SEO or search engine optimization is the process of modifying your site or parts of it to get recognized by search engines. This recognition is rewarded through a higher ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher your rank, the better for your business. Businesses should aim to rank on the first SERP because no one scrolls past the first page. People only ever scroll to about the fifth result on the first page. So, if you’re not going to use PPC to make your business known, SEO would be your best bet.
SEO strategy
SEO is a great asset because it provides a neutral platform for small businesses with a limited budget to compete with giants in their niche. Small business owners create fast, robust, and user-friendly websites that rank higher in search engines. This helps bring more qualified potential customers to their sites and increases conversion rates.
We’ve covered a step-by-step SEO strategy to help you figure out where to start your journey. It’s time to figure out what SEO can do for your small business.
Advantages of SEO for small businesses
Cheaper marketing
The heart of SEO is digital marketing. You are going through all the trouble of ensuring your site is SERP-worthy to drive more traffic and build sustainable revenue. If you don’t have the funds to pay for PPC advertising, the best way to drive traffic would be through SEO.
Pros of this are that it is considerably cheaper than PPC, you can do it yourself, and organic traffic from SEO is more valuable.
Create fast and robust websites
SEO will help small business owners create a faster, smoother, and user-friendlier website. Although most people still hang on to the old definition of SEO, thinking it is only about optimizing for the search engines, today, SEO is also about improving user experience.
Well-structured, clean, and uncluttered websites compel visitors to stay longer, decreasing bounce rate and increasing page views. Similarly, highly relevant content keeps your readers happy as they are more likely to answer their questions, solve their pressing issues, and help them find exactly what they’re looking for on your site.
Uncover growth opportunities
One great benefit of how small business SEO works is competitive analysis. Many businesses are competing for the same keywords and the same customers.
Analyzing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses is crucial to the success of your business. This will help uncover opportunities for growth that your competitors are yet to tap into.
Let’s take an example of two businesses in the same industry, selling similar products at similar prices. One has an optimized website, while the other has a non-optimized website. Keeping all other factors equal, the optimized site will rank higher on search engines, attracting more visitors.
Reach your target audience
SEO practices for a small business are one of the easiest and cheapest ways to reach your target audience. An online presence will mean more people looking to hire your services will find you.
SEO’s role in this is higher ranking, driving traffic to your website, and potentially expanding your client base.
Create brand awareness
97% of people learn more about a local small business online than anywhere else. People searching for your business will look for your website first. People want to know more before buying through websites, reviews, images, and competitors. Without clear online visibility, you’re leaving a hole of knowledge that may push customers elsewhere.
An SEO strategy helps businesses rank better on search engines. It’s important to note that Google does not allow websites to pay for crawling and indexing, making it a level playing field for any business to rank for a specific keyword.
Better conversion rates
Seo-optimized websites load faster, are easy to read and surf, and display properly on almost all devices, including mobile and tablets. Websites that are easy to read and navigate are more likely to grab and hold the attention of your readers or visitors. Visitors who stay on your page or those who come back help with click-through conversions.
Monitoring and reporting guarantee quality results.
Constant monitoring and reporting are also crucial in growing your SEO efforts. Monthly reporting schedules help you stay in the loop by showing the actions taken to increase your online presence. This also helps ensure the best approach to targeting the right people at the right time. Ultimately, this helps lead to quality results that increase your potential to turn visitors into paying customers.
Small business SEO is a long-term game with even longer-lasting results. Businesses typically start to see movement in search results at the six-month mark. Once you are there, ranking for a keyword, it is much easier to maintain and continue to write and publish content relevant to your search term.
SEO strategies help with quality link-building
A crucial aspect of growing your small business via SEO is link building. Building links with websites that are relevant to your cause is good for your SEO. For a small AirBnBlooking to increase its online presence, they might want to work to build links with travel websites. Relevant and quality links like these help bring high-quality traffic to your site and help increase your page ranking.
Our small business SEO packages start with a minimum of one link per month. We will help write the content and publish guest articles featuring your business on relevant sites. We do this by reaching out constantly with new topics and content ideas to our backlinking partners. Backlinking can be a challenging job. Let us do the work for you!
