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.

What is technical SEO?

The term “technical SEO” is usually used to describe any SEO work aside from the content. It is the optimal way to deal with the rules and limitations search engines provide. Technical SEO covers a broad range of subjects helping your site to be better crawled and indexed by search engine bots.

I’ve talked to my fellow SEOers and distilled a technical SEO checklist that will be especially important when you work on a new site.

1. Protect your site from negative SEO

Sometimes competitors play dirty and do not shun any means to outrank you. I hope your site will never be attacked, but it is always better to be prepared. Negative SEO can result in lost organic search visibility and revenue. Regular backlink monitoring may save your site. If you suddenly see a huge spike or drop and you haven’t been working on link building, immediately investigate what happened.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Backlink Quality Check tool

With the help of the WebCEO Backlink Quality Check you can monitor how many backlinks your site has. If you see a spike or drop on “Total Backlinks” widget in the tool summary, dig into your backlinks to understand what the reason was.

I recommend that you check backlinks weekly to be sure you never miss a negative SEO attack.

2. Check your semantic structure

Semantic structure relates to the way HTML tags are displayed on a given web page. The idea is that your HTML markup should convey the underlying meaning of your content, not its appearance. Correct semantic structure makes it easier for search engines, screen readers, and other machines to identify the different parts of your website.

Search engines are happy when you use H1-H6 tags the right way and add ALT attributes to you images.

Tools to use: The WebCEO On-Site Issues Overview tool

The WebCEO On-Site Issues Overview tool will inspect every page of your site and tell you if there are pages with any semantic HTML issues. You will be notified if H1 headings, Title tags or ALT attributes are missing, or if there is more than one H1 tag, etc.

3. Optimize for mobile

Google has officially said that a majority of its searches are now mobile-driven and that they have migrated toward a mobile-first index. When doing a technical SEO audit, it is now critical to not only review how the desktop Googlebot accesses your site content but also how Google’s mobile crawler does.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Mobile Optimization tool

The WebCEO Mobile Optimization tool detects mobile SEO issues that may influence your landing page rankings in mobile search. It provides you with easy-to-follow advice and recommendations on how to fix the issues.

4. Optimize page load speed

I keep on saying that page load speed matters both for your visitors and search engines. Impatient visitors don’t like waiting, and Google says they are using your mobile page speed for ranking. Check your page speed and do your best to improve the page load speed.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Page Speed tool

The Page Speed test will detect the issues that make your page load time longer; it will also give you practical tips on how to fix each issue and increase page speed.

5. Remove broken links

Broken links are not only bad for user experience but can also be harmful to your site’s SEO. If there are dead links on your website, it can stop search engine spiders from crawling your site and, thus, indexing it. Google clearly wants to send its searchers to high-quality websites, and broken links are like red flags that yell: “This site is neglected, go away!”

It’s crucial to detect and fix broken links as soon as possible.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Technical Audit tool

Use the WebCEO Technical Audit Tool to check your site for broken links and anchors, slow pages and server issues, missing images and inaccessible pages. To react lighten-fast you should set up email alerts. With email alerts set, you will get instant notifications about any site problems.

Get Tools for a Technical SEO Check
Sign Up for a Free 14-Day Trial!

The post Technical SEO Checklist for New Websites. Best Practices Only appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

I first SEOed a site in 2006. It was the site of the Health Care Center held by my friend’s father. We got requests from different countries and helped hundreds of people. Since then I’ve believed in the power of Internet and search engines. For 10 years SEO has been my profession. Only now, when it is kind of hobby, I can see how exhaustive SEO tasks can be. I’ve distilled my experience for you and want to share the strategy of SEO automation that has been working well for me for 10 years. It has saved me from SEO burnout.

Generate more leads to work on a good variety of SEO projects

It may sound odd but I recommend getting more SEO jobs to get away from just one job. I strongly believe that a change is as good as a rest. Optimization is a continuous process. Working for a long time on technical SEO or landing page content optimization can get rather boring. I always try to spice my days up with a good variety of SEO tasks. Therefore, I prefer having a good variety of projects to work on.

Action steps:

1. Automate SEO lead generation.

You can use the WebCEO SEO lead generation widget to passively generate high quality leads from your agency website. With the lead generation widget, you can add a branded “Free SEO report” (you can customize the call to action for such a button on your website).

