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.

Search engines run our lives. Feel a twinge? Look up what ailments could be causing that pain. Hungry? Search for recipes with the ingredients currently in the refrigerator. Going somewhere? Find directions and have your helpful little pocket robot talk you through each step. Search engines are a staple of modern life. As such, optimizing how your business ranks for relevant searches is vital to a healthy customer flow. An SEO company in St. Louis (like Beanstalk!) can help you do just that. But before we get into all that, let’s define some terms.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the art of organically getting your website in front of more eyeballs through search engines. As you’re probably already aware, Google is the biggest player in the search engine game, and its algorithm is the main focus for pretty much everyone in the SEO business. 

If you’re going to contact an SEO company in St. Louis, you’ll probably want to have a baseline understanding of the terms they like to throw around so that you’ll all be on the same page. Read on for our (non-comprehensive) basic SEO dictionary.

Algorithms

We just used this one a few paragraphs ago, so it seems like an excellent place to start. In the context of SEO, algorithms are the programs search engines use to give you results for your search. The algorithms take different factors into account to decide which pages are the best fit for what you searched, and knowing what those factors are is key to SEO. Algorithms also get updated regularly. To stay up-to-date on best SEO practices, it’s prudent to keep track of those algorithm updates. Of course, not all of those updates will be groundbreaking, but staying on top of them is a great perk of working with an SEO company in St. Louis — they’re pros at keeping track of algorithmic changes.

SERP

The acronyms are killer in the SEO world. This one stands for search engine results page, which is just what you see after you type something into the search bar and hit enter. It’s a list of websites the search engine thinks are relevant to your search. Where your site lands on this list is called its ranking, and you want your ranking to be close to the top. The basic premise of SEO is that there are certain things we can do to convince the Google algorithm to put your website closer to the top of the list on those search terms you care about. 

Crawling

You’ll probably hear a lot about a page getting “crawled.” This term is a little less straightforward than some of the others on this list, but don’t worry. It’s not that complicated! Basically, the job of search engine crawlers is to examine every page on the internet to determine which pages should rank the highest. The goal of “crawling” your website is to figure out what your website is about so that it can rank organically for relevant search queries. When crawlers find new content on the internet, it gets added to the search engine’s index. Essentially, this is the library of content it can pull from to give a searcher a result. 

So, if you want your pages to have any chance of getting in front of people through a Google search, you have to make sure they can be crawled and indexed. Any SEO company in St. Louis can help you optimize the pages you want to be crawled and indexed. And, if there are pages you don’t want crawled, there are steps you can take to prevent that from happening, as well.

Organic

If an SEO company in St. Louis starts telling you about organic traffic, they’re not saying it’s free-range and grass-fed. Organic traffic is simply traffic you don’t pay directly for, so traffic you’re getting from your SEO efforts. Paid traffic (the opposite of organic traffic) comes from ads.

Backlinks

These are links to your website from other ones. Getting other sites to link back to you is one way an SEO company in St. Louis might try to increase your ranking, because search engines see backlinks as a vote of confidence in your content. As long as the site linking to you is good and reputable, backlinks can be greatly effective. A natural next question would be, how do you know if the site is reputable? That’s measured in a metric called domain authority. You can use different online tools to check it.

Do be wary of any SEO company in St. Louis that proposes sketchy ways of getting more backlinks to your site. These methods are considered “black hat,” which just means they’re frowned upon and might leave you open to being penalized. 

As a final note, be careful not to confuse backlinks with internal links. These are links on your site that lead to another page on your site. An SEO company in St. Louis might recommend adding more internal links to your site, but that’s mostly to beef up its structure. Recall the crawling process — links show the crawler where to go next, so adding internal links can help more of your pages get indexed, which is always a good thing. 

Keywords

This is what people type into the search bar, the things you want to rank for. When somebody searches for a keyword relating to your business, you want your page to rank close to the top of the SERP. (Are you getting the hang of the SEO vocabulary yet? It definitely takes some getting used to. A little practice should make any conversation with an SEO company in St. Louis much easier.)

Anyway, keywords are a huge point of focus for any SEO company in St. Louis trying to improve your rankings. They’ll do keyword research into what things your potential customers are looking for, when they’re looking for them, and how they’re trying to find them. All of this information can be really useful when deciding which keywords to target. 

