If you’re at all aware of what it takes to run a business, you probably have at least a basic understanding of what search engine optimization (SEO) entails and why having a solid SEO strategy is so essential. But even with all we know about SEO, there’s still quite a bit of mystery involved. We have a clearer picture about what Google wants to see and what tactics actually improve search rankings. But for some, those two things may not always line up well enough for their liking. This is typically where we see a divergence between white hat SEO and black hat SEO.

The goal of both black hat and white hat SEO is to make certain a company is visible on the internet. But the way these strategies are executed can make all the difference.

What is White Hat SEO?

White hat SEO refers to the act of improving your website’s rankings and SEO score naturally. This can be done through quality content, user experience, on-page SEO, and more.

What is Black Hat SEO?

On the other side of the coin, you have black hat SEO. Black hat SEO is a set of unethical practices that violate search engine guidelines. Some elements that are involved in black hat SEO include keyword stuffing, buying backlinks, hiding content, article spinning, and more.

Why White Hat SEO Wins the Day

The two types of SEO are aptly named. Their hue tells you everything you need to know about which side is which in the battle of good versus evil.

Following Google’s guidelines should result in better rankings and increased traffic. This ethical approach is what white hat SEO is based on. The idea here is that if you follow the rules, you’ll likely be rewarded in the end.

With white hat SEO, you’ll generally see the use of relevant keywords and descriptive meta-tags. The keywords used in web copy, blog posts, and back-end development should be versatile and targeted without seeming spammy or unnatural. They need to integrate naturally into your content. Most of all, they should be used to tell both Google and website visitors about your business in a way that’s easy to understand and that doesn’t seem off-putting.

White hat SEO also involves the creation of original, helpful content. Your goal here should be to inform, to entertain, and to satisfy user needs. Generally speaking, long-form content (~1,200 words or longer) tends to perform better because it keeps users engaged and on the page. It also provides more opportunities to optimize and to entice others to share what you’ve created.

And speaking of sharing, white hat SEO has some hallmarks for that, too. The practice of guest posting — building relationships with other website owners by contributing content of value that benefits both parties — is common here. It’s an excellent way to diversify your backlink profile through referring domains in good standing with Google. The passing of links, which refers to a reputable website essentially giving an endorsement to your own, can play an important role in determining your site’s reputation.

All of these tactics are considered to be allowable by Google. Combined with a responsive web design that provides a consistently positive user experience for visitors, these white hat SEO techniques will ensure you’re thought of as one of the good guys.

With Black Hat SEO, You’ll Risk It All

Anything worth doing well takes a bit more time — and the use of white hat SEO will take a bit more time to show results. Unfortunately, there are some people out there who believe they’re entitled to all the glory. Plus, they’re often willing to take enormous risks to get it.

Black hat SEO readily uses manipulative tactics and outlawed tricks in an attempt to rise to the top. Instead of creating useful content that’s totally original, black hat SEO might publish auto-generated content that’s stuffed to the brim with keywords. The result is a lot of posts that make absolutely no sense to human readers. Another option is the use of duplicate content. This means posts are published in multiple places on one site or are stolen from other sources without permission.

Websites that use black hat SEO might also provide inconsistent user experiences that aim to fool both human and bot visitors. The use of doorway pages (sending visitors to pages other than what’s indexed by Google) and the practice of cloaking (presenting different content to humans and to bots) are dishonest and unethical techniques that Google won’t abide. Hidden text and links also fall under this category.

Reliance on spammy backlinks, irrelevant keywords or content, or negative SEO campaigns (e.g., using black hat strategies to sabotage a competitor) are all outlawed by Google, too. Essentially, anything that someone can do in an attempt to cut corners and boost their rankings in a way seen as being dishonest. In turn, these things will probably be considered to be black hat SEO.

Don’t Do the Crime If You Can’t Do the Time

These SEO offenses will come at a hefty price. If those who use these techniques are caught, the consequences can be pretty dire. In exchange for blatantly flouting Google’s rules, sites may be penalized. This means that your search ranking (and subsequent traffic share) will take a huge hit. In extreme cases, your site may be completely banned from search results altogether.

At the end of the day, it’s simply not worth it to take a chance with black hat SEO. You might momentarily see a surge in traffic, but the price you’ll pay once you’re found out could be more than you can bear. You may put your entire business at risk simply because you refused to follow the rules — which were put into place for everyone’s benefit.

