Digital Marketing Agencies Blog and Resources

Every new year brings new goals, trends, and fads. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies should look completely different than they did five years ago. Unfortunately, not many site and blog owners know where to start when it comes to creating, building, and optimizing a website.Don’t worry, everyone struggles with ranking in Google. That’s why the entire digital marketing industry was created — to help site owners win the Google turf war.Since the process of ranking for the best keywords can take months and even years, your SEO strategy needs to be well thought out. The main problem is that people aren’t creating big picture SEO strategies. They build their strategy article by article. This type of strategy leads to thin content, lack of enthusiasm, and eventually terrible content.You need to start by creating a big picture strategy. Think about the objective of your site. Is the purpose to inform? Is it to sell something? Where do you want to drive your traffic? You should have a clear vision and an answer for each of these questions.You need to clearly define your traffic goals, which means you must know your target audience. After you’ve defined your goals and researched your audience, it is vital that you not only create value, but that you also create targeted value (valuable content exactly applicable to your target audience).A quick Google search will bring up endless information on best practices, but the reality is that most of this information is either out of date or too general, making it difficult to know where to begin. It can be overwhelming to sort through the information, let alone implement it. This guide provides all the information you need to optimize your website. To win the Google game and rank in Google in 2019, you need to perfect these five SEO tactics: Build a perfect content strategy Create content that wins an audience and ranks on Google Beat your Competitors with on-site optimizations Become an expert in off-site tactics Utilize tools to maximize efforts If you implement these SEO practices, you’ll be on you way to the top of the search results in no time. Building the perfect content strategy in 2019 Whatever the objective, chances are you’ll want to drive traffic to a specific page on your site. Look at your website as a building. The foundation is a content strategy. The walls are your landing pages (what pages visitors are seeing first). The doors are where your visitors are entering. The rooms within your building are the different pages on your site. There is one room where you want every visitor to end up — the page where you turn visitors into money.Ask yourself, are you missing walls, rooms, a foundation? The goal is to create a building that attracts AND converts. As with any building, the foundation is fundamental. Your content strategy needs to be solid or it won’t support anything built on top of it. While developing your content strategy, keep the following in mind: Define your goals: Great content is created with a defined purpose in mind before you even start writing. Much like your big picture strategy, focus on the objective of the individual piece of content, and don’t stray from that objective. Research your audience: Your content strategy becomes more laser focused as soon as you identify your audience. This can also help you determine what other audiences to target as well. Create a unique endpoint: This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s where you want everyone on your site to end up. Make this page as unique and valuable to the reader as possible. This is also the point where you want to sell or convert.Keep the marketing funnel in mind as you create your content strategy. It’s important to know which stage you’re focusing on with a specific piece of content. The stages are as follows: This can seem like a lot to keep in mind every time you create a new piece of content; however, a little planning upfront can save a lot of headache in the long run. Set your content strategy upfront and then tweak it as you progress, and you’ll never have to worry about creating meaningless content again. Creating content that wins an audience and ranks on Google Neil Patel, cofounder of the Neil Patel Digital Marketing Agency, said the following about content: “Writing great content is a choice. You can choose to put in the time and work required to create great content and build a prosperous brand. Or you can choose to take the easy path and write poor content – a path that ultimately will get you nowhere. It will only result in a waste of time, energy, and resources.” Most of the content on the internet is useless. This content either already exists or doesn’t provide value to the user. Make sure your content not only fulfills your content strategy objective, but also provides valuable information to the reader. Here are a few tips for creating original, engaging, and thought-provoking content to rank in Google: Write short paragraphs and concise content: Nobody wants to look at a wall of text. It’s visually unappealing and you’ll lose the reader’s interest. Shorter paragraphs will engage your audience. Use graphics or video if available: Everybody learns differently. Some people tend to be more visual, so an infographic may help them connect with your content. A photo or video is a great way to break up the monotony of text.Refresh old content and update regularly: Your content needs to be relevant or nobody will stick around to read it.While some information stands the test of time, add a paragraph every now and then with new or updated information. Target clusters > keywords: This is based around user intent. Google’s algorithm is evolving, and so strictly optimizing for keywords alone is not as effective as it was five years ago. Organize content into topic clusters and optimize from there. The diversity in keywords has the potential to help you create more user friendly content as well. Provide answers: When users make a search query, they are looking for an answer, and you need to provide that answer. Try to cite any sources and keep the information as accurate as possible. Writing great content is not easy; don’t get discouraged if you struggle at first. It takes time to research and write, so allot yourself time to immerse yourself in the writing. Your effort will be reflected in your writing. On-site optimization is still a vital part of SEO Most SEO guides tend to gloss over on-site and focus on off-site tactics, as they are constantly changing. Remember, on-site optimization is still as important as ever. Getting your on-site optimizations lays a foundation to build on.Google uses the content