You might have some ideas already about keywords you’d like to rank for, and that’s a great place to start. However, you should still go through the research process, because it will likely unearth better keywords. Different factors, such as how competitive the keywords are, will heavily affect how much sense it makes to go after them. An SEO company in St. Louis will know how to decide which keywords are right for you in terms of specificity and popularity.

Why Hire an SEO Company in St. Louis?

So, now that you’ve read through some of the common SEO terms (and believe us, this has barely scratched the surface), maybe you think you’re an expert. Why would you want to outsource it? Or, maybe you’re overwhelmed with all of the different SEO elements to consider and want to forget about the whole thing. Either way, hiring an SEO company in St. Louis to help you out might be a really great move, and we’ll prove it to you in this section.

Grow Traffic

This is the big one, the one that probably got you interested in SEO to begin with. Obviously, increasing traffic to your website is the place to start trying to grow sales. The idea is that the closer you are to the top of the SERP, the more people will see and click on your site. An SEO company in St. Louis would use all their expertise to make that happen for you.

Build Brand Awareness

This is one is a less obvious benefit, but it goes hand-in-hand with the previous one. The more often people see your website near the top of the SERP, the more aware of your brand they will be. People also tend to trust the things they see on the first page of Google more than what they see on, say, the sixteenth page. 

Save Time

So, maybe you’re sold on the idea of focusing on SEO but not on the idea of paying somebody else to do it for you. Maybe you think that learning a few terms has made you enough of an expert that you could go it alone. Well, hold your horses. Think about how adding SEO duties to your plate would impact the rest of your responsibilities. It’s an ongoing, time-consuming process, and odds are, you have other things you could better spend your time on. Contacting an SEO company in St. Louis to handle it for you saves your valuable time for other ventures.

Better Results

Let’s face it: You can’t learn everything there is to know about SEO in one blog post. An SEO company in St. Louis will have a wealth of knowledge on the subject that it would take you years to build up. It’s what they do! They’ll focus all their expertise on getting you results.

Keep in Mind, Though…

Obviously, we think hiring an SEO company in St. Louis is a great decision, but it’s important to note that it’s not the best choice for everyone. Consider the following limitations:

Resources

Ask yourself if you have the resources necessary to partner with an SEO company in St. Louis. 

Make sure it’s something you can work into the budget, but also know that an SEO company is probably going to want to be a true partner with you, and you’ll have to have the time to confer about how to move forward. Having an up-to-date website is also a must for effective SEO efforts. Spend some time looking at all angles of your online presence, and decide if you’re really ready to go all-in on SEO.

Long-Term

If you’re looking for a quick cure-all to get more traffic to your website, SEO is not the way to go. It’s a long-term solution. There are other digital marketing strategies an agency can pursue to get you a quick bump, but SEO is not one of them. Make sure your goals for any SEO undertaking are realistic before you take the plunge, and any good SEO company in St. Louis should be honest with you about that.

Other Marketing Strategies

SEO alone is not a magic solution to pin all your hopes and dreams to. Even if you’re patient and committed to the long-term nature of SEO, it’s not wise to sit around and wait for your SEO efforts to completely transform your business. You might be waiting for, well, forever. 

Instead, consider pairing SEO with other things a digital marketing agency can do for you, like ad campaigns. When reaching out to an SEO company in St. Louis, make sure to ask what other services they can provide. The company might specialize in SEO, but odds are, it can help you out in other ways, as well. Really think through the scope of what you’d like to do before you jump in.

Contact an SEO Company in St. Louis.

Getting an SEO company to help you out can be a great step for your business. It can help you grow traffic, build brand awareness, and ultimately increase sales, among other benefits. After you’ve gotten familiar with the basic premise of SEO, you’re ready to start contacting agencies to see if they’d be a good fit. An SEO company will save you time and use their expertise to get you the best results possible. However, you’ll want to make sure any company you work with is a good fit before you get started. Weigh how patient you’re willing to be and how many resources you can devote to the project against the potential benefits.

Even with all of those limitations in mind, we still think reaching out to an SEO company in St. Louis is a great idea for your business. If you’re convinced, too, and are looking for a place to start, look no further! We here at Beanstalk are experts in all things SEO. We’re happy to walk you through the kinds of services we offer. Contact us today to get started!

The post Why You Should Hire an SEO Company in St. Louis appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

If your work is keyword-based, then you should be aware of the SEO tool, Google Trends. Most SEO experts don’t use Google Trends to its full potential and end up missing out on some amazing benefits that this tool brings to its customers.

