and it will give you up to 50+ of the latest LSI keywords.

We’ve discussed what LSI keywords are, why they are important in the era of Hummingbird, and how to find keywords you should concentrate on. Some keywords get more searches by users than others. Only SEO tools can help you find the most wanted keywords, and they are only one click away from you!

Find long-tail and LSI keywords with WebCEO's Keyword Tool! Sign Up Free

The post Long Tail vs LSI Keywords: Which Do You Need to Increase Website Traffic? appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

The following SEO Guide is not a Bible, but rather a list of recommendations and SEO trends listed in our actionable Semantic SEO Strategy guide. You can download this for FREE and use it alongside the 14+ free SEO tools which you will need for your website optimization and promotion in 2017.

What you’ll learn from this step-by-step handbook:

In the free 19 page handbook we’ve collected some up-to-date practical advice and how-to’s backed by 14+ free SEO tools hand-picked by our editors which will help you understand and implement the latest Google search optimization trends:

Chapter I. How contextual (semantic) search will change the way you manage your Content SEO Audits, and what tools will help you create user- and SEO-friendly website copy.

RankBrain forever changed the way we optimize website content for search engines. If, in 2015, RankBrain was used to interpret 15-20% of search queries, Google now uses RankBrain as a part of its core algorithm. Moreover, it applies its AI system for re-ranking search results. RankBrain doesn’t punish websites, but rather elevates or demotes them by relevance. How can you optimize for RankBrain? Ideally, you will need to learn how to read your targeted audience’s minds. But in real life, you will need to optimize your website for LSI keywords and contextual clues instead of standalone keywords.

In this chapter you’ll learn how to:

• Improve your website user experience by fixing on-page technical and content SEO issues.
• Contextualize Your Keyword Research and Optimization
• Improve visitors’ engagement and your content search visibility with a proper Internal Links structure
• Improve your website SERP clickability by optimizing your structured data with relevant and descriptive copy.

Chapter II. Step Up Your Mobile-First Search Index Game

Given the fact that Google, in 2017, is planning to launch a separate mobile search index which will eventually become the primary one, you should give mobile SEO your best shot…

Chapter III. Help Tools to Improve & Measure Your SEO Performance

When you plan something for tomorrow, you should play upon your previous experience, taking into account what worked best of all and what didn’t bring any benefits. You want to measure; we have the tools…

Sign up for a 14-days Free Trial and get exclusive access to a full guide and 14 professional SEO tools to help you apply our recommendations to your SEO strategy.

Words of Cheer

You never know what you can do til you try. You have a website and, if you work hard on it, you will be rewarded by Google. Our SEO strategy is a little leg-up for you to get this reward in 2017.

The post Semantic SEO Strategy: How to Do SEO in 2017 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complicated strategy with many moving parts, made even more complicated by the fact that Google doesn’t publish the true nature or exact mechanisms of its ranking algorithm. Instead, we rely on a number of “best practices” and fundamentals we’ve learned to be successful through trial and error and collaboration over the years. Some of these fundamentals are more obvious than others, and some marketers jump straight into the game with ongoing strategies like content marketing and offsite optimization without making sure all these foundational best practices are in place.

The Most Missed SEO Fundamentals

If you want to be successful in SEO, you must first build a foundation of onsite optimization and general best practices. These are some of the most commonly neglected SEO fundamentals out there, so make sure you aren’t neglecting them:

1. A keyword strategy. For starters, you will need a good keyword strategy, as it’s going to dictate the course of your campaign. Lately, we’ve seen a decline in keyword prioritization, which is admittedly appropriate; thanks to Google’s Hummingbird update, semantic search has taken precedence over older, keyword-based optimization tactics. However, keywords are still relevant, and you still need a strategic basis to guide your campaign. If nothing else, keywords should help you define your niche and select the topics for your ongoing content campaign, as well as helping you measure your ultimate results.
2. An intuitive site navigation (and URL structure). You’ll also need to structure your site in a way that’s SEO friendly. For most sites, that means listing all your pages in categories and subcategories, giving both search engines and users more tools to understand how your site is laid out. These should be both intuitive and descriptive, so there’s no question where each page belongs. Correspondingly, you will need a breadcrumbs-influenced URL structure that concisely informs users where they are on your site (and how to get back should they need to).
3. HTML and XML sitemaps. Extending from your site navigation and URL structure, you’ll need to include both an HTML and XML sitemap for your site (and keep them updated regularly). Your HTML sitemap will reside on your site directly, while your XML sitemap should be uploaded to Google through Webmaster Tools. This will help Google index your site faster, more efficiently, and more accurately as well.
4. Unique content for every page of your site. At this point in the history of SEO, this should go without saying, but we’re consistently surprised at the number of brands still neglecting onsite content. If a topic deserves a page on your site, it deserves at least 300 words of intelligently written, concise content that describes that topic. All of it should be unique, so don’t cheap out by copying content from other pages of your site or writing fluff.
5. Unique titles and descriptions for each page of your site. Furthermore, every page of your site should have a concise, uniquely descriptive title tag and a meta description that fleshes out that page’s function. You can check for inconsistencies or redundancies in Google Search Console, but this should be one of your first steps in optimizing your onsite pages. Also keep in mind that these entries are what users will see when they encounter your business in SERPs, so you’ll also want to optimize them for click-through rates.
6. Optimizing your images. Optimizing images for SEO isn’t complicated, but it’s still often neglected due to its perceived difficulty and lack of significance. It doesn’t take much; make sure your images are properly formatted and sized appropriately, then title them in a way that describes their content and provide alt tags that further describe what’s happening in the scene. This won’t necessarily increase your domain authority, but it’s a simple step that can get your site featured in more image searches.
7. Building backlinks. Though not related to onsite optimization (like most of these fundamentals), we want to mention link building because it’s commonly neglected due to the perceived risk involved. Make no mistake; you need backlinks if you’re going to rank in search engines, and building them manually (carefully following best practices) is the best way to get them. To effectively manage and monitor your backlink profile, consider using WebCEO’s Backlink Checker. This tool helps you identify and analyze the quality of backlinks pointing to your website, ensuring they align with best practices and contribute positively to your SEO strategy.

These seven fundamentals will prime your campaign for long-term results; without them, you may not be able to get off the ground even if you commit to best practices like ongoing content and social media marketing. You’ll note that a number of these are qualitative in nature; your keyword strategy will differ from all your other competitors’, and your onsite content will demand differentiation as well. While there’s no one right way to go about implementing these fundamentals, they do demand your attention and thorough development, so prioritize them.

The post The 7 Most Overlooked Fundamentals in SEO appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

This autumn the James Bond movie franchise turned 50! Not bad for her majesty’s Secret Service agent with a licence to kill, philogyny and an undeviating loyalty to shaken (not stirred) martini. You would probably ask how the heck James Bond will help me with my SEO strategy for 2016. We mean to say that you should serve your customers like James Bond serves her Majesty.

Download our step-by-step Download the SEO Strategy Guide 2016  in order to succeed in digital marketing in 2016.

Moreover, using WebCEO’s Rank Checker to monitor your rankings is always a wise strategy:)

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There are 3 major types of landing pages and each serves its own goals.

Let’s imagine you own a huge supermarket. First you can segment this into departments, i.e. canned goods, boxed goods, produce, home supply department etc. This is a must because, when people visit a supermarket, they go straightway to a specific department because they have specific shopping needs.  This is how your website should be built. Your home page is a showcase of your site and the landing pages that describe your product features and solutions are specific departments which attract targeted traffic that is generated from specific search queries. If a visitor’s search intent has a transactional character (she wants to buy a specific item over the Internet), you wouldn’t want to send a visitor to your cluttered home page but, instead, you would send her to a product description page with pricing and a clear call-to-action in order to get more conversions.

