5 Fast Ways to Get Traffic for a New Website

When it comes to the long-term traffic potential of marketing strategies, content marketing and SEO will usually offer you the biggest return on your investment. They naturally lend themselves to compounding returns over time, and have virtually no risk - as long as you execute them correctly. However, there’s one major disadvantage to these strategies; they take a long time to set up and start returning a positive ROI. Building SEO momentum takes months or years, and when you’re launching a new site, you want traffic fast.

So what do you do if you want to get traffic fast? There are a few options, each with advantages and disadvantages. These are some of the outright fastest:

1. Guest Post. Guest posts serve multiple functions, but there are two which make them a selling point for those after fast gains. First, guest posts connect you with authorities who already have established audiences. Take TechCrunch as an example - its readership is in the millions, so if you can get your brand featured there, you can lean on that visibility. Unfortunately, the more visible the publisher, the harder it is to get featured, so set your sights on something smaller to start.

2. Build Your Social Media Audience. Social audience building can be unpredictable, but if you have your priorities in order, it’s an effective and fast way to scale your potential user base. Here’s why: on social media, you can engage with users publicly and directly. You can use content to start attracting an audience naturally or ads (more on those in a moment) to funnel traffic directly, but more importantly, you can actually engage with people.

3. Leverage Influencers.Remember what I said about high-profile publishers being a shortcut to a wider audience? Influencers basically work the same way, except you’ll be engaging with an individual rather than hosting your client on an external site. You can find influencers in your industry by crawling the social media world or finding one through search.

4. Use Paid Ads. Paid advertising is my least favorite of the strategies listed here, but it’s an important option to mention. Why is it my least favorite? Because it has the lowest long-term potential. You’ll pay upfront for a guaranteed stream of inbound traffic to your site, which may be valuable, but once you withdraw that budget, the ads are turned off and your stream becomes defunct.

Compare that to something like influencer leveraging, which gives you a new relationship to draw upon in your industry, or social marketing, where your audience sticks around (practically) forever. Advertising is a good strategy that’s both fast and profitable, but it just doesn’t have the potential growth or gains that organic strategies offer. With that said, here are some good options for fast paid traffic:

• StumbleUpon ads
• Reddit ads
• Facebook ads
• Twitter ads
• LinkedIn ads
• Google Adwords
• Bing ads

5. Run Contests and Promotions. Contests and promotions are somewhat like paid advertising in the sense that you’ll have to make an upfront investment - usually in a hot consumer product, a gift card, or something similarly valuable. Then, you ask your users to engage in some behavior to be entered into the contest (such as liking or sharing your post on social media).

Contests are powerful because they naturally spread themselves - users like to share these opportunities, and it’s a good way to get widespread visibility quickly. You might even have a long-term benefit if the social users who engage with your contest end up following your brand. The key is to find the right contest - one that’s original, valuable, and interesting to your key demographics.

Remember that “fast” traffic isn’t always good traffic, and it doesn’t always mean you’re getting a good return on your investment. When it comes to the long-term return on every dollar spent, SEO and content marketing beat paid advertising almost every time (assuming proper strategic positioning). Think of it like buying seeds to grow your own vegetables versus buying the vegetables directly from the store; with the right time and care, your garden will return far more riches to your initial investments, but sometimes you need a shortcut to tide you over. Try to keep these short-term methods in balance with your long-term strategies to reap the benefits of both.

39 Ways to Get More Social Media Followers

Social media marketing works only if you actually have fans or followers. This article will walk you through 39 proven methods for increasing your followers across your social media accounts. There are three underlying elements that must take place in order for these to work:

You must be consistent. If you use any (or all) of these strategies for two weeks, and then give up and move onto something else, they won't work. These need to be practiced consistently over the long haul to be effective. If you have limited time and resources to commit to social media, I'd recommend choosing only a handful of these strategies and then making sure you carry them out consistently.

You must know what your audience really wants. What you think they want and what they actually want may very well be two different things. Take a look at your analytics to see which types of posts and content have been most popular; this is what they want to see more of.

You must be a good social media citizen. While some of the tips may seem more like social media best practices, keep in mind that growing on social media is as much about keeping your current followers as it is about gaining new ones.

39 Strategies for Increasing Your Fans and Followers

1. Reach out to influencers: Find influencers in your niche using a tool such as Buzzsumo, and then share their content, tag or mention them, or comment on their blogs.

2. Put social share buttons on each blog post: Make sure you include social media share buttons on each blog post, not just in your sidebar. This plugin for WordPress can help with that.

3. Post original, relevant content: This requires some outside-the-box thinking. Sharing other people's content should be a valuable part of your strategy, but make sure to share your knowledge and insights as well.

4. Periodically channel your email subscribers to your social media accounts: Every once in a while, encourage your email subscribers to follow you on social media.

5. Link to your social media accounts on your Contact and About Us pages: These visitors are already reaching out to you; give them another way to connect with you.

6. Identify popular posts to get more shares: Getting new fans often comes down to how often your content gets shared. A tool like Fanpage Karma can help you identify the most popular posts in your niche.

7. Be responsive: Posting engaging content is just one piece of the puzzle. Respond to questions, comments, and complaints in a timely manner.

8. Hold giveaways and contests: Hold contests and make liking your Page or following your Twitter account a requirement for entry. Rafflecopter is a fantastic tool for this.

9. Actively find and follow others: Don't just count on others to find you; go out and actively find others in your niche whom you can follow and engage with.