In our article today, we have discussed how you can maximize the benefits of this tool and use it to its full potential. Dive in to learn all about Google Trends and more!

What is Google Trends?

In a nutshell, Google Trends is a tool that helps you research your keywords and optimize them for SEO. You can search the most trending words on Google through the tool and incorporate them into your content to help it rank higher. The tool not only shows trending keywords, but it also shows image search, trending news search, and YouTube search as well.

Keywords are terms that people type on their search bars when they are seeking products and services. Since keywords come directly from people. They are extremely useful for finding out trending topics and other details that help to improve ranking.

When anyone searches for a keyword or phrase on Google, they get a list of related websites or relevant articles. For example, if you want to purchase coaxial cables, you may search for vendors on Google. Once you press enter, Google is going to show you millions of results, but only a few are going to be on the first page.

These top results are handpicked by Google for several reasons, most notably their usability for the reader. Every business wants to appear in the top results because let’s face it, nobody cares about the results past the 2nd page. However, you cannot appear on your user’s search result unless you know the keyword they will search for and incorporate it into your content. This is where Google Trends comes in.

How Does Google Trends Help To Improve Your Site’s SEO?

The past few years have seen an increase in the usage of this amazing tool as an aid to optimize SEO. However, before you use any tool to improve your ranking, one should learn the basics of SEO and how Google’s algorithms work. We already mentioned that keywords are an important aspect of content creation, and Google Trends makes it easier than ever to search for the most trending keywords.

Google Trends will tell you what your users are searching on Google. For example, it will tell you that COVID-19 is trending nowadays. This tells you that your users are interested in reading about the Coronavirus. With this information in hand, you can modify your content strategy to appeal to your target audience. Staying in touch with the changing trends is extremely important for Digital Marketers and SEO experts alike to make their marketing efforts pay off.

Here, we have discussed a few ways through which marketers can use this tool for their ad campaigns.

1. Paid Campaigns

Google Trends helps you access a large repository of data that you can use to strategize and plan your campaigns. Moreover, this tool will also help you separate trending words that are either irrelevant or have a negative connotation. By separating these terms from your campaigns, you can ensure that your campaign is focused and fulfills its purpose.

2. Content Creation and Marketing

Google Trends helps you gather the information that is generated by user queries. Creating content that is in high demand can help increase the traffic to your website. This is especially important for those businesses whose sales are based on seasonal trends. The trends generated can be used in two ways:

• You may create content that aligns with sales peaks. If you are a brand that sells air fresheners, your product will be sold mostly in summer. Google Trends can help you validate these facts, and you can work around your campaigns and budget accordingly.
• Secondly, you can prepare your webpages before the “peak season” hits your website. Preparing them means optimizing them and making them SEO friendly. You could prepare your campaign in a way that you get an ample amount of time to build links, update Meta descriptions, etc. to attract traffic to your website.

3. Creating Advertisements

Being aware of the trending topics and incorporating them into your advertisements can improve your ad campaigns and increase user engagement and reach. What’s better than reaching out to a wider audience and being able to increase your brand presence? Yes, Google Trends can help you achieve that, and even more!

4. Plan Your Content Calendar

An important aspect of social media campaigns is planning your content calendar. Google Trends can be used to help you schedule your posts and select your topics. Here is how to do it: Let’s suppose that you run an E-Magazine, and you post about the Oscars quite often. Since the Oscars take place in March every year, it would make more sense to post the content related to Oscars during that time since people would be most interested then. This is the power of planning out your content calendars in advance!

5. Dig Deeper into “Related Queries”

Most marketers using Google Trends ignore the related queries section entirely. If utilized in the right way, this section can reveal the biggest secrets that can help you overtake your competitors. Firstly it helps you learn more keywords which you might have been ignoring previously. Secondly, it can help you understand the purchase journey that the customer is making. You will eventually be able to plan better campaigns!

Conclusion

Google is one of the most popular search engines that is used all over the world. It is not surprising that more than 90 percent of the total search engine market share is owned by Google. This makes the tools launched by Google handy as they show results that are aligned with their search engine.

Identifying keywords through Google Trends helps to increase website traffic and improves SEO, which later helps to rank the sites higher on Google search engine results page (SERP). Learning how to use this tool in the right way can bring unimaginable benefits for your business!

The post Google Trends: A Useful Tool for Keyword Research appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

What Is Rank Tracking and Why Do You Need It?

