Last Update May 18, 2025 @ 2:45 am

What is the video presentation about?

The presentation goes over how to write SEO content and how to optimize it for different search engines to help a website gain more traffic and visibility as well as help enhance social media content. It will go into what optimization is like and why it is important. Best practices and different strategies will be discussed on how to optimize content. These lead to quick fixes and easy wins regarding SEO.

Why is content optimization important?

The reason for this is that content is the most important thing for SEO when talking about search engine optimization. Optimizing website content is key to helping one have a high ranking in search engines such as Google. For this, a website needs to have written content because search engines have difficulty understanding what a website is about without text since they cannot read images or videos. This will help guide them in ranking a website in the search results.

What are spiders that crawl the internet?

Search engines have so-called spiders that crawl the internet. These spiders can read an image file name but that’s not enough information to give them so they look for text content. This helps search engines give a website a higher ranking in the search engine. If Google can understand what a website is about, then it could start showing it to people searching for its products or services.

What role do keywords play in content optimization?

Another strategy is to show different keywords. When people search for keywords, it helps a website ultimately gain more traffic, specifically targeted traffic. One doesn’t just want anyone coming to the website. A company needs targeted people that are looking to make a purchase or use their services. Targeted traffic is what will lead them to more conversions.

How do conversions lead to less spending on ads?

We all want conversions in the form of sales, email leads, or phone calls, depending on the conversion goal. The website having targeted traffic will help increase this, so it is important to make sure that content is properly optimized, which will lead to more leads, conversions, and sales. By organically doing this, one won’t have to spend money on ads or anything similar. One will have to invest time, but it’s a lot less expensive than having to run ads.

What does content signify in terms of ranking?

A company will drop in its ranking if it stops doing SEO. Content is the most important thing for SEO and is the number one starting point when optimizing a website. Without content, it is going to be difficult if not impossible to rank in the search results.

Where on a website should content be added?

Content should not only be added to the homepage, but to every page on a website that one wants to rank in the search results. Each page on a website is targeting a different set of keywords. Google needs content to support those different keywords and back a website up. The about us page and contact us page are pages one should not worry about.

Why is content marketing important?

The homepage of services or any of the categories of products that one is offering are the main pages that need to be optimized and from there one can just keep optimizing blog posts, any content one has or any page on a website. It is an opportunity to rank for different keywords and adding content will allow ranking for them, which is why content marketing is important.

What type of content exists?

Doing press releases, doing product descriptions, writing content for a website, blogging on other people’s websites – content exists in many forms, which needs to constantly be optimized. Through optimization, one is making it easy and accessible for the search engines to understand what this content is and to start showing it to target traffic that would be interested in the content.

How does more content outrank competitors?

The more content, the better because then one outranks its competitors. Content of 400 words is the average, but it depends on the competition. What one should try to figure out is who is on the first page of Google and how much SEO have they done for them to land there. It helps to click on the competitors’ websites and see how much content they have. If a competitor has 200 words of content, one should write 300 words. This way one will have a higher ranking in a search engine than their competitors.

Why skip websites that rank through ads?

Google rewards a company by placing them on the first page, so when one searches in Google, ads should be ignored. Ads are not doing SEO, so it is best to skip them over and look at who’s on the first page of the search. Those will show how much content one is going to need to put on their website or pages. It doesn’t matter to Google where one places content since it reads a website from top to bottom. Breaking the content up into sections makes it easier to read.

Why write content as simply as possible?

When writing content, one should keep it as simple as possible at middle school level. Making it too technical can lead to a website losing viewers. This makes sure that everyone reading the website understands what it is about and has all the necessary information that people should read. The focus should be on the audience and their point of view. If one is looking for a product or service, the information on either should bring value and answer questions or help solve issues a user may have.

How does a value proposition when targeting keywords?

A user does not care how long a company has been around or how many employees it has, but more on what problems or issues will it solve for the user. It helps to have a value proposition at the top of a website that lets people know what a company is going to do to help them. One sentence like a tagline or a slogan is more than enough. Each page should have a unique one because every page on a website is targeting different keywords. A user doesn’t want to see the same tagline for everything because each page is focusing on a different problem or issue that a user may have.

What is duplicate content?

Another best practice is to have original content, that is free of plagiarism. If the content is copied word for word from another website, it is called duplicate content, which Google will penalize someone for having. Copyscape is a website to double-check and make sure the content is original, especially if one is paying writers. If they duplicate content, it will hurt the image of the company they are writing for and lower its rankings.

How many keywords should be in a title?

As many keywords as possible should be put in the title of the content or of the page and they should flow as a sentence. It is recommended for the title to be about 60 characters including spaces. A longer title is better than a shorter one because a longer one means one can put more keywords. Websites like BuzzFeed have short clickbaity titles but they’re relying on social media traffic, not on SEO- or Google traffic. The same keywords should not be repeated more than once.

What are long tail keywords?

When one is doing keyword research, one will find keywords that don’t have as many search volumes, which are called long tail keywords. This means not many people are searching for them. Having these long-tail keywords in the body of content is highly recommended. One should put the most important keywords in the title of a page to rank for them since they get the most search volume. One also needs to rank for all these other variations of long-tail keywords and sprinkle those in the content.

What does interlinking pages stand for?

For a person to stay longer on a website, it makes sense to interlink pages together using blog posts. This is done by having 1 to 3 clickable links inside the content by linking once or twice per every 400 words to other pages. This increases the time a user spends on the website, which reduces the user‘s bounce rate and is an overall positive signal for Google that the content on the website is valuable.

What is a featured snippet?

When one searches a question on Google, the featured snippet appears at the top of a Google search page with the most frequently asked questions that are relevant to the typed question and links to websites that have most likely already answered it. What one should do is search in Google for keywords and see what questions appear. One can click on them and the answers that others have written will be visible as short snippets of text. It then makes sense to rewrite these answers in the form of content.

What happens if the answers are rewritten as content?

This should be done to answer the five most popular questions that are most relevant to a company. If one answers the questions on the company’s website, it will significantly increase its chances of showing up in the Google search section at the top. This can be done either via Google search or a voice search using Alexa, Siri, and Chrome. Another thing that is recommended is to have a little section at the bottom of a website or on each page called FAQ, which stands for frequently asked questions. It is a great way to push down competitors and rank a company as number one.

Why is updating content necessary?

Another tip is to update old content. Articles as blog posts written years ago should be rewritten with up-to-date information. Google emphasizes current and fresh content. It will show to others the newest posts. One doesn’t necessarily have to rewrite a whole new blog post. It is enough to go into old content and add a couple of sentences to update and make it relevant. Even adding just another word or two can change the content. That will get Google to reevaluate the updated blog post.

The post How to Write SEO Content that Ranks first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Jun 8, 2023 @ 4:16 am

On-page SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of ensuring that the content on a webpage is tuned and tweaked just right to rank as highly as possible on search engine result pages, or SERPs. This is opposed to off-page SEO, which has to do more with outside links and other external factors that can influence search results. On-page SEO involves making sure that both the viewable content and the HTML code on your page are in the best condition to be recognized and ranked by search engine algorithms, which allows you to bring in more business, customer conversions, and click-throughs.

SEO is a never-ending process that must be continually monitored and worked on. It is constantly evolving, as both search engines themselves, along with your competitors, will constantly be trying to outdo each other and your company. That’s why it’s critical to make sure your SEO is on point, whether that’s by hiring an SEO company to take care of it for you or just taking some simple steps to improve your page. 

The basic idea is that the page should be easily accessible and understandable. Search engine algorithms interpret your content based on what they think a human user would want to see, how concise and clear the content is, and how relevant it is to the search. Essentially, it boils down to this:

1. Is the website easy to understand?
2. Is the website relevant to the search keywords?
3. Is the page useful enough to rank highly?

Let’s look at some of the major things on a web page that can influence these factors, and what you can do to help optimize this process.

Content Quality

Without good, quality content, no amount of SEO will provide the kind of lasting, organic click-throughs and conversions you need to be successful in the fast-paced digital marketplace. The key here is EAT, or Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. 

One of the ways Google revolutionized the way we interact with information was the technology they use to access and interpret huge amounts of internet data. The way they do this is by sending out crawlers, or web spiders, which build huge webs of data and links, and analyze the content they contain. While Google is fairly obscure about its exact methods, it’s well understood that the on-page content plays a major role in their evaluations of EAT. 

To make sure your page meets their EAT guidelines, try to write or produce content you are passionate about, knowledgeable about, and have researched absolutely fully. 

SEO Writing 

When writing your content, there’s a certain trick to making sure it’s optimized for SEO. One of these methods is to utilize the power of keywords by thinking of search terms that would lead users to your website and including these. You can also look at the “people also searched for” results to get an idea of some alternate keywords to include.

Another method is to use things like bulleted lists, subheadings, and brief paragraphs. Try to think like an algorithm that will instantly interpret your page: you want to make the data and content easily accessible. Large blocks of text without paragraphs or spacing will not translate well in an SEO setting. 

URLs, HTML, and Title Tags

When considering SEO, make sure that your URLs demonstrate what the page is about, rather than just containing random numbers or letters. This will help the algorithm find and rank your page more accurately. 

Another thing to consider is the HTML of your page, which tells the computer what to display on-screen. One important HTML aspect is a Title Tag, which creates a title or heading for the page, which gives the algorithm something to latch onto and an easy way for it to interpret what the page is about. Also, try to make sure your website is laid out in a logical and easily understandable way, which will give both users and the algorithm an easier time getting through it.

Become an SEO Success Story

In context with all the other elements, having clean HTML coding and website architecture can take your SEO to the next level. On-page SEO isn’t just one thing by itself, it’s a combination of many things coming together to form a page that presents itself expertly, authoritatively, and with trustworthiness. SEO is never complete, and there are always innovations and changes that could take your page down in the rankings or boost your competitors, whether that’s changes from the algorithm itself or your competitors’ content. 

Don’t let them get a step up on you, as regaining your SERP placement can be a much more difficult task than simply practicing solid SEO tactics. Take your business to the top today by contacting an SEO professional to help you along with the process, and you’ll bring in more customers, click-throughs, and the revenue stream your hard work deserves. 

The post 5 Essential On-Page SEO Factors You Cannot Ignore first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Apr 13, 2022 @ 9:04 am

When the internet exploded onto the global scene in the ‘90s, the way humans interact with information, each other, and the world around them changed forever. Within this maelstrom of development, Google rose above the rest, with its PageRank system revolutionizing the way information is searched for and found.

This search engine technology relies on the concept of keywords: simple, natural phrases that people ubiquitously use to search for data and interact with technology.

The impact keyword technology has had on the world is profound. Combining the power of research libraries, government databases, and powerful search algorithms, Google placed the collective knowledge of human history within the fingertips of the average person and changed the global economy forever.

The key to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and thus, the ability to harness massive energy to promote your product or website is keyword research, through which online content can be tailored and tuned to show up more effectively in search engine results. 

Information Revolution

Within the Information Age, data is the new gold. A strikingly literal observation of this is Bitcoin, a digital cryptocurrency, purely made out of 1’s and 0’s, that has gone from being worth almost nothing to tens of thousands of dollars for each token.

These digital tokens represent a literal depiction of the internet – a gold mine, in which money and profit can be made on a global scale from within your home, with the only requirement being the ability to transmit, receive, and interpret data.  

The key to achieving this elusive goal is SEO. This is the process of “tuning” or altering content to make it appear more frequently, efficiently, or in higher positions within search engine results.

There are many ways to do this, such as making sure that your content is accessible on mobile devices, but the core strategy of SEO involves Keyword Research, through which content can be tailored to its audience. 

What is a Keyword?

Within the world of digital marketing strategy, a keyword is used to refer to the terms an average internet user or consumer types or speaks into Google during their search. If you have an understanding of these search terms, you can tailor your content to more effectively appeal to your potential demographic.

In this way, you can get a feel for the pulse of information through the search engines, and tune your content so that it is found more easily. 

Once your content is within the stream of information, further techniques can be used to bring your results higher up the page, ahead of your competitors. Without an adequate understanding of keyword research, however, these SEO strategies cannot be brought to their full potential.

A full understanding of your potential client base is a critical step that will help towards envisioning what people commonly search for when they are looking for your product. 

Various other ways you can brainstorm potential keywords and their relevance are:

• Search for your product on Google, and check the “People also ask” section
• Similarly, check the “Related results” section at the bottom
• Browse your website and data to list potential keywords, organizing them into themes
• Use a free website like soovle.com to generate lists of the most popular searches related to terms that you enter
• Use geolocation data to target your keyword research to specific locations you want to advertise your product, or for the country you are in

Unlocking the Keyword

Once you have compiled a list of keywords, the next step is to analyze the data and compare it to search trends and rankings. The real art of this process is to find keywords within your data that aren’t searched as much, and change them to keywords that are more commonly searched.

In this way, you can tune your content to be more easily accessible and available on search engines.

Professional SEO optimization companies provide many services that can help you compile and analyze these keywords, through the use of sophisticated technological analytical tools that can delve far deeper than surface-level analytics provided by Google.

When you are analyzing who is searching for your business, the ability to research and categorize by demographics and location will prove to be an invaluable tool in your keyword research.

Content Creation

The first step, before any of these technical steps, is to focus on the quality of your content. Proofread all of your writing and provide colorful, eye-catching graphics. Video content is another great way to raise consumer interaction and attract the attention of Google’s ranking algorithms.

The way Google ranks information is the nucleus of a billion-dollar information search industry and knowing how to interact with these algorithms is the best way to raise your online presence. 

When Google evaluates information, they analyze it based on what they call EAT, or expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. This means that they have attempted to train their algorithms to recognize not just statistics about online content, but the actual quality of the content, using machine learning, AI, and other techniques.