The key objective of landing pages optimization is to narrow down and capture targeted visitor traffic and turn this into prequalified leads and ready-to-pay customers. But messages and the ways to attract traffic with the help of landing pages are different.

For example, if you have a website dedicated to online marketing services, you can build a specific internal website page that will cover one of the solutions you provide, be it SEO, or email marketing, or social media marketing. These internal website landing pages, if optimized properly, will show up in organic search results.

If you launch a PPC campaign via Google Adwords, Social Media ads, or via email marketing campaign and your goal is to provide a sales pitch, you can create a PPC landing page with sales-dedicated copy with a clear offer and above-the-fold call to actions.

And finally, if you launch a free content giveaway campaign or a viral campaign via a blog post or social media and your goal is lead generation, your landing page should have rich copy with unique and helpful content and with link incentives for users to share their contact details or get in touch via an inquiry form. This type of landing page is called a lead capture page.

Anyway, all roads lead to Rome. No matter what the goal, how much money you spend and what way you choose to bring targeted traffic to your site, your landing page should convey a high value, strong incentive with solid benefits.

Bite on this: According to Omniture: [Tweet “Marketing campaigns that use landing pages as target pages improve conversion rates by 25%.”]

To give your landing pages high conversions, follow these step-by-step recommendations.

1. Do keyword research to match a searcher’s intent with the topics of your landing pages.

Whatever type of landing page you choose, the first thing you should do is find user matched and SEO-friendly keywords. Users have short attention spans; it takes about 2 sec for them to click your result or not in the SERPs. So you should definitely use the keywords that closely match a user’s search intent with the key concept of your landing page.

An effective action plan for your landing page keyword research includes brainstorming and the refinement of a complex list of keyword phrases and long-tail keywords based on:

• Brand terms
• Generic terms
• Closely-related terms (synonyms)
• Competitive terms

There are a lot of useful keyword research tools on the web, like the Google AdWords Keyword Planner (great for PPC keyword search and analysis), the Bing Keyword Research Tool, KeywordTool.io, the WordTracker Keyword Research tools etc. Most of them provide in-depth keyword suggestions and estimates of their search volume.  Most keyword research tools fail to easily integrate your work on your keyword lists with what necessarily must follow: landing page optimization and keyword rank tracking.

Unlike these great but insufficient tools, the Web CEO Keyword Research Tool embraces four stages of keyword research:

Shape keyword suggestions

Sign up to Web CEO, add your website to our Add New Project wizard and start with finding the most relevant and profitable keyword suggestions in the Keyword Research tool → Get keyword Suggestion tab

With the help of special filters you can narrow down your suggestions in order to pick only those with 100+> global searches and low bid competition. Add your selected keywords to the Keyword Basket

Add terms used by your competition

Spy on your competitors targeted terms by adding a competitor’s domain or even specific landing page URL. Then add newly selected keywords to the basket.

Back this up with Google data for your website search queries

Use the search keywords that searchers have already used to reach your site. You can see how many impressions, clicks, CTR and the average position they had on Google over the past month (note that the WebCEO Rank Tracker tool itself provides fresh ranking data). Add them to the basket as well.

Refine your keyword list and assign tags

Once, you have selected your keywords, go to the Keyword Basket in order to get them in taxonomic order. With the help of the tag manager in the Web CEO keyword research tool, in every stage of keyword research you can assign tags to keyword family groups by, for instance, landing page goal and intent, language, or relevance and significance. It will be much easier to optimize you landing page content, once you have shaped your keywords spreadsheet into topical clusters via tags.