If your business is on the up-and-up, your SEO strategy should reflect those values. When it comes time to craft your SEO strategy for your site, make sure that every technique being used follows Google’s guidelines and your own personal ethics. That’s really the only way to truly win.

Author bio: Brennen Bliss is the founder and director of the marketing agency, PixelCutLabs. From making websites and apps at age 13 for family and friends in his bedroom to partnering with organizations like the College Football Playoffs a few years later, Brennen has bootstrapped a company that is now recognized by UpCity as one of the top 10 SEO agencies in the United States, and one of the top SEO agencies in the USA by the global search awards.

The post What is White Hat SEO? appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Google loves backlinks. And it considers natural backlinks one of the biggest indicators of content value. However, no matter how useful your material is, building quality backlinks can be a real headache.

In fact, there is only one secret to getting natural backlinks at the lowest cost – create content with a specific purpose in mind. In this article, we will explain how to do this in more detail.

Make Your Content Even More Personalized and Targeted

Personalization is not a hyped marketing word. It is a vital necessity. Content projects are no exception. For the content to get the best chance of backlinks, you need to be very precise and specific. Here are some tips.

• Write with your target audience in mind.
• Use links to other projects, especially statistics and facts.
• Use keywords with long tails, it will make your material more specific and focused on an explicit user request.

Repurpose the Content You Already Have for Better Sharing

In order to get natural backlinks, it is not always necessary to create cool stuff from scratch. Sometimes it’s enough to improve, refine, and repurpose the content that you already have. For example, you can convert your research into infographics, record videos instead of step-by-step or how-to instructions, and convert a series of posts into an e-book.

All these are convenient formats for other users, and therefore, there are more chances to get a backlink.

Make It Better

Here is another strategy. First, select a specific topic that suits the theme of your site, write it in the search box, and do an in-depth analysis of the posts from the first page.

Pay attention to all indicators – keywords, the number of words in the article, links to other sources, visual materials, and especially user questions in the comments. Your goal is to make the best piece of content and get into the top SERP. In this case, you have to act from all fronts – to share your article on social networks and forums, to distribute among friends, or even to promote for a fee. However, with high-quality material and good behavioral factors, natural backlinks will not take long.

Cooperate with Influencers

Do you know what the weak point of all influencers is? It is their ego. All of them are very proud of the opportunity to influence a targeted audience, even if this opportunity is limited to a niche. Your task is to exchange this opportunity for a backlink.

The idea is to interview an influencer, share content with him or her, and ask to add a backlink to one of the blog posts. Influencers love to brag about someone interviewing them, so be sure that it works. 

Hint! Choose micro-influencers. First, it’s easier to negotiate with them. And secondly, they always know more about a specific niche.

Find a Question, Provide an Answer, Get a Link

This strategy is called do-it-yourself. However, Google does not consider this a violation. The idea is that you need to do research on Quora and Reddit and find questions that you can give full answers to.

It is better to choose specific questions that do not have a large number of answers or the answers to which do not reflect the essence too well. Logically, your task is to give the most precise answer, plus organically add a link to your project. The art, in this case, is to make the link as organic as possible. If you can do this, you will receive not only a backlink but also several unique users.

Add Some Videos

It has long been known that video engages users better. By this logic, it is always the right decision to add an engaging video of your production to an article.

Of course, this is not a magic pill, the presence of a video does not guarantee dozens of natural backlinks in one day. However, this is clearly a competitive advantage in terms of material quality. And the higher the quality of your article, the more exciting and involving it is, the better the behavioral factors it shows, the higher your chances of getting a backlink.

Ask Users to Share

Sometimes it’s enough just to ask users to share your content on their blogs, and they will do it. However, it is necessary to learn to ask correctly. The “Share it, please” request will most likely not work — you need to show value in order to motivate users to share.

For example, if you wrote an article on how to stay productive in conditions of self-isolation, you can ask users to share and, thereby, help those who are in severe conditions now. And it should not contain a hint at your backlink. So did the Photza photo retouching studio, which created a blog on its website, where professionals give tips to beginners on retouching photos and people share these articles by linking to them.

Agree on Exchange With Related Websites

Crossposting still works. In addition, this is a good way not only to exchange links but also to get a new target audience and enhance your reputation. Of course, it is better if both sites will have a similar theme, but if you use a bit of imagination, you can figure out how to add the link in the most organic way.

Hint! The easiest way is to add a link to your project is in the author’s bio, that is, in your bio. It looks quite convincing both for readers and for Google.