10. Tell stories: To avoid being overtly promotional, use stories to connect with and engage your fans. Stories are far more likely to be shared than promotional content.

11. Use relevant hashtags: Use a tool like Hashtagify.me to find relevant and trending hashtags. Use these in your posts to attract new followers who are searching for those hashtags.

12. Streamline your efforts: Being active and engaged on a few social networks will net you more followers over the long haul than sporadically posting on many networks.

13. Post viral content: Easier said than done, right? Post Planner can help by providing you with images and content that have been proven to go viral.

14. Post often: Optimal posting frequency will differ between networks and audiences. Test out different posting frequencies and see which ones result in the most engagement and shares.

15. Focus on quality over quantity: While posting often is important, social media growth is more likely to happen when you're focusing on sharing amazing, quality content that you know your audience loves.

16. Link to your social media accounts everywhere: Don't be shy about linking to your social media accounts. Do so in your newsletter, email signature, blog, etc.

17. Discuss social media conversations on your blog: Entice your blog readers to follow you on social media by crossing the blog/social network divide. Blog about heated or interesting conversations taking place on your social media accounts.

18. Offer incentives for people to follow or like you: Offer your social media followers exclusive discounts, freebies, or coupon codes.

19. Guest blog on popular niche sites: Regularly contribute guest posts to popular niche sites and link to your social media accounts in your bio

20. Add Facebook and Twitter widgets to your site: Go beyond simple social media icons, and use a Facebook Like Box or Twitter Embedded Timeline on your site or blog.

21. Promote your social accounts in-store: Offer your in-store guests an incentive to like or follow you on social media.

22. Try Facebook's promoted posts: Extend your reach by promoting posts that have a history of getting engagement.

23. Give stuff away: Incentivize likes and follows by giving away free product samples or prizes for new fans or followers.

24. Cross-promote with a complimentary business in your niche: Connect with other businesses in your niche and promote each other's social media content.

25. Build network-specific landing pages: Create landing pages on your site for visitors from each social network you're on, and then link to these pages in your social media bios. This may increase your follows only marginally, but you should see an increase in traffic and conversions.

26. Provide valuable education without being a know-it-all: Unique, valuable content that only you know has a great chance of getting shared. Think about what info or insights you can provide based on your unique experiences and industry knowledge.

27. Use humor: Evoking emotions (positive or negative) through your posts is great for increased sharing; however, posting funny or happy content will net you more sharing overall.

28. Reshare other people's content: Share posts, images, and tweets from other businesses, and they'll be more likely to share yours.

29. Become a valued member in an industry LinkedIn group: As you provide valuable insights, group members will be more likely to want to hear more from you on social media.

30. Create topical boards on Pinterest: When naming Pinterest boards, be sure to target keywords people are actually searching for. To see what people are looking for, start typing possible keywords into the Pinterest search box, and see which keywords are auto-suggested.

31. Set a goal: Set short-term, specific goals for how many new fans or followers you want. This will help you keep your efforts focused and give you the best chance of actually achieving your goal.

32. Be a source of trending content and breaking news: Set up Facebook Interest lists and follow leading industry sources on Twitter, and then share breaking news with your followers.

33. Post only your best photos on Instagram: This suggestion goes along with an earlier one--focus on quality over quantity. With users having shared over 20 billion photos to date, posting a ton of poor quality images isn't going to get you far. Choose your best four to six photos each day and share the cream of the crop.

34. Be relatable: Let your fans and followers know you're a real person rather than a faceless business; this will make sharing your content with their friends feel like less of a risk.

35. Cross-promote your social media accounts: Periodically promote your other social media accounts to your fans and followers.

36. Answer questions on abandoned Facebook Pages: You'd be surprised at how many big brands have massive numbers of Facebook fans, and yet virtually ignore the questions and comments these fans leave. Respond in a helpful, non-promotional way to unanswered questions (and be sure to answer as your Page).

37. Include a social media call to action on your business card: Hand these out at trade shows, networking events, and speaking engagements.

38. Make sure your social media usernames are consistent: If you want people to actually find you when they search for you by name, make sure your account handles and usernames match your business name. Avoid abbreviations whenever possible.

39. Make your blog content tweetable with a click: Use a plugin such as Inline Tweet Sharer to encourage visitors to share your tweetable content.

On page SEO Checklist

Here is the final checklist which you need to follow in 2016 to make sure your content rank higher in search engine.

Keyword placement:

• Keyword in Title
• Keyword in Permalink
• Keyword in first paragraph
• Keyword in Image Alt tag
• Tweaked Keyword in H2 or H3
• Bold Important Keywords and related keywords
• Italics 1-2 important Keywords
• Outbound Link to relevant high-quality sites
• Internal links to related articles
• Remove all stop words from Permalink
• Add multi-media (Video, Slides, Inforgraphic)
• Longer the content length, better it is. Minimum: 700 words
• Optimize image before uploading (Compress and resize)
• Page loading time
• Use LSI Keywords (Use Google search to find related Keywords)

Other things:

• Use Meta title in less than 65 character
• Use Meta description in less than 150 characters.
• If using any Social SEO plugin, make sure to add image for Facebook, Twitter. (Take advantage of social graph)
• Make sure to have social sharing buttons at the end of post or floating social sharing buttons.
• Have related posts after blog posts to lower down bounce rate.