Build market authority
The ultimate goal of SEO for any business providing online services is to ensure that searchers get the best quality and relevant results based on their searches. Because of this, search engines only rank the best possible results that answer queries.
An SEO strategy for a small business will help in ranking, perhaps even the first SERP. Good rankings signify to other people in the market that your content is of good quality and can be trusted as a source.
Building this market authority will lead to more people sharing your content on other social media platforms or recommending you to potential customers through word of mouth.
Do it yourself or hire an expert.
It is possible to implement SEO yourself or hire the services of a professional. We have listed great resources from our SEO playlist to help you navigate the industry.
The decision to do SEO yourself or hire a professional boils down to:
SEO funds you have. SEO can vary from cheap to very expensive. Hiring the services of an expert will require money. If you are working with a limited budget, consider doing it yourself.
SEO services. Some services are simple enough to implement by yourself, but others are more complex and require a professional’s expertise.
SEO for small businesses: Takeaway
Small businesses are benefiting more than ever from search engine ranking efforts. SEO is necessary if you wish to rank well on the first page and drive traffic to your business. Employ an SEO strategy by doing it yourself or hiring a professional to take care of it. SEO strategies are known to have a high ROI (Return On Investment) and will boost your business’s visibility.
Following an SEO plan can be tricky if you don’t know the step-by-step process of it. SEO is for your website marketing campaign. It is so important that numerous companies are dedicated to providing SEO services and making a pretty buck from them. It is estimated that the SEO industry will be worth nearly 2 billion dollars by 2027.
Despite a wealth of information on the internet right now regarding SEO, it might be hard and overwhelming to figure out a starting point. This may make it hard for people trying to do SEO themselves to optimize their websites. Fret not, for we will create a fool-proof step-by-step how-to on getting your SEO campaign up and running.
What are search engines looking for?
Before you begin your campaign, you must understand what criteria search engines use to rank your pages. A search engine’s journey begins with a user’s search. These query searches are used to find information on the web that matches the query’s phrasing or words (known as keywords) to return a result. Search engines do this by going through tens of thousands of web pages daily and indexing the pages that provide relevant information for easier access by users.
SEO is the process by which websites ensure that their content is found by these search engines and indexed properly. It takes time for a new website to be indexed and eventually appear on searches, although a proper SEO strategy can accelerate this process.
There are four main elements that search engines look at when determining which site is more relevant and should show up higher in search engine results pages (SERPs):
Content: Is the content relevant to what the user is searching for?
Performance: Does the site load fast, and does it work properly?
Authority: Is the content useful enough to link to, or do other authoritative sites use that website as a reference or cite the available information?
User experience: How does the site look and behave? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?
Step-by-step guide on SEO
Google provides a detailed SEO starter guide that we’ll simplify in this article and other proven market strategies for other search engines.
Website optimization
Optimization is done during the website creation process and involves intentionally tweaking your website to search engine standards. The Google webmaster contains important information and tips on how to go bout this process.
Keyword research
Keywords feature in both the structures of your website and your content. A successful SEO campaign starts with a proper keyword strategy.
Keywords are the link between your web content and searcher intent. Learning and anticipating searcher behaviors is also good practice, so you can tailor your website and content to answer their most basic queries. Here’s our list of some of the best keyword research tools in the market.
Offer new and unique services
Create a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could write an original piece of research, break an exciting product or service, or leverage your unique user base. DO your competitor analysis using tools available on the web to know what your competitors are offering their customers and use this information to create something new.
Website domain name
A simple domain name works best
A proper strategy ensures that the domain name is aligned with the type of content you’re producing. Domain names are a ranking factor and are the first step when search engines try to figure out what your website is about. A great domain name is easy to remember, relevant, and incorporates the main keyword you want to rank for.
It shouldn’t be forced. The domain name should reflect the type of business you’re doing. contentERP.com focuses on helping websites improve their SEO and provides content strategies and management solutions.
An easy, short, and descriptive domain name makes it easy for people to remember the name of your site. It also makes for easy ranking based on the chosen keywords.