on your site to determine what keywords your website should rank for. If you have specific keywords you’re looking to rank for, make sure those keywords are in your content. Google will assign more or less relevancy to different elements of the page. These elements include the following: Title tag: The page title shows up as the clickable portion on the search engine, as well as within the tab on your site. This is the most important on-site element to focus on. There’s limited space here (512 pixels, or about 70 characters), so put only the most important information here. The important terms should be placed closer to the front. The title tag also works as an advertisement for your website on the search engine. Make sure that it’s user-friendly, easy to read, clear, and to the point. Meta description: Page descriptions don’t directly affect your rankings; however, they are still an important part of SEO as they can sway your click through rate one way or the other. Click through rate is not a ranking factor, yet it does play an important part when it comes to site traffic. The best way to write your description is to follow the FAB (Feature, Advantage, Benefit) principle. State what it is, what it can do, and why it’s a good thing. Page headings: Headers are used as a stylistic element, yet they are still an active ranking factor. The ranking importance has diminished in recent years, so don’t spend too much time on these. They should adequately describe the following paragraph, and you shouldn’t need to worry about it beyond that. Keyword in content: Keywords are important, so include several in the body of your content. If you have specific keywords you want to rank for, make sure you mention those within the first 100 words of your content. But don’t sacrifice the quality of your content in order to fit more keywords (otherwise known as keyword-stuffing). Keyword variance: While Google cares about where the keywords are on your page, it also cares about how keywords relate to one another. The best practice here is to write your content naturally, then go back to see if you have implemented the keyword enough. Detail, detail, detail: A recent study by Backlinko shows that Google favors content with over 2000 words. You don’t need to crank out long content with every article or blog post you put out, but it is something to keep in mind with content you want to perform well. You can also repurpose older content by adding additional relevant information. Make sure you aren’t adding words just to add words; if it’s not beneficial to the overall piece of content, leave it out. Focus on writing quality content without sacrificing or compromising the integrity of the page. Alt image tags: Images have a written description as well, known as the Alt image tag. This is important to optimize for your images, as it will then allow Google to read the image and you can use that to your advantage when it comes to content. URL: The URL can be an underrated asset. It not only adds additional value to your keywords, it also shows up in the search results themselves. Like the title tags, don’t make them too long. Just make sure they read well and are relevant to the page. Brush up on your technical knowledge. Whether it be switching to HTTPS, or enabling Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), it’s important to show some love to the technical side of SEO, as it can enhance the user experience of your website as well as help with your overall rankings. It’s important to know the difference between white hat and black hat SEO. The difference between white and black hat refers to the technique used in order to get ahead in the search results. Think of black hat SEO as gaming the system. Don’t cut corners and try to trick the search engine, and you shouldn’t have to worry about this when it comes to onsite work. Off-site SEO tactics to set you above the rest While on-site SEO focuses on making your site relevant, off-site SEO focuses on making your site authoritative. Anyone can create a website and optimize it, but proving to Google you deserve to be on the first page is a different story. Optimizing for off-site SEO involves improving the search engine and user’s perception of your site’s reputation, authority, relevance and popularity. This is achieved by other relevant and authoritative sites linking to your site, essentially ‘vouching’ for the quality of your content and site. Most off-site work focuses on obtaining these links. Remember, not all links are created equal. If you’re focused on creating quality content, you may see a lot of natural links come from people genuinely wanting to share your content. This is the ideal situation, however there are other ways to try to obtain backlinks that can be effective. Guest posting is one of the most popular methods, and for good reason. Essentially, you write a piece of content for someone else’s site, and in turn, they link back to you. This works well because you are exchanging content in turn for a link. If the content is good, it’s putting valuable information out there, and you’re compensated with the link. With guest posting, make sure you are only reaching out to relevant sites, as you want to add value with your expertise. And study how to use anchor text effectively so you're maximizing the impact of the outbound links you're asking for. Guest posting is also a good opportunity to network and build connections within your industry. This goes back to the core principle behind link building which is to build authority. The more you can interact and network within your industry, the more credibility you will build and you will be an authoritative site to the search engine and users alike. Tools to help you along the way As with most professions, you can’t get very far without some tools. As the SEO industry has grown, the available resources and tools have grown with it. Google Search Console and Analytics will be two extremely valuable tools as they will tell you how you’re doing on the search engines as well as how users are behaving on your site. These are both free, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be utilizing them. Ahrefs is one of the best tools to check keywords and backlinks. Buzzstream is a great tool for outreach. The list goes on, but what’s important to remember is that these tools can help you track your progress. Tips from SEO and content marketing experts These beneficial tips from SEO experts in different industries are divided into the following four categories: Content strategy, Content curation, On-site SEO, and Off-site SEO. Content strategy tips 1. BrandingShawn Lim, Founder of Traffic Bees“When we first started doing SEO five