It’s difficult to reproduce this sort of expertise, but proper research and genuine love and passion for your content will go a long way towards fulfilling these criteria. 

Heads or Tails?

While researching your keyword data and online interaction, it’s important to cover both broad, wide-spreading search terms, as well as the niche terms that relate to your business. Within the field of SEO, shorter and more generalized or widespread search terms are known as “head queries”.

So-called “tail queries” are longer, more specialized searches, such as someone searching for a particular component of an appliance, as opposed to a head query for simply “dishwasher”. These specialized tail query searches tend to have more engagement, as those who are looking for them are more likely to have a specific need to be filled. 

However, head queries are much more common and are included in the results for these ubiquitous searches that are made millions of times a day can be the lifeblood of a small or struggling business.

Tuning your content to be more similar and relevant to head queries related to your keywords can help provide the boost needed to “go viral” and achieve an organic momentum of customers spreading your product or message. Once you manage to rank within the Google search results, the increased business and profits that result from it will be well worth the effort put into SEO.

The Next Step

Keyword research and other SEO professionals can more effectively help those struggling to be noticed or achieve an online presence than the average person. Their access to specialized tools and information makes them a more potent force to reckon with the complicated search engine algorithms that control the flow of information in our world.

However, anyone who maintains an online presence at all can consider these guidelines and perform basic search engine and keyword optimization techniques.

Whether you’re a hobbyist running a personal website or a billion-dollar multinational conglomerate, search engine optimization affects you daily.

Without consciously and carefully curating your content, you run the risk of being passed over by the algorithms – a one-way ticket to a dead website. With SEO keyword research, you are closer to optimizing your dreams. 

The post Ultimate Guide for SEO Keyword Research  first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Aug 24, 2022 @ 6:19 pm

Also known as entity optimization, entity SEO is content optimization using entities instead of (or to complement) keywords.

This is a type of optimization that is taking a bigger and bigger role in semantic SEO.

We’ll see in this guide what entity SEO is all about, starting with the most foundational of questions: what is an entity?

What is an Entity?

According to Google, “an entity is a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable.”

That means that an entity is:

• One (singular)
• Such that there’s not another one like it (unique)
• Something that has certain qualities (well-defined)
• Separate or different from other entities (distinguishable)

and it might be anything from a person to an abstract concept, and it’s represented by a noun in a language.

That’s quite a lot but still clear enough, isn’t?

An entity is different from a keyword because, while an entity defines something in its wholeness (i.e. a thing, a concept), a keyword is a description or the verbal expression of that thing in a given language (e.g. “capital of Italy” is a description of “Rome” in the English language).

If you’re thinking about “web calendars” you may also think Asana and Google Calendar. That’s what Google’s algorithm may think about, too. They can be used as keywords, but in fact they are entities.

So, from everything we’ve seen so far, we can say that entities can be:

• Person
• Organization
• Location
• Consumer Good
• Work of Art
• Event
• Address
• Price

and others.

Entities and Relationships

Entities can be linked to each other in a graph (with entities as the nodes and edges as the relationship).

Entities are the foundation of Google’s Knowledge Graph and they can also be linked to a Knowledge Base containing entity descriptions and any other information about them.

It’s easier to understand entities if we imagine them as the entries of an encyclopedia or Wikipedia — and these entries are linked to other entries through links or bibliographical notes.

But let’s see it in practice with an example.

In the sentence “buy cheap textbooks to save money in college” there are 3 entities:

• “textbooks”
• “money”
• “college”

linked by relationships.

Below is a graph that shows the 3 entities and the relationships that link them together:

This is easy enough, isn’t it?

And Google Cloud NL API demo tells us exactly the same thing about this sentence:

This leads us to the next question: how are entities used by Google to return search results?

How does Google use Entities?

A 2014 patent titled “Ranking search results based on entity metrics” mentioned relatedness, which depends on co-occurrence, meaning that

the more frequently two entities appear in the same text, the better they are related.

As an example, “best superhero movies” and “iron man” are likely to be mentioned together, leading to results such as the ones below:

Naturally, a lot of factors contribute to ranking, and entities are not a ranking factor in the traditional sense (see later in this post) but they contribute to the shaping of the link graph, and given that Google now uses more machine learning than in the past, focusing on entities as an SEO practice is more than justified.

How to Do Entity SEO?

There are three methods essentially.

Method #1 – Google Images

Take a look at Google Images: searching for “best robot kit” will return a list of entities below the search field, that Google associates with the key phrase:

Here the entities Google Images gives us are:

• arduino robot
• antbo
• toy
• kits for
• lego
• humanoid robot
• arduino uno
• educational robot
• jimu robot
• robot toys
• lego mindstorms

If we were to write content on “best robot kit”, we would make sure to include all these entities.

Method #2 – Google’s Natural Language API Demo

You can also use Google’s Natural Language API demo (we introduced it earlier but it’s worth linking again) to find entities in a text.

For example, let’s take this article on resource page link building and input a portion of its text in the demo field and click Analyze:

We found the following entities:

• Resource page
• Link building
• Resource page link building
• links
• resources
• niche
• marketer
• webmaster
• benefit
• website owners
• suggestions
• readers
• link request

and others (a total of 16 entities).

We know that not all of these look like entities, some look more like keywords — but you can easily realize that they are entities because they don’t describe something, they are something.

The tool also gives us a significant piece of information about each entity: salience.

Salience is the score that tells us how important a word (or group of words) is a text.

In our example, “Resource Page Link Building” has the most importance in our text.

What term has the highest salience in yours?

You can also use the API demo method to find out how to optimize your content for entities:

input your target keyword or key phrase and then see what entities (and other keywords) the tool suggests.

Finally, you can run a competitive analysis for entities using this demo tool: simply input a competitor’s content (the text from one of their pages) in the analysis field and see what results the tool gives you.

Remember to make sure that’s a competitor appearing on page one for your target query for better data to build your content upon.

Method #3 – Wikipedia

You can search your topic in Wikipedia and see what other links or entities that Wikipedia page has in its text.

That will give you an idea of what other topics you can cover in your content that are related to your target one.

For example, the Wikipedia page for Content Marketing gives us, in the introductory text, a list of entities that are strictly related to the concept of “content marketing”:

• content
• target audience
• news
• video
• white papers
• e-books
• infographics
• email newsletters
• case studies
• podcasts
• how-to guides
• question and answer articles
• photos
• blogs

It makes sense because these entities are all part of content marketing. If we had to draw this as a graph, we would have “content marketing” as a central node and then all these entities as other nodes linked to it.

If you don’t want to make this entity analysis yourself, you can run the text of the Wikipedia page you’re researching in Google’s NL API demo and see what entities it returns.

Bonus Tips

There are a number of other optimizations you can do on your content that use entities:

• Optimize for People Also Ask because that gives you related entities you can cover in your content
• Don’t forget search intent — understand what meaning Google gives to specific queries and give it an entity name (e.g. for the keyword “solving puzzles”, Google gives us results on a variety of puzzles you can solve to hone your problem solving skills — so the associated entity is “puzzles”, and you can cover it in its entirety in your content)

Finally, remember to build relevant links — even backlinks shape the Knowledge Graph — and to use Schema to further help Google understand your content.

What the Experts Say on Entity SEO

We asked experts on HARO to share their insights on entity SEO with our readership.

Specifically, we asked:

• How do they use entities in your SEO?
• How do they optimize for entities rather than keywords?

Here’s what they told us.

Nikola Roza (CEO and Owner)

I optimized this page on my site for entities, and not just for keywords. Here’s how!

1. I scooped up all Google Suggest queries and made them part of my content outline as subheadings and sub-topics.
2. I took advantage of PAA boxes that were showing up at the time (now they’re gone) to see what users ask about the topic.
3. I used related searches at the bottom of the page, as these are powered by the Knowledge Graph.
4. I went to Google Images and found new entities displayed in the suggested searches bar above the first row of images. These are also entities delivered by the Knowledge Graph.
5. I went to Google NL API and pasted the text of the first 3 ranking pages. I scooped up all terms with high salience scores.
6.  I went to YouTube and found new queries which were auto-suggested in the YouTube search bar.
7. As a final step, I wrote my article naturally and then came back and tried to include as many entities as I could, in a natural way of course.

I think it worked, because I currently rank on the second page for 20+ keywords, and my page is less than 3 months old.

It’s showing great potential!

Eduard Dziak (Marketing Manager)

Often I am using entities to learn more about semantic meaning that Google associates with the targeted keyword or topic I am going to write about. Understand the particular important key phrases that Google associate with my target topic helps me guide my content and ensure that I provide a comprehensive article with answers that Google and its users are looking for.

Because optimizing only for a keyword often lead to keyword stuffing and doesn’t deliver enough value. Also, I have noticed that the content often leads to fewer indexed keywords if you only optimize for the keyword rather than for semantic and entities.

So to optimize my article for entities I am using keyword research tools along with natural language processing tools from Google and MonkeyLearn Keyword Extractor. These tools point out to me what other keywords are associated with my targeted keyword or topic and thus navigate my content to create SEO optimized article.

Like this I can create articles that I know will rank well and provide the content Google and users are looking for when they are typing my targeted keyword phrase.

Jenna Carson (Marketing Director)

The best way that we’ve started to incorporate entities within our SEO strategy has been to use software that uses extraction of relevant entities for you and identifies Google’s understanding of them – this helps us integrate them within our other SEO techniques and plans.

We do our best to optimize entities by referencing the music entities we’re experts in within a lot of our copywriting and blogs – however, we’ve had the most success in the first quarter of 2021 by stopping the typical keyword-stuffing SEO behavior. We have a list of entities we want to focus on and we now carefully craft content around this, before publishing any articles we look at competitors’ entities’ successes and see how we can tap into this.

Anatolii Ulitovskyi (Digital Marketer, Founder)

Generic SEO is related to finding keywords, optimization them, and providing link building. That’s not the case anymore because of huge competition with around 1.8 billion websites that want to get traffic.

Modern SEO is related to topics [entities], not keywords. Google understands the user intent and ranks content that users want to get. Instead of searching for generic keywords, find topics with a lack of quality content and low competition and jump there.

These topics are not always relevant 100% to your niche but they cover all the stages of a sales funnel and build brand awareness. Most projects fail because they chase high-volume. Over a thousand others do it the same. Search on Google any keyword. There are a million results.

Search systems have a lot of choices. It’s not possible to rank even a tiny percentage of existing content. That’s why I search for topics with outdated content that my competitors ignore.

Zander Buteux (Head of Organic Growth)

At Wilbur Labs, we use a few tools to help us as we generate content at scale — around 40 to 50 pieces per month today, and we anticipate generating 100+ by the end of Q3. Copy.AI, Fraze, and SEMrush are the go-to platforms for us. Copy.AI helps turn a blank page from a keyword into a title, into an outline, and then an intro paragraph. Fraze and SEMrush help turn the outline into not just a body of well-written words, but one that is optimized for the topical entity. Whereby it provides recommendations of questions to answer, related keywords to include, and suggested length of the article based on SERP competition.

This tactic has worked exceptionally well for Joblist, which tackles content generation with a spoke and hub strategy — “hub” being a parent piece that discusses a topical cluster of clusters and the spokes being a deeper dive into the nuanced topics within. Using this strategy of generating strong, entity-focused content that truly helps and guides our target market, our content hub has grown on-site traffic by 1230% Y/Y.

The biggest takeaway here is that keyword chasing will produce momentary growth that will require more hands-on updating over the life of the piece, while responding to entities will generate sustainable growth over the long term and nightmares of algorithm updates ripping away 90% of your traffic can be a thing of the past.

John Pinedo (Founder)

Internally linking entity-related articles helps Google recognize your website as an authority on the entity topic.

If I’m covering an entity topic like landing page software, I’d want to cover as many informational and commercial topics as possible on my site. Google will eventually crawl and index my articles on these entity-related topics, but it’s not until they’re internally linked together that Google starts registering that my website has covered said topic thoroughly.

Soon enough, when someone searches for an entity-related topic, Google can match up to my website as a great fit for the searcher (ranking me higher in the SERP) by cross-checking its knowledge graph with my on-page SEO and site structure efforts.

Are Entities a Ranking Factor?

Not if taken as a standalone entity (pun intended).

Like keywords, entities are not a ranking factor per se, but they can be as something that goes together with content.

Entities are the way content is understood by Google’s natural language processing model and related with other content.

That — content — is a ranking factor, as well as links and RankBrain.

Conclusions on Entity SEO

Entity optimization is the future of SEO. It doesn’t replace keyword research combined with search intent, but it gives a broader meaning to it, for topics are not just keywords — they are entities, which exist regardless of language.

We recommend using the methods we outlined in this guide to do your entity SEO and come up with entities to use in your content.

For further help and guidance, take a look at our On-Page SEO services.

Here’s to your success!

The post Entity SEO: A Quick Guide to Entity Optimization for Google first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Oct 4, 2021 @ 10:44 pm

Meta descriptions are essential for driving traffic to any website. They are the hook that brings potential clients in and they can also be the wall that keeps them out.

Before you visit any website, you decide to do so because of what you read in the search engine—this small bit of information is the meta description.

Given that such a brief snapshot of 150-160 words in length at most is so crucial to bringing in traffic, it then makes it all the more evident that it should also be optimized.

Tools commonly available for this purpose do a decent job at automating this and bringing in key elements of the web page, but if you really want it to be effective you need to take manual control and craft the description yourself.