Things not to do:

• Not more than 1 H1 tag (Your Post title is H1 tag)
• Don’t repeat H2 and H3 Tag
• Don’t increase Keyword density by more than 1.25%

Things to focus on:

• Try to use Keyword in Post Title at beginning
• Use Long tail keywords (You can use up to 65 Character in Post title)
• If writing in evergreen niche, remove dates from the posts. (Use Date Exclusion SEO plugin)
• Content length: The longer the length of the content, better it is. Though don’t try to uselessly increase the content size.
• At the end of blog post, ask users to take action.

SEO - Tactics & Methods

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

• White Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design.
• Black Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.

White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:

• It conforms to the search engine's guidelines.
• It does not involve in any deception.
• It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is the same content a user will see.
• It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.
• It ensures good quality of the web pages.
• It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and you will definitely get something more.

Black Hat or Spamdexing

An SEO tactic, is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

• Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines and/or involve deception.
• Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.
• Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.
• Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.
• Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
• Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website content. This is called metatag stuffing.
• Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.
• Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.
• Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites - all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.
• Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This is called page hijacking.

Always stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.

How to Increase Domain Authority

What is Domain Authority?

Domain authority is a logarithmic score (ranging from 0-100) by Moz, which predicts how well a domain (web page) will rank in the search engine results. It is based on some other factors like Moz Rank, Moz Trust, social signals, linking root domains, total backlink profile, user experience, site loading time, traffic, etc.

Scoring a DA of 30 from 20 is easier than getting it to 90 from 80. Often authoritative sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Google itself enjoy the ultimate DA score of 100. But that doesn’t mean sites with DA 50-90 are considered inferior.

It is a comparative value which means your site might see a degradation of domain authority if it is not updated or does not hold the quality signals true.

Domain Authority Vs Page Authority

Domain authority must not be confused with page authority that is a completely different metric. While domain authority gives you the ranking of the site as a whole, page authority is the score of that single page in question.

Domain authority is constant across the whole site, but page authority changes across sub-domains of the same root domain.

Domain Authority Factors

1. Linking root domains
2. Moz Rank
3. Moz trust
4. Quality content
5. Social signals
6. Search engine friendliness

How To Increase Your Domain Authority?

Earn links from more sites

• Start marketing your content
• Not only diversification, but you also need a clean link profile
• Build a well-planned internal link structure
• Write epic content and nothing less than that
• Off page SEO

                    Guest posting

                    Social bookmarking sites

                    Blog Commenting

• Social media optimization
• Increase user friendliness of your site
• Have patience, let your domain grow

How To Check Your Domain Authority?

You can check your domain authority by using the official toolbar from Moz. Alternatively, you can calculate your domain authority by going to opensiteexplorer.

Other handy free domain authority checker tools are Moonsy and Smallseotools. (Read SmallSeoTools review)

What is a Good Domain Authority Score?

Domain authority is a number, and you can always hope to increase it. Anyone with a DA score of 10 would want to achieve 20 in the next update, and similarly someone with DA 52 would hope to make it 75 the next time. So it’s a relative factor.

Having a domain authority of above 50 is often considered an achievement and your blog reaches the influential zone. However, it is not the zenith. Industry experts enjoy a DA ranging from 70-78 or even 80, but that’s again with aged domains being active since 8-10 years.

3 SEO Techniques Even SEOs Forget

Keyword research, link building, on-page optimization - these are all SEO strategies that get a lot of attention. For anyone who knows the first thing about SEO, these front-line strategies are hard to forget.

But there are other techniques that aren't quite as sexy, and that tend to get forgotten in favor of more obvious, first-order ranking influencers. And there's a very good reason for this: it's possible to achieve decent rankings without using any of these strategies.

That said, the three strategies below have the potential to take your SEO to the next level. Beyond basic keyword research and on-page optimization, these techniques will help you attract highly-relevant traffic that actually converts. And because you'll be working smart, you'll find it take a lot less time and effort to achieve even better results.

1. Writing content based on user intent.

SEO and content marketing work together beautifully, when done right. Unfortunately, sometimes your SEO strategies can inadvertently sabotage your content marketing efforts.

To ensure this doesn't happen, focus on creating content that matches user intent. While you may have certain keywords on your 'must-have' list, keep in mind that people who are searching for that word or phrase may have a very different intent than what you're presuming.

As a refresher, there are three main types of searches:

•     Informational: Searches where people are looking for general information (e.g., "How do I cook a turkey?")
•     Transactional: Searches where people are looking to perform some specific online action or activity (e.g., purchase a product)
•     Navigational: Where people are looking for a specific company or website (e.g., "Ford Motor Co.")

Failing to consider these 3 search types can mean all your optimization efforts are in vain. For instance, trying to rank  for informational phrases may be a waste of time and money for an e-commerce site that is looking for purchases (conversions).

So, how can you avoid this? When determining which keyword phrases you're going to target, do some due diligence. I recommend plugging your keywords into Google, and examining the SERPs to see what comes up. Because Google has gotten pretty good at determining search intent, you can use the top ranking pages to give you an idea of what people are actually looking for.

2. Networking.

Because many of the tasks related to SEO can be done in isolation, it's easy to get stuck in your own little SEO 'bubble'. But networking - particularly online networking - is absolutely critical for establishing mutually-beneficial relationships and opportunities.

There are a number of ways networking is imperative for SEO, but here are three of the most important.

Establishing guest blogging relationships: Cultivating relationships with other site owners and publications is A LOT of work. Big sites will often want to work with you on a piecemeal basis until you've proven that you can provide excellent content...and that you aren't just churning out content to boost your own rankings.

Connecting with influencers: There's no substitute for authenticity and trust when it comes to building your brand online. With so much content being produced and pushed every single day, anything you can do to stand out from the crowd is important. Having a key player in your field endorse, mention or promote your content can be HUGE; because even if you have zero credibility on your own, you are essentially 'borrowing' theirs.