Use unique URLs
Search engines need a unique URL per piece of content to crawl, index, and refer users to it. Different content (for example, different products in a shop) and modified content (for example, translations or regional variations) need to use separate URLs to be shown in search appropriately.
Create unique, accurate page titles and metadata
<title> tag
A <title> tag tells users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. Each webpage on your website should have unique title tags that accurately describe what that page is about. If a webpage appears on a search results page, the contents of the <title> tag may appear as the title link to the document.
Do not use title elements that have no relation to the content on the page.
Meta description
A meta description gives a summary of what your page is about. It may be a short sentence or a paragraph. Meta description tags are important because search engines might use them as snippets for your pages in Search results.
As with the <title> tag, do not write irrelevant meta descriptions that have no relation to the content.
Be as descriptive as possible.
Avoid saturating the meta description with keywords.
Be mobile-friendly
More than half of the human population today use mobile devices to search the web. The desktop version of a website may be difficult to navigate on a mobile phone. Having a mobile-ready site is critical to your online presence. So critical that Google has made being mobile-friendly an important ranking factor.
A mobile-friendly site satisfies the following criteria:
Fast loading speeds- This goes unsaid for the desktop versions of websites as well.
Responsive design that can easily switch from one screen type to another. The algorithm is set to detect responsive sites that fulfill these criteria automatically.
User-friendly and customer satisfaction. Minimize the appearance of ads on your pages. Make sure that visual content loads properly. Pages that provide poor searcher experiences can be demoted.
Make sure any structural data on the desktop version is also available on the mobile version.
Organize your site structure
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the website owner thinks is important. To rank effectively for your target keywords, you need to structure your website so that each page targets its own set of closely related, highly relevant keywords.
Plan navigation based on the homepage
The homepage, also known as the root page, is the most visited page on a website. It is the starting place of navigation when users visit your site. Plan your site’s architecture to make it easy for visitors to move to other pages from this main page.
Use a naturally flowing hierarchical method to list down pages.
Use breadcrumb lists
Breadcrumbs are internal links at the top or bottom of a page, allowing users to navigate to previous pages quickly. Think of it as links pointing down to pages in a hierarchical manner, from the more general root page to the specific sections in a website structure.
Show useful 404 pages
Broken links or pages that do not exist will lead users to 404 pages. A custom 404 page that guides users back to other pages on your site that work can improve their experience.
Submit a sitemap
Submitting a sitemap makes it easier for a search engine to find your website so it can add new or update content on its index. Create and submit a sitemap to Google’s search console or Bing webmaster Tools for faster and easier crawling and indexing.
Optimize your content
Now that your website’s structure, usability, and appearance on search engines is on track, it’s time to focus on content. Knowing your primary and LSI keywords will help you plan your content.
Understand search intent
You’re creating content that a searcher would find relevant, answering their query.
Think about the words a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know much about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone new to it.
Create compelling content
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it.
Offer a different perspective from what users are used to.
Avoid repetition.
Write content for users, not search engines
While you need to focus on optimization, the content you write should be readable by human standards. Design content around your visitors’ needs, focussing on these key points:
Write easy-to-read text.
Avoid keyword stuffing
Avoid thin content.
Provide relevant information on your content.
Search engines can now detect ‘bad’ content and can penalize you by demoting you from search results.
Optimize your images
Incorporating visual media into your content can greatly improve its quality. Visual data can be optimized in several ways, namely:
Using standard file types that load quickly, like png
Small or medium-sized files make for easier and faster loading
Make them responsive to load on all types of screens.
Use the alt attribute to describe your images.
Off-site optimization
Backlinks
Backlinks are extremely important for an SEO strategy. Crawler bots follow links from trusted websites back to yours making it discoverable. Good backlinks will also bring in traffic from other sites.
Seek out partnerships with other websites by writing great original content hat these other sites can source or guest write for a blog.
Future SEO strategy for the win
SEO is constantly evolving, and your site should evolve with it. Create systems within your strategy to check SEO guidelines posted by search engines constantly. Luckily for you, an SEO strategy once in place is easy to maintain.