Nowadays, SEO is one of the most popular digital marketing methods. The principal role of SEO is to improve the ranks that a website has in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Rank tracking is the general term used for the methods that can accomplish that. For example, you can do it manually, or you can use a Google Rank Checker tool.

If you want to check your rankings manually, then you need to be prepared for a lot more work and results with lower quality. The most basic manual method is to search the keywords included in your SEO strategy and find their ranks. But there are some issues with this method. The main one is the inability to check all the keywords for which your website ranks.

Imagine that your strategy includes ten keywords. The content used will also help your website rank for other keywords as well. But because you are not aware of this fact and you do not know which keywords are these, you will not be able to obtain any information about them. Two negative results may happen from this. The first one is the possibility to rank for keywords that will drop your overall ranks. The second one is missing several keywords with high potential.

So, instead of spending a lot of time on subpar results, it will be more beneficial for your business to use Google rank checker tools. By doing that, you will be able to obtain the most optimal keywords and phrases for your SEO plan, find out the most relevant results of your past strategies, and it can help you create a better strategy for the future.

Did You Choose the Most Optimal Keywords and Phrases?

What are the most optimal keywords? Well, it is a difficult question. Most amateurs go for the keywords that are the most searched. The problem is that by selecting these keywords, you will have to fight with many competitors. The results that you will obtain while fighting so many competitors will not be worthy of the resources invested.

It will be better to find balanced keywords. Those that have an optimal balance between the resources you will invest, and the results that you will obtain. But to be able to check all the information about a specific keyword or phrase, you will need to use a rank checker tool. While using it, you will have a chance to find that kind of keywords. And the best part is that your website is already ranking for some of them.

Remember that a google check ranker tool will show you all the keywords for which your website ranks as well as the monthly traffic that they generate. You can also look for separate keywords and check the traffic that they produce as well as the possible competitors that fight for them. If you have the necessary knowledge, then you can select the best keywords for your business yourself.

Without enough SEO knowledge, you may make the wrong decisions. So, if you are not an SEO expert, then you should use the services offered by an SEO agency. The agency’s experts will also be able to ensure a clear judgment of the results produced by your current SEO strategy and improve it accordingly.

How Good Is Your SEO Strategy Performing?

You need to know that SEO is a long-term solution. Do not expect positive results to appear overnight. It takes time for any strategy to produce results. So, if you use a rank checker tool too fast, you may not be able to see any improvements. After implementing an SEO strategy, or modifying one, you should wait a few weeks before seeing some results. Moreover, the better the ranks, the harder the climb will become.

Many website owners do not understand this fact, and they expect fast results. Because of this, they misjudge the results shown by the ranking tools. Many times, their wrong perception will push them to give up very effective strategies before they can prove their worth. If you do not want to experience the same situation, then let professionals take care of these tasks.

By using google rank checker tools, an SEO agency can help your SEO strategies in 3 distinct ways:

• Check the performance of the past and current SEO strategies

Without this process, all your SEO efforts will be blind. And you will not know what the results produced by your SEO strategies are. So, how can you decide if it needs any modifications? Or if you should change the SEO strategy completely? You won’t be able to do that, and your website’s ranks will drop.

• Optimize your current SEO strategies

As mentioned above, if you are not an SEO expert, then you will not be able to improve your SEO strategies. Or, the improvements will be mediocre or even harmful. On the other hand, an agency can optimize your SEO strategies in the best way possible. And you will be able to expect the best results possible.

• Create new SEO strategies

If your current ones are useless, or they produce negative results, then you need to replace them altogether. You will need new SEO strategies. To make sure that you obtain the best ones, then you need to let an SEO agency create them for you.

What Differences Are Between Google Rank Checker Tools?

There are many Google rank checker tools that you can find on the internet. All of them are different from each other. Some functions are the same, but there are also different functions, and the amount of information provided also differs. There are three main differences between the checker tools:

• Functions

Some tools are more specialized. They have only a few purposes. Most of the time, they focus on one or two areas, ignoring everything else. Doing this is not necessarily wrong. Depending on your needs, you may want to use one of these tools.

• Costs

You can find rank checker tools that cost you a few hundred dollars every year and those that are free. The differences between a free service and a paid one can be very vast. Make sure that you know what you need before paying for any tool. You want to focus on your needs, not to buy the most expensive one in the hope of getting everything you need from it.