Increased reach and potential for external links: We can't forget social networking. While we know that social sharing and engagement doesn't have a direct impact on search rankings, the indirect benefits are undeniable. As your content gets liked, shared, retweeted, etc., it gets in front of more people. And as more people see it, it has more potential to accumulate links - which we know does directly impact rankings.

3. Optimizing for user experience.

A good user experience essentially means visitors can easily find and consume what they need on your page. There are many factors that go into creating a positive user experience, but most come down to one thing: giving visitors exactly what they want.

According to Moz, while user experience may be a second order influencer on rankings, it's impact 'downstream' can be significant:  "Crafting a thoughtful, empathetic user experience helps ensure that visitors to your site perceive it positively, encouraging sharing, bookmarking, return visits, and inbound links—all signals that trickle down to the search engines and contribute to high rankings."

So, what elements should you incorporate in order to optimize user experience? According to Searchmetrics' 2015 Search Ranking Factors report, there are a number of user experience (UX) elements that are correlated with high rankings. Some of the most significant are:

• A well-optimized internal link structure to guide users and the search engines through your content
• Relevant images and videos within content
• Responsive design so the site is accessible on all devices
• Readable font size (average of 14 pts above the fold, 12 points below)
• Use of unordered lists to break up content into scannable chunks

There's no question that Google tracks and weighs user signals like click-through rates and time on site to use as ranking factors. The elements above will all help ensure users who click through to your site find what they need and stay on your site longer.

The three strategies above should be part of any SEO strategy. While you can potentially achieve decent rankings without doing any of them, I guarantee they'll make your job easier and help you achieve optimal rankings and conversions.

How to Master Video Marketing on LinkedIn

fter creating a marketing video, most brands distribute their videos through YouTube, Facebook, or other paid media options. But what about LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is one of the most important networks for B2B marketers. It boasts over 350 million registered users and sets itself apart with a more professional, business-savvy audience. However, most companies underutilize the platform, which means video content on the platform tends to be underutilized as well.

For marketers who do promote their videos on the channel, LinkedIn can be a goldmine. It offers a great opportunity to stand out in the crowd and promote targeted, B2B video campaigns that reach a professional audience. If your brand has yet to focus on LinkedIn, here are five ways to boost your video marketing efforts with LinkedIn and grab the attention of your prospects.

Add Interactivity to Your Profile

If your LinkedIn profile reads more like a standard resume, it won’t do you much good when trying to attract the attention of media and potential clients. Instead, you can optimize your profile to highlight your brand’s marketing messages with video. LinkedIn provides several ways to include video content in your profile, starting with the ‘Summary’ section. Here you can place an ‘About Us’ or explainer video that complements your text ‘About Us’ or summary.

You can also add video content to the ‘Experience’ section of your LinkedIn page. Videos are displayed under your recommendations, so this is the ideal spot to place customer testimonial videos.

You can even create exclusive customer testimonial videos for LinkedIn - or offer your own video recommendations to your partners and colleagues that they can post under their LinkedIn ‘Experience’ section. This is a great way to get others to spread the word about your company through engaging video content.

Video Updates

One of the simplest ways to boost engagement on LinkedIn with video is by posting video updates. You can share your latest marketing videos and even tag other companies. If you wish to upload your videos to YouTube first and then paste the link in your update post, LinkedIn will use YouTube’s metadata (titles, descriptions, and thumbnail previews) which is also beneficial for SEO.

Sharing your marketing videos on LinkedIn keeps your profile fresh and helps your prospectives stay up-to-date with your company news.

Use Video in LinkedIn Groups

There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn and there’s a good chance a few dozen of these groups are specific to your industry. Take advantage of these popular professional hangouts and start a discussion by posting your video content here. All you have to do is paste your video links in the body of a new discussion field. You can also include relevant videos within a reply to someone else’s discussion.

Actively participating in LinkedIn groups can help establish your brand as an industry leader and video can humanize your efforts. These groups and discussions are also great for staying on top of industry trends, competitors’ news, and discovering new ideas for your digital marketing campaigns.

So if you have great video content to share, why not try posting it on LinkedIn? It’s easy to do, and not many businesses are doing it yet so your video posts are guaranteed to stand out in the sea of link/text only posts.

5 Surefire Ways to Boost Your Blog Visibility

For a growing business, a blog is a vital marketing tool, offering a place to highlight news, educate readers about your products and services and show off your expertise. But what is the benefit of a blog that is not read? Here are 5 surefire ways to boost your blog visibility.

1. Repost Top Content on LinkedIn

Although LinkedIn is often considered suitable only for B2B companies, don't forget that every professional is a person too! They have pets, get married, go on vacation and shop online just like everyone else. LinkedIn is a great place to reach them where your competitors might not be.

EConsultancy did a study that found that LinkedIn is responsible for 64% of all visits from social media networks to corporate websites. While this will vary from site to site, this statistic shows the potential power LinkedIn has to drive traffic to your business blog.

However, to some, the thought of reposting on LinkedIn is confusing, particularly after Google updated its algorithms to punish sites publishing "excessive duplicate content." Should you publish on LinkedIn or your blog? Can you publish the same content on both?

According to Matt Cutts, the head of webspam team at Google, there isn't cause for major concern. "For the largest part, duplicate content is not really viewed as spam. Rather, it is treated as content we need to cluster properly and Google tries to make sure it is ranked appropriately."