Once the button is on your site, site visitors will click it, and provide you with their website URL and email address, in exchange for a free all-in-one SEO audit report.

Now you have a list of qualified leads interested in receiving your SEO help. You only have to contact them, show how you can help them, and close a deal!

2. Get more SEO leads by generating quick SEO reports.

We all know that the ability to say “no” to clients who will do nothing more than stress you out is one of life’s most important lessons. If you are one who prefers to choose clients, I have a tool that will help you.

Before you reach out to a cold lead, generate an SEO lead report that will show the SEO performance of the prospect’s site in a clear visual manner. All you need is to add a URL and your lead’s email (optional), after which WebCEO will do the hard job of analyzing the website.

Your only task is to explain how your services will improve the SEO performance of the analyzed site and a deal is done.

Join WebCEO and Start SEO Lead Generation

Automate SEO reporting and cut the manual job off

It doesn’t matter if you are a left-brainer or a right one, I’ll bet you spend a lot of time with Google Analytics, or with ranking or linking reports. You will spend even more time distilling the most important information and presenting it all in layman’s terms for your clients. My advice is: use automatic reporting and SEO widgets.

Action steps:

1. Create a custom SEO widget set for client reporting.

With the WebCEO widgets you can create custom sets to fit your needs. I usually create two different sets of widgets: one for client reporting, and another for me. The “Client reporting” set includes some basic web analytics graphs, an average ranking position trend, total backlinks and the total backlinks of competitors.

2. Use the WebCEO Main Dashboard to analyze your SEO projects’ health.

The Main Dashboard is a helicopter view of all the SEO projects you are working on with WebCEO. The Main Dashboard is the first thing you see when you log into your WebCEO account. It helps you to detect immediately what projects need your attention and then take action.

3. Show the progress of your SEO campaigns with an all-in-one SEO report.

The best thing about an all-in-one SEO report – it can be emailed automatically on schedule. You need to set a scheduled scanning for the SEO projects you want to report on, then add widgets and reports you need (I recommend to add more widgets as they are easier to interpret), and grab yourself a cup of coffee while reports are being done by themselves.

Share SEO tasks with your marketing team

Take your work/life balance under control and share various SEO tasks with your team. The WebCEO Task Manager helps to organize and structure a team’s SEO workflow smoothly. We announced this long-awaited Task Manager in January and after two months it’s become one of the most used tools (after the Rank Tracking tool, of course).

Action steps:

1. Utilize automated SEO workflow on all your SEO projects.

You can use the predefined promotion plans created by the WebCEO analytics team or create a bunch of your own. These plans with estimates and defined deadlines will save you from working when your work day has ended.

2. Delegate various tasks to your SEO team members.

You can easily assign tasks to your team members via the Task Management tool. Each team member can get a bird’s-eye view of their current work volume. They can see a general deadline for each promoted project and deadlines for each specific task to manage their work schedule efficiently.

Sign Up for the WebCEO Tools
and Automate Your Daily SEO Tasks

The post How SEO Automation Will Save You From Burnout appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

In my childhood, there was a popular poetry book with the subtitle “for naughty children only!” From this book you could learn that it is OK to jump out the window with your mom’s umbrella, or that you can draw a portrait of your granny on a wall as a birthday present for her. “There are naughty children who always do exactly the opposite of what they are told to do. For these children the book has been written.”

I found this book when I visited my parents on Christmas vacation and immediately had an idea for a blog post! Let’s imagine what fake SEO advice your competitors would be happy to give you.

1. Test your site on your own monitor only. If your site looks good on your own computer, it will look good on all devices.

No, it won’t. Today desktop screen resolutions vary widely, and that’s without mentioning mobile devices! You should ensure your site visitors have the best experience using your site on their devices. To do this, go to your Google Analytics → Audience → Browser & OS. Here select “Screen resolution” as a primary dimension and “Browser size” as a secondary one.

This report will show what screen resolutions your visitors have. Now you can see your site through their eyes. If you use the Chrome browser, as I do, you can use the Resolution test plugin or any other tool that lets you imitate different screen sizes.