2. Put in order your keyword-to-page relationships

When you’ve finished grabbing and tagging the most profitable terms and long-tail keyword tag clusters, you can start to align them with your landing pages to make them SEO-friendly. You should focus on using 2-3 primary keywords for each page. No matter what the length of your landing page copy is, the goal is to add your targeted keywords wisely and match them with the topic of your page. Focus keyword mapping on sensitive SEO areas in order to establish your landing page theme and match your message to a user’s search intent. Sensitive areas are:

• URL: fill your landing page URL address with your 2-3 targeted keywords for that page in order to communicate the landing page’s semantic core to search engines.
• Title: put the targeted keywords (phrases) at the beginning in order to communicate the message of your landing page content (its offer). The Title tag should not exceed 55 characters;
• Headings: put keywords in H-tags to improve their search value, be sure to not have more than one H1 tag per page;
• Image name and its ALT attribute: use a targeted keyword in both the image file name and ALT tag to get additional ranking power, especially in image search, and make visual content SE-readable;
• Meta description: transmit your landing page message and value to search engines and searchers with a keyword-rich description tag (it should not exceed 160 characters).

3. Check your landing page SEO for weak spots and fix them

 Ok, your obedient keywords are now in their places. Before it’s too late and you lose your targeted traffic, make sure that you have properly conducted keyword mapping within your landing pages.

The easiest way to do this is to run your Landing Page SEO Analysis with WebCEO at hand:

Run a Landing Page Overview that will help you take a quick view of all your landing pages’ SEO performance (i.e.: critical SEO issues, page speed score, Google mobile friendliness, broken links, backlinks and social citations)

The more specific Landing Page SEO report will provide you with a detailed look at your keyword placement within any given page as well as other SEO issue details for that page. If you see a low keyword optimization score, you can either reconsider what keywords the page should be optimized for or go into your HTML and properly add your chosen keywords into the proper meta tags, etc. All the SEO issues you will find will come with detailed advice on how to get them fixed.

4. Match your landing page copy with design elements and layout

 A well-designed landing page with a logical structure flow is crucial. It takes only several seconds for a visitor to fall in love or not with your site (plus the time to load a page).  When you come to the design of a landing page, your key objective is to make it simple, short, uncluttered and persuasive. When you give too many visual focuses, you will cause them to get distracted and uncertain on their way through the conversion funnel. So, you need to give them one task and provide them with logical grounds for their decision making. Here are 5 must-have design elements that will help you tell your story and grab a user’s attention in order to make him or her complete your desired action.

• Your company logo at the top that builds strong brand awareness.
• A proposition-focused headline that tells what your product focuses on.
• A sub-headline that explains what your product can do for users.
• A topic-related image that transmits and supports the message of your proposition.
• Benefit bullet points for your proposition.
• Relevant and prominent call-to-action buttons that clearly describe what will happen upon clicking.
• Lead capture form use where appropriate
• Social-proof accolades (testimonials, case-studies, embedded social media posts and social media buttons that open to your popular social pages in separate browser tabs)

While you put the main focus on the simplicity of your landing page visual and content elements layout, you should avoid any negative distracting clutter such as:

– Menu navigation with too many sidetracking links

– Too many call-to-actions per offer

– Too much text

– Freakish hard-to-read fonts

– Lack of white space

Keep in mind that the biggest enemy of your landing page conversion tally is the browser back button. You should put all your effort into making users click on your call-to-action buttons instead of the dreaded browser back button.

If you are in a startup and have no designers to help you build and customize landing pages, Instapage would be of great help to you. It allows you to create mobile responsive landing pages from scratch or based on existing templates, publish on your domain, integrate with a CRM, conduct email marketing and work with other third-party tools, as well as monitor your performance and conversion analytics and run A/B split tests.