SEO is an essential component of any web business. It plays a part in your marketing strategy, but you can’t rely on it alone. To see the best results from your SEO efforts, you must be patient and consistent—especially with content creation and link building.
Organic search engine optimization
Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process, not a product. It’s not magic. It’s not a one-time thing; it takes time and effort to see results from SEO.
While you might hear people talking about how fast their business has grown since doing some search marketing campaign, this isn’t necessarily true for every company out there—and even if it were true for yours, it wouldn’t mean anything without looking at what was done with those campaigns first!
The first three months of your SEO campaign
The first three months of your SEO campaign are the most challenging part. You’ll have to write content, do keyword research, build links to your site, and create a content strategy to attract new visitors.
In this section:
What happens in the first three months?
Tips for getting started with SEO
Six to 12 months into your SEO campaign
You will see more traffic six to 12 months into your SEO campaign. You’ll also start to see more conversions and links. This means people find your site through search engines and click on it or buy something from it!
You’ll also start seeing organic rankings (the top positions) in search engines like Google or Bing—but this is only the beginning of what’s possible with SEO. If you can keep up with these changes over time, they can help you reach a wider audience than ever!
After six months of working on your website, you should start seeing positive results from your SEO efforts.
After six months of working on your website, you should start seeing positive results from your SEO efforts. You’ll be able to rank for some keywords and get targeted traffic. This will help you drive more conversions, which leads to a higher ROI.
A site-wide audit will take time.
SEO is a long-term investment, and it requires you to be patient. You won’t see results overnight or even in the first month of implementing your SEO strategy. It can take anywhere from one month to six months for your website content to appear organically on search engines like Google and Bing. That said, several factors affect how quickly you’ll see results:
How much competition there is for your keywords
How well optimized your site is overall
After one year of working on your website, you’re likely ranking for a handful of keywords, driving more targeted traffic to your website, and starting to see conversions.
After one year of working on your website, you’re likely to be ranking for a handful of keywords and driving more targeted traffic to your website.
You’ll start seeing results from your SEO efforts: You’ll be able to see the impact that SEO has had on your rankings and traffic, which will help you determine what needs improvement or what’s going well. This can include determining whether or not it’s time for an update or revamp of the site itself (more on this later).
Pay attention to SEO
On-page SEO is the content of your website, such as keywords and phrases you want to rank for, as well as any links to relevant pages. Off-page SEO refers to creating backlinks from other websites that point back directly at yours (and vice versa). Both are important because they can help improve how people discover you online—and if someone visits one of your pages on their own accord rather than being directed there by a search engine algorithm update, that’s good!
You’ll have different goals depending on what type of business model you’re running: some businesses may need more organic traffic while others might be looking for paid ads or sponsorships; but regardless of whether it’s organic or paid traffic that brings in new leads or customers, all businesses should be continually trying out new strategies, so they stay ahead of the curve when it comes down those inevitable changes in Google rankings caused by algorithmic updates over time.”
Be patient
You must be in it for the long haul to get the most out of your SEO strategy. It’s not uncommon for businesses to see results after only a few months of work—but that’s the exception rather than the rule.
Depending on your time and what kind of business you run, it could take anywhere from two years or more before your website starts getting traction with its Google rankings and visitors start returning. This may seem like an eternity away, but don’t worry; keep working on improving your site, so it’ll be worth waiting for when those magic times come around!
Conclusion
Now that you know what to expect from SEO, let’s talk about how long it will take for your campaign to start generating results. The first three months of your SEO campaign are crucial and can make or break your success with organic search engine optimization (SEO). After six months of working on your website, you should start seeing positive results from your SEO efforts. If you want more advanced techniques and strategies, consider hiring a professional company like our friendly White Hat Digital Marketing LLC team! We offer services such as website design and development, social media management, content marketing techniques, and more so that we can help grow your brand into the future today!