Strengthen Your Position With Some Paid Links

Paid links can also be effective. Google considers it as a gray strategy, but if the link is inscribed in relevant content and is useful, then this is a drop in your piggy bank. Moreover, it is much more reasonable to use a special service. Buying backlinks can smoothly increase your rankings.

Conclusion

Nowadays, Google is not going to abandon the mechanism for evaluating backlinks. Whether you want it or not, it is necessary to pay attention to this indicator. And the simplest (as well as the most complex, but the most effective) way to constantly get new, natural backlinks is to create really cool content and provide your readers with information that you are an expert in.

Marie Barnes is a writer for  Bestforacar. She is an enthusiastic blogger interested in writing about technology, social media, work, travel, lifestyle, and current affairs. She shares her insights through blogging. Follow her on Medium.

The post 9 Secrets to Building Natural Backlinks appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Educational websites are one of the most sought-after backlinks. This isn’t surprising since Google’s algorithm highly values university backlinks as they’re chock-full of valuable information

Acquiring a .edu domain is a difficult process as you’ll need to meet all the requirements to verify your authenticity. It’s this verification process that gives these .edu sites the influence it enjoys when it comes to ranking and authority, hence why other sites are after them. 

However, it can be challenging to acquire backlinks from university websites. The good news is that there are steps you can follow to acquire backlinks from universities. Here are seven of them. 

1. Broken Links in Resource Pages  

One of the most common techniques used in this strategy is to find the resource page of a university site that is relevant to your business. For instance, if your niche is in the photography industry, you should find a university that is dealing with that discipline. Now, it’s quite easy to find the resource page of your industry on Google. 

Simply enter this on the search bar: site:.edu photography + inurl: resources. 

You’ll want to change “photography” to the business you’re in so that you’re good to go. To find broken links, use Chrome’s “Check My Link” extension and have it run on a resource page. Once you’ve found your target, you can cover the content of that link on your site, then reach out to the university and convince them to use your piece as a working substitute. 

Note, however, that you should contact the assistant lecturer rather than the main lecturer since the former is mostly responsible for updating the site’s courses. 

2. Provide More Content for Resource Pages 

While the broken link method might work, there will be some cases when you don’t find any of them on a university’s resource page. In this case, you might want to scan the listed resources to see whether or not you can add more value to the page.

If you’ve been in your niche for years, chances are you’re up to date with the current trend in the industry and know a couple of tricks that might help a student. You can use this expertise to give a detailed explanation about a specific technique and post it on your site. Then, you can contact the assistant lecturer and pitch your piece to them.  

You can also check out the link of a resource page to see if the information in the article missed a significant section or a blank slate that you can fill. The idea here is to provide more value to the resource page, information that can ultimately help university students become better at what they aspire to be. 

3. Offer Staff & Student Discounts

Giving university staff and students discounts on your product is another excellent way to get them to backlink your site. After all, who doesn’t want to receive incentives from a business that only asks for something as small as a backlink? 

A great example of this is what Adorama is doing. Adorama is a video and photography business that’s been operating in the industry for over 33 years that offers staff and students who are in the “film, video, photography, graphic design, audio, or new media departments” discounts on a variety of products. 

Applicants simply need to fill out a form and submit the requirements to enter the program. This program is an excellent way of getting on the radar of universities, which can then be used to build a network in the long run.

4. Collecting Data and Conducting Research 

Providing extensive data and comprehensive research in your field is also a great way for universities to backlink your site. And since cultivating a business needs these two anyway, there’s a high chance that you already have a background on the entire process.

This time, however, your piece should be angled in a way that can benefit students. The idea is to add value in your industry, whether you’re involved within the Los Angeles SEO agency or moving in the creative writing ecosystem. 

Of course, it will be challenging to collect this information and arrange them in a way that can be beneficial. But if you do it right, universities may link your piece on their platform.

5. Offer a Scholarship 

Giving out a scholarship can be a great beacon to capture the attention of universities as well. First, you want to research what sort of scholarship you should offer. Understand the necessary requirements to enter the event, criteria, and the reward. For reference, you may want to do a bit of digging to see the kinds of scholarship being offered. 

To do this, enter on the search bar: site:.edu “scholarships” followed by your niche. 

Taking our photography example above, here’s a sample of what a scholarship program looks like. After arranging all the details, reach out to a university and tell them about your scholarship program.

6. Collaborate with Students

In some universities, administrators let students contribute to their site’s blogs. You can take advantage of this by collaborating with these students, either by pitching or paying them to backlink useful articles on your site that have already been published.