2. Make the website load slowly to make your visitors spend more time on it.

Slow pages annoy both search engines and visitors. The content of your site is the power that can involve users and keep them on your site. How will you know if your site pages are fast enough? Use WebCEO’s Website Audit Tool and check the Speed Optimization report.

The best advice is: “Check the page speed score for all your important pages and fix the issues WebCEO has found.”

3. Give your visitors more choices.

Well, this one is tricky. Having choices is considered a good thing. However, the more choices a website offers, the harder it is for a visitor to choose something.

Hick’s Law says that increasing the number of choices will increase decision time logarithmically. A user overwhelmed with choices often decides to leave. The “jam experiment” provided by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper proves this. If you are not familiar with the experiment I will retell you in brief: it was found that consumers were 10 times more likely to purchase jam on display when the number of jams available was reduced from 24 to 6. More choice, fewer sales.

How to use this knowledge on your site:

• If you want your readers to share your content, give them a limited number of ways to do so. Just pick the most important social sharing icons and not clutter your site with the rest.
• On a landing page, don’t try to make the entire sale; instead, convince visitors to take one action. Remember, that a single offer asks customers to make one decision.
• Don’t try to display all your options on a home page. Leave only the most important ones.

4. Optimize different pages for the same keywords.

Keyword cannibalism is still a thing. The problem of having multiple pages targeting the same keywords is as awful as it sounds. Why is it a problem?

When each page of a website is focusing on the same set of keywords, search engines need to choose which page is more relevant for optimized query and decide what page to show in SERPs. This means that pages that should convert visitors into clients will compete with the whole internet and even other pages of your site!

To avoid keyword cannibalization, decide which pages on your site you should optimize for which keywords. WebCEO’s Keyword Research can help you to find the most effective keywords that will enhance your website’s visibility, attract a targeted audience, and improve your search engine rankings.

5. Use more & more pop-ups to grab visitor attention.

In 2004 pop-up windows were called the most hated advertising technique – 95% of users asked by John Boyd from Yahoo! and Christian Rohrer from eBay rated this technique the most negatively. Over the past few years, pop-ups have re-emerged as a popular marketing tactic for growing email lists, promoting content and lead generation.

Do you need those passive-aggressive pop-ups to get more subscribers? Some AWeber research shows that a pop-up subscription form drove 1,375% more subscriptions.

Surely we do not call to sacrifice site performance for user experience. We call you to create only user-friendly pop-ups that convert users!

• Think about how people interact with your site and show pop-ups only when they are appropriate. For example, you can suggest that visitors subscribe to new blog posts when someone scrolls down the page as she reads the content.
• Offer something valuable. You can offer a free ebook or a coupon code for a person who spent a specific amount of time on your pages.
• Don’t ruin the mobile experience. Pop-ups are so distracting on mobile devices that Google even promised to penalize sites for using them.

Share your best “fake SEO advice” in comments!

The post 5 Instances of Fake SEO Advice Your Competitors Will Be Happy to Give You 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.

The trends in SEO shift like a clock. Several years ago, internet companies worked hard to generate traffic. Today, high traffic is not a long-run objective and it doesn’t always bring you high ROI. With a new generation of big data players the stakes are high in SEO industry. SEO gurus and internet marketers spread themselves out to build a strong online presence and create an effective conversion funnel. Lead generation is the critical point in any conversion funnel, the liaison between traffic generation and customer acquisition.

According to the SEO survey provided by Conductor, [Tweet “60% of surveyed enterprise companies consider lead generation one of the leading marketing objectives in 2015.”]

What are the most common ways to generate SEO leads?

Now, that you are ready to improve your lead generation strategy for your SEO agency, choose the best ways and techniques. There are 2 well known ways to generate some prospects:

• Paid lead generation. The most common ways of generating SEO leads is email marketing, cold calls, PPC, Facebook/Twitter ads, remarketing. There is also a direct way of buying leads via third-party services.This is the worst technique, because paying for SEO leads is now considered an old-fashioned and rotten technique. You’d better walk on by when you get generic propositions of getting # of SEO leads for $500 -…Let’s face the truth. You don’t know what quality these leads are, how many of this crowd are cash prospects and how many are blanks. You would have better luck with your own,“manupropria” leads than with uncertain junk that may have also been sold to someone else.

