Getting a featured snippet is basically hitting the SEO goldmine, resulting in increased clicks, traffic, and potentially, increased business.

The good news here is you don’t have to work that hard to get more featured snippets of your website. Interested? You should be.

Backed by the years I put into writing and SEO, I’ve put together a guide to help you identify featured snippet opportunities. 

How Do I Find Featured Snippet Opportunities?

Quick Answer: Use tools to look into where your website currently stands with regards to featured snippets. Use manual search and the same tools to find keywords with featured snippets you can aim for, as well as other related keywords you can leverage. From there, find quick-win opportunities based on your website’s authority, the content you can optimize, and the structured data you can apply. After making these changes, keep track of what techniques worked for your website, and what didn’t.

What are Featured Snippets?

This is a type of search engine results page (SERP) feature that answers your questions using a snippet that crawl bots have pulled directly from an article or web page. Often, it’s a summary of the information that Google thinks users are looking for.

Here’s an example from an older article of mine on link optimization:

Google has been rolling out featured snippets for an ever-widening variety of search queries for a while now. That’s because they’re great for serving quick answers to users. 

Why do Featured Snippets Matter in SEO?

Featured snippets are great for your SEO because they rank #0 on the organic search results. It sits on top of the #1 organic search result.

It’s also formatted in a way that makes it much more helpful and accessible to users, compared to organic search results. 

Let’s look at the featured snippet for the query “What is a featured snippet,” versus the first organic result on the same page.

And here’s how short a traditional organic result looks like:

That’s it. If I were the user searching this, I definitely gained a more substantial answer from the first, rather than the second.

And, if I was a curious user, I would be more likely to click on the article that feels more helpful to me—which featured snippets are formatted to be like. 

In short, having your content appear in a featured snippet is important for SEO because it can lead to way more clicks to your website. That means it’s good for your click-through rate and growing your organic traffic.

Types of Featured Snippets:

The most common type of featured snippet is the one I just showed you above, but Google can provide different formats in different spaces. 

As of the time of writing, there are five general types of featured snippets:

1. Paragraph
2. List
3. Table
4. Video
5. Accordion

Of these, we know that paragraph- and list-type featured snippets are the most common. Lists can come in numerical format, or in bullet format. You often see these two types when asking for definitions, instructions, and of course, lists of products. 

Recently, I’ve also noticed that Google is pushing for more table and video-formatted featured snippets. 

Tables are common if your search has to do something with product specifications, such as price. 

Videos, on the other hand, show up if you’re looking for how-to guides or demonstrations, where Google will show a specific section of a video that it thinks provides the most appropriate answer. 

Last are accordions. These I don’t see as often, but they look a lot like the People Also Ask section. When clicked, the accordion expands and almost always shows you additional featured snippets, which is fascinating.

Important Statistics on Featured Snippets

Let’s take a look at some general stats that I found from several studies regarding featured snippets. This data can give SEOs and site owners a better look into how they affect SEO, and how to find opportunities to gain more featured snippets.

19-23% of all SERPs include a Featured Snippet

One study from Moz states that they’re included in about 23% of all SERPs. Another study from SEMRush and Brando said they appear in 19% of all SERPs. Either way, this is up over 150% since 2016—that’s wild. 

Paragraphs and Lists are the most common types of Featured Snippets

According to SEMRush, Paragraphs made up 70% of all featured snippets, followed by lists at 19.1%. This study, made in 2020, might not have the most accurate numbers for 2023, but this shows us a pretty clear picture as to what kind of content format is often pushed as featured snippets in Google. 

Getstat also had the same findings in their own research—showing that Paragraph snippets showed up in 82% of all the featured snippets they saw.

People Also Ask sections are seen on 93.8% of Featured Snippet SERPs

Moz, in the same study, noted that we usually see the PAA section whenever there’s a featured snippet. 

Here’s an example, using the same search query as earlier (what is a featured snippet):

This is pretty interesting to me, as it shows that whenever there’s a featured snippet, there are several other opportunities for your article or page to get on the search results—even if, organically, it might not be ranking well.

If you can’t get the featured snippet spot, you can seed your keyword research, add some of the PAAs that show up to your content, and gain more chances to get put on the SERPs. 

Getstat’s research revealed another interesting tidbit: In 23% of the SERPs with both PAAs and a featured snippet, the first PAA had a similar answer to the featured snippet. 

Featured Snippets affect your CTR rate

A study by Ahrefs a few years back showed that, while featured snippets are eye-catching and informative, they don’t necessarily get the most clicks out of every site on the first page.

A page that’s #1 on a SERP without a featured snippet can get about 26% of all clicks. However, a page that’s #1 on a SERP with a featured snippet will only get about 19.6% on average.