If you’re already an established leader in your niche around your area, you might have an easier time convincing these students to link your piece. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay them for the backlink, which is still a sound investment considering the return.

7. Interview Professors

Aside from students, you can also collaborate with university professors by interviewing them and asking for their insight. This doesn’t only open up the possibility of a .edu domain backlink, but you’ll also be building your network with people from the inside. 

Once your article is published, make sure you notify the professor you’ve interviewed. You can also ask them if they’ll consider adding your piece to their resource page. Just remember: the higher the quality of the article, the higher the chances of it getting backlink by the university site.

Contact us with any questions.

The post 7 Most Common Techniques to Acquire Quality Backlinks from Universities appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Backlinks are one of the most important factors that Google uses to determine a website’s ranking. If multiple trusted and highly rated websites link to you, it means that your content is highly relevant. And Google is only interested in showing relevant search results to its users.

There are multiple ways to acquire high-quality backlinks, the most common ways are through guest posting and infographics. When you write an article, however, it can only be posted on one website. You have to write multiple different articles to get posted on different sites. Imagine the time you spend doing that.

That’s not the case with infographics. Infographic is one of the most effective tools to acquire backlinks because one infographic can be shared across different websites and platforms, unlike guest articles. This article will reveal the step by step process of using infographics to gain tons of backlinks:

1. Create the infographic

The first step is obviously to create the infographic. You don’t need to hire a professional infographic agency if you just get started. There are tons of free infographic making tools on the web. Just make sure that the infographic is relevant to your business and it gives value to a lot of people.

2. Publish it

After your infographic ready, the next step is to publish it. First, you need to publish it on your own site. This will be the source link for the infographic. Anytime someone wants to share your infographic in the future, they have to link back to this page. 

You also need to post it on infographic directory websites like Canva or Pinterest. These websites usually give you free backlinks as well. Here’s the complete list of infographic directories. 

3. Search for potential websites 

The third step in the process is to reach out to other websites within the same industry. You have to convince them how your infographic will give values to their readers and why they should publish your infographic.  

But, before that, you have to search for the potential websites to reach out first. Tools like Ahrefs can help you compile a lot of websites in a very short time. Just open the site, go to “Content Explorer”, type in your keyword, and then Ahrefs will give you all the relevant websites on the internet carrying that keyword, like this:

After that, export the result into a Google Spreadsheet. Now, here comes the most tiring and time-consuming part of the whole process. You need to visit all of those sites manually one by one to find information about their email addresses. 

Use FindThatLead to find email addresses quicker and more accurately. This tool allows you to search for emails by domain names and social media links. You can also use this tool to verify whether an email address is valid or not. 

4. Send email outreach 

After the email addresses are all collected, the next step is to reach out to them. There are two ways to send an email outreach, manually and automatically. Sending emails manually obviously takes a longer time, but you can personalize the copy based on the recipient.

On the other hand, sending emails automatically using tools like Mailmunch is definitely much faster, but the content will be generic and standardized. At the end of the day, whatever method you prefer, it all comes down to your copywriting abilities to make them interested.

5. Offer them benefits  

After sending all the emails, wait for the reply. Wait for people who express interest in your infographic. The average reply rate of cold email outreach isn’t very high, just around 1%. So, send as many emails as you can to gain optimal results. 

Because the reply rate is so low, you have to make the most out of people who reply. Offer them a benefit to get them interested in publishing your work. For example, if they publish your infographic, you would write an article for them. This way, you’ll get a valuable backlink and they get free content for their site. 

Wrap up

Attracting high-quality backlinks isn’t as hard as you think, as long as you know how to do it. Every website on the internet needs content. So logically, if you could offer them valuable content, then they’ll definitely share your work.  

There are many types of content you can make, such as videos, articles, and infographics. Out of those three, an infographic is easier to make and can be shared on multiple platforms. Thus, as long as you make the right infographic for the right audience, and know how to promote it, then backlinks will start flowing into your site.  

Author’s Bio

Andre Oentoro is one of the co-founders of Milkwhale, an internationally acknowledged infographic production agency. He helps businesses increase visibility on the internet with visual data and well-placed outreach campaigns. 

The post How to Attract Backlinks Using Infographics appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Today you can no longer achieve top Google rankings simply by keyword stuffing. In the past, article spamming would have aided you in gaining a boost in your audience but that does not make any sense today. You must really work hard with full dedication. If any sort of spamming is present on your website, you could be penalized. One of the most successful strategies for boosting SEO is link building.