years ago, branding is one thing that we overlooked. Initially, we focused on finding the right keywords with a significant search volume. But after working with some of our clients for a few years, we realized that they were getting the most traffic from their brand name. Studies have also shown that brand recognition increases click-through rate as well.” 2. Correlative potential keywordsCary Haun, SEO Specialist at Page 1 Solutions"One important aspect of SEO that tends to be overlooked is the correlative potential between keywords. Oftentimes, people will choose and target keywords that are either topping the charts or obscurely dangling with the low-hanging fruit. (This is a common strategy, of course.) However, combining keywords into new, niche topics is how an innovative SEO can not only find new potential audiences, but create them as well."3. Don't overlook evergreen content for SEOBradley Shaw, President of SEO Expert Brad Inc. “Evergreen Content is content that does not lose relevance over time; it is ageless. It does not expire.Blogs have become the keys to online marketing and SEO. Content should be crafted in a style that presumes the basic facts on the topic will not likely change over a long period of time. Using present perfect tense is one of the easiest ways to keep content evergreen.” 4. Dwell timePierre de Braux, Content Strategist at Spiralytics Inc“For me, the most overlooked SEO strategy would have to be keeping visitors on your page for longer.While traditional on-page/off-page elements are undoubtedly important, bounce rates and average time on page also significantly affect how well a page ranks. And that's not even mentioning the additional conversion potential that comes with more engagement.If you take a look at your best-performing content, you'll almost always see that bounce rates are relatively low and time on page is relatively high. So, the next time you're trying to optimize a page, think more engagement and more dwell time.”5. Focus on lower volume keywordsJason Lavis, Managing Director at Out of the Box Innovations Ltd“Something that I missed for years, and still often neglect now, is a focus on lower volume keywords. Content creation tends to come with SEO nowadays since you need something to rank in the first place. As more marketers and companies start to expand their web presence, they look at the easy wins first. If they have high domain authority, they can go straight for trophy keywords and have a realistic chance of page one without much work.The result is that everyone else, finds that they're now on page two or three, with little chance of page one. It's easier to create a 1,000 word post that includes ten keywords with 100 monthly search volumes than to go for a 1,000 per month keyword. In the same way, pages with ten 1,000 volume keywords words will be easier to rank than a 10,000 volume keyword.”6. Power wordsBriana Marie, Content Marketing Manager at Tanzek Media“The use of power words in title tags is often overlooked when it comes to SEO. Power words are action-packed terms or phrases such as amazing, fast, step-by-step, proven, crazy, exclusive, shocking, etc. The use of these words in your title tag will greatly increase your click-through-rate as people are seeking the quickest and most effective answers to their questions. Your CTR is important because it helps search engines determine how relevant your content is to the terms the user has searched.”7. Quality over quantityMatt Erickson, Marketing Director at National Positions"One area that is commonly overlooked is too much content. Some end up having hundreds of site pages with thousands of words that people are not going to read. You might have a short-lived bump in your rankings but over time, Google will learn that your content lacks relevancy and your ratings will begin dropping. Shorter, highly relevant content is far more valuable and powerful — so focus on your context, timeliness, and the impact of your content before you focus on content volume and length."8. Semantically related subtopicsStephen Jeske, Content Strategist at MarketMuse“Those new to SEO often focus on keywords while neglecting the importance of semantically related subtopics. That’s a mistake. In September 2018, Google revealed it added a new layer to its Knowledge Graph. It’s called the Topic Layer and helps the search engine deeply understand a topic space in order to surface relevant content.In this environment, it’s imperative your content demonstrates an in-depth understanding of the subject. Employing a detailed topic model ensures the content you create thoroughly covers those critical subtopics.”9. User ExperienceLila Eidi, Founder and CEO of EIDI Communications “User experience (UX) is critical to SEO and something that can easily be overlooked, especially with SEO newcomers. UX on a site is often underestimated as a valuable aspect of link building campaigns. When a site has a good UX, visitors to that site stay. Their extended time on the site adds value to the SEO juice. Conversely, a poor UX causes visitors to leave quickly. This reduces the value of inbound links from that site.”10. User search intentBrandon Andersen, Chief Strategist at CerAlytics“The most commonly overlooked aspect of SEO we see with our clients is not taking user intent into account when creating recommendations on keywords and building out content. If a user's search intent is to know more about a topic, throwing a product page at them in search is not going to work. Likewise, if the user's search intent is to get help with a topic immediately from someone, giving them a how-to guide isn't going to work either. Match the intent of the user's query with the content you create.”11. Visual contentTony DeGennaro, Director of Marketing at Dragon Social LTD“I'd say creating shareable visual content is one SEO tactic I think that tends to get overlooked. Many companies employ full-time designers, who by putting together a simple and updated infographic, could end up drastically improving a post's backlink profile. Nearly every infographic I've created has resulted in a huge amount of backlinks that have helped to increase SERP. I also think this fits in well with the mantra of creating high-quality content. Everyone likes a good infographic, especially when it’s chock full of updated statistics, quotable information, and high quality visuals!” Content curation tips 12. Build more landing pagesGene Caballero, Co-Founder of Your Green Pal“One SEO strategy that gets overlooked is building more landing pages. What we have done to grow our business and ramp up our organic SEO in different markets is to create landing pages for those new markets — outside of our larger markets that we already operate in. For example, in addition to creating landing pages for large metros, we also create them for smaller cities.  