HubSpot recommend reposting 1 in every 5 of your articles. Another option is to post on LinkedIn first, and then repost on your own blog, attributing source to the LinkedIn article by using the rel="canonical" tag. This is a useful tactic if you have a strong LinkedIn audience that brings you more potential clients than search engine traffic.

Top Tip: When posting content to LinkedIn, add a powerful call to action at the bottom of the post directing readers to your site for more information or resources.

2. Add Visual Elements

Add photos, graphics, videos or infographics to your articles to break up the monotony of text and potentially boost your views by 94%. Studies consistently show that blog posts and social media updates that include visuals get substantially higher views than plain text.

Not only do visuals spice up your content, but they capture your visitors' attention and more easily transfer information.

Jerome Bruner, a psychologist at the University of New York, reports that "people remember only 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read, and a staggering 80 percent of what they see." We also process visual information a whopping 60,000 times faster than text!

Visuals are particularly important if you are conveying a lot of instructions or complex information.

Top Tip: Be sure to include alt text for your videos and images. This is best practice to help both search engines and visitors who cannot view the images better understand their context.

3. Schedule Social Posts More Than Just Once

Too many small business owners invest considerable time in crafting quality content, only to share it once with their networks and never mention it again.

Share links to your content at multiple times to make sure as many people see it as possible. Vary the title slightly each time you share, and post at different times. If you use a social media management tool such as Hootsuite you can easily schedule several posts about your content over a period of time.

Top Tip: Review the performance of your content once a month and re-share the most popular posts. This is a great way to maintain momentum on content that is working well for you.

4. Network with Other Bloggers and Experts in Your Niche

One of the great things about being a small business owner is that you belong to a friendly community of like minded people.

Building relationships with other businesses lets you tap into each other's networks and create a win-win marketing opportunity.

Start a list of businesses that complement, rather than compete, with yours. Look at their websites to see if they have regularly updated blogs and health, active social media profiles.

Begin a relationship by following them on social media and sharing their updates. Leave comments on their blogs. You will often find that they will reciprocate, sharing your updates with their own followers and fans.

Top Tip: Before reaching out to other bloggers write a blog post about their business. Include comments about why you admire their work and chose to feature them on your blog. Most business owners will appreciate the free publicity and be open to you publishing a guest post on their blog. As well as expanding your audience, this is a good SEO strategy to build natural backlinks to your website.

5. Promote on Facebook

Facebook boasts one of the most powerful advertising platforms available to small business owners. It allows you to be extremely detailed in choosing who should see your ad, letting you invest in reaching your ideal target customers.

Even a small campaign can hugely increase the visibility of your post.

The quickest, easiest and most affordable way to start with Facebook ads is to select the "Boost Post" option when you share your latest blog posts on your page. For as little as $20 you can choose to promote a post to people who match criteria that you select, significantly increasing the number of people seeing your post.

Top Tip: Given the huge volume of Facebook posts that appear in a person's timeline each day, your update is likely to disappear from feeds within a short time after posting. Choosing to boost your post to people following your page will also helps the update to remain visible in people's newsfeeds after the first initial post.

Your SEO is safe from the Penguin… for now

Everyone’s been on edge for about a month now, just waiting for Google’s Penguin update that’s been promised to happen. Every time a little hiccup in the rankings show up, people are moaning, “Penguin! Penguin!” We had a day like that early in the week that looked like it might be the real thing, but in my opinion, it’s not. I know it’s not for two specific reasons.

On January 10, almost every site across the board had a mysterious dip, dropping 10 to 20 spots in the Google rankings, then back up again on the same day. The recovery landed sites almost exactly where they started, although some improved when it was all settled. That across-the-board action had everyone convinced it was finally the Penguin update happening.

The first reason I know that’s not true is that Google updates don’t act like that. After a shake-up of rankings, every site would raise or lower to a different degree, instead of an almost identical curve in the graph. A Penguin update is a refocusing Google takes when it looks closer for spammy sites, so it should treat every site a little differently.

Also, when all the sites dropped, they all rose back up again just as far. I did a search through a variety of sites and found that some of the websites that ended up in the top five were complete spam blogs, written only to grab links. Penguin’s designed to shake out spam sites and leave the quality information, so this is the exact opposite of the result the new update would create.

Yes, Penguin’s still due to update, and you still should have gotten rid of the spammy links on your site already. It’s going to happen, but this event wasn’t it. Google readjusted itself, but there’s more to come.

SEO - More SEO preparation for Google’s Penguin update

All of them were good advice but what if you’ve got a site that’s got hundreds of links? You can’t afford to take the time to click on every single link to find out whether or not the site is spammy and something you’d never want your website associated with. You need a way to generally streamline the process without having to take hours or days to finish.

The best way is to look at all of your links in a general way by going to majestic.com or one of the other sites that allow you to see all of your backlinks in one spot. Once you’ve pulled up your list, you’re going to be looking for some general red flags. In general, any domain name with the words article, directory, press, SEO, or submit in the URL are spammy sites. You can feel safe adding those links to your disavow file

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After you’ve cleaned out those obvious candidates, look for the originating country that the site is coming from. If the URL ends in .ru, .pl, .mx, .pk, or any other of the dozens of countries that are riddled with spammers, you’re pretty safe eliminating the link. The odds are good that it’s a spammy, useless link that will do you more harm than good when Google finally updates Penguin.

If you’ll look at a Google page listing for popular keywords like “skip bins,” you’ll see sites in the number one and two positions that won’t be there once the update happens. After that day, your site will be perfectly positioned to rise up in the ranks if you’ve done your homework ahead of time.