In today’s competitive marketplace, where consumers spend less time researching products online than ever
Businesses must get creative to capture market share through digital marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO). While there are many ways to go about this task, including paid ads
Blog posts about competitors’ products or services etc., these tactics do not always yield desired results due to their limited reach within search engines like Google’s algorithm updates. That’s why it’s essential for any business owner looking forward to growing their brand by optimizing their website through a program like white hat digital marketing LLC should hire someone who knows how exactly works best with today’s technology today.”
SEO has become integral to any marketing strategy in the last few years. It is a great way to boost traffic to the website and increase its visibility on the internet.
There are numerous SEO techniques, but no single best SEO strategy will guarantee increased traffic to your website. The most effective tactics depend on your site’s specific goals and objectives and your competition. Nevertheless, a few general tips can help increase web traffic.
A good SEO strategy is constantly changing with the changes in Google’s algorithm. It also needs to sync with the changing online landscape and its trends.
SEO experts need to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in search engine optimization, analytics, link building, and other digital marketing strategies.
On-Page Optimization
The best way to increase the traffic to the website (increasing search engine ranking) is to optimize pages on the site. You have to do various things such as use keywords in the title tag, meta description, H1 tags, etc. Also, ensure relevant content on each page, making it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. Use internal links to connect related pages to create a bigger web of information.
Off-page optimization
Off-page optimization involves using external sites to help out your own site. Link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to yours. There are many techniques to get others to link to your site.
Link building
Link building is an important part of SEO. This means getting links from other websites that link to your site. It’s also called backlinking since you are trying to get someone else’s website to link back to yours.
It can be done in several ways, but here are some techniques that have worked well for me:
Write guest posts on blogs or websites where they talk about what you do (or don’t do!)
Get emails from people who want to hear more about what your business does (this will help them remember how awesome it was)
Keyword Research
keyword research is the foundation of any good SEO strategy. If you know how to use keywords effectively, you can develop content that drives more people to your website. The first step is to identify the primary and secondary keywords for the page.
Your primary keyword is the main focus of your content. You only need to choose one main keyword for each page. It should relate to your page focus, brand identity, products, and services.
Your secondary keywords support the primary topic. You may have several of them. They are usually more detailed than the main keyword and represent the sub-topics you cover in the article. Try to include them naturally in your content, but don’t force them if they don’t fit.
Keep your content fresh and updated.
Try to write and publish as often as possible, but not at the cost of quality! The more quality content you have on your website or blog, the more opportunities you create for organic traffic to come your way.
Create content around topics that will always be of interest to your audience. These evergreen posts will accumulate traffic and links over time, especially if you refresh them regularly.
Content marketing
Content marketing is a strategy that uses content to attract and retain customers. It’s a long-term strategy, but any business can use it.
Content marketing has been around for decades, but it’s only recently become mainstream in the SEO world. Why? Because this type of marketing works! It attracts more visitors than traditional advertising campaigns because people want information about your product or service before they buy it (or even visit your website).
Content marketing also costs less than traditional advertising methods because you don’t need to pay someone else to create great content—you already have everything laid out on paper: interesting facts about your product/service; how-to guides; lists of useful links; etcetera.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is free advertising and an excellent tool for any business. Using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, you can advertise your business to millions of people. These sites work both online and offline.
Content marketing as an SEO strategy for increased traffic
Email Marketing
Email marketing campaigns are powerful tools that allow businesses to maintain contact with their customers, prospects, and potential clients. You’ll keep your customers engaged, interested, and updated if you send emails regularly.
Online Reputation Management
Most people don’t know how harmful negative reviews can be to a company’s reputation. An online reputation management service checks those negative comments and posts positive ones, protecting the company’s image and leading to higher sales.
Pay Per Click Advertising
PPC ads refer to advertisements shown at the top of search engines. Businesses pay Google and Bing when their ad shows up first when someone searches for specific terms. PPC ads are highly targeted to individuals searching for a product or service.
Technical SEO
Check the site for broken links: If a page has a broken link, it will be impossible for Google to crawl the site and index it. The crawler cannot find the content because of that link. Broken links may also be due to 404 errors or other technical issues like server downtime or slow loading times of pages.
Check for duplicate content: Duplicate content on your website is an issue because it makes your site look less credible in search results and reduces traffic from search engines. It also leads to duplicate content penalties (which can lead to further losses in rankings) if these search engines also detect it.