• Information

The information provided by rank checker tools can vary greatly. You can find tools that will provide general information about many different areas, and tools that concentrate on fewer areas but offer in-depth data. The diversity and the depth of the data provided by these tools can vary from the free ones to the paid ones.

Three Google Rank Checker Tools That You May Need!

All rank checker tools can show you the rank of your website for different keywords. But depending on the rest of your needs, there are three tools that you should consider to use:

• Semrush

If you want to make a comparison between your website and your competitors, this is the tool that you need. You will also be able to do thorough research for relevant keywords or phrases. You can do this from significant search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. But this tool is one of the more costly ones. Apart from a 7-days trial, you will have to pay 99.95$/month.

• Moz Pro

This tool offers suggestions that will help you improve your ranks and the results obtained from search engines, adding a touch of convenience. It can also do a thorough keyword analysis and gather data from all search engines. After a whopping 30 days trial, you can use this tool for 99$/month.

• Ahrefs

If you want to focus on Off-page SEO, then this tool is the one you need. It can show you all the backlink history of your website. It can also estimate the traffic that you can expect for every keyword. Also, if you are a local business, then this tool can show your rank based on the country. But it can only be used for Google. The trial is 7-days, like most other tools, and the price is 99$/month.

Why Do You Need to Use Google Rank Checker Tools Services?

Google rank checker tools can make your life easier. But if your SEO knowledge is low, then you won’t be able to understand the results and what benefits you can obtain from them. For example, if you have a competitor analysis, then how will you use that information, and what results can you get from it depends on your SEO knowledge.

By using the services of an SEO agency, you can ensure the best use of the information acquired from these tools. The price itself can be very advantageous. Most SEO packages contain this type of service as a bonus. Even if you only want this service, it may be more cost-effective to use an SEO agency.

The post Do You Need Google Rank Checker Services? appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

A successful business depends on good marketing skills. A company will gradually cease to exist if a brand fails to produce a good brand image in the market. We have walked into the future that has introduced us to digitalization making marketing easy comparatively. Once you understand how to manage your own SEO you can reach millions of people with the help of SEO management. However, it is not always necessary to hire an SEO agency. As an intermediate step, you can do a few things without deep SEO knowledge. 

Managing Your Own SEO

Managing your own SEO is not tough once you understand the basics and start implementing them in your daily tasks.

Here are a few tips to manage your own SEO: 

1. Use the Right Keywords

Keywords play an important role in SEO management. In order to choose the right keywords, one must consider the following things:

1. 1. The words and phrases that are used by potential customers 
   2. They should indicate the product that is being sold
   3. Choose from the common jargon that is frequently used in the industry. 

This will help you to narrow down the keyword list. Once you start using the right keywords it will increase traffic on the website automatically. If you cannot determine the keywords, you can hire SEO services to help you out.

2. Study your competitors

Knowledge of your competitors and their strategies will massively help to determine a strategy for your company. When you research your competitors look through the marketing strategies that they use for reaching out to people and to increase their market value.

What you should look for: 

1. 1. How do they structure their websites and link building services the keywords back to their website?
   2. How are they increasing the organic search to their websites and posts?
   3. Are the contents more interactive? Then why are they so?
   4. The difference between the type of content published being published by you and your competitors 

3. Optimize Your Site Properly

Once you make a list of the keywords, you will be ready to post content on the different pages. Before updating, ensure all the important keywords are subsequently integrated into content. The contents that you will upload should be unique, interesting, and informative. Besides uploading text, other elements can be added as well. You can add audio, video, and graphics if you want.

Factors that determine the increase in organic search-

1. 1. The keyword-rich section on every page will increase organic traffic.
   2. The title tags, meta descriptions, and headings should have keywords for the traffic to reach your websites easily.

4. Regular Content Flow

It is essential to make sure that interesting, unique, and informative content has a regular flow. However, it necessarily does not have to be well researched or very long.
The content you write should be-

1. 1. Simple, interactive, and crisp content for viewer attention.
   2. You don’t have to post text-only content and experiment with other things.
   3. Keep experimenting with your content by introducing illustrations, photos, videos, or other content that delivers the information and the message clearly. 

Once the content fails to engage customers, it will defeat the entire purpose of creating the content. So, make sure that you are keeping a few important things in mind. The simplicity, attractiveness, and information being passed on through your content will captivate viewers. 

Conclusion

To manage your own SEO can get expensive at times. Once you have gotten the taste of traffic increase, you definitely would want to increase it further. I understand the need for the best tools being an SEO executive myself. Make sure to only use the best tools as well as save some money on the other hand.