This will ensure that Google algorithm can detect the keywords and our business in that specific location. This helps expand our business to a new city by ranking for search and has improved our business by 10 percent by launching this practice.” 13. Delete old contentTatiana Morand, Content and SEO Manager at Wild Apricot"Something that many people overlook when thinking of SEO techniques is the importance of deleting old content. If your website has been around for a while, chances are that there's some pretty thin content on there.Auditing your site and editing or removing content that provides little to no value to visitors (and to Google) can give you an easy boost without being too time-consuming or difficult to do." 14. Experience and site structureShafi Khan, SEO Analyst at Optiux Marketing“User experience is among the top ranking factor for SEO in 2019 and optimizing the site structure should be the first thing you should do. Make sure no page on the website should take more than three clicks to reach (from the homepage).”15. Featured snippetsVi Trang, SEO Specialist at Savings.com.au“I think the most overlooked SEO practice so far has been identifying opportunities for featured snippets. Featured snippets, sometimes known as position 0, offer great visibility to websites because they rank above all organic results. While keyword research is a familiar task to SEO specialists, it doesn’t often move beyond researching and mapping relevant keywords based on user’s intent and monthly search volume. Keywords that provide great opportunities for featured snippets (those that have yet to generate any) are often overlooked. These should be singled out on day one, to help drive a content strategy that focuses on such keywords, increasing the likelihood of gaining featured snippets while competitors have yet to get there.”16. Optimize video contentAndre Guelmann, SEO Manager at Promo.com“Today, the most overlooked SEO practice is ignoring/not optimizing your video content. People no longer want to read online, and we can see this with the increasing prevalence of video results when you do a search on Google. As an SEO, your job is to optimize CONTENT, no matter the format, so you need to be prepared to do it wherever your audience is.”17. Start a blogDr. Ty Belknap, SEO Expert at Port Bell Inc. “Everybody knows that content is king when it comes to getting higher in the search engines, but few people set up blogs. Blogs are a great way to blast content, but each blog post doesn’t have to be the size of a book. Write a post reviewing an article or a helpful hint for customers. Small blog posts are not as effective as larger blog posts, but they are much more effective than nothing at all.”18. Use of images Marie Lamonde, Content Marketing Specialist at DashThis“One of the SEO practices I consider people overlook is the use of images. We talk about content, blog posts, landing pages, etc. But very few marketers actually talk about the importance of optimizing images for SEO. We all know that we have to add alt text, but what about the picture itself? You have to take into consideration the nature of the image (original and relevant), the name (SEO optimized), the format (high-quality pictures with a small size for page speed), the presentation (organize them neatly, and in a way that makes sense for the visitor), and the captions (use some if possible since they are crawlable).Indexing your images properly can give you a lot of traffic that you would otherwise never get! You could also get image snippets that would place you before the first ranking page! So don't choose your images lightly, and make sure they are as optimized as your text.”19. Voice search optimizationKetan Pande, Founder of Goodvitae“One of the overlooked SEO practices is optimizing content for the voice search. The volume of voice search is increasing day by day, and while writing a blog and making a video, we tend to overlook it. It's mostly overlooked by SEO, who runs a blog or youtube channel which concentrates on local topics and issue. The sentence 'XYZ near me' is becoming a gold mine, and an SEO must take note of it. Also framing questions in the title can help us in optimizing as per voice search.” On-site SEO tips 20. Aggregate rating schemaKristie Deaver, SEO Specialist at Page 1 Solutions"One aspect of SEO which is often overlooked is adding aggregate rating schema to your site. Adding this markup will add the coveted stars to your SERP entry, making it stand out among the sea of results given to users. SEOs need to be careful when adding this to their sites, as mistakes will result in a warning from Google. Be honest in your schema and you should be fine.”21. CanonicalizationChris Foster, Head of SEO at Acquiro Digital"One of the most overlooked aspects of SEO that we've experienced is canonicalization. Duplicate pages and URLs are a common occurrence on many platforms and is something which can't always be avoided, but in terms of SEO, having these duplicate pages could negatively affect your organic performance. Canonicalizing similar or duplicate pages signals to search engines that these areas of the site are very similar and it allows you to tell Google which is the preferred page that you wish to be shown in search results. It's a vital element that any new SEO specialist should take into consideration when optimizing a site."22. Check redirectsRyan Scollon, SEO and PPC Consultant at ryanscollon.co.uk“One key tactic that is often overlooked is redirects. When you start working on any site, it's always worth reviewing the site in Web Archive for any old variations of the website. Then you need to grab a few page URLs from the old versions and test them in a browser. Do they redirect? If not, it's certainly worth getting a redirect in place should there be any historical links that still exist.”23. Crawl efficiencyDavid Pagotto, Founder of SIXGUN"One of the most overlooked SEO practices is the focus on crawl efficiency — essentially making your website as efficient as possible for a search engine to crawl. Unlike individual SEO practices, crawl efficiency is a wider philosophy that encompasses a number of different optimisation areas. For example, ensuring the website has no unnecessary indexed pages, duplicate content, or internal 301 redirects and 404 errors. This type of thinking can go a long way in boosting your organic search performance."24. Fix technical errors first Jeff Ferguson, CEO of Fang Marketing“The most overlooked practice in SEO is realizing that most SEO issues aren't SEO issues at all, but larger technical issues that are causing numerous SEO issues. Say you're just starting work on a new site. You pull out your trusty SEO site crawler tool and it's a bloodbath of errors. However, nine times out of ten, the reams of errors that you see are caused by another technical issue that mucks up a dozen other issues. Find the root of the issue first, fix that, then crawl again. Your life will be so much easier.”25. Incorrect canonical linkAdam Riemer, President of Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC “The canonical link is set up incorrectly. Canonical links are designed to show the proper version of a page so Google knows what to display to an end user.  