Conclusion
It is important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and requires constant attention. Many changes in the market can affect your rankings, so it’s best if you keep an eye on them. However, as long as you remain focused and maintain a steady course of action, you will have no trouble reaching your goals with SEO!
Which of the following are considered black hat SEO techniques
It might feel like a risky game if you’re just starting with black hat SEO. Black hat SEO is a term that describes devious or unethical practices used to improve a website’s search engine rankings. It contrasts with white hat SEO, which encompasses techniques approved and recommended by search engines.
Guide to Black Hat SEO Techniques
It’s no secret that search engine optimization (SEO) can be a challenging and frustrating process. Many best practices remain fairly constant when it comes to effectively optimizing your website. There are also constantly evolving tactics that marketers can employ to give their site an edge in search results.
These methods are not only deceptive and malicious but also push the boundaries of generally accepted ethical SEO practices.
Any time you dip below the surface and explore some trickier SEO aspects, you risk negative repercussions. Such repercussions could include having your site penalized by Google or outright banned from their index.
Keywords and content
The number one rule of black hat SEO is to create quality content. A successful content marketing strategy will create content that resonates with your audience.
It doesn’t matter how many backlinks you have if none of your content is relevant to your audience.
Identify a few keywords for which you’d like to rank and then focus on creating engaging and on-topic content.
Don’t try to stuff every article full of keywords. And don’t try to push content that you know your audience will find unhelpful or offensive.
It is important to remember that Google constantly evolves. If you try to bend the rules too far, you may lose the battle entirely. Google has become remarkably adept at recognizing over-optimized content. Your site may face penalties if Google detects this.
Content Spinning
Keyword stuffing is a tried and true Black Hat SEO technique that has been around for a long time. If you want to rank for a very competitive keyword like “New York City real estate,” you might not naturally have the authority to rank for that keyword.
If you are over-optimizing your content and/or are not progressing towards ranking for that keyword, you might want to consider content spinning.
This is a particularly sneaky form of keyword stuffing. Essentially, you copy and paste your original article and swap out certain keywords with synonyms that are more likely to generate interest. Be careful because Google is also getting better at detecting spun content.
Black Hat SEO With Paid Links
Paid links have been a considerable part of the Black Hat SEO landscape for a very long time. It comes down to paying a website owner to link to your site from theirs.
Google is aware of this tactic but can’t figure out how to shut it down completely.
For a long time, the most effective way to get a site banned from Google’s index was to offer a link in exchange for a backlink.
This technique is still prevalent today, but many folks have found ways to adapt the tactic to avoid the attention of Google’s algorithms. If you use this method, be careful to buy links that are “no-follow” or “no-link” backlinks to avoid penalties. Unfortunately, even if you follow every rule associated with this method of Black Hat SEO, there is always a chance that Google could ban your site.
Excessive Internal Linking
Internal linking is a common SEO practice that many marketers go overboard. There is nothing wrong with linking to helpful pages on your own website. However, when you start linking to every page on your site, it begins to look suspicious. The best way to avoid this is to link to your most important pages and use your judgment when linking to less important ones.
For example, it won’t make sense to write a piece about dogs and link it to a page about cat breeds. If you have an entire section or category dedicated to cats, but you only link to that one page, it still looks a bit fishy.
On the other hand, you’d be wise to link to as many pages as you can relate to dogs, cats, and every other subject you write about.
Freemium Strategy
The Freemium strategy has recently made a big splash in online marketing. Essentially, you create a “lite” version of your product and make it available for free in exchange for an email address.
Once you have that email address, you can market your premium services to that person, and since you spent no money on acquiring that address, you are making free money.
This is a prevalent strategy among online marketers but particularly annoying to Google. The problem is that many marketers eventually transition their free users to a paid version, which is something that should be reserved for subscribers.
You can avoid this problem by not transitioning free users to a paid version of your product or by transitioning all free users but avoiding sending them emails. This is risky, as you will only hurt your marketing efforts without gaining much return.