Author Bio: Mashum Mollah is an entrepreneur, founder and CEO at BloggerOutreach, a blogger outreach platform. He is a passionate blogger and blogs at Search Engine Magazine. Follow him on Facebook & Instagram

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Like many Google algorithm updates, Google has been pretty vague about what has actually changed. Websites that abide by Google’s best practices for SEO are more likely to see a boost, while websites that try to cheat the system to get to the top of search results are more likely to be hit. 

If you have found that your website has taken a hit by the latest algorithm update, don’t panic. Google’s official advice for websites is to do nothing.

The best advice we can give is that Google rewards websites that provide high-quality content that is original, proves expertise, and helps users. White Hat SEO practices are the most sustainable and effective way to boost your website’s rankings. Trying to cheat your way to the top or cut corners to get better results will nearly always fail. 

Make sure you aren’t making simple SEO mistakes. For example, you may have compiled an informative list of all of your services on one page, but that page could confuse Google if they want to serve relevant information to a user who is searching for just one of your services.

Optimize all of your content with user experience in mind. Think about why they are coming to your website and what they hope to gain from visiting. And remember, building your brand and gaining the trust of users and of Google happens over time. SEO is a long-term strategy, and patience pays off.

The post What You Should Know About the Latest Google Algorithm Update appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Should you use pay-per-click (PPC) or just content marketing to boost your high-quality content?

The question of which option to use has divided opinion among experts in both fields. While each of them has its pros and cons, they can certainly complement one another.

For example, content marketing is more of a long-term strategy, while PPC can be expensive but can generate results within the shortest timeframe.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how these methods complement each other, you’re in luck.

That’s because this article will reveal to you 5 proven ways PPC and high-quality content can complement each other.

PPC is the fastest way to get traffic to your content

Without having a pre-established audience, it is nearly impossible to have lots of eyeballs on your content. This is particularly true when you consider the fact that up to 4 million blog posts are published on a daily basis.

However, by using PPC ads to drive traffic to your website’s content, you can be sure of some exposure to your brand and perhaps, some revenue.

More importantly, you will be driving targeted traffic to your brand. You are accomplishing two goals with one action. PPC will drive visitors to your website, but it is the content that retains them on your website.

The two most effective ways to obtain useful insights from your audience and expose your brand to them at the same time is by using google ads and Facebook ads.

In addition, you can distinguish your brand from other advertisers through more detailed content.

The goal is to ensure that each time you appear in the search results, your brand’s content will always appear on top.

PPC is an opportunity to perform highly targeted keyword research

PPC allows you to determine the keywords that generate the most traffic and the highest revenue. Hence, you can use this data to create your content. You create your content around keywords that are proven to generate visitor’s interest and the highest revenue.

During your PPC campaigns, you will discover keywords that might be too expensive for you. But you can leverage on these keywords in your content to generate organic traffic and use your PPC budget for the keywords you can afford.

You can focus on less competitive words and phrases in your PPC campaigns because it will be harder for you to rank for the more expensive keywords.

However, if there are long-tail keywords that are improving your site organically, you can maximize engagement for those keywords by leveraging them in your PPC campaigns.

For the best results, do not target the most expensive competitive keywords until you’re sure you can earn an ROI on them. Pay for selected keywords only after you’ve determined their performance.

When you combine PPC and content marketing, they make each other stronger.

Use your storytelling technique to maximize your PPC campaigns

Create a unique landing page experience for your website by leveraging on your storytelling technique. This can turn most of these web visitors to leads and with the right funnel, they can become clients.

When you consider the buyer’s journey before he makes a purchase decision, you will discover that quality content on your site is an important tool that can make or mar the purchase decision and it doesn’t matter whether the potential buyer got to your site through paid ads or organic traffic.

PPC can improve your search engine ranking position (SERP)

The content that’s effective for PPC will also be effective for SEO. If your PPC’s ad copy leads to a higher conversion rate, this can influence the content on your web pages, Meta descriptions and title tags.

PPC allows you to aim your marketing to your target audience because you can use the same language, target the same keywords and appeal to the same audience in all your search marketing.

Provide damage control

Unfortunately, at one point or the other someone will have a negative opinion about your business. However, you can use SEO and PPC to provide significant damage control when this happens. You can have a greater input and guide the conversation by controlling the PPC and SEO about your business.