5. Streamline your landing pages with the Google mobile-friendly guidelines

In 2015, mobile searches officially surpassed desktop searches. Unless you into business suicide, you will want mobile-friendly versions of your landing pages with a slightly different message in some cases. The fact is that mobile users are more goal-driven, while desktop users are more benefit-driven in their intention. It’s in your power to make your landing pages kindly welcome mobile users with a positive user experience. Meet the following requirements for a better mobile-optimized landing page in order to increase your mobile landing page conversions:

Content

• 3-4 word succinct headlines
• Short actionable call-to-action buttons

Design

• Orderly single-column page layout
• Negative (white) space between clickable elements
• Legible fonts (16 pixels)
• Color contrast between text and background

Usability

• Light-weight page size (less than 20KB)
• Top-oriented and clickable call buttons
• Content accessibility (no flash, frames and plugins)
• Thumb-friendly touch targets (eliminate zooming)

Read more about Google’s requirements for mobile-friendly content in this mobile issues checklist

Tip: Plan your landing pages with mobile search in mind, so you don’t have to scale down your content and layout after the fact.

6. Verify which landing page layout works best with A/B testing

No one likes landing page bounces and exits. You will experience them until you find out why you fail to convert visitors who come to each landing page. A/B testing is a great trial-and-error method for landing page conversion rate optimization.

Set up your original landing page as a control and start running experiments against it. There are five elements of a landing page you can control and test to improve your landing page performance.

• Headline + subheadline
• Copy length
• Image
• The call-to-action
• Form fields
• Explicit directional cues (arrows, pathways etc.)

Read more about some of the aspects of A/B testing for landing page optimization in this post written by our Product Manager and regular WebCEO blog contributor, Helen Vozna. 

Secret hack from WebCEO: With the help of the WebCEO Rank Tracker you can spy on your competitors’ organic and PPC landing pages. Go to Competitor Rankings by Keyword and click on a keyword that is related to your landing page topic. You will see the SERP cached results with the links of your competitor landing pages. Analyze competitor landing pages and find hidden opportunities for your headline copy or call-to-action A/B experiments.

The post 6 Actionable Steps to Build a Top-Selling Landing Page appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Have you heard about the Pareto Rule? This principle was named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who analyzed the Italian land market and found that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population. Eventually people started to apply the Pareto principle to other spheres of life, including business, technology, culture, education, management etc. The rule helps in balancing your business inputs-outputs in the most effective way: set business priorities, find the 20% of the most profitable segments of your business, what your business is good at and minify your spends on the aspects which take a lot of your time and resources and bring less profits.

Here are some common 80/20 rules which construct a paradigm of success in the Business and Digital Marketing world:

• 80% of your website traffic come from 20% of channel sources
• 80% of searchers visit 20% of website pages
• 80% of traffic is generated by 20% of your content
• 80% of profits come from 20% of your clients
• 80% ofsales come from 20% of your products
• 80% of social traffic come from 20% of social media sites

What about the Pareto rule when applying it to SEO and Internet Marketing? Considering the correlation 80/20, the key objective that most of the webmasters face is the optimization of SEO activities in order to reach the perfect correlation – 20% of inputs should bring 80% of outputs.

Let’s focus on what 20% of your inputsthat result in 80% of outputs. The aspects uncovered below are not absolute numbers of the formula of success, but a rough concept that can help you set priorities for a successful SEO Strategy.

20% of Your Niche Keywords Drive 80% of Traffic

Mighty content dandelions grow from little keyword seeds. You should focus on the best…a few dozen keywords in order to build a strong and authoritative blog pieces or landing pages. If you have not yet performed detailed Hummingbird-friendly keyword research or did it too long ago, give it a second wind.

 Keyword Research 

Start with keyword research of your niche in order to pick a list of keywords and phrases that is highly descriptive and relevant to your website theme.

Help tools: the WebCEO Keyword Research Tool → Get Suggestions

 Competitive Research

Dig into your competitor keyword analysis in order to narrow your list of targeted keywords and enrich your keyword basket with the most popular terms you want to compete for

Help tools: The WebCEO Keyword Research Tool → Spy on Competitors

 Search Queries Analyitcs 

Strengthen your keyword pattern with the search queries your website is mostly searchable for.

Help tools: Google Analytics → Search Engine Optimization → Queries + Google Search Console → Search Traffic → Search Analytics.