HTML Marketing Mix Strategies
HTML marketing mix strategy is a relatively new Black Hat SEO technique but one that has made a splash in the marketing world. It combines different marketing strategies often frowned upon, like guest posting and article spinning.
It is important to note that this technique is not considered Black Hat SEO because it is regarded as an overall marketing strategy. Still, it can be used with other Black Hat SEO techniques to increase its effectiveness.
This strategy aims to develop articles on various topics and spin them almost identical. You then distribute these articles across various websites in exchange for a backlink. This, of course, is a very shady tactic, but it can be effective if done correctly.
Dynamic Content Insertion
Dynamic content insertion is another extremely frowned-upon Black Hat SEO technique, but one that can be very effective. The idea behind this strategy is that you create one article and use an article spinner to come up with thousands of variations of that article.
You then distribute these articles to various websites and request that they insert their unique article directly before or after your article. This will have the effect of having your article appear on thousands of different websites with your own name attached, without you having to write a single piece of content.
This is a very shady and completely unethical Black Hat SEO technique. If you want to rank for anything on Google, avoid this method like the plague and don’t use any of the other mentioned Black Hat SEO techniques.
Constant Content Is King
This simple but effective Black Hat SEO tactic will allow you to rank for a wide range of keywords. The idea behind this strategy is to create several articles but only publish one of them on your website.
You can then use the other articles as “pre-written content” for other websites and only publish them once you have received a backlink. It is a very shady way to leverage your authority and rank for a wide range of keywords, but it is one method that has proven to be very effective.
This is one of the riskiest and most controversial Black Hat SEO techniques, so be careful not to push the boundaries too far.
SEO Can Help You Know Your Audience
Creating content that resonates with your audience is great. But it can become even more effective if you understand what your audience wants. Many strategies and techniques will allow you to rank for a large number of keywords. However, they won’t help you get accurate, tangible results.
You can use SEO to help you learn more about your audience. This knowledge will help you create content that truly resonates with your readers.
Many websites offer free keyword research tools, articles, and guides to help you learn more about SEO. It may seem like a lot of information, but it will ultimately help you create better content for your audience.
Use Rich Media Marketing Strategies
The best way to ensure that your content truly resonates with your audience is to use rich media marketing strategies like video and podcasts. These types of media are beneficial because they allow you to connect with your audience more personally while also providing you with the ability to provide more information in a shorter amount of time.
For example, you may want to create a podcast about a specific topic, like SEO. You can then use that podcast to promote other content, like articles, blog posts, and other resources.
Conclusion
Black hat SEO tactics pose a real risk to any website that uses them as a way to rank on the SERPs.
And while they’re nowhere near as commonly used as they once were, there are still SEOs who go down this route or lead businesses to believe it’s being marketed ethically when in reality, the techniques being used are clear violations of Google’s guidelines.
We advise you to be aware of the risk posed to your website if you use these tactics.
How to write SEO-friendly alt text for your images
What is alt text, and why is it important for SEO?
‘Alt text’ or ‘alternative text,’ a short text intended to describe an image or any other picture on a website to make it searchable and SEO friendly.
Every day more than 1 billion searches are done on Google Images. Today, image searches represent about 38% of all searches in search engines. That’s why optimizing your images is crucial; one step in doing so is to write SEO-friendly image alt texts.
The screenshot above shows the first search engine results page (SERP) that Google produces for the search term “best backpacks.” Notice how, in addition to the “Images” tab at the top, Google pulls in a substantial pack of clickable images to the beginning of the main results page — before any organic text results are visible.
Well-written alt text is important to your website’s accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO).
Accessibility
It’s read by screen readers in place of images, allowing your image content to be accessed by people who are blind or have a visual impairment.
It can be helpful to people with specific sensory processing and learning disabilities.
It’s displayed in place of the image in browsers if the image file hasn’t loaded or when the user has chosen not to view images.
SEO
Using alt text on your images can make for a better user experience, but it may also help earn you both explicit and implicit SEO benefits.