For example, during BP’s oil spill in the Gulf, the company had to pay for various PPC adverts related to the keyword “oil spill.”

Hence, rather than news reports about the incident itself, the PPC ad displayed content related to the clean-up information.

Through their PPC ads, BP was able to control the negativity surrounding the incident.

Bonus 6: Increase social media visibility

By promoting your high-quality content using Facebook ads, you can use their audience insights to target your ads towards an audience relevant to your brand and even segment your audience.

You can boost your Facebook post by targeting specific audience groups to promote your best performing content.

When you intend to boost your Facebook post with Facebook ads, you can target two audiences:

• “your target audience group”
• “people who follow your page and their friends”

Build an audience for your content with PPC ads, then, use the “boost post” feature to reach an additional audience who are likely interested in your content.

Apart from Facebook’s audience insights, Twitter’s tailored audiences can be used to achieve the same purpose.

When you have an established audience, you can boost the engagement with your post by remarketing to your audience.

You can use your most liked content and most shared content to target them but with different ads campaigns.

Conclusion

It is obvious that you can drive more traffic to your website faster and improve your search engine ranking position by combining PPC with your high-quality content.

Most online users rarely understand the difference between organic search results and paid search results. Hence, they will click on either them during their search.

Avoid losing out on leads and possible revenue to your competition by boosting high-quality content with PPC campaigns.

So, start today because the sooner you start, the sooner you can start getting the results you desire (leads and revenue).

Author Bio:

Ayushi Choudhary is a Jr. Content Writer working with Ranking By SEO. In her corporate life, she writes many blogs and articles on SEO, Link building, SMO and many more.

The post 5 Amazing Ways Great Content and PPC Complement Each Other appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Featured snippets are gold mines of high-quality leads and traffic for digital marketers. This is why landing a spot in a featured snippet can be a real breakthrough. What’s important to emphasize is that all websites, regardless of their size and influence, can earn a feature snippet, as well as that it’s not necessary to hold the top position – you only have to be on the first page.

Produce content that gives specific answers

To be a candidate for a featured snippet, your content has to provide answers to the questions that searchers query. The most frequent form of these questions is how to, what is, or how does. Create content that would offer useful, relevant, and easily applicable solutions to the problems expressed through these questions. You could stand a chance of being featured in a snippet.

The fact that answer boxes have been created to provide quickly accessible answers so that searchers, who are usually in a hurry, don’t have to browse through a website, may seem as it will affect website traffic and cause some serious dips. However, this isn’t the case as a recent study reported a 667% improvement in the revenue from organic visitors, as well as a quadruple increase in CTRs on a featured page. If your clients are suspicious about this whole snippet business, it’s a good idea to use a KPI dashboard and show them how their metrics will improve after the content from their website has been featured in an answer box.

Use appropriate formatting

People love lists. They enjoy skimming bullets that highlight the main takeaways. The reason for this lies in the fact that our brains process listed information faster and more easily. Featured snippets are more likely to use lists, as they are more readable and search-friendly. Answers containing a list of ingredients, steps necessary to perform a procedure, or any other information which is standing out among amorphous paragraphs will be noticed both by Google crawlers and searchers.

Apart from lists, charts and tables are other formatting types favored by Google. Finally, paragraph-style featured snippets which condense the answer to a question from a query in the form of text, are the most popular ones, according to Getstat. The point is to decide which type of formatting works for your answers and optimize them accordingly. High-quality, helpful content that adds value to your readers is a must.

Include visuals

Including high-quality images and video can help you earn a featured snipped. Most people are visually-oriented and they learn and process information better if it’s accompanied by images or video. For example, 59% of executives say that they will select video over text if both content types are available on the same topic. In order to qualify for a snippet, make sure to provide clear transcripts for your videos. Google tends to pull the text directly from them. When it comes to the title of your video, it’s a good idea to use a question that you’ll answer.

Optimize your word count

The section in which you give a clear answer to the question from the query should be very concise. According to SEMrush, featured snippets are usually 40-50 words long. If we break down this stat into characters, we get approximately 300. As for featured snippet lists, the most common examples are the ones with 4 items. It’s recommendable to use a little trick and create a list with a maximum number of items. This will prompt Google to display the “more items” tab, thus creating better engagement.