• Organic Lead Generation. Organic SEO leads come from organic traffic through Google (Bing, Yahoo!) search and social media channels as a result of your content optimization and promotion. It is the hardest indirect way to convert visitors into customers. Sometimes it works, but in most cases it can take months to generate leads and convert them with the help of just content. You can produce hundreds of posts, infographics and guides on SEO topics with “Ask about our Services” links and forms, but only a few such leads will pan out.

Lead Nurturing as a key part of lead generation

When you go fishing you always take the most attractive and nurturing live bait in order to get a fine catch. The same strategy should be used when you “fish” for leads. Before capturing SEO leads, you should give them satisfying information, specifically about them, that would attract their interest to your offer and make them want your services.

The best strategy for you to generate qualified leads and convert them into loyal customers is to run lead nurturing campaigns. Lead nurturing is the process of capturing, informing, educating, involving and converting your site visitors. There are a lot of techniques and practices of lead nurturing, which include display and social ads, emails, supporting content, online interactions via social media, forums and communities, etc.

How can Web CEO help you easily generate and nurture five-star SEO leads?

We, at WebCEO, have just released an innovative Lead Generation Module that comes as a bonus to our Agency Unlimited SEO tools set. Instead of promoting your SEO services to your prospects through exhaustive cold calling, expensive display ads, annoying email newsletters, you can cost-effectively place our Lead Generation Widget button on your website and issue Express SEO Audit reports even while you’re sleeping.

There are two strategies for the double-quick generation and nurturing of the SEO leads you will get with the help of the Web CEO Lead Generation tools.

Free-of-charge Express SEO Audits

Let’s say you already have some prospects in mind. You make arrangements for a meeting, phone or Skype call. An Express SEO Audit can serve as a good SEO tool at hand that will help you persuade her to order your SEO service on the spot. It takes no longer than a couple of minutes to generate an express SEO report. You will not have to add a new project and run multiple tools at once. All the SEO data you will need, including SEO analysis, technical audit, rankings, backlink data and web analytics will be provided within one single SEO report after one-click effort.Chances are, your lead contacts will understand that they have some serious issues with their sites and they will WANT to order your services after seeing a BOOtiful SEO report that discusses (without revealing more detail than you want them to have at this point) all the SEO issues which keep their site from high rankings.

An SEO Lead Generation Widget button placed on your site

For those who offer SEO services, the best way to get SEO leads is to showcase your potential to your prospects. The best way to demonstrate your business solutions is to provide your leads with a quick analysis of their SEO status with all the issues they have. An Express SEO Audit is what you and your future customer need. Once you have added a branded SEO leadgen button provided by the Web CEO SEO platform on any page of your website in the most fitting part of the page, you will start to automatically generate free-of-charge SEO reports to your visitors which show an overall performance of visitors’ sites via the popup fill-in-the-form widget. Every lead that was captured with a free express SEO audit report will automatically appear in the SEO leads tab of your Lead Generation module. You will be able to see contact details and look through the SEO insights of your prospects’ sites.

Build an effective SEO lead generation strategy with the help of the Web CEO lead generation tools in order to get more high quality SEO leads into your business’s fish net and increase your sales revenue.

The post 2 Passive Ways to Generate Five-Star SEO Leads Using Web CEO appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

With the weather getting hotter, Google has been aggressively rolling out update after update. It all started with the Google Mobile-Friendly Update aka Mobilegeddon. Then it was followed by speculations about an additional Google Mobile Search Update dubbed Platypus and confirmations of a ‘Phantom 2 Update’. The latter update was first noticed on 4/29 and has been confirmed to be non Panda, Penguin or Mobile Algo related. It targets the overall quality of search results. Google Phantom 2 seems pretty similar to the Google Phantom Algo tweak rolled out in early May, 2013. Not long after that, Google Penguin 2.0 hit websites. This means we should be on the lookout for the next big Penguin update. Some experts have already confirmed information about an upcoming link spam penalizing algo update.

With another big Google Penguin Update always round the corner, you will need to keep your backlink profile audit constantly updated and free of suspicious link referrals.