While search engine image recognition technology has vastly improved over the years, search crawlers still can’t “see” the images on a website page as we can, so it’s not wise to leave the interpretation solely in their hands. If they don’t understand or get it wrong, it’s possible you could either rank for unintended keywords or miss out on ranking altogether.
Image Traffic
One of the most important things image alt text can do for you is turn your images into hyperlinked search results that appear either in Google Images or as image packs. Image packs are special results displayed as a horizontal row of image links that can appear in any organic position, including the #1 spot on a SERP.
How do I write good alt text?
Describe the image as precisely as possible.
Alt text is, first and foremost, designed to provide text explanations of images for users who cannot see them.
An excellent point to note: generic doesn’t pay off when it comes to product descriptions. The devil is in the detail. You need to pay attention to the way you describe your products.
If an image truly doesn’t convey any meaning or value and is just for design purposes, it should live within the CSS, not HTML.
Keep it (relatively) short.
It’s advisable to keep alt text at around 125 characters or less. It was previously advised that popular screen readers cut alt text off after about 125 characters.
<img src="alt-text.jpg" alt="This is a very long alt text, which isn't user friendly, and will most likely be cut off by screen readers" />
While no longer a hard and fast rule, it is still a good guide for content creators and SEOs when writing alt text for complex images requiring longer descriptions.
Use your keywords.
Alt text provides you another opportunity to include your target keyword on a page and thus another opportunity to signal to search engines that your page is highly relevant to a particular search query.
While your first priority should be describing and providing context to the image if it makes sense to do so, include your keyword in the alt text of at least one image on the page.
Avoid keyword stuffing.
Google won’t dock you points for poorly written alt text, but you’ll be in trouble if you use your alt text as an opportunity to stuff as many relevant keywords as you can think of into it.
Focus on writing descriptive alt text that provides context to the image and if possible, includes your target keyword, and leave it at that.
Don’t include “image of,” “picture of,” etc., in your alt text. It’s already assumed your alt text refers to an image, so there’s no need to specify it.
Review for spelling errors.
Misspelled words in image alt text could hurt the user experience or confuse search engines crawling your site. You should review alt text like you would any other content on the page.
Don’t add alt text to ‘decorative’ images.
You should add alt text to most images on a webpage for the sake of SEO, UX, and accessibility — however, there are exceptions. Images that are purely decorative or are described in text nearby, for example, should have an empty alt attribute. Check out this decision tree for a more detailed breakdown of when to add alt text and when to not.
Use best practices for complex images.
Describe maps, charts, diagrams, and any other complex images using accessibility best practices. While browsers handle the longdesc=”” attribute differently, they are available to screen reader users.
Examples of SEO-friendly alt text
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples of alt text in action:
Keyword vs. Detail
Bad: in this image, a man is working on his computer, typing, or doing research. He’s frustrated by the look of it- perhaps he can’t find what he’s looking for
The alt text above makes it hard for Google to understand how the image might relate to the content on your webpage. There are no precise, descriptive keywords, and the text is too long.
Good:Man working on Google with his hands in his hair
Detail vs. Specificity
Bad: Keyword explorer tool
The alt text above isn’t too bad as it provides details of the picture but a better alt text would contain more information about the tool.
Good: ahref’s keyword tool for SEO keyword research
Context
More often than not, your images will have clear context to help you write alt the context of your within-page content. Text, but that might not always be the case. Some images might be ambiguous.
For images of this nature, it is up to you to write the alt text based on
Some images are also pretty self-explanatory and do not need any alt descriptions.
Adding Alt Text to Images in WordPress
Adding alt text to images is super easy using the WordPress block editor.
To get started, scroll to the post or page you’re editing and click on your image, so it gets marked with the blue frame. Then, go to the Image Settings in the right column of your post editor and type in the alt text in the Alt Text (alternative text) field.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that alt text plays a crucial role in an online world consumed by the importance of keywords. If you want to make the most of your alt text, keep these tips in mind and remember that the online world is constantly evolving.
We hope this post helped you understand how to write alt text for images for SEO. Remember that the more images you optimize with alt texts, the better your chances of ranking them in image search. You’ll also improve the overall user experience and keep visitors glued to your content.