Many websites and templates do not have it set up correctly.” 26.  Internal link hierarchyJeff Kear, Head of Marketing at Planning Pod“Creating internal links to key pages on your site in the body copy of your site pages is vitally important in letting the SERPs know the hierarchy of your site as well as passing more link value to important pages and less to marginal pages. This is also critical if you are restructuring a site and need new or repurposed pages to take more prominence and want them to be recognized by the SERPs for specific keywords or phrases.”27. Internal link impactJimmy Rodriguez, COO of 3dcart“Internal links can have a huge impact on how Google reads and prioritizes pages on your site, and it can be the difference between you ranking for your target keyword or not. The way you link pages within your site tells the bots what that page is about, so make sure to always clean up your link profile and use the right anchors for the right pages.”28. Internal linking opportunitiesDave Hermansen, CEO of Store Coach“The mistake I see more often than any other when it comes to websites — especially new ones — is that people miss so many internal linking opportunities. Maybe it's because there were no internal pages to link to at the beginning. Almost every post, product, or category on a website has at least one page that it should be linking to from the textual content. Go back and review each page of your site and I'm sure you'll find internal linking opportunities galore!”29. Optimize for mobile Sadi Khan, Digital Marketing Manager at Run Repeat“Optimizing for mobile: This gets overlooked a lot because SEO specialists are working on the desktop computers or laptops. Mobile searches and mobile traffic has now surpassed desktop users. So, SEO specialists need to acclimatize to a mobile-first approach in everything they do. It will include, but will not be limited to, voice searches, mobile user experience, and loading speed.”30. Optimize meta titles and descriptions to grab people's attentionJack Parcell, CEO of Clovr Creative“I think the biggest thing that new SEO specialists overlook when first starting out is to optimize meta titles and descriptions to grab people's attention. By grabbing people's attention, you are sure to improve your click-through rate.I think that SEO specialists, especially new ones, get so caught up in trying to inject their keywords into the titles and descriptions that the titles and descriptions end up dull and boring. While it is important to make sure the keywords are there, click through rate is a huge indicator for Google, so it is important to stand out from competitors.”31. Page load speedAndrew King, Search Analyst at Klood Digital“A commonly overlooked aspect of SEO, and improving the ranking of a website, is page load speed. Many SEOs don't think about it, as they consider it to be more of a technical issue for developers to deal with, but there are many simple jobs that can be done to improve it. One example is to ensure images are compressed to a reasonable file size to allow them to load more quickly.”32. Robots.txt file checkBorislav Ivanov, SEO Executive at Best Response Media“The thing that rookies often miss is the thing you should do first when you start working on a website as a technical SEO. That's a robots.txt checkup along with robots meta directives and canonical links. Without proper sorting, the bots crawl and index on all of the wrong places. Often there are blocked assets, like CSS files. That means that little bots can't reach them and render the page.”33. Sitemap checkStephanie Hooper, Senior SEO and Digital Marketing Manager at Infront Webworks“One aspect of SEO that gets overlooked is checking your sitemap. Your sitemap is a directory or guide that lists the web pages on a website and can also include when the pages were last updated. The pages are listed in a hierarchical order and the most relevant pages are listed at the top. It is important to submit your website’s xml sitemap to Google Search Console. This ensures that Google has the most updated version of your website.”34. Update disavow filesAdam Gingery, Paid Search and Digital Strategy Manager at Majux Marketing“New SEOs aren't often tasked with updating disavow files, but it's an important process that can't be overlooked. Google has said that it actively credits or discredits links in real time, with the implication that your disavow file is superfluous, and you won't be penalized for bad links — they just won't help you rank higher. However, our own tests have shown that deleting a disavow file will expose you to penalty-level fluctuations, and when a disavow is re-uploaded to Search Console, the eventual rankings recovery (likely during a core algorithm update) will make it fairly obvious that the disavow file was important all along.”35. URL lengthKris Rivenburgh, SEO Specialist at RIVE Marketing “New SEOs often overlook URL length. Although simple to implement, keeping URL slugs as short as possible by removing filler/unimportant words definitely makes a difference.” Off-site SEO tips 36. Anchor text ratioKevin Peguero, Digital Marketing Manager at Astro Pak“Anchor Text Ratio is overlooked. Many people don’t know how to build backlinks to have correct anchor text ratios pointing to their site. They get penalized often for this.   