What kind of backlinks are in Google’s favor

Most webmasters and SEOs understand link building too literally and treat it as the main way to increase popularity on the web and gain higher rankings. No, no, and again, no! Google sees your backlinks as one measure of your content credibility; something that is built upon relationships with people. Earning quality backlinks has become more holistic and complex, where you should build your link profile manually, with a long-term, solid perspective. In the Post-Penguin era Google validates and ranks only those links built in a natural, non-manipulative way:

Editorial links are a common definition for the kind of backlinks that are generated in an organic, non-promotional way via trustworthy industry-level sources.   Make use of some of the 7 ways to earn editorial links provided by Amanda DiSilvestro in order to pass editorial link juice to your backling profile.

Implied Links are one of the safest type of backlinks. These are not actual hyperlinks, but just mentions of your website name or domain name that can dramatically benefit your backlink profile bringing a strong connection between your brand mentions and your site.

Social citations. Though providing nofollow value, social links are in play and are used to measure the power of your content. Let’s see how it works. You write a post on your blog, or elsewhere. What’s next? You send a newsletter email to your clients about your new article. With this kind of scenario you would hardly get new traffic to your site and earn more than a few inbound links. You will need to be out there diligently promoting your content asset (unique and informative or interactive) on every single social network where your potential clients might be. You may still get only 9 or 10 likes or shares per post, but then Google will compare your performance to that of others in your industry. The most effective social networks and platforms for building social citations are:

• Twitter, which is one of the top social networks for generating social citations and where individual posts are now a full-fledged part of Google search results pages. Read about the prospects of the latest Google-Twitter deal for your business and learn what factors can help you get posts into Google organic search listings and generate a great portion of new traffic.
• LinkedIn is a perfect place for sharing links to your content (LinkedIn Profile/Group) and blog posts (Pulse) in order to build your personal brand authority and earn new professional connections.
• Facebook is the right place to keep your audience informed about your company updates, special offers, industry news etc. The more your audience likes and shares your Facebook posts, the more you will expand your target audience (their friends) and your social link profile (Google records how many likes and shares posts receive that have your domain linked in them).
• Reddit/StumpleUpon/Growthhackers are powerful social media platforms for direct links distribution and branded content promotion. Remember that you should be proactive and unbiased. Share not only your content but provide useful assets with links to other sources.
• Quora is one of the most authoritative Q/A expert communities where you can generate links (nofollow) back to your site right in your in-depth answers and grow your personal brand authority and awareness. Quora is also a great source for attracting well-targeted traffic with a high conversion rate.

In a link building perspective, quora links may be officially nofollow, but they are highly indexable and rankable by Google.

Guest Posting is still in play if done in an unbiased non-promotional way. Guest posting can do more harm than good if you write for your own SEO benefits. Your approach to guest blogging should be like your approach to charity, which is altruistic as well as good for building trust and authority to your persona and creating a strong expert connections network where you’ll see pay-offs down the road. If you link to yourself from a guest post platform, consider linking indirectly to your Twitter platform. Read more about ways to find guest blogging opportunities at Social Media Examiner.

Co-citation is another effective way to build relative links back to your site. Co-citations are the link references cited on a single source page to two or more external related sources. This means that you will want to be listed with your competitors as much as possible. The most powerful method of building co-citations is competitive backlink analysis. The WebCEO Competitor Backlink Spy tool will help you to prospect high quality, niche-related links from third-party websites in order to get listed alongside your competitors.

Google will be totally happy with your website if you balance your link building strategy with all the above mentioned backlink types. Google doesn’t like it when SEOs go overboard with one single link building technique in their strategy. Ann Smarty learned a lesson after big G disgraced her “baby,” MyBlogGuest, last year for abusing of link schemes.  (Read about link spam/toxic links over two sections below)

The backlink data you should take under control in order to claim higher rankings.

Here are some of the essential backlink factors that determine link quality.

# of Linking Pages – Links coming from multiple unique and relevant pages = a strong ranking factor

# of Linking Domains – The number of linking domains is critical for determining the quality of your link profile. However, the quality of linking domains is more important than their quantity. Having 1000 links on 100 high quality domains is better than having 100000 low quality backlinks on 100 domains with low authority.