Crafting the Perfect Meta Description

If you want to create perfect meta descriptions that hook and reel clients and traffic in then you have to understand only a few key points:

1. Your target audience: Knowing who you’re marketing to and what they are looking for when they see you in the search results is supremely important. This is because you want the meta description to call out to their need so that the next action, they take is clicking on you. Stay relevant to the customer and give information specific to the web page.
2. Meta description length: 160 words are the maximum allowed length for a description but in reality, the best descriptions are as short as they can be while delivering that intended message about what your web page is your target audience. 150 words is what your maximum should be instead, as search engines can all have slightly different attributes and may cut some descriptions short with an ellipses ‘…’ message.
3. Inclusion of keywords: While Google has stated that they do not look at the meta description as a ranking signal it is important to remember that the use of keywords is what directs traffic to any web page. If you are not signaling for that traffic to visit you then you are not receiving it. For this reason, it is very important that you include at least one of the most important keywords that your web page contains. This is an opportunity to indirectly increase your ranking and visibility.

Creating perfect meta descriptions is actually very simple when you keep these points in mind.

When in doubt look at examples of similar web pages that rank highly or work off of the automated meta description that SEO tools can provide while giving it a polished touch.

Remember to review every page’s description individually and to always stay relevant to your target audience.

The post How To Write SEO Meta Descriptions first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Aug 24, 2022 @ 6:18 pm

In February 2021, Google introduced 12 new manual action penalties that are unrelated to Google Search. Instead, this time they impact Google News and Google Discovery content.

The enforcement of new policies is probably due to the rise of fake news, manipulated content by political parties and violent acts that were sadly among trending news over the past 12 months.

However, Google doesn’t say if the content that received a manual action will be removed from the listing or demoted. All we know is that there are 12 new manual actions you should be aware of.

Let’s quickly review what is a manual action and then dive into Google’s 12 new manual penalties.

What Is A Manual Action?

A manual action is a penalty applied by a Google employee after they reviewed your website for violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

The results of a manual action can include:

• Drop in rankings
• Drop in number of indexed pages
• Drop of selected pages from Google search
• Deindexing of the whole website or part of it

If you need an authoritative reference, Search Engine Journal has a complete list of manual action penalties that Google applies to websites in search.

As we learned in February 2021, though, manual actions are no longer restricted to only content appearing in Google Search, but also in Google News and Google Discover.

What Are Google News and Google Discover?

Google News is Google’s news aggregator that gets content from websites that applied to appear as news providers.

Google Discover is a mobile feed that helps you discover (indeed) new content that you might be interested in. It’s based on Google’s Topic Layer in the Knowledge Graph to learn more about you and your interests.

Source: Google

Both News and Discover comes with their own policies (here and here) that webmasters must comply with in order for their content to remain in News and Discover.

Google Introduces 12 New Manual Actions for Google News and Google Discover

Google’s spokesperson Danny Sullivan said on Twitter that Google is already automatically preventing offending content from appearing in Google News and Google Discover, but that manual actions come to the rescue in all those cases the algorithm fails.

See the tweets below:

But if our systems weren't catching things for whatever reason, then we might take a manual action.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) February 8, 2021

That still doesn’t say if the content receiving a manual action will be demoted or completely removed from News and Discover, but chances are, since it hadn’t to show up in the first place, it’s going to be removed.

Let’s see which new manual actions Google introduced for News and Discover.

1. Transparency (Google News)

Google may apply a manual action penalty if the site appearing in Google News doesn’t have clear information about who writes the articles, as well clear dates and bylines.

Also, Google may penalize for not having enough information about authors, publishers, companies and any publication that appears in Google News.

Contact information is a must as well. Omitting it is seen as a violation of Google’s policy.

2. Misleading Content (Google Discover)

Think clickbait.

Any empty promise made to the user in the headline or content is considered a violation.

3. Adult-themed Content (Google Discover)

Adult content is not allowed in Google Discover.

That includes explicit sexual material and acts, as well as nudity.

4. Dangerous Content (Google News + Discover)

Any content that could cause serious harm to people or animals is subject to manual action.

5. Harassing Content (Google News + Discover)

If your content contains threatening content, including bullying and harassment, it will be penalized.

That includes any content that will “sexualize someone in an unwanted way, expose private information of someone else that could be used to carry out threats”.

6. Hateful Content (Google News + Discover)

If your content incites hatred, Google will take action on it.

That also includes content that promotes hatred against people with any “characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization”.

7. Manipulated Media (Google News + Discover)

Media that are used to deceive, manipulate or mislead are subject to penalty.

Google includes media that “significantly undermine participation or trust in electoral or civic processes”.

8. Medical Content (Google News + Discover)

Google may take action on medical content that has commercial purposes.

“We also do not allow content from any site that contradicts or runs contrary to scientific or medical consensus and evidence-based best practices”, says Google.

9. Sexually Explicit Content (Google News + Discover)

Images or videos aimed at causing sexual arousal will get a penalty, getting potentially removed from the platform altogether.

10. Terrorist Content (Google News + Discover)

If your content promotes terrorist activities in any way, it’s subject to manual action.

11. Violence and Gore Content (Google News + Discover)

Google will penalize for content that incites to violence and celebrates it, including the sharing of explicitly graphic material.

“We also do not allow extremely graphic or violent materials for the sake of disgusting others”, says Google.

12. Vulgar Language and Profanity (Google News + Discover)

This penalty is for content that contains strong profanities and obscenities.

How to recover from these Manual Actions?

The best practice is to remove the content (we know, it’s a lot of work, but must be done) that violates Google’s policies and then submit a reconsideration request.

Google offers advice in the form of “Recommended actions” to webmasters directly in the Search Console Help page for manual actions. It’s worth linking again, here. We strongly encourage you to follow the recommended steps and any further directives Google gives you.

After that, it might take anywhere from days to weeks to recover, depending on when Google’s employees see and take action on the request.

The best way to avoid News and Discover manual actions for the time being is to abide strictly to Google’s policies for this type of content.

A Takeaway

E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) has never been more important.

Google wants all content from News and Discovery to be trustworthy and come from authoritative, expert voices. It won’t accept anything inferior or misleading even in the slightest.

And we don’t need to tell you that even most of the content appearing in Google Search has to abide to E-A-T quality standards to be able to remain indexed and rank well.

Do you publish content on Google News and Google Discover? Let us know about your experience in the comments below.

Here’s to your success.

The post Google’s 12 New Manual Actions for Google News and Google Discover first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Aug 24, 2022 @ 6:19 pm

Internal linking is critical to the well-being of a website.

Not only crawlers won’t be able to find your pages if they’re not linked anywhere (sitemaps are not enough) but the biggest issue will be having users click your pages and read them.

If users can’t find pages, either through your website or a search engine, those pages can’t convert. Period.

And SEO is all about conversions.

It goes without saying that orphan pages fail the test and they can’t be found either by search engines or users.

Therefore they can’t convert.

In this post, we explain how to find and fix orphan pages so they can begin to get you results and not lay around as extra kilobytes on your server.

What Is an Orphan Page & Why It’s an SEO Issue?

Orphan pages are pages of your website that no other page links to and that sometimes is also a dead-end page (i.e. contains no links to other pages of your website — except for, maybe, in-page jump links to subsections of the content).

That means unless they appear in the sitemap, search engine crawlers can’t find orphan pages, nor users can, and that’s a problem because you’re missing out on both search and referral traffic as well as the opportunity to use these pages for conversion.

Unless a page is an orphan on purpose (e.g. a landing page that users can only reach by subscribing to your newsletter) we don’t recommend having orphan pages on your website.

Let’s see how you can find (and fix) orphan pages on your website.

How to Find Orphan Pages on Your Website

Finding orphan pages means discovering all those pages that are like isolated nodes from your website architecture.

There are 2 methods you can use to find orphan pages on your website:

1. Using ScreamingFrog (for static websites)
2. Using Rank Math SEO (for WordPress)

After the discovery step, you will create a spreadsheet with a list of orphan pages to fix.

We suggest that you run this audit at least once a year (ideally every six months, especially if you have a large website) to keep your site clean of orphan pages.

Using ScreamingFrog

To find pages with no internal links using this method, run your website through the ScreamingFrog crawler using your sitemap file, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics.

Follow this detailed guide by ScreamingFrog, which is complete with screenshots.

Basically, you will have to connect your Google Search Console and Google Analytics to your ScreamingFrog account and specify your sitemap, so the tool can compare the URLs and find the orphaned ones.

You will have to buy a ScreamingFrog license (£149/year) to run this process, as you can’t connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts with the free version of the software.

Using Rank Math SEO

As an alternative to ScreamingFrog, if you use WordPress you can install the Rank Math SEO plugin that will show you the number of incoming links and internal links per post or page.

See the example below:

Rank Math SEO shows you 3 Links icons after Keyword and Schema: a chain for internal links, a square with an arrow at the top right for outbound links, and a square with an arrow at the bottom left for inbound links.

For the “Contact Me” page in the screenshot, there are exactly 21 incoming links, so this page is not orphan at all.

With Rank Math SEO it will be easy to find out which pages and/or posts have 0 inbound links. The only downside is that there is no way to order your page by inbound link number, so you will have to manually scroll down the list of pages of your site and note down which ones have no inbound links.

Create a Spreadsheet for Orphan Pages

No matter what tool you used to find orphan pages on your website, now is the time to collect all those URLs in a spreadsheet, so you can make your fixing job easier.

Below is an example spreadsheet:

In the columns we reported URL and Title of the page, and a space for Notes where you can write down how you want to link this page, or if you want to delete or merge this page.

Naturally feel free to use this spreadsheet as a template to build your own. What matters is that you have all your orphan pages collected in one place that you can refer to when it comes to fixing them.

How to Fix Orphan Pages

There are 4 ways you can fix orphan pages:

1. Internal Links

Add internal links from other pages to this page so users and search engine crawlers can find it (and if it’s also a dead-end page, add internal links in the page so users and crawlers can move from this page to other pages).

There’s nothing wrong with linking from older pages to newer pages. Actually, it’s a good practice to improve the hierarchical structure of your website, so each node (page) is linked to similar or relevant pages as best as possible.

2. Leave As-is

Don’t make changes to the page if it’s a landing page of some sort that you don’t want linked from other pages.

It makes sense to leave it as-is in this case!

However, make sure this page is noindexed and/or blocked by robots.txt to avoid even accidental indexing through your sitemap.

3. Merge

If you think an orphan page no longer stands on its own feet but some of its content is still helpful, you can merge it with another page in order to create good content that both users and search engines will love.

An example may be an old post where you have some juicy statistics but the post is no longer helpful on its own; in this case, it’s a good idea to take all those statistics and add them to a newer post of higher quality that gets traffic.

4. Remove

Finally, you have the option to delete the orphan page from your server if you no longer have a scope for it.

For example, you may want to remove an old landing page for a product you no longer want to sell or an old blog post that doesn’t have any value for today’s users and that you don’t want crawled by search engines.

Conclusions: Find & Fix Orphan Pages for Better UX and SEO

As you could read, finding orphan pages on your website and fixing them is not too hard.

Sure, it takes some time, but the good news is that you won’t need to repeat the process more than once every six months to a year, depending on the nature and size of your website.

Definitely, fixing orphan pages is a best practice for both your UX and SEO, because you can get rid of any dead weight on your servers and only keep the content that matters, minimizing resource usage and optimizing content discovery and conversions.

In fact, the rule of thumb should be to only have pages that both users and search engines can find and use (with the obvious — few — exceptions).

Over to you:

How do you handle orphan pages on your website?

Let us know in the comments! We’re very interested in your feedback.

The post How to Find & Fix Orphan Pages on Your Website first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Jun 14, 2021 @ 11:07 am

You might be hearing a lot about schema markup, microdata, and structured data. However, many of us have no idea about what it is and how to use it.

Let me tell you this: Schema Markup is one of the latest evolutions in SEO and is the most potent but least-utilized form of SEO among marketers despite its considerable benefits.

According to a study by Bing and Catalyst, merely 17% of marketers use Schema.org markup.

It’s becoming increasingly important in the age of voice search and acts as a signpost that leads digital assistants towards the information that correctly answers the user’s voice query. In addition to this, it can also help in boosting your website in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Let me help you understand a basic question that might be bothering you when you read the headline.

What is Schema Markup?

Schema markup is a form of microdata that can be added to your webpage to create an enhanced description (also known as a rich snippet) that appears in the search result.

It’s crucial in the age of Hummingbird and RankBrain to determine the context of a query. In 2011, top search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, and Google collaborated to create Schema.org.

In a nutshell: Schema markup is a code that you put on your website to enable search engines to give more informative results for your users. The schema markup tells the SERP to display the desired information.

I am sure you might be wanting to know something more about schema markup.

Let’s dive deeper.

FACT#1: Schema conveys to the search engine what your data truly means.

Every content on your website gets indexed and returned in search results. Once you use the scheme markup, some of the content gets indexed and returned differently.

How does this happen?

Schema markup tells the search engine what the content actually means.

For example: If the word ‘Hemal Bhatt appears in an article, then the search engine will produce a SERP entry with Hemal Bhatt.

When you place the right scheme around the word ‘Hemal Bhatt,’ you’ve told the search engine that Hemal Bhatt is the author of the article and asks the search engine to display better information for the user searching for Hemal Bhatt.

FACT#2: Schema markup utilizes unique semantic vocabulary in microdata format.

All you need to do is add bits of schema.org vocabulary to your HTML Microdata. Schema is an inter-industry collaboration where you need to agree upon a set of code markers that tell you what to do with your website’s data.

FACT#3: Schema markup was invented for users.

A website with schema markup allows users to see everything about a website in the SERPs. You can even call it a ‘virtual business card.’

Schema markup helps users get the information they need.

Why is Schema Markup Important?