I specialize in building backlinks for my clients. That is what I do and I have came across dozen of brands with this issue. It is also not talked about much. It is not as sexy as other SEO practices.”37. Broken link buildingOwen Cook, Founder of Blockchain SEO“While it may be somewhat time-consuming, broken link building is still an effective way to boost SEO results and is highly scalable in 2019. Specifically, broken link building is the process of identifying a broken or dead link, recreating the content which was linked to, and then notifying the website or party linking to that dead content. After all, it’s in a website’s best interests to make the user experience as smooth as possible — and broken links sure don’t help!” 38. Digital PRCaroline Khalili, Associate Director of PR at Circa Interactive “Digital PR has emerged as a powerful tool for generating exposure and establishing credibility online. Forging strong relationships with journalists, bloggers, and other producers of digital content can help an organization amplify its story and reach larger, higher-quality audiences. Digital PR also creates value in the form of improved search engine rankings, greater conversion rates, and enhanced brand trust.”39. Google review systemMercy Muigai, Founder and CEO of Onlipac Digital Solutions“As a white hat SEO tip, Google review system is an overlooked SEO practice. The more positive reviews your website has, the better the SEO. Businesses should take advantage of this practice by asking people to leave their reviews on Google and not just on social media. It's not only for SEO but also builds the credibility of a website.”40. Handle toxic backlinksDan Rawley, Account Manager at The SEO Works “One area of SEO that often gets neglected is handling toxic backlinks. While actively building strong backlinks is a common focus of any SEO campaign, it is just as important to monitor new links to the site that you have not built, and ensure that undesirable links are dealt with, either by creating and submitting a disavow file or by contacting webmasters to request link removal. This ensures that the strength of the backlinks you are building is not being diluted and allows you to keep on top of any potentially harmful new links.”41. Name, address, and phone number consistency Damien Buxton, Director at Midas Creative"One fairly simple task that often gets overlooked is to review every website that your business is mentioned online. Look at places such as online directories, social media accounts, and local listings  What you should look for is consistency of the business name, address, contact number and categories that your business is listed as. Search engines such as Google cross reference other sites to validate data that it holds on your company. If you've moved address recently, for example, make sure that your new location is updated across the web. By doing this you're helping your website have a better chance of appearing stronger in local search results." 42. Networking through PRWinston Nguyen, Owner of BitCoinSEO “People don't normally associate PR with SEO, but I think most of SEO is PR! After the technical audits, the only thing that's left is the content creation and link building. And the best way to do link building is through PR.”43. Optimizing “Google My Business”Lewis Peters, Marketing Specialist at Online Rock Salt “During the past year we have found a huge lift in our local SEO rankings by optimizing our Google My Business (GMB) account, by increased rankings in the map pack and increased ranking in localized organic searches. GMB can easily fall under the radar for many businesses; many have theirs left untouched for many years and not paid any attention to it. A new SEO specialist may not think to optimise GMB especially if the contact details have not changed.”44. Out-of-business competitor sitesSimon Rogers, Digital Marketing Executive at Website Pulse“One of the overlooked link building practices is to check (and keep checking) your out-of-business competitors' websites and try to get their backlinks. You can do that by outreaching the linking sites and letting them know their link is broken and suggest they link to your content/service/product.”45. Review outbound linksNatalie Athanasiadis, Founder of Ormi Media“When it comes to SEO, everyone talks about inbound link-building but too often outbound linking is overlooked. You want your site to be linking to authoritative and relevant content. Pages can be deleted on other websites and not redirected resulting in your site displaying dead links. So it’s really important to review outbound links periodically.”   SEO Tool Tips 46. Google search performance reportRyan MacKellar, SEO Specialist at 9thCo"One of the most overlooked SEO methods is using the performance report in Google Search Console. Specifically, the keyword impression data can provide a ton of insights. For example, you can find new keywords that you didn't know your website was ranking for and ensure you are fully optimized for them. It can also provide a treasure trove of long-tail keywords that make for ideal blog posts."47. Learn HTMLJensen Hendriks, Owner at Candor Digital Media“Many new SEO specialists avoid learning basic HTML code. They rely on Wordpress and the SEO plugins to get them by. All goes well until they acquire a client, or have the opportunity to, but it's a custom site. Simple courses on HTML markup would be beneficial to anyone in the SEO world. Key things to be capable of editing in HTML would be the meta info, title tags, heading tags, links/anchor text, lists, and paragraph copy. There are courses all over the web on these topics. It's worth learning and will help SEO specialists with longevity in the industry.”

There are more ways to do SEO now than ever. The tools and resources at our disposal can seem overwhelming. We've reached out to various experts in the SEO field, and asked them what about their favorite lesser known tools. Below you'll find what they had to say, and you can start using these tools to get your SEO in the right direction. Screaming Frog Price: Free (limited) and Paid $149“I use Screaming Frog when trying to get an overall view of a website’s title tag, meta description, h1 tag, alt tags, response codes, and more. This is better than going through each page individually. The free version allows you to crawl up to 500 pages.”Phillip Livingston — Digital Marketing Specialist at Condo Control Central“Screaming Frog is the ultimate solution for a website's technical SEO audit. The tool crawls and scans the links and codes to accumulate search engine optimization insights that are valuable and supply detailed reports of a website. The free version permits you to track up to 1,000 log lines as well as 500 website URLs but does not include things like customer service.”Ashish Goswami — SEO Specialist at Zestard Technologies FATRANK “FatRank is a free keyword rank checker that is quick and efficient. It is a SEO Chrome extension that allows you to easily check a website's performance and keyword ranking. You can prioritize keywords based on optimized pages.” Ryan Esco — Marketing Consultant at Fire Rock Marketing“If you want to quickly check if the website you are on ranks for a particular keyword, FatRank does that. It is pretty accurate and you do not have to head over to Google to check the keywords every