Remember link building is still considered to play a pivotal role in enhancing the ranking of a website on the Search Engine Ranking Page. However, procedures of link building have changed over time. Today it is extremely challenging to rank a website without top-quality backlinks.

Experts have concluded that link building is integral to the success of a website and it is essential if you are looking to boost the visibility and overall rankings of your website and achieve top SERP rankings. So, how do you identify the right link building techniques? Here are some absolutely practical and powerful link building strategies that online marketing specialists use for achieving success.

Internal Links

Internal links are found going from page to page within the website. We know that internal linking often does not get the importance it deserves but it is an amazing way of helping the visitors to your site to dig deeper. For internal links, you can identify an impressive keyword phrase present on any page and consider linking it to your homepage or an inner page with much more information to make sure that the visitor stays much longer exploring your website.

Advantages of internal linking are:

• It enhances page authority and aids in passing link juice to all other pages equally.
• It is helpful in decreasing the website’s overall bounce rate.
• Enhances previous blog posts simply by boosting exposure and driving some traffic.
• Enhances overall indexation and crawl-ability of your website.
• Assists in boosting keyword rankings provided your webpage has some strategic links with relevant content.

Articles Are Still Quite Effective

Posting of the same article across different websites has been banned by article submission websites. If an article directory seems to allow linking, you may consider using just a single anchor tag for linking it with your website. Moreover, you are advised to make sure that the anchor text backlinks are used in a natural manner.

Product Reviews Are Useful

If you are in the business of selling some products, it is quite obvious that the customers or potential buyers would be checking out the products meticulously. They may browse the Internet to go through your product reviews. Product reviews would help customers by telling them exactly what to expect from the product and what the product would actually be doing for them. Product reviews could be conducted by the manufacturers themselves or you could seek professional assistance from an advertising agency.

Vlogging is very much in vogue in recent times so you could employ the services of a professional vlogger for doing some product testing on your behalf. For instance, you may send your specific product to a vlogger and he would make an apt video explaining the product features and benefits of using the product, to his audience. You would certainly obtain some good backlinks in this way, from his blog or video.

Focus on the Latest & Incorporate the Current Year ‘2018’ in Your Posts

Users have a tendency to opt for the latest. They have a natural preference for updated posts, as such, it is best to add the current year to the heading or you may alternatively add a CTA to the headline. Focus on the latest for maximizing your potential to obtain initial backlinks. This could also be helpful in getting first page slots for your website. Always try adding the current year for increasing curiosity. However, you may consider incorporating words such as Discover, Top, Free, Fastest, Greatest, Try, Get, Oldest, Newest, Cheapest, Expensive, Unbelievable, Most, and Best, etc. in your headline to grab more attention.

Make Judicious Use of Interviews

You must give an interview as that is a brilliant technique for attracting and driving more visitors to your site when they find you talking about your product or when they find people praising your product. There are many websites and blogs that are interested in conducting interviews with both big and small entrepreneurs online. While doing interviews, you would be getting backlinks since your contact details would be shared with the public.

How would interviewers know that you are looking forward to being interviewed? You need to consider creating an ‘Interview Me’ page on your site for letting everybody know that you are available and prepared for an interview. Moreover, if you are following certain bloggers already, you may directly request them for scheduling an interview with you. You may not get an instantaneous response from them but your turn would surely come. Be patient. This way, if you could organize an interview every month or so, you would be successful in getting robust backlinks and automatically, your visibility would be boosted.

Infographics

Creating infographics could be a wonderful way of promoting links. This could be an effective and creative way of boosting your website’s reach and engagement. It is quite natural that visuals would be speaking much more as compared to simple text.

These days, infographics are pretty viral on the social networking sites. It is regarded as one of the most popular ways of bringing a one-way backlink to your site. Your contact details and company logo must be incorporated in your infographic for connecting it automatically to you. Do not forget to include your site’s address in your infographic. This would help in building your brand image. Submit it on various social media platforms. If it is authentic and fascinating, people will be sharing it on their profiles.

Tips for creating successful infographics:

• Create your infographic keeping your target audience in mind. Keep it relevant and simple.
• You must try limiting the size of your infographic to around 1500 to 2000 pixels so that it loads faster.
• Incorporate important figures, facts, and do not forget to give due credit to your resources in your infographic.
• Create a fascinating story that retains audience curiosity until the end.
• Use maximum two different fonts and do not use more than three colors.
• Always pay attention and concentrate on the flow.
• Keep your audience engaged with impressive charts and graphs.
• Create a stunning headline for your infographic. However, do not use more than 70 characters.
• Do not forget to incorporate an authentic and unique description of your product and remember to use the targeted keywords in different ways to hold the audience’s attention.
• When your infographics are ready, you could post them to various infographic sites for building links.