Schema markup helps to rank your website better for all types of content. You can get data markup for the following:

• Local Businesses
• Events
• People
• Recipes
• Products
• Videos
• Reviews
• TV episodes and ratings
• Restaurants
• Software applications
• Movies

For movies, rich snippets come in varying sizes, depending on the website.

For instance: A major website like IMDb has a small amount of information listed in their rich snippet, displaying the movie’s rating.

While another website like Rotten Tomatoes, the rich snippet is much bigger and shows the rating, genre, runtime, etc.

It doesn’t just happen because Google decides to show you more or less information.

Everything depends on the Schema markup that has been added to the page. Adding schema to your site will allow search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. to help your users understand your context.

Schema markup exists because search engines want to provide more avenues to supply desired information about your content on your website pages.

It powers rich snippets that have higher click-through-rates than regular search results. This means more traffic to your website.

The function of the markup is to help search engines understand your content better.

 This one is a fantastic example by Ahrefs about what *Google’s Knowledge Graph looks like.

*Google’s Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base of entities and the relationships between them.

Here, all the edges that are connecting the nodes represent real schema markup properties.

By looking at the above google knowledge graph, you can tell that schema markup aims to provide easy-to-read information about your company, products, services, content, and likewise.

Listen up:

• Google helps you to understand things better than plain text.
• Users are likely to get more relevant search results.
• Marketers get rich snippets and can become an entity in the knowledge graph.

Getting included in the knowledge graph offers excellent branding opportunities in the SERP. You get a knowledge panel whenever people search for you, and your brand name appears as a relevant solution for non-branded queries.

Thinking about the bigger picture, schema markup is an essential part of structured data that enables semantic web and search.

It also allows URLs to convey the actual meaning of your content to Googlebot.

 I firmly believe that schema is essential for SEO as it:

• Provides you with a distinct set of data.
• Matches with your search query or intent.
• Increases user experience on search engines.
• Improves search engine optimization practices of UX.
• Enhances your ranking factor.

Let me give you 3 reasons why schema markup is important for SEO:

1. It offers extensive rich snippets.
2. It drives organic click-through rates.
3. It boosts your website SEO.

As said above, schema markup provides rich snippets for articles, movies, products, events, and many more.

In addition to this, there are hundreds of other data markup types for different genres. You can get many like these from entertainment to medical schedules. As a matter of fact, any type of data on your website can have an ‘itemtype’ and ‘itemscope’.

Let me give you a concrete example from Schema.org.

If you have a page about the Hollywood movie ‘Avatar’. Your website links the movie tailor and provides all information about the director, cast, run time, reviews, etc.

In this case, your HTML code should look like this:

If you want to get details ‘about’ the movie, add the itemscope element to the HTML tag that encloses the item’s information.

Adding an itemscope means you’re specifying that the HTML displayed in the <div>…</div> block is about a particular item.

If you want to specify the type of item using the ‘itemtype’ attribute, then the markup specifies that the thing is a movie as defined in the Schema.org type hierarchy.

I will continue explaining the 3 common ways schema is useful for SEO.

• It offers extensive rich snippets.

Schema markup will make your web page look better in SERPs since it enhances the rich snippets displayed under your content’s page title.

The first result contains all the information the user is searching for. It shows that the rich snippet looks way better than the second one, which has the metadata that Google chooses.

Which one would you choose?

Obviously, the first one as it consists of an extensive rich snippet.

A structured data markup allows you to display the exact information you need your users to see on your web pages’ snippet.

• It drives organic click-through rates.

An extensive rich snippet that’s well-presented in search engine result pages will garner the highest organic click-through rates.

In the above example, the first snippet is classified as an extensive rich snippet resulting from a structured data markup on a specific web page.

It can also provide an indirect SEO benefit because it makes your web pages indexable easily by offering targeted metadata that’s accurate than only keywords.

Other significant ranking factors include SEO behavioral data like time on site, bounce rate, click-through rate, etc.

• It boosts your website SEO

Schema markup is an indirect ranking factor but is one of the powerful SEO practices that can help rank your website at the top of the search engine results pages.

A structured data markup can aid in:

• Enhancing your rich snippets
• Driving higher click-through rates
• Allowing search engines to understand your web page content
• Making your website more indexable than other websites without schema markup

Experts have also claimed that web pages with a structured data markup can rank up to four positions higher than those that do not utilize a data markup. Thus, we can say that investing your effort in schema markup can improve your SEO. Try it!

To round it off

SEO and schema markup are a huge world in itself. Use schema to make your website trustworthy and give it a sense of authority on search engines.

Make the most of the common schema types that suit your business niche and give you richer results.

The post Schema Tags in SEO: Understanding the What and Why! first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update May 16, 2021 @ 11:59 am

If you know anything about SEO, or you start doing some research about it, you’ll be hearing a lot about meta descriptions. This is because they represent an important segment of a successful SEO strategy.

However, some marketers tend to underestimate the power of writing strong and SEO friendly meta descriptions, which can seriously damage their ranking, traffic, and conversions.

This is why you need to learn more about meta descriptions, their importance for your SEO strategy, and how to write it like a pro.

If you like what you hear, just keep reading. We’ve put together the ultimate guide for writing meta descriptions for SEO.

Let’s take a closer look.

What is a Meta Description?

Before we head to the writing tips and secrets, we need to make sure you understand what exactly are meta descriptions.

By definition, meta descriptions are:

• HTML attributes that summarize a web page.

Let’s clarify this a bit further.

Meta descriptions are those brief paragraphs of text that appear in Google search results under the page titles. It serves to discover a bit more about the page that Google decided to show as a result of someone’s search.

This means that you’ve got a chance to attract more page visitors and stand out from your competitors if you write top-notch meta descriptions for each of your pages.

What Do Meta Descriptions Influence?

So, meta descriptions describe what your page is about. Why does it matter so much?

Well, the truth is meta descriptions influence how your potential customers or readers perceive your page, which affects their decision making.

To put it simply, meta descriptions will:

• influence people to choose your page over other similar results
• improve your click-through rate
• positively influence your SEO

When Google search engines see that your CTR is increased and higher than for other pages, it will boost your SEO and make your page rank higher.

How to Write Meta Descriptions for SEO?

Now that you understand what meta descriptions are and how they work, it’s time that we take a look at the guide for writing better meta descriptions.

In order to write great meta descriptions that make the best results and get you the highest CTRs, you’ll need to create a writing strategy and follow a set of simple yet effective rules.

Let’s break down those rules and outline a strategy for you to follow.

Provide Instant Value

Your meta descriptions are not there to look nice or to add volume to your content. They have a very specific role, which is to improve how people perceive your page on the search results page and whether they click it or not.

This is why meta descriptions will help you make that first, most important impression.

And, to ensure they attract a large number of people, you’ll have to provide instant value to the readers. Here’s what you need to share:

• what the page is about
• who you are
• what you offer
• why they need to read more

Answering these burning questions is a necessity for each meta description to be a success.

If you omit any of the information, the readers might be suspicious of whether to click your page or not.

Keep it Short

A meta description should be able to tell the readers everything but take up as many as 160 characters. That means that every sentence and every word needs to count.

Let’s compare the two examples:

• We provide high-quality web design services for businesses, brands, and companies.
• Our team of professionals will do everything they can to create a website according to your preferences, needs, and wishes.

The first one is simple but to the point. It tells the readers exactly what they need to know.

The second one is longer but says nothing more than the first one, only in a more complicated and less effective way.

Open on a Strong Note

If you take a look at the Google search results page, you’ll see that not all meta descriptions are fully displayed. Some of them are cut short because the entire text of the meta description can’t fit the intended space.

This is why you should always open your meta descriptions strongly.

That means that you should:

• open with the most important information
• place key facts upfront
• not risk to have important information not displayed

Here’s what we have in mind:

• Buy swimwear and accessories online, and have them delivered…
• Visit our website and take a look at our latest swimwear and accessories collection…

The first example prioritizes the most important segment of the meta description and places it at the very beginning. This will ensure that the target audience will definitely see it.

Include Keywords

Meta descriptions need to be SEO friendly, which means you should always include keywords. You should choose those keywords that are included in the content of the page you’re writing the meta description for.

Make sure to:

• include the main keyword
• include some secondary keywords

So, if your main keyword is “professional yoga instructors,” write something like, “Our professional yoga instructors help our clients…”.

Make them fit the meta description naturally, but still impress potential page visitors and give them a push in the right direction to click your page.

Never Do Keyword Stuffing

As we’ve already mentioned, the main purpose of a meta description is to help a potential page visitor choose your page over the competitors’ pages.

This is why keyword stuffing won’t help you rank higher or get more people to click it.

Keyword stuffing is cramming as many keywords into your meta description as possible, thinking it will positively influence your CTR. But, just imagine reading a meta description like this:

• Buy office supplies today- if you need office materials and office supplies, order today from our office supplies online store.

This is just ridiculous, and it will make you seem unprofessional. Therefore, never perform keyword stuffing but choose to place your keywords in your meta description naturally.

Address the Pain Points

Most people who are looking for online content are doing it with a specific reason in mind. It could be anything:

• to find entertainment
• to solve a problem
• to get informed
• to buy a product
• to hire a service

When you’re writing your page, you’re doing it with a specific target audience in mind. Make sure to define their pain points and goals and address them in your meta descriptions. Here are some examples:

• You want to learn pottery, and we’ve got online classes for you!
• Do you need to hire a professional babysitter ASAP?
• Latest fashion news, trends, and events for all you fashion lovers.

Make sure you tell potential page visitors you’ve got exactly what they’re looking for. This will be a reason more for them to choose you over the competitors.

Showcase Brand Personality

Your brand personality is your formula for addressing your followers, customers, and audience. It’s a set of rules you’ve created to make sure you’re authentic and true to your values.

You need to make sure your brand personality is visible in everything you do, write, and publish.

Meta descriptions are not an exception.

Therefore, make sure to:

• use brand tone and voice
• use the right type of vocabulary
• write according to your brand personality

Make sure your meta descriptions are similar to your social media posts, blog posts, and website content.

Include a CTA

Every meta description should include at least one strong call-to-action. And, if your meta description is short and will be fully displayed, you should end with a killer CTA.

What is the purpose of a CTA?

It’s supposed to make that final impact on your target readers and tell them exactly what to do. It’s the message that will stick with them even if they decide to read other pages’ descriptions.

A great CTA is:

• short
• to the point
• attention-grabbing

So, if your page is selling organic fruit, make sure you send a clear message using a CTA such as “Order your healthy, organic fruit today!”.

CTAs are there to enhance your main message and increase your CTRs.

Address Your Target Audience

Another important factor in the success of a meta description is how relatable it is to your target audience.

They need to feel like you’re talking directly to them, and the page content is something they need to check out.

You can achieve this effect by following simple rules such as:

• include a lot of “you” and “your”
• tell them why they need to see, buy, or do something
• address them by their belonging to a certain group

Here’s what we have in mind:

• Hey, garden enthusiasts! Do you need to buy quality garden supplies for your autumn garden adventures? We’ve got you covered- check it out on our website.

If you address your target audience the right way, they’ll feel like your page is designed for them, and they’ll definitely be more willing to check it out.

Be Original

Some marketers believe that a single generic meta description copy should do the trick for all their web pages. However, placing duplicate meta descriptions can only do you harm.

Let’s say your potential readers see meta descriptions that are:

• generic
• unoriginal
• too general

They’ll find your page too obscure, and the lack of specific information will turn them away. Here’s an example of a generic meta description that you don’t want to use:

• Joe’s Furniture Design- International furniture manufacturer for all your ideas.

This meta description tells you nothing about the content of the specific page that it’s offering and will turn down most potential customers. Instead, you should go for a more specific, original meta description:

• Do you need someone to design the furniture for your living room? We’ve got you covered.

The more specific and detailed, the better. Therefore, always create unique meta descriptions for all your pages.

Use Active Voice

You want your meta descriptions to activate and awaken your potential customers and page visitors. That’s why you should use the active voice and try to lift the energy levels of the meta description content.

Here’s an example of an active meta description:

• Our team of professional digital marketers takes care of your entire online strategy- just choose your goal and let us handle the rest.

On the other hand, the passive voice would make it far more distant and harder to relate to:

• Your digital marketing strategy will be handled by a team of professionals- the goals you’ve set will be our concern.

Keep your meta descriptions in an active voice and make sure they are easy to read, comprehend, and follow.

Match The Page Content

Trying to trick your audience into clicking your page is never a good idea. You’ll manage to do it once, but you’ll be losing your long-term audience.

This is why you always need to make sure your meta descriptions match the content of the page:

• provide facts
• be accurate
• don’t share deceptive or ambiguous information

Always make sure what you describe and promise in your meta descriptions is exactly what the people get once they open your page.

Show Your Professionalism

Even though meta descriptions are short and represent only a small portion of the content you share, you still need to make them perfect.

Accuracy in writing is the mirror image of your professionalism, so make sure to:

• proofread for typos, grammar mistakes, and spelling mistakes
• edit several times

This top websites page can help you find writing help online, in case you need professional guidance to polish your meta descriptions.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, writing a meta description for SEO is a job that requires several stages of planning, executing, and testing. Still, by following the right steps, you’ll soon create a writing routine that will be winning every time.

Use the tips we’ve shared above to create brilliant meta descriptions for SEO every time.

The post Write Better SEO Meta Descriptions To Increase CTR first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update May 16, 2021 @ 12:19 pm

You’re confused, right?

You know that meta descriptions are your advertising copy/sales pitch.

That means they should be compelling enough to attract your target audience to your website from the SERP and increase click-through rates. But then you’re not sure how to craft them.

You’re not alone.

According to custom essay help, writing compelling and readable meta descriptions is a challenge faced by most webmasters.

Unfortunately, writing boring meta descriptions can hurt your CTR rates and ultimately affect your SEO efforts.