Update your content and research new keywords once you see a decrease in traffic or once you see your competition performing better than you. Don’t bother to post 7 days a week. Focus on producing the 20% of helpful, creative and timely content that will bring 80% of targeted traffic, quality leads and loyal customers.

20% of Landing Pages Drive the Attention of 80% of Users

When optimizing your website, you should bear in mind that only 20% of your website pages will drive 80% of overall traffic. These 20% of pages are your landing pages, – targeted pages which are critical to the buying process. Landing pages are a kind of accelerant for users to take actions and the efficiency of this depends on the transparency of the areas that users interact with in order to complete actions. That’s why you should focus on optimization of key aspects of your landing pages such as user experience and on-page SEO (keywords and internal links).

Landing Page SEO

If your website already receives some traffic, sit and analyze what pages of your website perform better than others. As soon as you find the pages visitors are mostly engaged with, dive deep into their on-page SEO

Help tools: Google Analytics → Search Engine Optimization → Landing Pages + Google Search Console → Search Traffic → Search Analytics.

Bonus tool: Web CEO Google Search Analytics provides you not only with analytics on your top pages found in search, but also allows you to mark the best performing pages as landing pages in order to further work with them in the Landing Page SEO tool of WebCEO.

User Experience Optimization

The interface and design of a landing page plays a critical role in the customer acquisition process. In order to find what 20% of page areas cause 80% of user actions, conduct the visualization and optimization of a page heatmap with the help of website heatmap tools.

Help tools: Crazy Egg.

Internal Links Analysis and Optimization

The Internal Links Structure of a website is critical both in the context of user experience, search visibility and SEO. An in-depth and user-friendly internal links map can significantly improve your landing page click-through rate, help search enginesindex and understand deeper pages of your site quickly, and thus increase your visibility and rankings.

Try to improve your website navigation in order to tie visitors to each of your landing pages and help them take actions on your site with the help of a robust internal links optimization.

Help tools: the WebCEO Internal Links Optimization tool

20% of Your Inbound Links Pass 80% of Link Juice

The quality of content is responsible for the quality of your backlinks. The better the content, the better the backlinks. But you should be aware of the fact that only 20% of your backlink profile passes the 80% of link juice that really affects your SEO. Of great importance is the type of backlink, its placement, anchor text and the source it’s put on.

In order to gain more benefits from the backlinks you build, you should first examine which of your external links bring the most value to your website. Then you can try to earn more of this type of backlinks. Analyze your competitors’ backlink profile for further link prospecting

Help tools: the WebCEO Backlink Quality Check tool + the WebCEO Competitor Backlink Spy tool + Ahrefs

Sign Up for the WebCEO all-in-one SEO platform in order to minify your SEO inputs.

If you have applied the 20/80 system to your SEO and marketing strategy and are ready to share your experience, feel free to share it using the comments section.

The post Pareto Rule in SEO: What 20% of Your Inputs Bring 80% of Outputs appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Marketers tend to be obsessed with high rankings but the final goal of good content marketing is traffic.  Targeted traffic shows up at your door when you’ve optimized your site for the right SEO keywords. What helps you to find the right keywords? Detailed keyword research is crucial. Then, instead of being obsessed with high rankings for your targeted keywords, think of the conversion rate for each of them and optimize for that. It is conversion that helps you to pay the bills.

When you do research for high converting keywords you should focus on a “cluster,” not on a “core”. Having a very limited targeted keywords cloud can cause you to sink in competition bog and miss your chance to attract targeted and high converting traffic. Richard Jacobs (an Attorney Marketing Specialist at Speakeasy Marketing Inc.) likened a keyword to a dandelion in his Dandelion Keyword Theory:

This concerns both SEO and PPC efforts. When you are bidding on a particular phrase or long-tail term…you should not bid on that particular keyword but on patterns surrounding it. Think of your targeted  SEO keywords as a circle tangent to a larger area outside of your circle; the bigger your circle of keywords, the larger will be the number of search queries related to your selected SEO keywords realm.