Some Techniques to Avoid While Link Building for SEO

There are numerous techniques of link building for boosting search engine optimization. In this context, you must know that there are some bad techniques of link building that could adversely impact your website ranking. Moreover, you could be penalized and it would be pretty tough to recover from such a situation.

Here are some bad link building practices that must be avoided:

• Selling & buying links.
• Excessive exchange of links.
• Implementing an automated system of link building.
• Posting irrelevant links.
• Using link farms and web-rings.
• Using poor quality links.
• Creating a network of websites intentionally for interlinking them.

Conclusion

An effective link building stratagem with an approach towards link earning would always fetch better outcomes in terms of your site’s traffic and SERP position. You could utilize the effective link building techniques suggested in the article for getting the desired results for your blog or website. Moreover, always keep track of your competitors if you wish to stay ahead of the curve.

The post Link Building Techniques for Achieving Maximum Engagement & SEO Success in 2018 appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Almost all internet marketers use SEO practices every day in their day-to-day tasks, but some may not realize that it’s important to be creative and innovative when thinking like a typical internet user. Of course, it’s important to follow the basics and fundamentals of SEO, like relevant keyword research, backlinks and optimizing SEO titles and meta descriptions, but what other ways are there to boost your rank that you are not thinking of?

Below are some key tips you can use to start improving your SEO ranking.

Write for the User

This tip might seem obvious, but when writing about certain topics, it can get tough trying to provide enough content that will drive traffic to a certain post or business and thus “keyword stuffing” becomes appealing. Not only will Google notice this, but your readers will too. Keyword stuffing causes the meaning and purpose of a post to get lost in relevant keyword jargon, all for the sake of possibly improving your rank on Google. That being said, it’s always a great rule-of-thumb to keep in mind the user. Write for the user, not for Google.

As a side note, also remember to keep your content focused on and relevant to your topic. Try not to stray away from the topic too much and try not to incorporate too many ideas that aren’t focused on your topic. Click-bait is a major no-no in the online world and one of the fastest ways to lose a potential client.

Write for Bookmarking

Piggy-backing off of our last tip, writing content that is dense in content quality is important for not only improving your SEO rank but also improving the user experience. Since the first rule of SEO practices and digital marketing is that the user always comes first, it makes sense to include this nugget in your regime.

When users like your content and can grab valuable information from it, they are likely to come back. Mix this in with consistent posts and users could even bookmark your page. According to an article on JeffBullas.com, if internet users decide to bookmark your page using Google Chrome, this could possibly improve your website’s SEO ranking on Google.

Bookmarking a page can also indicate a sense of trust and respect in the expertise of the content of a website.

Social Sharing is Caring

Sometimes it easy to forget about social media when writing quality SEO posts or trying to increase your rank, but providing social media buttons for users to share your content can be beneficial in more ways than one.

Certain social media plug-ins can allow you to see how often and where your content is being shared. This can be a useful tool to let you know where you receive a lot of attention and which social media platforms you need to work on.

Not only will having a social media plug-in be useful in improving your search engine rank, but it can also be an organic marketing tool. Users who find your posts resourceful and informative will want to post it and share it with other people within their social media realms, which in turn could potentially drive more traffic to your website.

With the internet world forever changing and evolving, these tips are not an end-all-be-all remedy. So be sure to check back with us for more helpful and relevant tips!

The post Tips to Improve Your SEO Rank That You May Not Be Thinking Of appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Social video is any video created to be viewed and shared on social media. It essentially takes the best of what we already know about social media marketing and video marketing and combines them into one, highly effective concept.

Video is not a new concept or something to only be used by mainstream media; it’s here now and it’s here to stay. It’s a valuable method to showcase your brand, sell your potential value, and foster a healthy atmosphere for your audience.

Studies show that 87% of marketers already use video in their campaigns. If you’re part of the 13% who aren’t using video then it’s time to embrace it and dramatically improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Video improves everything in a campaign, from engagement to click-through rate to conversions, no matter where it’s used in the sales funnel. Just including a video on your landing page can boost your conversion by a whopping 80% and using video in an email can lead to a 200-300% improvement on click-through rate.

Why is it that video affects our behavior as consumers?

Essentially it comes down to two aspects. Firstly, we like to be entertained, especially when we go on social media. Video content that’s engaging and adds some value to the customer can be highly effective simply because it entertains us on an emotional level.