What is HTTP2 and How Will it Affect Your SEO?

HTTP/2 is a much needed refresh of the HTTP protocol that was based largely on Google’s own SPDY protocol. The protocol brings with it vast improvements in communication between browsers and servers, reducing load times.

The two biggest changes are that the protocol did away with a lot of redundancy in the headers and it allows for multiplexing, or requesting multiple files at the same time. With more than 50% of websites now loading 75 or more files, according to HTTP Archive, multiplexing is a huge boon to newer websites that typically rely on more files.

TLDR; switch from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/2. It’s easier than you think and there are no downsides. If a browser doesn’t support HTTP/2, it will simply downgrade the connection to HTTP/1.1. All you need to do to make your website support the new protocol is update your server software, assuming your server supports HTTP/2 (most do or will be adding supporting soon).

The one caveat to this is most major browsers only support the HTTP/2 protocol over a secure connection, so if your website is not already secured, then you’ll have to make the switch. Luckily for us, many hosts, CDNs, and other entities are now offering free TLS certificates which eliminates cost as a barrier to entry to security. Remember as well that HTTPS is a Google ranking factor and the switch to HTTP/2 will be better for user experience since it is faster.

Where HTTP/2 truly shines is on slower connections such as mobile networks. Without the additional round trips, the load time on slower mobile networks is reduced significantly. I would say, for most mobile networks, HTTP/2 reduces the load times more than Google AMP, but that’s not to say that you can’t use both together!

Does HTTP/2 Affect Your SEO?

John Mueller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, stated that Googlebot will support HTTP/2. At the time this article was written, it’s not yet confirmed that this has happened. It may have happened with all the algorithm changes in January, but there were so many, it’s difficult to tell. What’s interesting is, to my knowledge, Googlebot never supported SPDY. Google’s announcement of support for HTTP/2 shows that they will likely be adding more user experience indicators to the algorithms or, at the very least, adding HTTP/2 as a ranking signal this year. Even if there isn’t a significant boost to your rankings, remember that you are better serving your users by having a faster website.

Are SEO Companies Supporting HTTP/2?

was surprised to find that few SEO companies seem to have added support for HTTP/2. I checked roughly 75 SEO companies whose employees routinely speak at conferences and write for various SEO blogs and could count the number of SPDY and HTTP/2 implementations on one hand. This baffles me, as so many of these companies tout better UX and increased site speed in their service offerings—but perhaps they are updating client sites and haven’t gotten around to their own yet. Even SEJ doesn’t seem to have support yet, even though they added support for HTTPS. What would happen if they did? According to my quick test from LoadImpact.com, SEJ’s load time for the homepage would decrease from 1.89 seconds to 1.25 seconds!

The Seven Golden Rules of SEO 2016

There is a lot of talk on the Web regarding search engine optimization (SEO) and how, if you just do this one thing, you will be at the top of Google. If only it were that easy. In fact, I believe there are seven distinct rules that a search engine optimizer needs to possess. Most people possess one or maybe two of these skills, very rarely do people posses all seven. In truth, to obtain all seven of theses skills will take time and effort — and, if you are running your own business, do you really have the time to do this?

The golden rules that I believe are necessary for SEO work are:

1. Web Design – Producing a visually attractive page.
2. HTML coding – Developing search engine-friendly coding that sits behind the Wweb design.
3. Copy writing – Producing the actual readable text on the page.
4. Marketing – What are the actual searches that are being used, what key words actually get more business for your company?
5. An eye for detail — Even the smallest errors can stop spiderbots visiting your site.
6. Patience — There is a time lag on any change you make, waiting is a virtue.
7. IT skills — An appreciation of how search engine programs and the algorithms actually work.

1. Many website designers produce more and more eye-catching designs with animations and clever features hoping to entice the people onto their sites. This is the first big mistake; using designs like these may actually decrease your chances of a high Google rating. Yes, that’s right; all that money you have paid for the website design could be wasted because no one will ever find your site.

The reason for this is that before worrying about bringing people to your site, you need to get the spiderbots to like your site. Spiderbots are pieces of software used by the search engine companies to crawl the Internet looking at all the websites, and then having reviewed the sites, they use complex algorithms to rank the sites. Some of the complex techniques used by Web designers cannot be trawled by spiderbots. They come to your site, look at the HTML code and exit stage right, without even bothering to rank your site — meaning you will not be found on any meaningful search.

I am amazed how many times I look at websites and I immediately know they are a waste of money. The trouble is that both the Web designers and the company that paid the money really do not want to know this. In fact, I have stopped playing the messenger of bad news (too many shootings!); I now work round the problem.

Optimizing a website to be Google-friendly is often a compromise between a visually attractive site and an easy-to-find site.

2. The second skill is that of optimizing the actual HTML code to be spiderbot-friendly. I put this as different to the web design because you really do need to be “down and dirty” in the code rather than using an editor like FrontPage, which is OK for website design. This skill takes lots of time and experience to develop, and just when you think you have cracked it, the search engine companies change the algorithms used to calculate how high your site will appear in the search results.

This is no place for even the most enthusiastic amateur. Results need to be constantly monitored, pieces of code added or removed, and a check kept on what the competition is doing. Many people who design their own website feel they will get searched because it looks good, and totally miss out on this step. Without a strong technical understanding of how spiderbots work, you will always struggle to get your company on the first results page in Google. We actually run seven test domains that are testing different theories with different search engines. Remember that different search engines use different criteria and algorithms to rank your site — one size does not fit all.