As soon as you realize that keywords are not only about rankings, start to build a semantic core from your main keyword’s fluffy halo. With special thanks to the Zamurai Blogger, here are some types of keywords that can convert extremely well if optimized and implemented properly:

1.  User Intent keywords. These are mainly long tail question phrases and conversational terms real searchers use. Examples would be “Who’s the best lawyer in Dodge City” or “I want to buy a wedding dress in downtown Seattle”. Most of us ask concrete questions and type in detailed queries to reduce the time and efforts on searching of what we need. Your task is to reduce your competitor chances to appear higher than you in search results.
2.  Local Terms. These are keywords and phrases that include a nearby location. If your business has a physical location than this type of keyword is a must if you want to drive high converting searchers to your site.
3.  User Decision Making Analysis Keywords. Many people will not only type in “What is the best product in XYZ Category” or “What is the best pizza place in Manhattan” but they will search for “Review Products XYZ Category” or “Comparison of Manhattan Pizza Places.” You can post a review or comparison of your product with another product to handle such queries. Searchers may be looking for case studies with which to make their decisions such as “Customer experiences XYZ Category,” so you will want to write about some of your satisfied customers as case studies. Other customers are specifically looking for special offers and discounts, so you will want to have active landing pages with some special offers going most of the time and visible on search engines. Then build your anchor texts around all these ”decision making” keywords and see how your conversion rate starts to grow.
4. List Keywords. People love structured lists. Write posts and optimize landing pages for keyword phrases like “Top 10 of…”, “6 reasons why you should…”, “A list of…” etc.
5. Thought Leader Keywords. Some product categories have been made famous by or are associated with a celebrity or thought leader and their actual or potential endorsement of a product would be important for a buyer to make a decision. You may want to optimize some pages for keywords like “What is Sean Connery’s favorite hotel in Scotland” or “What Martini Brand would James Bond prefer” even if your product wasn’t specifically recommended by them. As long as your content doesn’t lie and is very interesting to readers, it can provide you with a lot of targeted traffic. For instance, if you owned a hotel in Scotland, you could provide a list of a few hotels Sean Connery would probably like and playfully state that he is welcome anytime at your hotel. Optimally, you will want to write about how you got the real attention of someone whose opinion would be valued for your product category.

Here are several places where you can do research for high conversion keywords:

• Google Analytics →Acquisition → Search Engine Optimization → Queries report. These are the real intent-based keywords that have brought folks directly to your site. If you really want to increase your conversion rate this is the first place you should look for high converting terms.
• Keyword cluster provided in the WebCEO Keyword Research tool suggestions. The key features of this tool allow you to select the most effective keywords thanks to our keyword parameter range filters of global searches, local searches, bid competition and KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index).

• Google search related suggestions. This is the easiest way to look for searches typed in by other users. Type in all possible questions and conversational phrases that are relevant to your site. As soon as you click on a search button, Google will provide the most relevant and popular combinations closely related to your search query at the bottom of the first page. Another option is the Google Autocomplete predictions that are enabled when you type in some query and see all possible suggestions dropped down from the search box.
• If your site is complex and  you don’t have an on-site search option installed on your website yet, you’d better implement this because Google Analytics will retain this data and you can then get more alternative keyword clusters that you can focus on for better SEO and PPC campaigns. An internal search data analysis allows you to see the search terms that greatly differ from the external search queries provided in Google Analytics. The point is that user search intent on Google is more generic while onsite user search intent is more specific.

Don’t forget to give extra attention to your high conversion keywords and thematically optimized landing pages.. Give your content, that is rich in targeted converting keywords, a boost via social channel sharing and link building.

Tip: Your content theme and keyword clusters should be supported by diverse internal link texts. WebCEO Internal Links Optimization Guide will help you to analyze your link texts and fine-tune a strong semantic field for your landing pages so you can get higher rankings for your targeted search queries.

The post 5 Must-Have Keywords to Increase Organic Conversions appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.