Secondly, with technology nowadays, we’re overloaded and bombarded with information. Watching a video is an easier way to digest information than reading text for most people. In fact, videos are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text, so it seems like a no brainer in terms of cognitive effort.

The simple fact is that video has become the most effective way to speak to an audience. If you want your audience to interact and share your content, then video is definitely the way to go. In fact, if your content is in video form, people are 39% more likely to share it, 36% more likely to comment, and 56% more likely to give it a like over non-video content.

What’s interesting is we still haven’t reached the peak of social video’s full potential and the medium is still in its infancy. But, let’s see what the future has to hold and why social video is set to become even bigger in 2017. YouTube already reports that mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year, so it’s certainly not going away anytime soon! This mobile growth is part of the reason that YouTube videos go viral in the first place.

Social video is set to become more prevalent throughout 2017 for a few reasons, so it’s important to pay attention. Firstly, social media networks are all investing in their own native video platforms. This includes Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This means that the market may be poised for a shift away from YouTube as the king of video and we may start to see more video that’s been specifically curate for different native platforms.

The benefit of video, of course, is that what you make for Facebook can then be re-edited for your Instagram audience or vice versa. Once you have your core creative ideas down, you can then tweak the content for each of your channels ensuring that you drive the most engagement possible from each group.

Video is already king of the internet. Studies predict that 74% of all internet traffic this year will be because of video, most of it on social media. Facebook currently has a billion video views a day and Periscope users watch an average of 40 years worth of video each day!

With the prevalence of smartphones social media now in our pockets, so social video is set to skyrocket. Already 93% of video users share the videos they watch online, so once you get good video content into the right hands, you can be sure your message will spread and you’ll see an improvement in all your social media marketing metrics.

The numbers don’t lie and we can see that video does indeed seem to be the preferred form of consumption by consumers. However, it’s important to remember that social video is not just good because it’s popular. Video is also the best medium to sell a product as it provides the best visual opportunity to demonstrate features and take customers on a virtual tour.

Besides the visual factor, video also allows brands to not just show the customer something, but also to tell them a story and take them on a journey. Video can be highly emotive and a key ingredient to use when tapping into consumer’s emotions whether it’s pulling on their heart strings or generating excitement.

One of the biggest benefits now is of course you can be live! There’s something about watching an event in real-time that makes it more special. So there’s no better way to get your audience to feel closer to your brand than be doing live video. Not only is this a great opportunity for consumers but it can also provide you with real-time feedback from your audience (such as in the form of comments) which you can then address right away on the video itself.

Whatever way you look at it, social video is set to be the hottest marketing trend of 2017. Videos capacity to tap into emotions, display things visually, and be easily digestible makes it by far the most effective strategy for selling your brand. So if social video isn’t already part of your marketing strategy for 2017, it’s time to put it on the list!

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Number of Competitors Backlinks

When doing competitive analysis for SEO there are many different ways to judge how well a competitor is doing. However the number of backlinks does not usually reflect a coherent understanding of their performance. This is because the quality of backlinks have a greater weight than the amount. Further more, sites with massive backlink profiles have greater risk of attracting negative patterns. For example, a site might have 3,000 more backlinks than your site, but 2,000 of them could all use the same anchor text and be found on the same IP cluster. As a result the site will likely be hit with Penguin or a manual penalty. So looking at the total number alone tells you nothing about the health of a competitor’s backlink profile.

Rankings For One or Two Keywords

This metric isn’t completely useless, but it is dangerous. Dangerous, because so many site owners are tempted to obsess over only one or two keywords. As a result they miss the bigger picture and fail to see trends that they should be paying attention to. I talked about this briefly in the past and still wholeheartedly believe the following.

Now, let me be clear when I say “ranking data”, I am not talking about the position for one or two terms. I am more interested in looking at the bulk of rankings over time, and identifying trends. For example, if your site loses significant rankings for one or two terms, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have been affected by an algorithm update. However, seeing 10 to 20 terms change position by more or less than 15 positions, is an absolute sign that a change has taken place, changes like that need a specific strategy moving forward.

Keyword Density

This is an interesting metric that has been around for a very long time. This is simply the percentage of times a given keyword appears in text on a page. This metric used to hold value, but now a days it is a quick way to over simplify whats really going on, on the page. The only time I use this metric is in a high level comparative sense when trying to identify content that might have manipulative patterns. Don’t fall for this easy metric.