3. Thirdly, I suggested that copy writing is a skill in its own right. This is the writing of the actual text that people coming to your site will read. The Googlebot and other spiderbots love text – but only when written well in properly constructed English. Some people try to stuff their site with keywords, while others put white writing on white space (so spiderbots can see it but humans cannot).

Spiderbots are very sophisticated and not only will not fall for these tricks, they may actively penalize your site – in Google terms, this is sandboxing. Google takes new sites and “naughty” sites and effectively sin-bins them for three to six months, you can still be found, but n0t until results page 14 – which is not very useful. As well as good English, the spiderbots are also reading the HTML code, so the copywriter also needs an appreciation of the interplay between the two. My recommendation for anyone copy writing their own site is to write normal, well-constructed English sentences that can be read by machine and human alike.

4. The fourth skill is marketing. After all, this is what we are doing – marketing you site and hence company and products/services on the Web. The key here is to set the site up to be accessible to the searches that will provide most business to you. I have seen many sites that can be found as you key in the company name. So the marketing skill requires knowledge of a company’s business, what they are really trying to sell and an understanding of what actual searches may provide dividends.

5. The next rule is an eye for detail. Even a simple change to a Web page can create an error that means the spiderbots will not crawl your site. Recently, I put a link to a page that didn’t have www. at the front of the address. The link still worked but the spiders stopped crawling, and it took my partner to find the error. We have recently invested in a very sophisticated html validator that picks up errors that other validators just fail to see. These errors do not stop the pages displaying correctly to the human eye, but cause massive problems with spiderbots. Almost all the code that I look at on the Web using this validator flags major errors, even from SEO companies.

6. The sixth rule is patience — it really is a virtue. Some people seem to want to make daily changes and then think they can track the Wweb page ranking results the next day. Unfortunately, it can take a week for absolutely correct changes to take effect, in which time you have made six other changes. Add to this Google’s reticence to allow new sites straight on to its listings by adding a waiting factor of, maybe, three months for new sites, and you have a totally uncontrollable situation. We say to all our clients that a piece of SEO work should be looked at like a marketing campaign that runs for six months, since it is only after that time that a true judgment of the effectiveness of the work can be made.

7. The final and seventh skill is an appreciation of how search engines and algorithms work, for this where both IT and math experience is useful. People who have programmed at a detailed systems level have a natural feeling for how spiderbots will read a page, what they will search for, what tables they will set up, what weightings they may give to different elements. All of this builds a picture of the database that will be created and how it will be accessed when a search is undertaken. Unfortunately, this skill is the most difficult one to learn because it relies on many years experience of systems programming.

Search Update Impact On SEO & Content Strategies: Staying Ahead With A Focus On Quality

 

Since Google was first launched in 1998, the company has been continually refining its search algorithm to better match users with online content.

Over the years, many algorithm updates have targeted spammy and low-quality content in an effort to surface this content less frequently in search results. Other algorithm updates have been aimed at improving Google’s “understanding” of search queries and page content to better align search results with user intent.

The bottom line is that focusing on quality content and the user experience really is the best way to ensure your search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing campaigns are update proactive rather than update reactive.

Many Google updates have impacted numerous reputable sites. Search marketers have had to learn how to better optimize their pages with each update to avoid losing rankings. Considering that 67.60 percent of clicks go to the top five slots on SERPs, a drop of just a few positions because of an algorithm update can have massive impact on traffic, revenue and conversions.

Over the coming weeks and months, as recent updates set in and impending updates come to pass, it will be interesting to see how SEO and content strategies evolve in response. In the meantime, here’s my overview of Google’s major algorithm updates (past, present and future) and their impact on the digital marketing landscape.

Panda

The Panda update was first launched in February 2011, though it has been updated several times since then. This update is designed to target sites with low-quality content and prevent them from ranking well in search engine results pages.

Sites that have pages of spammy content, too many ads or excessive duplicate content, for example, often experience Panda penalties.

It was recently announced that Panda was added to Google’s core ranking algorithm, which has caused considerable buzz in the industry.

While there are still some questions about what it means, there are some things we’re fairly certain about. Panda updates are expected to run more regularly, for example, which will be very helpful for brands who have seen their websites hit by Panda penalties.

However, contrary to early rumors, the update will not be run in real time.

When it comes to content production, since the initial Panda release, websites have needed to really focus on providing high-quality information. Websites that have pages of low-quality content, such as thin material with little insight, should improve the existing pages, rather than just deleting them.

Keep in mind that “quality” isn’t measured in content length, so you won’t improve your low-quality pages simply by adding more text. Content can be short or long — what matters is that it provides the information the user seeks. The quality of the content on a website matters more than the quantity.

Penguin

The Penguin update was first released about a year after the Panda update, in April 2012. The two are often grouped together when discussing Google’s big push to raise the quality of content that appears in search engine results.

This update focused largely on targeting spammy links. Google looks at backlinks as a signal of a website’s authority and reputation, taking a site or page’s backlink profile into consideration when determining rankings.

Back when its core algorithm was less sophisticated, people figured out that they could effectively game search engine rankings simply by obtaining significant numbers of (often spammy and irrelevant) backlinks.

Penguin combatted this manipulative technique by targeting pages that depended upon poor-quality links, such as link farms, to artificially raise their rankings. Websites with spammy backlink profiles have been forced to remove or disavow bad links in order to avoid ranking penalties.