Add a Q&A section to your website

One of the best methods for earning featured snippets is adding a well-organized Q&A section to your website and answering related questions. This is a great way of solving your customers’ pain points and qualifying for featured snippets in the process. Similarly, how-to content drives a lot of traffic and brings tons of fresh leads. Having such a section on your website can also land you some featured snippets. In order to find out what your target audience is searching for, visit Q&A portals and search through the questions from your industry. Also, spying on your competitors and ranking for their current featured snippet keywords is another way of optimizing your Q&A content and being noticed by Google.

Play your cards right and successfully optimize your content for featured snippets. Your website will experience a significant increase in traffic and qualified leads.

Nate Vickery is a marketing consultant and author mostly engaged in researching the latest marketing technology trends and practices applicable to startups and SMBs. He is also the editor at Bizzmark Blog and an author on The Next Web.

The post Leveraging Google’s Featured Snippets for Lead Generation appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

For most e-commerce sites, the best keywords are obtained through Google and other search engines and they often work well.

However, you will find that your Amazon sales will increase if you choose a keyword using research tools from Amazon rather than other search engines. This doesn’t discredit Google. It only means that Amazon keyword research tools are more specific.

Google is a home to millions and millions of products and services. If your product, which is similar to another seller’s, is going to rank higher, don’t you think you should have an alternative keyword research tool or tools? Amazon makes this possible with the following tools:

Free Keyword Research Tool

Though it misses a few keywords and gives irrelevant keywords sometimes, the Free Keyword Research Tool is extremely easy to use. It is fast, has the ability to find keywords before your main seed words and you have an unlimited search window.

The keyword Tool Dominator

This is the best keyword research tool for long-tail keywords and phrases. It is available specifically for Amazon. It is fast, easy to use, gives real-time results for keywords typed by customers, and it gives you keyword results together with the rank indices.

Unfortunately, you may miss a few good keywords and only the first three searches are free. If you are on a tight budget, you may be unable to find all the keywords for the different categories and subtypes of your products.

The Keyword Inspector – Amazon Merchant Words and Keyword Product Research Tools

Rather than spending time scouring for keywords that your buyers may never use or that they only might use, get all the keywords used by buyers using The Keyword Inspector – Amazon Merchant Words and Keyword Product Research Tools. This is a suite with a number of tools that spies on your top competitors’ keywords, ethically.

It is fast and you get the most relevant words because you use products’ Unique Amazon Identifier (ASIN) to find thousands of potential keywords in seconds.

On the downside, you have to pay to use The Keyword Inspector – Amazon Merchant Words and Keyword Product Research Tools. The other disadvantage is that you may miss a few important keywords because these tools only collect data from product pages.

Eglim

For sellers who find it difficult to conduct keyword research using other Amazon tools, you have Eglim. This tool serves as a keyword ideas generator and it gives the best information on keyword research, popularity, and the top ten products in your search category.

AMZShark

This is a good keyword research software suite that helps you find the right new keywords. It tracks the keywords, performs cost analysis and search volume analysis while analyzing the top 10 products against any given keywords.

AMZInsight

This tool identifies great keyword ideas against your target niche. It searches for keywords in the top products and categories and also reviews keywords based on product popularity. AMZInsight also ranks keywords and products while giving the best keyword ideas. The keyword ideas generator provides keywords optimization, products optimization, and Amazon SEO.

In conclusion, these are the best Amazon keyword research tools. You may come across others on the way but make use of these to build traffic to your products’ or services’ site.

Author Bio

Marvin Powers is one of Amazon’s design SEO experts with more experience using the Keyword Inspector – Amazon Merchant Words and Keyword Product Research Tools. Check out his LinkedIn profile for more information on Amazon Keyword research tools for SEO.

The post 6 Amazon-Specific Keyword Research Tools That Drive Sales appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Videos have been proven to bring marketers solid returns of their investments. However, it is also true that the popularity of videos poses a challenge for businesses that are new to enter this space. Hundreds and thousands of videos are already out there in the virtual world and hundreds more being added with every passing second, making it difficult for beginners to make sure that their videos rank higher and stand out from all the competition.

As search engines cannot “watch” the videos itself to know what it’s all about, you need to add closed captions, transcripts, and subtitles to your videos to give it search engine visibility. Recently a study done by Liveclicker showed that revenue could go up by an average of 16% if you add transcripts to your videos. Similarly, adding subtitles to videos has been shown to increase viewer engagement time by more than 40%.

Here is an infographic from Take1 Transcription that shares some great ideas and tips to make your videos rank higher in the search engine.

The post How to Make Your Videos Rank Higher on Search Engines appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.