Linking Domain Age – Google likes backlinks hosted on older domains more than those hosted on new ones.

Linking Domain Authority – Google pays more attention to the links from domains with a high Home PR (they are now replacing PageRank with rankings measured by others in the industry).

Linking Domains Diversity – Google may consider an excessive number of links coming from the same exact domain a negative manipulative link building technique.

Page Rank of Linking Page/Page Rank of Home Page – The age of the linking page and linking domain determines its authority. The higher the better.

Backlink Anchor Text – Google sees the anchor text as a descriptor of a linked page. A backlink with a relevant anchor text is a powerful ranking factor.

Linking Domain Relevancy/Page-Level Relevancy – Since the Hummingbird Update, Google seeks to understand the theme of each site and gives more value to the linking domains and pages that are relevant to your site’s theme.

Location of Backlink – Contextual links are more valuable than those placed in navigation sections of linking sites. Sitewide links are considered low quality and manipulative.

% of Nofollow Links – Having lots of links with rel=”nofollow” status should be part of a natural link profile. Google doesn’t count them but pay attention to their presence in your link profile.

# of Social Shares of Linking Page – Linking page is considered valuable if it has a number of social shares and likes, i.e. brings natural traffic.

Ahrefs Domain Rank/Ahrefs URL Rank – These measure how valuable a referring domain/page is by verifying the number and quality of the backlinks they get themselves.

Backlinks Velocity – It provides the trend of your backlink profile for natural/unnatural growth.

What is a toxic link and how do you identify one?

When some of the above mentioned factors are devalued or abused, Google may consider one of your backlinks as manipulative spam link. If your link profile includes more than 20% toxic links you are in the Google Penguin Penalty risk group. For your backlink profile safety, WebCEO has created a specific toxicity formula that helps to identify toxic links.

According to this formula and Google Penguin-proof link building guidelines, backlinks are considered toxic in the these common cases:

• linking page has an excessive number of outgoing links
• backlinks are part of a network of links coming from the same linking domain/subnet/IP
• high % of sitewide links (placed in footers, headers, sidebars)
• high % of links with the same exact (generic) anchor text
• high % of directory backlinks, backlinks from comment sections and guest post backlinks (if they are not nofollow).

If you have thousands of backlinks and don’t know if there are toxic links among them, be sure to use our Backlink Quality Checker to find and detox harmful links.

The Algorithm of the Backlink SEO Audit:

For an effective Google Penguin-friendly linkbuilding strategy, WebCEO shares its best recommendations based on Google guidelines, our tried-and-tested techniques and customer experiences.

Once you have the needed SEO backlink data and a comprehensive backlink quality check tool at hand it’s time to get your all-in-one backlinks report which should provide solutions to problems related to:

1. Linking Domains Analysis.

A weighted analysis of the linking domains to your site is the first thing you should start with, in your Backlink Profile SEO Audit. A comprehensive report should provide information on how many links are coming from one single domain, how many juicy links it passes, what % of toxic links and nofollow links it provides. Such data as Home PR, Ahrefs Domain Rank will show the authority of a domain.

2. Linking Pages Analysis.

The analysis of a linking page should include insights about what anchor text it uses, what page of your site it targets, its quality (Google PR, Home PR, Ahrefs URL Rank) and status (dofollow, nofollow or suspected toxic) data.

3. Broken Link Check

Using WebCEO’s “Chosen Links Watch,” be sure to check the availability of your most important backlinks to search engines (you may have just redesigned your site and accidentally eliminated a page that had a great backlink to it). If your backlink profile has a lot of broken inbound links this may negatively affect your overall rankings.

4. Backlink Anchor Text Analysis.

Pay special attention to your backlink anchor texts, because they are the cover of your backlink profile. Check the diversity of your anchors, the number of exact-match anchors, how much link juice your link texts pass, how many source domains use this or that anchor text etc.

5. Linked Pages Analysis. The quality of backlinks is partially identified by those of your website pages that they are linking to. Be sure to check your most linked pages and determine if the backlinks to the pages are related and descriptive and diverse.

6. Toxic Links Analysis.

Once you check your backlink profile for shortcomings and have found the most harmful ones, you should add them to your get-rid-of list.