Well, of course, Google stated that meta descriptions don’t count when it comes to getting better rankings. However, their influence on a page’s click-through-rate on search can improve the visibility of your website.

That’s why it’s important to craft mouthwatering meta descriptions for your web pages and blog posts.

If you’re confused about how to boost CTR by writing compelling meta descriptions, this in-depth guide is for you.

Here, I’m going to talk about what meta descriptions are, the ideal length, and how powerful they are when it comes to improving your SEO. I will then show you how to craft compelling MDs for your website and blog posts.

So without much ado let’s get rolling.

Understanding meta description definition

Meta descriptions are snippets that provide a brief description of a page’s content in the SERPs- usually appears below the title of the page in search engine’s organic search results.

Take a look at how meta descriptions are displayed on search in the following screenshot.

Are meta descriptions important for SEO anyway?

Why should you bother to write compelling Meta descriptions for your pages and blog posts?

Well, according to Google’s announcement of September 2009, the search engine’s algorithms don’t use meta descriptions as a ranking signal; however, the content inside the meta descriptions can increase click-through rates.

Typically, meta descriptions are important for various reasons as outlined below:

• Attract your target readers to click on your website in the SERPs.
• Drive more traffic to a page. When optimized properly, meta descriptions have the power to attract visitors to click on a page in the SERPs and this ultimately leads to increased traffic.
• Increase conversions. A properly crafted meta description that’s optimized for user intent can potentially increase conversion rate and revenue.

What’s the ideal length of compelling meta descriptions?

Google has been constantly changing the meta description length. For instance, the search giant increased the length to 320 characters in December 2017- Only to revert the length to between 155-160 characters in 2018.

Ideally, it’s not easy to determine the exact length of meta descriptions for both mobile and desktop devices.

In fact, according to a Google employee, a good meta description should be short, interesting, and aimed at informing the reader about the content of a particular page.

In other words, Google is yet to state the ideal meta descriptions length.

That’s why it’s important to make sure that your meta descriptions are as descriptive as possible- I’m going to show you how to do it in a moment.

Of course, the recommended best SEO practice by expert SEOs is to keep meta descriptions around 155-160 characters for desktop and 120 characters for mobile devices.

Difference between meta descriptions and search snippets

For years, people have been mistaking meta descriptions with search snippets.

The two are different components altogether.

As stated above, a meta description is a snippet that briefly describes the content of a particular page.

Users have control over how to optimize and tweak a meta description however, a search snippet is controlled by Google.

Ideally, Google displays a search snippet depending on the search phrase a user enters into the search engine. The search engine can even display a snippet of the conclusion as long as it is optimized for the search query.

Well, if you’re lucky, Google will display your meta descriptions but in most cases, Google controls what should be displayed in the SERPs.

That said here is how to write compelling Meta descriptions that increase CTR and conversions.

Understand Your Target Audience

I mentioned above that Google displays meta descriptions based on the phrase a user enters into the search engine- and sometimes the search engine may display your exact meta description; if you’re lucky though.

We also found that meta descriptions should be short, interesting, and inform the reader about the content of a particular page.

Now here is the thing: No matter how descriptive your meta descriptions are, if they don’t grab your user’s attention, no one is going to click on your page.

But how do you write meta descriptions that grab the reader’s attention in the first place?

That’s where you need to research your audience well- find out what your target customers are looking for on the internet.

As Lucas Trogdon, the author of paper writing service reviews suggests, your page’s content needs to satisfy what users are looking for then your meta descriptions should grab them to click.

As a rule, you need to understand the searchers’ intent then give them exactly that by writing meta descriptions that attract them.

Assuming a user wanted to buy the best running watch and enters the exact search phrase on Google, see what the search engine would display:

As you can see, T3 wins the searcher’s heart by listing all the suitable running watches.

That means that T3 took their time to understand that users looking for running watches want certain types of watches and targeted them by listing those watches right in their meta descriptions.

Include Your Focus Keywords

Having said that your meta descriptions should signal search engines and users about the content of a particular page, it’s safe to assume that including your focus keywords right in there could help increase your CTR as well.

Take a look at how adding your focus keywords in your meta descriptions could help when a user enters the phrase “SEO best practices”.

As you can see from the top 5 results, all the blog posts have listed the SEO best practices straight away and the keyword “SEO best practices are highlighted.

Ideally, if you were looking for how to do SEO on your blog posts you’d use the five results to inspire your SEO strategy.

That’s because the results matched with what you’re looking for. And to add more salt, the blog owners have even shown you what to do to strengthen your SEO efforts.

Remember that you should use your focus keywords naturally to let the reader know what to expect when they click

Google also uses the keywords you add to know what the page or post is all about.

The Yoast SEO tool lets you add your focus keywords to your web pages as well as blog posts with ease.

Ignore What SEOs Say

Given how Google keeps changing the meta description length, it doesn’t make sense to focus on the ideal length of your pages’ meta description.

Initially, Google had announced the character count for meta description to be 320. The search engine then reverted the length to 155-160 characters.

Now, considering the main purpose of meta descriptions, it’s important to avoid focusing on the character count and give users what they want.

As I stated earlier, the meta descriptions should act as a hook while also telling the reader what the content of a page is all about.

That means that what you include in the meta descriptions should be influenced by the end user.

And most importantly, you should check what your competitors are writing in their meta descriptions and do it better.

Well, and of course, if you want to limit yourself to the announced character count then keep your MD between 150 to 160 characters long.

Of importance, it should inform the reader what’s inside the page before they even click.

Take a look at the meta descriptions of these three companies- Short and straight to the point.

As you can see, the meta description of the first result: BuyaCar is 28 words long whereas that of the second result: AutoExpress is 23 words and the third one: CarWow 36 words long.

That means that whether the meta description is long or short, as long as it serves the purpose, you shouldn’t bother yourself focusing on the ideal length.

Craft an Interesting, Unique Meta Description That Promises Value

It’s easy to attract people to click your meta descriptions if you make them interesting.

So you want to make people want to click on your page once it is displayed in the SERPs.

To achieve that, you should write in the active voice.

You also want to keep your meta descriptions unique.

Remember that your meta descriptions are a powerful tool to build your brand. So you need to promise the reader something of value once they click on the search results.

Use Action Words

I’m going to use Dropbox as my example as the company uses action words to get people to create an account with them.

As you can see, Dropbox’s meta description tells users what the company does to ease people’s work so they can focus on things that matter. Their meta description also goes further to get you to take action: sign in so you can put your creative energy to work.

They promise value then make you take action.

Once your meta description attracts readers, you want to make them take a certain action. This is the best place to add action words such as “Click here to read more”, “Download the latest app to track your weight loss effort”, “Sign up an account and enjoy…” etc.

Match the Content of The Meta Descriptions With That of the Pages

Granted, the meta description is just your advertising copy. It’s meant to sell the product fast and effectively.

It wouldn’t make sense to craft an awesome meta description yet you’re selling a poor-quality product.

Besides, you shouldn’t promise people something you don’t provide.

By this, you shouldn’t make your meta descriptions click-baits.

Google will discover that if you’re tricking users to click on your page and you might be penalized.

In fact, this will even result in a higher bounce rate. After all, what would you do if you clicked a Google result that promises to sell weight loss supplements only to find that the content is talking about different things altogether?

You will click the back button right away.

Once someone has taken their time to click on a result, they want to see exactly what you promised on the meta description so there shouldn’t be a content mismatch.

Tease But Don’t Give Out Everything

See, your meta descriptions should briefly tell the readers what to expect when they click.

Ideally, you want to grab them so they can click and get inside. That means that if you give out everything in your meta description then no one will click and this will hurt your CTR.

As a rule, give them a tip of the iceberg and let them want to click and find out more.

Write Separate Meta Descriptions for Each Pages

At no time should there be pages on your website with the same meta description.

Well, this doesn’t affect your CTR but it can get people confused about which pages to click.

As a rule, each page should have a unique meta description that informs the reader what content is within.

How to Add Meta Descriptions With Yoast SEO

For WordPress users with the Yoast SEO Plugin installed, adding meta descriptions is easy.

The good thing about this tool is that you get to see feedback in real-time.

The plugin lets you add your meta descriptions and your focus keyphrase.

It will also check whether your meta descriptions are within the required length as well.

Take a look at how the Yoast SEO Plugin works in the screenshot below.

As you can see in the image above, the lines are all green which means that the SEO title and meta description box is within the required character count. Had the content within the meta description box been longer than required, the line could have turned red.

Of course, right below the meta description assessment box is the SEO analysis where you can optimize your content further as shown in the image below.

If you check the results in the image above, you can see the “Keyphrase in meta description” and “Meta description length” sections have a green dot.

That means that the meta description contains the focus keyword and it’s within the ideal character count.

So that’s how easy it is to add meta descriptions using the Yoast SEO Plugin assuming your website is hosted on the WordPress platform.

The plugin also lets you add meta descriptions for social sharing.

Write Compelling Meta Descriptions:FAQs

Does Google show web master’s meta descriptions?

Oftentimes Google shows meta descriptions based on the search term a user enters into the search engine.

That means that your meta descriptions may or may not be displayed at all times. Usually, Google picks information based on the search query. To increase the chances of making Google display your meta descriptions, research your target audience and make sure you add the exact keyphrases they are entering to your meta descriptions.

What makes a good meta description?

A good meta description is short, descriptive, and informs the reader about the content within. Think of a good meta description as a sales pitch that convinces a user that the page displayed contains exactly what they are looking for.

What’s the ideal length for meta descriptions?

Typically, there is no character limit for meta descriptions. Of importance, you need to craft meta descriptions that compel and inform the reader about what to expect once they click on a search result.

Bottom Line…

Meta descriptions aren’t Google ranking signals but they can impact rankings indirectly.

Given that Google monitors click-through rates, it’s no doubt when you craft compelling meta descriptions, you increase CTR and ultimately move the needle for your page rankings and increase conversion.

Remember that meta descriptions are here to stay. So, it’s important to learn how to increase CTR by writing compelling meta descriptions, which is exactly what I have talked about in this article.

Did I miss anything you feel should be featured in this in-depth guide on how to write compelling meta descriptions?

Let’s hear that in the comment section.

The post How To Increase CTR By Writing Compelling Meta Descriptions first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:15 pm

Can a single factor like page speed have a significant impact on your conversions? Absolutely. In fact, more than you expect! Let us examine some interesting statistics:

• At least 46% of people reveal that waiting for pages to load is what they dislike most when browsing using their smartphones
• A whopping 79% of web shoppers who have trouble with a site say they won’t return
• A 100-millisecond delay in load time can cause a 7% drop in conversion rates
• Pages that load within 2 seconds have a bounce rate of 9%, while pages that take 5 seconds to load have a bounce rate of 38%
• Research indicated that 40% of visitors who have had an unsatisfactory experience with a website would tell a family member or friend

Why Site Speed Matters

Many site owners often can’t fully grasp the importance of improving site speed even by just a few milliseconds since it’s not tangible enough. It’s also one of the reasons site speed often gets overlooked.

However, data and research from experts and industry giants often reveal that site speed has a direct impact on page views, SEO, and yes, conversions. To help you quantify how site speed impacts conversion, let’s look at other relevant insights:

Site speed has a direct impact on user experience

By now, it’s evident that visitors hate slow-loading sites. In fact, according to stress-testing specialist Dotcom-Monitor, a staggering 75% of users will typically leave a site once the page load time passes the 3-second mark.

When it comes to pleasing customers, site speed is paramount. Consider this: an extra second in loading time can result in a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction! It’s safe to assume adding a few extra seconds to your loading time can have a massive impact on your ability to engage with your visitors and provide exceptional customer service.

Site speed can affect your sales significantly

If you’re an e-commerce site, having returning visitors is crucial. According to Business Insider, returning visitors represent up to 48% of all transactions. They are also considered a key component of the Customer Lifetime Value.

To highlight the importance of site speed when it comes to conversions, Walmart created an impressive analysis of their online sales and how customers responded to page loading times.

Here’s what they learned from their study: there’s a sharp decline in conversion rate when the average load time increased from 1 to 4 seconds!

Site speed can influence your online visibility (search engine optimization)

According to Search Engine Journal, mobile page speed is considered a ranking factor in search results. And this is not really surprising considering 50% of worldwide traffic last 2018 was generated through mobile phones.

Taking into account the meteoric rise in mobile traffic, Google rolled out its Mobile-First Index. In other words, search engines will now rank websites based primarily on mobile performance factors as opposed to desktop performances. Simply put, your mobile page speed can now directly affect your search engine optimization efforts.

Factors that Can Affect Site Speed

Regardless of the reason for their visit, people expect to land on your website as quickly as possible. The more you can speed up the process, the more opportunity you will get to convert visitors into buying customers.

Hosting/server

Your web hosting company as well as the server it chooses to place your website on can have a huge impact on your site speed. If the resources on the server are not enough, it can slow things down for everyone. While shared hosting is considered the most economical option for new and small websites, it is not the ideal alternative for all.

Larger websites for instance may benefit more from virtual private servers (VPS). It comes with the cost-efficiency of shared hosting, plus the ability to manage server resources like a dedicated hosting plan.

Huge websites like Twitter and Facebook use dedicated hosting. As the name implies, they are the only websites hosted on the server. They also have total control over the resources. Similar sites will need more than one server to effectively accommodate the volume of traffic they are receiving.

If you have traffic coming from all sides of the world, investing in a content delivery network (CDN) is something you can consider. A CDN is a network of servers that host your site content. It works by pulling your site’s content from the server that’s closest to the visitor. As a result, load time is reduced significantly since data does not have to travel far.