time. The best part is, unlike keyword trackers, the results are in real-time. You can only check a handful of keywords at a time though. If you exceed the limit, Google will start giving you a captcha. I generally use it to check four to five keywords at a time.”Rajiv Agarwal — SEO Specialist at SEO Auditing Hunter.io “Hunter.io is a Google Chrome add-on that helps you find the email addresses of the people behind the website you are on. The email addresses this tool provides are either marked verified or given a confidence score, so you know you can trust the information Hunter is providing. This is another useful tool for link building because it helps you find relevant contact information for outreach campaigns, whether you want to write a guest post for that site, inform them of a broken link, share an article you wrote for your company’s blog, etc. The tool is free for up to 100 searches/month, but you can upgrade your account if you would like more.”Samantha Marsh — Marketing Content Coordinator at iDashboards Keywords Everywhere “This is a free Chrome extension, and its main purpose is to be able to see keyword metrics like search volume and CPC from within the search engine itself. That means no more having to switch over tabs to see keyword metrics; you can see those metrics right under the search bar.”Gennady Litvin — Attorney at Moshes Law“Keywords Everywhere lets you see the search volume, CPC, and competition for any keyword under the Google Search bar. It’s a great tool for keyword brainstorming. It even gives you data for “related keywords” and “people also searched for” to help you develop a solid keyword strategy in a no time. Keywords Everywhere gives you the option to download your keyword list in different variations: Excel, CSV, or PDF file. You can trust the data, because it is the same data that is released by Google.”Samantha Marsh — Marketing Content Coordinator at iDashboards Nightwatch.io “This website allows you to track the rankings of multiple keywords for more than one website. It starts at about $59/month for a basic package, but it's a worthwhile tool if you have to track the rankings of multiple clients. It also checks the keyword rankings for specific landing pages, too.”Elizabeth Bradshaw — Owner at Canvas Art Boutique “Nightwatch is one amazing SEO tool that I use. I love it because it provides a lot of flexibility in the information that it provides. It is by far the best rank tracker that I have ever used. It is easy to use, accurate, and reliable; it also allows you to track all of your backlinks. It also has great APIs, very competitive pricing, and an amazing dashboard.The UI is also very intuitive; they use a lot of graphs and small diagrams, making it very easy for my team to track the progress of our SEO work. The team at Nightwatch is amazing too; they are always willing to help and answer questions very quickly.”Jenna Erickson — Marketing Manager at Codal If you are wanting to read more on the best SEO tools then check out this article that lists 25 of the most effective SEO tools on the market.  

Everyone wants a piece of customer reviews. Why? Because they've eclipsed nearly all other forms of influence for what we buy and don't buy, with the exception of the influences from close family, friends and topical experts. People are flocking to review sites...and with good reason. For instance, a 2015 study by YouMoz found that online reviews affect 67.7% of purchasing decisions. More than half describe online reviews as a "fairly," "very," or "absolutely" important part of their decision-making process. In a recent Zendesk survey, this influence was found to be even stronger, especially for positive reviews. Ninety percent of survey-takers said positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions; 86% said the same about negative reviews. If you combine this with growing consumer distrust toward companies and their messaging, you find companies with scant options: get better at reviews or get passed up. That's good and well, you say, but what if, even after throwing everything I have at this challenge, I only get a measly couple of reviews or none at all? This problem is more common than you might think and it can be more than frustrating for those eager to shine in online reviews. Below is a checklist of 7 potential problems to diagnose your brand's online reviews shortage and get things back on track: 1. You don't have enough customers Consider these stats from the aforementioned Zendesk survey: Of customers who have bad experiences with companies, only 35% turn to online review sites to voice their feelings. Only 23% of those who've had positive experiences leave online reviews This behavior of sharing with others negative or positive customer experiences goes up somewhat when people share on social media, instead of online review sites: Of customers with negative experiences, 45% tell their stories on social media Of customers with positive experiences, 30% do the same What does this mean? If you have a relatively small customer base, your potential number of reviews is much lower than, say, that of an automobile manufacturer or Tide laundry detergent. Does this mean that small companies should just forget about getting online reviews? Definitely not. In fact, anecdotal evidence shows that customer reviews on sites like Yelp or Angie's List for small local businesses are even more important than they are for larger brands. What this does mean is that smaller companies need to acknowledge that online reviews are a numbers game and set their expectations accordingly. 2. Your product/service isn't review-worthy Whether fortunately or unfortunately, this does happen. Sometimes, a product or service does not elicit powerful feelings one way or the other-not enough, anyway, to compel someone to talk about it online. Surely, no company wants to be in this category. Every brand wants to be memorable. The problem is, as long as your customer experience is forgettable, you're going to have a really hard time getting people to post reviews about you. When wading into the waters of online customer reviews, companies would do well to consider the possibility that their customer experience is boring. It's not infuriatingly bad. It's not mood-lifting-ly good. It's just boring. And ask some soul-piercing questions: Is your customer experience worth talking about? What is keeping it from being noteworthy? What changes are required at every level of your organization to make it noteworthy? In most cases, a non-review-worthy brand is more than one marketer, social media manager, or customer service rep can fix alone-it's usually a company-wide problem and will take the entire company to resolve. Ultimately, ensuring a great customer experience will supply you with more reviews than any other item on this list. Nellie Akalp at Mashable said it this way: "At the end of the day, the best path to having great reviews is to offer a great product and customer experience. If you're doing all you can to create a remarkable experience for your customers, there's no reason not to remind them about the importance of sharing reviews." 