Quality links still have something of value to offer websites, although Google emphasizes that sites should focus on developing a quality backlink profile organically. This means creating informative pieces that people will want to source with a backlink.

To attract attention to your piece, you can leverage the search, social and content trifecta. By creating high-quality pieces and then distributing them on social media, you start to attract attention to your work.

This can increase your readership and (in theory) help you acquire more backlinks. You can also use techniques such as posting guest posts on other reputable blogs to leverage your content and build a strong backlink profile.

Hummingbird

The Hummingbird update followed in the summer of 2013. This update was designed to improve Google’s semantic search capabilities. It was becoming increasingly common for people to use Google in a conversational way, to type their queries as though they were asking a friend.

This update was designed to help Google respond by understanding intent and context.

With this update, the development of content had to shift slightly again. With the emphasis on intent, Google was not simply playing a matching game where they connect the keywords in the query with the keywords in the content.

Content needed now to go beyond just the keyword. It needed to demonstrate an understanding of what users are interested in and what they would like to learn.

While keywords still are an important part of communicating with the search engine about the topic of the content, the way they were used shifted. Long-tail keywords became more important, and intent became crucial.

Content developers needed to direct their focus toward understanding why customers might be typing particular words into the search engine and producing content that addressed their needs.

Mobile Update

The year 2015 saw several major updates that impacted content development. The first, Google’s mobile-friendly update, occurred in April. This update was unique because Google actually warned website users in advance that it was coming.

With this update, Google recognized that mobile was beginning to dominate much of search and online customer behavior — in fact, just a couple months after the mobile-friendly update was announced, Google noted that mobile searches had officially surpassed desktop. The mobile-friendly update forced sites to become mobile-friendly or risk losing visibility to sites that were.

With this update, Google wanted sites to take into account what mobile users wanted to do online and how these needs were being addressed.

This meant that SEOs and content marketers had to start considering design factors such as:

•     Responsive design or a mobile page.
•     Having site navigation front and center and easy for customers to use with their fingers.
•     Avoiding frustrations caused by issues such as buttons too close together.
•     Having all forms as efficient and as easy as possible to fill out on a smartphone screen.

This mobile update also brought to the forefront the importance of brands optimizing for mobile, even going beyond what was required by Google to avoid a penalty.

For example, customers on mobile are often very action-oriented. They want to be able to call you or find your address. They want to view the information on your screen easily, without excessive scrolling. While long-form content is commonly read on mobile devices, making it easier for people to get back to the top is very beneficial.

Mobile users also tend to be very local-oriented. Content developed for mobile devices should take local SEO into account to maximize the mobile opportunities that present themselves.

Quality Update

Not long after the mobile update went live, people began reporting evidence of another Google update, which has since been nicknamed the Quality Update. It happened so quietly that even Google did not acknowledge the change at first.

During this update, sites that focused on the user experience and distributing high-quality content were rewarded, while sites that had many ads and certain types of user-generated content were more likely to be penalized. This was even true for established sites like HubPages.

Interestingly, however, not all user-generated content was hit on all sites. Some pages, like Quora, actually received a boost from the update; it is suspected that this is because this site is very careful about the quality of the responses and content that are posted on the page.

The key to avoiding a penalty with this update seemed to be avoiding thin content or other material that did not place the needs of the user first.

Sites also need to make sure that their pages are working well, as error messages place a site at risk for a penalty from this quality update. Google knows how frustrating it is to try to find an answer to a question and instead get treated to an overly promotional article or a 404.

RankBrain

RankBrain was announced in the fall of 2015, and it was also a unique change to the Google algorithm. With this update, the search engine ventured into the world of AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning.

This system was designed to learn and predict user behaviors, which helps Google interpret and respond to the hundreds of millions of completely unique, never-before-seen queries that it encounters each day.

It is also assumed that RankBrain helps Google to interpret content and intent in some way. Although Google has given little information about how their new AI works, they have said that it has become the third most important ranking signal. For site owners, this has placed an even greater emphasis on creating content that matches the user intent.

Since RankBrain has gone live, some marketers have spoken about the importance of making sure that the technical side of SEO, such as schema markup, is all up to date. It is likely that as search engines become more dependent upon AI, these little details will become significant.
The Buzz Over The Last Week: Panda & The Core Algorithm

Last week, some marketers were caught off guard by a new update that seemed to impact ratings for numerous sites. Although there were initially rumors circulating that this update might be the anticipated Penguin update or something to do with Panda, Google put those rumors to rest and officially confirmed that this was a core algorithm update that was not linked to other established updates.

Based upon the patterns established over the past few years, it is most likely that this adjustment, like the others, focused on better understanding user intent and identifying high-quality content.

As “updates on updates” change constantly (even from the seven days it takes a post go live), the best way to stay up to date on core changes is via Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Land.

Google Ranking Algorithm Update 2016 Jan 9th

Did you notice ranking changes with your websites?

Google have confirmed on Twitter that what webmasters were seeing over the weekend was not the Penguin update we are expecting, but rather a core ranking algorithm update.

On Friday, I noticed early signs of an update, and then, over the weekend Jan 8th & 9th 2016, I called this a “massive update.” I asked Google for confirmation, and on Twitter they confirmed it was a core ranking algorithm update.

Reference: http://searchengineland.com/google-had-a-major-core-ranking-algorithm-update-this-past-weekend-240067

Google Panda Algorithm is Now Part Of Google’s Core Ranking Signals

Panda is now baked 2016 in as one of Google's core ranking algorithm. Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.

Reference: http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-is-now-part-of-googles-core-ranking-signals-240069