Traffic volume

Websites have a set amount of bandwidth or the amount of data transfers over a period of time (usually a month). Having a high traffic volume is a great sign. However, it can be a problem if your host does not have enough bandwidth to accommodate the traffic. In similar scenarios, you will not only risk a slow website speed but also a complete shut down in worst-case scenarios.

If you are running an e-commerce business, high traffic is a clear indication that business is doing really well. It’s also a good sign that the conversion rate is likely high. In line with this, keep an eye on your bandwidth and be prepared to make the adjustments needed to prevent sluggish performance.

Plugins

WordPress plugins can be very helpful when it comes to adding website functionality. However, too many plugins that are not optimized can slow your website down. Plugins come with different features and functions. Plugins that require a lot of assets to load and make a lot of database queries can really slow down your load time.

When done accordingly, you won’t be able to notice any difference in your load time. However, if several of your plugins are inundating the server with HTTP requests, it will surely have a negative impact on user experience.

If you want to see how your plugins are affecting your page load time, you can use tools like Pingdom or GTmetrix to find out what goes on each time your site loads. The tools can help you see if a plugin is hogging resources so you can look for another alternative that can accomplish the same function without taking up much of the resources.

How to Increase Your Site Speed and Maximize Conversions

Countless studies and research have made a direct correlation between site speed and conversion very clear. With that in mind, improving website speed should always rank high in your list of priorities. Below are some ways you can improve website speed and maximize your site’s true potential:

Minimize redirects

Understandably, you will have more HTTP requests on your site if there are a lot of redirects. This can also result in reduced page speed. You also need to fix broken links as they can also affect user experience.

You can also use tools to easily find broken links, redirect chains, and redundant redirects. There are also several tools you can use to get rid of redirect chains. Redirect chains are the series of redirects that bring users from one version to another. The extra steps can often slow your site down.

Impact on conversions

Redirects and broken links may prevent many of your site visitors from using your sales funnel. Ensure you monitor and fix redirects and broken links in a timely manner.

Get rid of render-blocking Javascript

Check your website structure and ensure you are not using render-blocking Javascript especially external scripts that need to be fetched before being executed. Scripts that don’t need rendering should be made asynchronous. Or you can defer it after the first render. This is especially important for the above-the-fold part of your page (the part users see first).

Impact on conversions

Most conversion and traffic analytics platforms are installed using a Javascript code. Ensure the ones you are using are not slowing your website down. Consider using analytics that won’t jeopardize your site’s performance and speed.

Leverage browser caching

Each time a user visits, your site builds a cache that contains information about images, stylesheets, Javascripts, and many more. This is done so when a visitor comes back, the entire page does not have to be reloaded.

This can help improve page speed as time spent sending multiple HTTP requests to the server is minimized. It can also help reduce the bandwidth as well as the overall cost of site hosting.

Impact on conversions

Return customers have been known to bring the highest revenue so this technique will not only ensure customers will have the best experience, but it can also help guarantee your conversions will experience a steady spike.

Improve server response time

Several factors can affect server response time including the hosting solution used, volume of traffic, and type of software used. Ideally, server response time should be less than 200ms. You can achieve this by checking the different performance metrics and paying close attention to things such as slow routing, lack of memory, or slow database requests.

Impact on conversions

When you monitor your server performance accordingly, you’ll be able to identify the issues that prevent your visitors from interacting with your site effectively.

Take Conversions to the Next Level!

Improving site speed is considered an integral part of conversion optimization. It’s often the low-hanging fruit you can easily work on if you want to provide visitors with the ultimate experience and boost conversions and revenue at the same time!

The post How a Slow Website Can Kill Conversions and What You Can Do About It first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update May 16, 2021 @ 12:07 pm

Screaming Frog, when it was first launched in 2011, started as an advanced web crawler designed specifically for Search Engine Optimization.

Fast forward to 2020; the platform has evolved into a multi-faceted website crawler with diverse analytical and auditing tools. To no surprise, Screaming Frog continues to be one of the top players in the industry.

For beginners, the tool could be tremendously overwhelming. As extensive as its possibilities are, Screaming Frog is also sophisticated enough to confuse you in the beginning. Knowing the right settings and features is crucial for you to take the maximum advantage of this tool.

With the help of EssayPro we have created a guide that will help you establish the basics of the Screaming Frog tool.

The simple aim here is to clear the mist and let you in on how to boost your productivity with the tool. We will start with the basic settings first and break it down further below.

Your Basic Menu Kit

Most of the menu is self-explanatory; however, the features listed below are the most important and beneficial.

File

The File menu contains settings that allow you to save crawl reports. You can save them, and if you did not, you also get access to the six latest coral reports from this menu. Furthermore, you can also schedule your SEO crawl from the ‘File’ button.

Configuration

Undoubtedly, this is where you set all the preferences for your web crawls. The most important settings here are as follow.

• Spider. This is where you can customize each crawl based on content and data you prefer. You can opt to include images, subdomains, JavaScripts, CSS, or the specific content you would like to see in the crawl.
• Include and Exclude. If you want to include or eliminate any specific webpages, you can post the URLs here. 
• API Access. When you are integrating your crawl with any analytical tools such as Google Analytics, here is where you can find the settings. 

Bulk Export

When you want to export detailed data from the crawl, Bulk Export will give you choices of export addresses. You can find them with response codes, anchor texts, images, and a few other options as well.

Reports

The difference between Bulk Export and Reports is that you receive an overall report in this section. It will also contain relevant take on data such as canonical errors or redirect chains.

Choosing The Memory 

There are two storage modes to facilitate crawling and store the data. Depending on how extensive the crawling is and your machine specifications, you can choose between memory storage and database storage.

Memory Storage 

Memory storage mode allows for fast, flexible, and efficient crawling for settings. As machines typically have less RAM than the hard disk space, memory mode is optimal for sites with under 500k links. This mode is also recommended for machines without an external SSD. 

Database Storage 

On the flip side, Database Storage is suited for those who have access to SSD, as well as want to scrape at a large scale. You can cover more URLs at the default of 5 million links.

Users can also automatically save the crawls in this mode, without having to do it manually. As the files are loading in .seospider extension, it is also easier to open the stored crawls. 

Screaming Frog highly recommends using an SSD and doing crawls in database mode. It makes for the most efficient crawling features and supports. If you are unable to invest in an SSD, you can adjust the memory used for crawls at:

Configuration > System > Memory.

You can begin by assigning 4gb, as the SEO spider will use that first before moving the data to the disk. It is best to start with this, so you will leave enough RAM for other applications as well.

Screaming Frog comes with an extensive set of resources. It goes beyond the merit of this article to elaborate on every single feature. So, we will elaborate on how to do a crawl of an entire site, how to filter your crawl reports, and how to create an XML sitemap.

By the end, you will be equipped with all the necessary guidance on how to begin crawling with Screaming Frog.

How to Crawl a Site 

Before starting a crawl, it is recommended to narrow down the kind of data you would like to obtain. It is equally important to recognize the size of the website as well as the specific pages you need to access.

Scraping an entire site will not only take resources but will also cost you time. Screaming Frog comes with a number of restrictions you can apply to crawl to get the exact specific information you require. This will help you manage the file sizes easier.

To Include All Subdomains 

The default settings in Screaming Frog scrape only the specific subdomains you choose. Any other domains the tool crawls will be considered as external links. If you want to add any other subdomains, here is how you do it.

1. Go to Configuration Menu > Crawl.
2. Check “Crawl All Subdomains” under the Crawl Behaviour.
3. Check “Crawl Outside of Start Folder.”

This will make sure that the scraping starts from the subdomain you have specifically mentioned and expands to the other parts as well.

Choose What to Crawl 

The memory consumption is also based on the volume of data you collect. Screaming Frog lets you consider options for a lighter crawl by specifying the exact parameters you need.

You can do this from the Configuration menu, as we mentioned earlier. Here, you can select and deselect the data you want, such as:

• External links;
• Canonicals;
• Pagination;
• AMP.

Furthermore, here you can also decide between the format of Images, CSS, and Javascript. Bear in mind that if you are rendering in Java mode, then you are likely to require all these options for the best results.

To Exclude Specific Subdomains

Apart from controlling the type of data, you can also set the SEO crawler to limit any unnecessary features from taking up space.

You can control what the SEO crawler covers, from entire sections to few particular URLs.

All you need to do is listed below.

1. Go to Configuration > Exclude;
2. Add any specific URL that you would like to eliminate from SEO crawling.

After this step, you also have the option to test that the exclusion is actually working while you perform the crawl.

To Limit the Parameters

Let’s say you want to sample a number of pages, but not scrap it entirely. It will help you maintain control over the memory as well as get a report on multiple pages across multiple sites. Here is what you can do:

1. Go to Configuration > Spider > Limits;
2. Set Limits to Number of Pages, Depth, Number of query strings, and more.

When you are using the Memory mode, do not forget to save your crawls regularly.

You only have to merely stop the crawl and click ‘File > Save’ to achieve this. Once the saving is complete, you can hit ‘resume’ to crawl.

Setting up a Proxy

If you are crawling a competitive site, then you might want to avoid any bot-blocking. Screaming Frog allows users to set proxy of any kind, to ensure the optimum usage of the tool. You can set this at ‘Configuration > Proxy.’

While doing this, ensure that the proxy does not hinder the speed and efficiency of the crawl, or else it could make the crawling process last for a considerably longer time.

Finding Site Content on Your Crawl

With the amount of data available, the next step is to sort it. If you prefer to do the filtering in a CSV file, you can download it from the “Bulk Export” menu.

• If you want to sort pages based on Content:

Go to Internal Tab > filter by HTML > Choose Word Count.

• If you want to find images on a specific webpage:

Select the page > click on Image Info > find the images listed.

Another way to do this is to crawl only the specific URL you want. 

• If you want to filter the CSS files:

Before crawling, go to Spider Configuration menu > Crawl > Check CSS.

• If you want to filter the JavaScript files:

Before crawling go to

Spider Configuration menu > Crawl > Select Javascript.

Once you finish crawling, you can sort the CSS and javascript content at the ‘Internal’ tab.

How to Analyze Meta Descriptions

Mets descriptions play a significant role in a site’s technical SEO and thus needs to be audited as well.

You have to regularly crawl meta descriptions to avoid any duplicate content, optimize it with keywords, and maintain its relevance.

• If you want to filter Page Titles or Meta descriptions

Go to Page Titles tab > filter for titles less than 70 characters.

Google does not display over 70 characters in these titles, so looking for longer ones is a waste of time. You can also do the same with ‘meta descriptions’ or URLs, and filter them for duplicity as well.

• If you want to find pages with Meta Directives

Go to ‘Directives’ tab > choose the type of directive and apply filter.

• If you want to find Schema Markups 

In this case, you will need to set custom filters. 

Go to Configuration menu > Custom > Search. 

Here you can search for Schema item types or narrow down with any specific markup you are looking for.

How to Do a Link Audit With Screaming Frog

Among all the site content, links are particularly difficult to audit. However, they are also a big reason for performing the crawl.

Here is how you can set a link audit on with SEO spider.

1. Go to Configuration > uncheck all CSS, Images, Javascript, and any other options you do not need. Keep the subdomains checked, and uncheck the other boxes as per your requirements.
2. Begin the crawl and continue until it’s finished.
3. Go to Bulk Export > Export CSV of “All Links”.

This will give you data of all link locations, along with the respective locations, anchor text directives, and other data.

Note that this report could be quite large, depending on the extent of the crawl. If you want to know the overall number, go to the “Internal” tab and filter by ‘Outlinks,’ or ‘Inlinks.’

How to Find Broken Links

1. Begin the Crawling of the website by entering the URL;
2. Go to the ‘Response Codes’ tab, and filter by ‘Client Error (4xx)’.

You do not have to wait until the entire crawling is finished. You can view the 404 broken links while crawling. You can also see it in the right-hand window and by clicking ‘Client Error (4xx)’. This panel gets updated as the crawling progresses.

1. Go to ‘Inlinks’ tab at the bottom to see the source of the broken links of the selected URL. You can use the data to identify the internal links to be modified.
2. Choose ‘Outlinks’ if you are looking for broken outbound links.
3. Go to ‘Bulk Export’ > Response Codes > Choose the type of filter you want for the broken code. If you want an overall report, then Client Error (4xx) will cover your bases.

Sometimes it is also possible that the source is, in fact, direct. In order to find the original source page, it is recommended to choose Reports > Redirects > All Redirects.

This way, you will find the 404 URL in the final address tab, and the original source under the ‘Source’ tab.

How to Create XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps are enormously helpful to rank in Google, as they point out to the updates of your webpages. Screaming Frog has developed its own unique way to use a sitemap. You can do it in the following steps.

1. Finish crawling the site 
2. Click ‘Sitemaps’ menu > XML sitemap. 
3. Choose your settings in the ‘XML Sitemap Configuration’

Here, you can filter the pages you need based on response codes, modification dares, priority, frequency, and images. SEO Spider covers only 2xx links by default. If you need more, you have to select it manually.

Users can also create a new XML sitemap by uploading links or manually pasting them.

Auditing an Existing Sitemap

If you have already completed a sitemap, you can also check it for any discrepancies or errors on your site.

Go to ‘Mode’ menu > List > Upload.

Here, you can either download the Sitemap or Sitemap Index and enter the sitemap URL to start the crawl.

If you find that certain sections of your site aren’t indexed, you can find them at: 

Configuration > Spider > Autodiscover XML sitemaps through robots.txt. Sometimes, you might have to enter such URLs manually.

What’s Next?

Screaming Frog has many more specific tools and capabilities that can help you get precisely what you are hoping for. You can also integrate it with analytical tools to ensure an even better experience.