Number of Followers In Social Media

Any good content marketer will tell you that the larger your following is in social media, the easier it is to promote your content, and the easier that task becomes, the more likely that you will attract links and other positive signals. But it is important to remember that the number of followers alone do not have any direct affect on rankings. In fact the most value aspect of a strong social media following is the ability to talk directly with your customers. Can this help with SEO? Sure, but just as many sites are ranking well with out social followings as the ones that are.

The Amount of Your AdWords Budget

For some weird reason there is a longstanding myth that if you spend more on AdWords you will likely do better in organic. In fact I have even heard some very dishonest PPC consultants say this. This is has never been true.

Source: Joe Hall Internet Marketing Ninjas

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1. No SEO means no visitors from search engines. If you don’t do it then search engines can’t categorise and rank your site for keywords relevant to your business.

2. Both on-site SEO and off-site SEO are required. You can’t achieve good results doing one without the other.

3. Start doing SEO now. The longer you leave it to start, the further ahead your competitors will be, and the harder it becomes to rank higher than them.

4. Know your competition. Find out what the sites ranking on the 1st page for the keywords that you want to rank for have done, on-site and off-site, to get there.

5. No two websites are the same. An SEO strategy that worked for someone else’s site isn’t guaranteed to work for yours because there are so many variables.

6. SEO doesn’t have to be expensive. You can get big results on a small budget if you invest time in creating good content and building online relationships.

7. SEO results aren’t instant. The results of SEO work done today might not become apparent, and might not be credited by search engines, for weeks, or even months.

8. The newer your website is, the more patient you will need to be. It takes time to build authority and trust, and until you’ve developed both, you shouldn’t expect to outrank older, more established sites.

9. Never consider your website to be finished. If you want your site to continue to rank higher, attract more visitors and make more sales, then you should always be adding to and improving it.

10. Adapt to algorithm updates. To attain and retain good rankings you need to adapt your SEO strategy as search engines evolve over time.

11. You don’t need to submit your website to search engines. They have evolved beyond the point of needing to be directly notified when a new website, or page on a website, is created.

12. Get advice directly from Google. Via their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Help Videos.

13. Don’t risk Google penalties. As they have a significant share of the search market, a penalty from them results in a significant, and often long-term, loss of visitors to your site.

14. You’re ultimately responsible for all of SEO work done on your website. Search engines won’t remove a penalty on the basis that you didn’t do, and didn’t know the specifics of, the SEO work on your site.

15. Set-up and use Google Webmaster Tools. To find out, among other things, what keywords your site is ranking for and which other sites are linking to yours.

16. Set-up and use Google Analytics. To find out, among other things, how many visitors your site gets, the keywords they use to find it, and what pages they visit.

17. Set-up a Google+ page for your business. Doing so builds trust with Google and improves rankings for localised keywords.

18. Diversify your traffic sources. Google is a great source of traffic but being 100% reliant on them for visitors puts you in a vulnerable position.

19. Use Pay Per Click in addition to SEO. If you can afford to do both, then do both, as although PPC can be costly, you can get visitors to your site straight away for any keywords that you want.

20. Low quality equals high risk. Low quality backlinks and/or low quality on-site content can easily result in your site being penalised by search engines.

Source: SEOMARK

Another great source for a similar article containing 100 tips: Alvarez Web Services

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1. Solid on page SEO Make sure all of your content is valuable to users and get rid of any thin pages. Also check on your coding to make sure everything is running quickly and smoothly. Slow load times turn of potential clients.

2. Market one piece of content for over a week Use social networks and email blasts to show people your content. Find other people who have posted about the same thing and link back to yourself.

3. Put good content on great publication sites Once you have a post published on an authority site, link to that post from other guest posts. This will allow tiered links to you and really help with SEO.

4. Use social media It can help with SEO and is just good business. A good place to start is Google +, Facebook, and Twitter. There are many more social media sites to explore as well.

5.Do your homework on directories there are still several very good ones that can help your site.

6.Quality First Whenever you post on your blog, write for another site, or leave a comment, that could be the first impression a potential client will have of your business. Sharing only high-quality content is certain to make it a good one.

7.Be creative. If you are not looking for new ways to improve your site and rankings, you are always going to be playing catch up. Take your specialized knowledge of your industry and use it to solve common problems, answer common questions and provide a better way of doing things.

Beanstalk Web Solutions can help with all of the things listed above and so much more. It is important to build SEO so you are not behind your competition and constantly trying to catch up. Give us a call today and see how we can help your business grow.

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