7. Competitor link profile analysis.

Competitve backlinks analysis is crucial for identifying weaknesses and strengths in your current link building strategy. You may consider sites linking to your competitors as your link prospects.  Evaluate your competitors’ backlinks in order to pick the most relevant and valuable with a high page ranking as determined by independent sources like Ahrefs and preferably from EDU. and ORG. domains.

If you don’t have a backlink checker tool on hand to conduct an audit of all of this complex backlink data, sigh up free for WebCEO to try our Backlink Quality Checker reporting tools and the Technical Audit tool.

Reminder: Be sure to audit your backlink profile on a regular basis, such as once per quarter, in order to keep your site safe and forget about having Penguin mania.

The post How to Keep Your Backlink Profile Ever Clean appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

It’s been a week since the Google Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Update rolled out. It is a long-running update and it continues to affect websites that are compliant or non-compliant with the Google mobile search guidelines.  Most webmasters claim the update seems to be insignificant and only a few major websites like Reddit suffered from being hit by Google Mobilegeddon. However the list of losers and winners is not final. Google reports that the update may take weeks to roll out.

If you noticed that your website saw a significant mobile traffic drop you are likely to make it into the Google Mobile-friendly post-apocalyptic zone. It should be no big deal, because Google updates its mobile-friendly data on a regular basis.

The good news is that you can regain your lost visibility score and earn Google’s mobile–friendly label reward. In our Mobile SEO Issues Checklist you will learn about the 10 Horsemen of the Google Mobile Apocalypse and the ways to sweep them away.

Remember to check how well your website is optimized for mobiles with WebCEO’s Website Audit Tool.

The post Taming the 10 Horses of the Mobile Apocalypse appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

One of our customers asked a question: “How do I get on Google Places with multiple business locations?”  A simple answer might be: “Yes, sure! All you need to do is to visit Google My Business Locations (formerly Google Places) within your Google+ business account where you can import and verify your business locations list. It will take an hour of your time.” Then you may just sit and wait.

The problem with multiple business location management is not new, but still has some unclear aspects. One click submission of your multiple business locations to Google might be important, but it is the last step on the way of your successful local SEO strategy. The bulk locations uploading should be preceded by more important local SEO efforts.

To maximize geo-targeted SERP listings and increase local search domination for your multiple local business areas, you should follow some recommendations from Google Local Business guidelines and experts in local SEO.

Create Subdirectories Under One Single Domain

Keeping one single domain name with separate city-specific subdirectories (http://mysite.com/city) will minimize your SEO efforts and save you a lot of time and money. Having city-specific subfolders (subdirectories) with unique content and contact details for each location is a perfect SEO solution. Remember that we are not talking about creating sub-domains like city.mysite.com.

Create Location-Specific Landing Pages

As soon, as you have built proper site domain structure to benefit your local SEO, focus on creating location-specific landing pages that will contain unique geo-specific content and contact information relevant to the audience you target. What kind of content can you use to attract location-specific residents or tourists? Upload photos, publish testimonials and local news, describe upcoming events and dress your targeted keywords with geo-descriptors by putting them into the most SEO-valuable page elements (i.e.: page titles, H1 tags, image tags etc.). Go heavy on neighborhood descriptions (landmarks, nearby parks, malls etc.) on your local landing pages with images of these neighborhoods properly tagged. Such hyperlocal targeting (neighborhood descriptions) may bring additional SEO benefits and help your online visitors get a good sense of your business locations. Be careful about duplicates in your local content.

Tip: Be sure to submit each of your local landing page URLs to your website HTML sitemap in order to let search engines index them quickly.  You can use Geo Sitemap Generator to give Google accurate coordinates of your business locations.

Implement Local Schema Markup

Next, you should pattern your unstructured local data into structured tags. This will help search engines pick the most important elements from your multiple business location pages and display them in local SERP listings as structured snippets. Be sure to markup the most important local content (address, unique-per-location phone number, prices, business hours, map etc.) with specific schema tags for local businesses.

Run a Technical Audit and SEO Analysis

Run an SEO audit and content optimization analysis of your geo-specific pages in order to fix and improve critical aspects of your content.