Hopefully, this article has helped you establish basics on how to get started with the SEO Spider of Screaming Frog. When used correctly, it can be an invaluable tool in decoding a website.

FAQs

How many URLs can I crawl using the SEO Spider?

The SEO Spider has the potential to crawl millions of URLs; however, it also depends on the hardware and configuration. The range would differ based on the type of memory. In the database mode, with 8 GB RAM and an SSD, you can crawl approximately 5 million URLs. 

How many people can use the licensed version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider?

The licenses are provided per individual user. If you have four people working with SEO Spider, then you will need four different licenses. But you can use the license to install the tool on multiple devices.

Which operating systems are supported by SEO Spider?

You can run SEO Spider on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

How can I integrate Google Analytics with SEO Spider?

Screaming Frog’s latest version 4.0 comes with Google Analytics integration. You can grant the permission at

Configuration > API Access > Google Analytics.

Is my data protected when using SEO Spider?

The tool cannot see the data or the webpages you are crawling. The entire information is stored on the machine you use.

The post How to Use Screaming Frog for SEO: A Beginner’s Guide first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Sep 30, 2021 @ 9:54 am

Once you get traffic to your website from SEO you may be wondering what is next.

If your website traffic is not converting into clients, leads, sales, etc. then you may need to work on conversion rate optimization.

Your website design is a key contributor to how to increase your conversion rate.

People are visual beings, so it’s only natural that their decisions can be driven by what they see on your site – from colors and fonts to how your content is laid out on the page.

The idea here is to strike the perfect balance between form and function – good design is not just about aesthetics alone, it’s also about understanding user experience.

Here are 11 tips that can help boost your site’s conversion without sacrificing good web design:

Make your Call-to-Action easily distinguishable

The goal of every page on your site is for a visitor to take action by clicking on your CTA.

Content is a supporting element that should serve as a guide to why they should “Add to cart,” “Book an Appointment,” “Get a Free Consultation,” “Sign Up” or whatever your page’s objective is.

The CTA should be treated as one of the most important elements of the site, so make it stand out by placing it inside a container and picking a color that pops, but at the same time complements the background.

Do the squint test and see how conspicuous your CTA is. Take a look at Mailchimp’s home page:

You’ll know immediately which are Call-to-Action buttons, that’s a good design for website conversion.

Implement The Rule of Thirds

You might think The Rule of Thirds is only applicable to photography, but it’s actually one of the core principles in web design.

Use The Rule of Thirds to visually divide a website page into thirds – this will basically leave you with two equally spaced horizontal and vertical lines – a total of nine equal squares.

Now, once you do that, focus your energy on the four middle sections because based on The Rule of Thirds, those are strategic places of interests and where you should place the most important elements of your site – be it the CTA button, the best features of your product or service, or the most impactful image you have.

Check out how Hubspot placed their CTA right on the intersection.

Use Directional Visual Cues

Directional cues are designed to serve as guideposts to what you want your site visitor to focus on.

To improve conversion, place visual aids like arrows to point toward what you consider most important elements of your site such as call-to-action buttons or your site’s lead capture form.

Now, one thing you have to know is that directional cues come in both explicit and implicit types.

Explicit cues are direct to the point like arrows, lines, or human line of sight. Implicit visual cues, on the other hand, are subtle, almost unnoticeable.

This is usually done through the use of negative space and color contrast. Check out how Codify Academy uses a more subtle arrow to direct a user’s attention to both the form and CTA:

Design for optimum speed

It’s no new knowledge that the age of the internet has fueled people’s impatience. In fact, just a 2-second delay has been known to contribute to a 103% increase in bounce rates.

Every second counts, so make sure that you build your business website for optimum speed.

There are a lot of ways to do this – minimizing HTTP requests, minifying and combining files, doing a compression audit, and enabling browser caching are just a few of the things you can do to speed uploading site.

There are a lot of web accessibility resources and tools you can use to evaluate your site’s speed performance such as Google Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix. These can help identify issues, so you know exactly what and how to troubleshoot.

Utilize your white space effectively

White space or negative space is the section of your site that is not used for any content element. Knowing how to use white space effectively can help your site look less crowded and more organized.

The purpose of white space is to help the user distinguish supporting content from the actionable parts of your site. This will enable you to highlight CTA’s, increase content legibility, and create balance. See how the second image looks cleaner and easier to the eyes?

Consider the F-layout

Based on research, the natural behavior of users when browsing a web page is in an F pattern.

Basically, their first instinct is to look from left to right starting at the top of the screen, and as they go further down the page, they just scan their way through it.

This means that the bottom part of the page gets the least amount of attention, so you want to place the most important message and elements along the F-shape lines. Here’s a quick wireframe to guide you:

Tell a story through visual hierarchy

Just like with the F-pattern, a clear visual hierarchy is based on how a user takes in information when they visit your site.

It serves as another guide to their thought patterns by placing elements that naturally flow – telling a story before encouraging them to take action by clicking a CTA.

It’s how content is positioned inside a page which often starts with a hero headline, a supporting content that is a mix of text and image, then a CTA.

Remember, every page of your website should tell a tale because people are all about brand stories now, not hard-sell statements.

See the image below and you’ll be able to see the difference in a visual hierarchy – this small change led to an online sale increase of 35.6%.

Leverage the Power of Color

There’s more to colors than your site’s aesthetics. Color psychology plays a big role in terms of conveying a message – it affects how your brand is perceived not just online, but offline as well.

It’s important to remember that certain color combinations can evoke different emotions, so make sure every color is well-thought-out and should reflect the message of your brand clearly.

One way to play around and come up with the right colors is to curate a Pinterest board with images that seem aligned with your brand vision.

Once done, you can upload those to Adobe’s Color Wheel which will automatically provide a color scheme based on the photo set you uploaded.

This will help you pick our colors you can use for elements like background and text, so they will all look complementary and easy to the eyes.

Encourage Familiarity with Faces

People connect with people and this is mainly the reason why you should use photos rather than vector images.

It has been proven that sites that use people on their visual content tend to boost conversions as users feel more connected and understood.

However, do try and steer away from stock photos if you can because consumers are more inclined to trust brands that are authentic and personal.

Look at how Airbnb deliberately uses people on the Experiences part of the site– it allows users to imagine themselves in that place.

Follow the 8-second rule

Did you know that the human attention span is even shorter than that of a goldfish?

With only 6 to 8 seconds to capture and engage with your market, it is pivotal to make those seconds count the moment they land on your site. Here are some things you can do to grab their attention on the first 8 seconds:

• Your hero image should be eye-catching and partnered with a headline that is benefit-driven.
• Your CTA buttons should be distinguishable, clear, and direct-to-the-point.
• Your content should be concise, so use power words to make it more engaging.

Abide by Hick’s law

Hick’s Law is named after Willam Edmund Hick, a British Psychologist. According to him, the more choices you provide a person, the longer it will take for them to decide.

This is a popular theory in web design, that’s why more and more businesses are limiting the contents of their navigation bar. See how Intercom is able to categorize what they do in three options.

This makes it easier for the consumer to find a specific solution to their specific problem, therefore minimizing friction that could lead them to exit your site.

Always K.I.S.S.

K.I.S.S. is a popular acronym for the mantra “Keep it simple, stupid” and is widely considered as one of the most popular principles of web design.

Just like the Hick’s Law, simplicity is key to driving conversions. The more information you cram on a page, the more confusing it gets for the consumer.

Simple is not only direct-to-the-point but also visually more appealing.

It’s important to note that a user can only handle so much information at a single time, so when it comes to user experience, keeping it simple is key to not make them overwhelmed.

See how Apple keeps it minimal:

Final words

While all these 11 web design principles are great for improving your site’s conversion rate, it’s also imperative to know that design evolves together with user experience.

The key to guaranteeing conversion is really in understanding how your market perceives your brand and the information you convey through your site.

As long as you continuously serve your market’s needs, then everything else will follow.

The post 11 Web Design Principles That Will Boost Your Conversion Rate first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Feb 5, 2023 @ 6:53 pm

When you invest your time, energy and money to create the website of your dreams, you have to put up more than just good content on your webpages in order to rank higher in Google.

There are hidden HTML attributes and metadata that add value and richness to your page and to its SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

A meta description is one such HTML attribute that can add value to your text snippets and send useful signals to both users and search engines.

What Is a Meta Description?

The meta description is a short snippet of the text put in the HTML of a page which summarizes the page’s content. This provides a brief summary of a web page.

Search engines usually display meta descriptions in search results, more so when the searched-for phrase is within the description.  

The search engines display meta description as shown in the figure above. The blurb of text (meta description) is part of a larger snippet, the larger snippet includes:

• Title Tag: Title Tag is a version of the page title; it is added in the HTML of the page just like the meta description. If you so desire, then you can keep this title tag separate from the headline that actually appears on the page.
• URL: Slug (URL) is basically the URL of the page.

If you look at the above image, each search result begins with the Slug (URL) and then is followed by the Title Tag and then comes the meta description at last as a summary of that page’s content.

Meta descriptions not only appear during search results but also appear when your page is shared across websites and social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. When displayed on Facebook it looks something like this:

How to add meta description to a page?

In order to add a meta description to your page, you can put the tag in the <head> section of the HTML of your site.

It would look something like this:

<head>

<meta name=”description” content=”Here is a precise description of my awesome webpage.”>

</head>

However, if you are using a CMS like WordPress then you will have complete control over your meta description. You can use YOAST SEO Plugin on WordPress to make this super easy.

Especially if you are just starting a blog then it will be best that you use a plugin to do it for you.

YOAST SEO’s Snippet editor lets you create the whole metadata snippet including Title Tag, Slug and Meta Description without struggling with the HTML of the page.

Why is the meta description important?

Your meta description is not a factor for your ranking on search engines. Google publicly announced in September 2009 that it does not take meta description or meta keywords as a variable for Google’s ranking algorithms for web search.

In spite of this, the meta description has the potential to influence the decision of a user.

It can significantly increase your CTR (Click Through Rate). If you have carefully made your description more attractive, descriptive and informative then there is a high chance that a visitor might actually click through your website from the search results.

1. Improved click-through rates can improve rankings

If you manage to convert a good CTR then google definitely considers your page as a good result. Google’s ranking algorithm takes CTR as a factor in consideration. Thus, the meta descriptions can indirectly improve your ranking on search engines.

2. Meta descriptions work like mini ads for your webpage

SEO meta description works like a mini promotional blurb while being displayed on SERP and Social media feeds. This copy of the page gives an opportunity to market your web page, it tells the visitor why the visitor should click on it.

3. Defined meta description look better in search results

When there is no defined meta description for a page, the search engine can pick up anything from the webpage which is relevant to the searched keyword phrases. This might result in a shabby description where the text might be cut off in between or irrelevant page data might appear. A defined meta description will look more attractive and share only relevant information with people. Now without further ado! Let’s dive into exploring ways that can be used to optimize the meta description of your page.

Give Every Webpage A Unique Meta Description

It is a great practice to write a unique meta description for every page on your website. If you already have hundreds of pages without meta description, then start by adding meta descriptions to the most important pages and blogs first.

You can use the YOAST snippet editor to make it really simple for you to edit or create a meta tag without ever having to deal with the HTML of each page separately. How to use a YOAST SEO Plugin has already been discussed in this article above.

Write An Optimum Length Description

You can write a meta description for any length, however, google curtails the snippet to 155 – 160 characters in length. So, it is a practice to write a meta description that is descriptive and informative yet relevant and is under the character limit of 160 characters.

The length might vary depending upon the purpose of the page and description. There is no correct length defined for the meta description. If in case you chose to write a long description with 300 characters then try to put the most relevant and important information in the first 150 characters. ‘=

Also, the length of the description often changes with the change in screen size, device type, and other technical factors.

Write-In Active Voice With Optimal Format

A meta description is not just a snippet of text in the larger snippet, this copy is an opportunity to advertise and market your web page. It is a possibility to intrigue the visitor and let them know that whatever they are looking for is right here.

Passive language, when the subject of the sentence is being acted upon, is boring and drab. Active language, when the subject of the sentence is taking action, is interesting and easy to visualize and understand.

Always be sure to use active voice while writing your snippet as it gives it an alive and actionable feeling. Make sure that you don’t write text which looks spammy or is trying to trick users into clicking your website. If you do then the user will immediately realize once he visits the webpage that he/she has been tricked and will never return to your site ever.

Make your text directly relevant to your web page it describes and keeps it unique from the descriptions of other pages.

Include A Call-To-Action

Including a call-to-action keyword might actually make a difference in your CTR. Leaving keywords like Find out more, Get it now, Try for free can come in handy as invitations for users to click on your site and explore.

It is in one way similar to using active voice while writing but using call-to-action words puts more weight to the meta description and a more actionable and lively appeal. Treat your meta description as a piece of your customer’s journey and use language that guides users to take the next step. Include a call to action that encourages them to act.

Avoid Using Duplicate Meta Description Tags

Always make sure that you do not use duplicate meta descriptions for multiple pages. If you use the same meta description for all your pages, it might end up looking something like this:

If you already have hundreds of pages online and you need to check them for duplicate meta description tags then you can use Alexa’s SEO Audit Tool. Enter your site and run the complete site audit. Scroll down to the section “Duplicate Meta Descriptions” to see how many pages (as well as a list of the exact pages) that have duplicate content problems.

You can find various plugins on WordPress to do the same.

You can also implement a dynamic and programmatic way to write unique meta description tags for automated pages. However, writing an original and unique description has no alternative.

Write Keywords That Match Search Queries

While strategizing your web page’s ranking scheme you must select a keyword you want it to rank for. While writing the meta description, make sure you include this keyword in the copy. Make sure that you also add relevant keywords related to the title and possible search queries.