3. You're not asking If you are doing a great job in taking care of your customers, you shouldn't have to ask>/em> people to give you reviews, right? Wrong. The experts agree that most companies don't ask for reviews as much as they should. This makes sense. Marketers have learned to tell customers what they want them to do in direct calls-to-action: "Click here." "Buy one, get one free." "Buy now." So why not add "Leave a Review" to that list? Jeff Motter, the CEO and CMO of East Bay Marketing Group says, "The best way to get reviews is to ask for them." "Don't be afraid to say to clients, 'Hey, if we helped you, we'd be grateful if you let people know,'" agrees Bret Bonnet, CMO of Quality Logo Products. "They might take to Yelp themselves." 4. You're not asking the right customers As mentioned above, not all customers are the reviewing type. So, while it's not a bad idea to put some calls-to-action out there, there are some more review-friendly customers toward whom you you might want to direct more of your energy. Remember how the Zendesk survey revealed that customers were more likely to tell about their experiences on social media than on review sites? Well, the results of the survey painted an even more detailed picture of the most likely reviewers, for example: People who consumed products or services in a business context People from Generation X People who earned more than $150,000 a year These groups were found to share nearly all of their customer experiences, good or bad, frequently on social media. So if these demographics define your target reviewers, and the majority of reviews are happening on social media, maybe you shouldn't rely solely on CTAs on your website to get reviews. You should be inviting customers on social media-via the Facebook Reviews tab, for instance-to tell friends and family about your brand. 5. You're not asking at the right time Timing can be everything on a review call-to-action. If you ask them to give you a review right after you've delivered their purchase late, you risk not only failing to get a review, but also making them so angry they never come back to you again. But the opposite is also true. Right when you've successfully delivered a great experience is the ideal moment to ask customers for a review. For a restaurant, this might mean at the conclusion of a meal, right about when they are paying the bill. For a real estate agent, this would be during the euphoria that ensues after closing. For an online retailer, this would be at the moment the customer's order arrives on their doorstep. Megan Mosley from Referral Rock says, "There is a sweet spot when it comes to asking for a review. Actually a couple of good opportunities. The most obvious is asking post-purchase, as typically speaking, a customer is most happy then. Other times would be after a great customer interaction, if you receive a nice social media comment, or see people already talking about you. These are the perfect instances (and people) to ask for a review!"  Additional tip: whenever possible, to increase the odds of getting a review, make this an in-person call-to-action. "There's no better way to ask for, and get, reviews than to do it in person," says Brian Patterson at Marketing Land. "The person-to-person request is incredibly effective, particularly if the requester has spent a lot of time with the customer. We've found that asking in person can garner you seven to eight times more reviews than asking via email." 6. You're not responding Nobody wants to feel like they're talking to the air. Just responding to other reviews will tell would-be reviewers that, when it comes to your business, somebody is listening and taking reviews seriously. Of course, if all of your responses feel predatory, overly confrontational, this will have the opposite effect. The one thing reviewers hate more than talking to the air is having their review thrown back in their face. In most companies, people leap at the chance to respond to the positive review. Thank them for their review but beware of tossing out incentives. Remember, they chose to leave a review simply because they enjoyed your product or service without expecting anything in return. Sometimes, offering a incentive after the fact can cheapen this. But what about negative reviews? Few companies really look forward to this, seeing it as just another uncomfortable confrontation with an angry customer. A growing number of companies, however, are turning these moment into opportunities to turn haters into advocates, in the words of marketing guru Jay Baer, author of Hug Your Haters. For instance, one French bakery chain actively sought out their most negative reviewers and made them a proposition. They needed the reviewers' help in making their service and food the best they could be. If the restaurant gave them a free meal once a month, would the reviewer be willing to supply them with their honest feedback? Intrigued and flattered, most of the reviewers agreed and went from being naysayers to being collaborators in building the restaurant chain's brand. 7. You're making it difficult You might be asking customers for reviews, but are you eliminating as many steps as possible to make it easy for them to post a review? Are you set up on all the major review sites-like Yelp, Angie's List, Google Local, Yahoo Local, LinkedIn, CitySearch, and TripAdvisor? Are you set up on your industry-specific review sites (Ex: Expedia or Travelocity for hotels)? Are you providing them with links to these pages so they don't have to hunt them down themselves? "Unless someone has a negative experience to share, the average customer is not going to look for ways to leave your company a review," says Akalp. "That's why you need to ask them to post a review and make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Put direct links to your review profiles in multiple places; for example, a follow-up email, newsletter, and your website." Getting Into the Reviews Game So how did you do? Did you find something you'd been missing in trying to secure customer reviews? Fortunately, there are so many opportunities to get the reviews your company needs to both create a strong brand presence and keep communication open with customers happy and not-so-happy.