1. Check your website’s general and local-focused URL structure for technical issues and access errors.
2. Make a deep SEO analysis of your location-specific landing pages for targeted terms + geo modifiers.
3. Check your local-focused content for mobile optimization bottlenecks since most local searches are made on mobile devices.

Refine citations for your multiple business locations

A citation is a non-linked mention of your local business NAP (name, address, phone number) information on specific citation listing sites. The citation factor is now a part of Google local algorithm hierarchy. So, if you want to be easily found in local SERP listings, submission to local directory sites like Yelp, Bing local, Google+, Foursquare, Yahoo Local is not a recommendation, but a must! Before you refine your local citations on business directories, you will need to check the consistency of your NAP information on all your local service pages and maybe use paid but time-saving data aggregators like Acxiom, Localeze and Infogroup for effective business listing management. Only a few local citation directories provide multi-location bulk submission for free. These are Foursquare, Bing Local and Google My Business.

Create a Google+ Business page

Once you are done with all the on-site local optimization and local citation submissions, feel free to strengthen your online presence for local search by building one descriptive and interactive Google+ Business Page or location-specific business pages. Then all depends on your time and resources in terms of making sure you get a relevant following for that page.

The post 6 Steps to Help a Multi-Location Business Dominate Local Search appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

What does search engine optimization (SEO) and mobile readiness have in common? A lot more than you think. In 2014, mobile readiness officially arrived, which means that most people now do their research on smartphones before making a buying decision (regardless of where that final purchase is made), and there are more people using mobile devices compared to desktops. Of course, it was also a year of Panda and Penguin updates.

What changes will mobile readiness bring to SEO? A few, but it’s also a reminder to keep up with SEO best practices in general. Heading into 2015, here are a few ways to let the mobile world drive your SEO strategy:

1. Speed (really) counts

The New York Times reports that users won’t wait long for a slow loading site, and it generally takes longer for pages to load on a mobile device rather than a desktop. Plus, speed is one of the ranking factors for SEO in general. Google doesn’t want users to be stuck waiting for a slow page to load when there are faster quality websites out there. There are many ways to increase your speed, such as getting a mobile version of a website (key in mobile readiness!), changing your web host, or ditching the flash.

In fact, there’s now a Mobile Optimization report just a click away where you can get SEO reports for your website’s optimization via mobile gadgets, complete with page speed (mobile and desktop) analysis. This is where and how you can find out whether your audience is getting your full mobile experience (or not!).

2. Embrace responsive design

Not all “mobile readiness” is responsive design. In its simplest form, responsive design is a way of designing a website so that it loads beautifully and quickly no matter what browser or device is being used. Another option for a user-friendly mobile experience is to have a mobile version of your site. Whatever option you choose, both of them have their pros and cons. Obviously, you will need to make sure your website looks great on the latest smartphone…but also on a five year old laptop. 

3. Content needs to be shorter and sweeter

“Content is king!” will continue to be the rally cry of SEO experts, but in a mobile world it needs to be shorter, more engaging and any images need to be properly sized and formatted. If you want to include more infographics on your site or blog (great idea!), check out Social Media Examiner’s tips on doing so the right way.

4. Keep a closer eye on your reviews

Reviews, for better or worse, play a key part in SEO and more and more users will be checking them out as they peruse their smartphone in line, on their commute or (sadly) even while on a date. While you can’t control the reviews of others, you can request that abusive reviews be removed, address the issues publicly and directly (while fixing  them), or encourage positive reviews by offering your customers an incentive for a write-up.

5. Speech to text is more prevalent

Right now, SEO keywords are often fragments because people will type in “dog grooming Tampa” instead of “find a dog groomer in Tampa.” However, speech to text technology is advancing, and it’s quite useful when you’re on a mobile device. People are more inclined to speak in the latter style because that’s how they talk. This means keyword variants might become (thankfully) more conversational and less like text speak.
Whether your site is mobile ready or not, it doesn’t matter because mobile readiness is in full swing. There’s still time to get your online presence up to snuff, but the window is swiftly closing. While you consider an app, mobile version of your website or both, don’t forget to think about how these changes are going to impact your SEO. For best results, hire an SEO professional who knows all the white hat tricks to get the results you want.

The post 5 Ways Mobile Readiness Impacts SEO appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.