The reason I am emphasizing on putting correct keywords is that search engines like Google, highlight the keywords in Bold when it matches search queries. This bold text generally draws attention and if it is crafted carefully, then it can also push the visitor to click through the web page.

Don’t Use Double Quotation Marks

Since meta description is part of the HTML of a web page, it is important that you carefully write a description so that it does not break the HTML language. Double quotation mark (“Double”) is the most frequently used character in HTML language and it can create a lot of problems while being used in the description.

If it’s important to use a quote, then use the single quotation mark (‘Single’). You can also use HTML Entity if it is absolutely necessary to use double quotation marks in the meta description.

Write Strong Page Titles To Support Your Meta Description

It is crucial to realize that unlike meta description tags, Title tags have an impact on the SEO ranking quite significantly. Also, it is one of the most important aspects of your larger snippet to attract the reader’s attention and intrigue them to click through it.

Thus, writing a correct title tag can be of immense support to the description itself. It is best to not overuse the keywords as it can create unnecessary redundancy in the copy which might be a turn off to readers.

Try to keep the keyword in the starting of the Title tag. While writing your title, don’t just think about the search engines but also pay attention to what the readers would value. Writing a title between 50 – 60 characters is considered optimum. Including your brand name once in a while in the titles can create brand recall for you and brand visibility for the search engine.

Don’t Fumble Around With Meta Keywords

Meta keywords are terms that are tagged in the HTML of a web page just like the Title tag and meta description. Meta keywords like meta descriptions are not taken as a factor by search engines for their ranking algorithms. But unlike meta descriptions, meta keywords have very little impact on the overall value of the web page.

Major search engines have publicly stated that these hidden terms are not ranking factors. Also, meta tag keywords are not visible to users, so don’t exert energy adding these extra terms to your pages.

Optimize For Rich Snippets

It is great if you can optimize your snippet with icons, star ratings, customer ratings, product information, calorie counts, etc. by using schema markup you can add elements to the snippets to increase their appeal.

Conclusion

It is evident for all of us that meta description can be a turning point for your ranking and CTR. Having a profusely optimum description can convert a large click-through rate which will improve your ranking indirectly.

SEO meta description is more than just bonus text blurbs. You can make the meta description a part of a larger strategy that helps you attract readers and draw extra traffic.

It is great if you can plan out a strategy to write down unique meta descriptions for each of your web pages and ensure that they meet the standards and best practices for SEO meta descriptions.

The post On Page SEO: Optimizing Meta Descriptions first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Dec 1, 2022 @ 7:59 pm

Whether we like it or not, we can always encounter images anywhere at any time. They are everywhere, starting from social media pages like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook to news sources.

Pictures also appear in the search engine results page. If you are a blogger, a content writer, or a website manager, you have probably thought of using an image to enrich your article. Images bring your content to life and make it more appealing to the visitors. So, if it helps your web page to rank higher, then you need to know more about how to optimize your images for your webpage.

Optimizing your images for SEO sometimes can be challenging, but it is an essential step to make your website more competitive.

For the beginning let’s see why images are important for SEO

What do you think is better, reading an article without pictures or read one with descriptive, engaging, and appropriate imagery? I am sure you wouldn’t believe the website without images is memorable or even trustworthy, would you?

Let’s speaks facts first, narratives second. According to Poll Everywhere, people are 80% more likely to read articles with images. Moreover, they are 64% more likely to memorize the content.

As we could see, imagery is vital for a better user experience. However, images may harm the website load speed, so you need to be careful with them.

Images have become a popular mobile marketing trend that can boost websites’ SEO ranking. Google and other search engines have algorithms to track the needed information by a relevant image.

If you have use images in your article, here is a step by step instruction on how to optimize them for better user experience.

Understand What Image Optimization is

Decompressed images carry a lot of extra weight and make website users download unnecessary data. Optimizing your pictures decreases the total size of your page. This, in turn, makes your website load faster.

So, optimizing your website’s image is a process of providing high-quality images in the right format and dimension. It directly reduces the file size of your images as much as possible, meantime keeping the quality high.

Image optimization is also about image SEO. This all ties back into on-page SEO updates. This means it is sometimes done to get your product images rank high on Google and other search engines. Basically, image optimization is one of the easiest ways to speed up your site and improve the speed of your webpage with the use of images.

Create Unique Image Content

Original images are necessary to make your page unique and valuable for the user. Creating pages that are valuable for your means having images that help users get the best experience possible from your page.

Eye-catching and visually pleasant images will always gain the attention of the visitors. Your image needs to complement well to your content. You should consider what types of images, infographics, and animations could be added to your content to enrich its messaging.

The uniqueness of your image will have a positive impact on your website’s rankings. The more original pictures you use, the better the user experience will be.

Name Your Images Appropriately

The name of your image is one of the most significant things to make it SEO-friendly. First of all, you should know one thing; Google does not want a lengthy description of your image. They say that file names are better when they are short.

Second, it is essential to realize that you can not just copy and paste one sentence from some webpage. The name of the file has to be relevant and match the content. You can not give your images ridiculous names, or add some random and unnecessary keyword just to get high ranks. You have to name it as relevant and appropriate as possible.

Keep in mind that having an image attached to your site is not always enough. The name is what will bring visitors to your page again and again.

Resize the Images

First of all, it is essential to know that the image size is not the same as the file size. Image size refers to the dimensions of an image, while the file size is the space needed to store the image on the server. 

Perhaps in the world of print, high-resolution images are good, but the web environment is a bit different. Imagery with larger size slows down the website’s page speed. This, in turn, hurt user experience and of course, your search engine ranking.

Big images and slow load times especially annoy mobile users. Sometimes you will want to use large images on your website for the background. If you use low-quality images there, they can look fuzzy.

So, how do we choose the right balance between size and quality, then? It is entirely up continuous tests and reviews of the page work. Keep testing the page on different platforms until you see which option works best for your website.

Improperly sized images are often the primary reason for low page load speed. Since page load speed affects SEO, image compression becomes an aspect of image SEO accordingly.

If you have trouble resizing images, use online tools or websites to resize them one at a time quickly.

Choose The Right Type of Image

There are two types of images, vector and raster.

Vectors are composed of lines, points, and polygons. They are best applicable for shapes, icons, flat images. They have no pixelation when you zoom in. Moreover, it is possible to use the same image file on many other platforms (such as responsive website design).

As opposed to vectors, raster graphics contain images that are made of pixels. The images do look real, yet they become vulnerable to the so-called “image degradation.” Raster images become blurry, just like photo images. In other words, when you zoom in, you see the pixels that comprise the image. Hence, be careful while choosing between the two types of images since it is always nice to use high-quality ones.

Choose The Right File Format

Choosing the right format of the image file to edit is also an essential part of image optimization. There are some types of files that you can use, such as PNG, JPEG, GIF, and so on. Let’s get a little more detailed into what each one is.

• PNG is known for producing high-quality images. Thus, it has a large file size. It can be both lossy and lossless.
• GIF is the best choice for animated images. It only uses lossless compression.
• JPEG usually uses both lossy and lossless optimization. You can adjust the file quality level and size.

To conclude, the best options for website imagery are JPEG or JPG. They have much more freedom as far as the color patterns are concerned. For more simple images, you may use PNG.

Pay Attention to Load Time For Image SEO

Loading time is actually about the time a visitor has to wait until your page is completely loaded. Remember, users have so much time before they run out of patience and leave your website.

The loading time is essential for SEO because page speed also impacts your website ranking. The faster the site, the easier it is to visit the page and have an excellent experience.

Make sure you don’t use too large images. Pick the right host that will go with your business and avoid having too many ads on your webpage. Put the most effort in, so that your website visitors don’t leave your page because for waiting too long. Don’t forget that too long can even be two-three seconds.

Organize Multiple Images for Optimal Interface

I have to tell you that organizing images is as important as choosing them. How do you do that?

• Organize your images in a way that makes sense for the user
• Make sure there are no gaps in your imagery
• Test the effectiveness of the number of images that you have used per page
• Reduce or add the number of pictures and find the right balance

Use Alt Text, Title and Caption For The Image Properly

Alt text is an HTML attribute that is added to the image tag to display images on the webpage. It describes the image in plain text. The primary purpose of the alternate text is to improve accessibility for the website.

Alt text is also essential for image SEO. It helps search engines understand the context of the image. Make sure to add it to all the images you use.

What about the title? It is the only attachment detail that is required by WordPress. Titles define the permalink for the attachment post. It is also possible to use the title to search for images in the archive.

The caption is the text under the image (though the exact placement can vary depending on your theme). The caption is not linked to your attachment post. It is where you choose to place the image in a post. That means if you use the same image in some different posts or some unusual places, you may have individual captions for each.

These are critical fields for every website. Combining these fields can be a powerful feature. It can be used to create a better and more communicative experience for your page visitors. It will also bring new visitors to your website.

Incorporate the Target Keyword To The Image Title

The keyword is a significant part of Search Engine, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing.

One excellent way to create SEO-friendly images is by adding the target keyword in the photo title. It is not as crucial as the alt tag, but it is still relevant and should be used.

Keywords are words that are used to describe your image and its elements. So the primary goal of keywording photos is to attach the words to your image that describe your content accurately.

The keywords will help the image searcher find the one that is yours. But you should take into account that adding too many descriptive keywords is not a good idea.

Have an Image Sitemap

A sitemap is a file that lists all important pages of your website so that search engine crawlers can easily find. In some cases, images are included in your sitemap automatically. If not, you should add an image sitemap manually.

To provide Google with information about images on your website, you have to add some details to the standard sitemap. This will include the type of image, subject matter, caption, title, location, etc. The process allows site owners to identify which images on each page are most relevant.

XML sitemaps are a convenient way to share your website’s information with search engines such as Google. Submitting a sitemap is a good search engine optimization practice and will help you rank higher.

Use Image Caching

One of the most efficient optimization methods is image caching. It is the process of storing image files within a user’s browser cache. Caching is a way of temporarily storing the images of a web page. It helps deliver a faster and much more satisfying user experience. It is one of the most popular web performance optimization techniques.

You need image caching for fast and easy access. Image caching will reduce your application requests and the page’s download size. Caching provides a quick and reliable user experience and is considered one of the best mobile marketing trends.

Add Structured Image Data

Structured data is data that has been made into a formatted repository. Its elements can be addressable for more effective processing and analysis.

Structured data is another great way to add backend details to your image. Add structured data to your pages, and it will help search engines display your images as rich results. Structured data also increases the chances of a picture to show up as a rich result on SERPs. Consequently, you can add it to your important images. Due to the structured data, you will have higher rankings and better results.

So we do realize that image SEO is not so easy. We got acquainted with factors that are important to make sure your images are findable and do not slow down your site. So follow these steps to have an efficient image optimization tactic.

The post How to Optimize Images for SEO: Step by Step Instructions first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Mar 20, 2020 @ 3:14 pm

It gets tough when you are a total beginner at the technical sides of running your own blog or website. I remember it took me a while to figure out the difference between the .htaccess file and robots.txt

Even though I always loved anything IT and computers, the first time you encounter a new object or concept, your mind needs a bit of time to absorb the workings of it.

And .htaccess and robots.txt are the two files in the root folder of your website that you really can’t live without, so learning what they are and how they work is critical.

In this post, I will explain to you what they are, why they matter and how you can use them to your advantage, with a few examples to make learning easier and faster.

The Difference Between .HTACCESS and ROBOTS.txt File

A first general definition of this difference is that .htaccess is used mostly for internal access, whereas robots.txt manages external access.

“Internal” because .htaccess tells your Apache server how to handle page and file names, URLs and a user’s way to access these resources; it’s for your site to handle its own features.

Robots.txt, on the contrary, regulates “external” access, because it tells search engines and other web tools what to read and index and whatnot (but a human user can still browse and read).

Some examples:

.htaccess for a WordPress installation with “nice” permalinks:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Robots.txt for a WordPress blog that disallows Googlebot but allows other search engines, but also allows none to crawl their /familypics folder:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /familypics

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

In other words .htaccess protects your site from people, robots.txt from machines.

Why You Can’t Live Without .HTACCESS and ROBOTS.txt

Without .htaccess, your site will behave in its default way or may not work at all, depending on the software you use. For example, the standard installation of WordPress doesn’t include an .htaccess file: WordPress automatically creates the file when you configure your permalinks under Settings -> Permalinks. If you don’t set your permalinks, the default configuration for your URLs will stay the “unfriendly” http://example.com/?p=203, with “203” being the post ID in the MySQL database.

Without robots.txt, search engine and tool crawlers (and scrapers) would index or copy your entire website without exceptions, including files you want to keep “private”. See the example from my previous paragraph about this.

The modern Web user doesn’t like “unfriendly” URLs and search engines don’t want to find any “junk” present on your website when their spiders meet it, so having your .htaccess and robots.txt files correctly configured only works to your advantage.

How You Can Benefit From These Two Files

The technical side of these two files is only a small portion of the benefits they can bring to your table. There are also benefits connected with UX (User Experience) and SEO.

With .htaccess you can:

• Create user-friendly URLs
• Redirect users away from specific files and directories
• Manage 301 redirects (you can use a generator tool)

With robots.txt you can:

• Tell search engines what (not) to index
• Disallow crawlers from other services (like Archive.org)

Takeaway:

Configure your .htaccess and robots.txt files as soon as you set up your website or blog. They are critical to the wellbeing of your site in the search index and from a user’s viewpoint.

More resources to check out:

• Introduction to URL Rewriting by Paul Tero at Smashing Magazine
• Robots.Txt: A Beginners Guide by Boris Demaria at Woorank
• Robots.txt Tutorial by Aaron Wall

The post Difference Between .HTACCESS and ROBOTS.txt File first appeared on SEO Optimizers.