This means the #0 spot effectively steals a good portion of the clicks from the #1 organic result. Pretty good tradeoff if you can’t quite beat the #1 result, but still want to get tons of clicks. 

How to Research Featured Snippet Opportunities

Manually looking for a featured snippet opportunity is going to take a lot of time. And, Google Search Console doesn’t currently show any information regarding featured snippets. 

I recommend using third-party tools to research featured snippet opportunities to optimize your content.  

Research Tools to Use for Featured Snippets

I use two tools to look into where our websites are at, in terms of featured snippets: Ahrefs and SEMrush. You can use both to check for your current rankings as well as untapped featured snippet opportunities. 

How to check your Current Snippets

Before you begin the process of looking for opportunities, I recommend getting a good idea of where your website is first.

On Ahrefs, just put in your domain, and click the organic keywords report. From there, you can filter the results by SERP features, and click on featured snippets.

The resulting list contains all the keywords you’re showing up as a featured snippet for.

With SEMrush, put your domain in the search bar, click enter, then select positions in the first menu you see below.

From here, you can further filter the results by clicking SERP features, which will show you which pages are currently shown as featured snippets (plus some other features, such as Local Pack).

On either tool, you can look at the percentage of your search results that appear in any kind of snippet. If you see a low number there, don’t panic. It’s common for most websites to have a low number—especially if you haven’t been trying to optimize for this kind of thing in the first place. 

What you’re getting here is a baseline for your optimization efforts. It’s good to know where you started to understand what’s working for you, and what isn’t, once you start trying to target featured snippets.

Plus, working within a niche where Google already considers you an expert is a pretty good place to start. You’re more likely to capture opportunities here than anywhere else.

How to find your competitor’s snippets

In the same way that you looked at your website’s standing, you can also check your competitors’. 

Why? Because you want to beat your competition. And if your competitors are showing up in the snippets 1 out of 10 times, then you should try to appear in them twice as much. That’s how you can get a bigger market share in your industry. 

The good news is that these two tools let you see the same data for your competitors. Just follow the same instructions using their website domain, and see where your competitors’ snippets are coming from. 

What keywords are they targeting that have a featured snippet? Are these snippets coming from their articles, pages, or homepage? 

These two considerations can reveal new opportunities as well as their tactics—both of which you can use later on. 

How to Identify Featured Snippet Opportunities 

This step-by-step guide can help you potentially win a featured snippet:

1. Check if keywords have featured snippets.
2. Look into keyword suggestions.
3. Optimize content for the featured snippet type.
4. Know your audience’s intent.
5. Make your content concise and informative.
6. Use schema markups.
7. Keep track of featured snippet targets.

Let’s get into each one.

Check if keywords have featured snippets

You can see this in SEMRush. If you look at your organically ranking keywords, you might see symbols like these, which indicate that the search queries show both organic results and structured results, such as featured snippets, PAAs, and more.

You should also check the SERPs manually to see what kind of featured snippet is showing up for this keyword.

From this, we know this particular keyword has a list featured snippet. This means that if I added a list to my old article, I can try to steal this featured snippet from the currently ranking website. 

Look into keyword suggestions

From there, go into Keyword Overview, which shows you related keywords and queries of your selected keyword. In the example below, I’m checking the keyword “how to tell seo is working,” which I used in a previous article.

This data shows what other keywords you might want to include in your article or page, as well as opportunities to hit the PAA section.

Optimize content for the featured snippet type.

Once you know what type of featured snippet your targeted keyword has, it’s time to optimize your content for it.

Make sure you’re adding something that fits the criteria. I also have other tips in another article I previously wrote on optimizing for featured snippets, if you need more help on that.

In the previous example, I said I’d add a list for my article targeting the keyword “how to tell seo is working” because that is the type of snippet I saw in the SERPs. 

If, on the other hand, I saw that it was showing a paragraph-type snippet, then my strategy for this article would change. 

Pro-tip: whatever you saw in the current featured snippet you’re trying to claim, one-up it. If it’s listing, say, the seven benefits of something, list eight to ten. If it’s a concise description of a topic, try doing the same—but with a little extra valuable info (if you have some expertise in the area, this is where it would come in handy). 

Always try to beat the value of the current featured snippet with the content you’re optimizing.

Know your audience’s intent

Part of optimizing your content is understanding your audience. 

When people search certain keywords, they are looking for a specific answer—they may not know what that is, yet, but you should. 

You have to know what kind of answer they’re looking for. Knowing that will help you understand how to best answer their query. I dive deep into this topic in my other guide on how to make helpful content.

Crafting the right response makes it more likely for your content to become a featured snippet. 

Make your content concise and informative.

Aside from using the right type of content, you have to make sure your answers are succinct and relevant to the query. Make your answers as to the point as possible (think 2-3 sentences, max).

Why? Google regularly pushes for short yet informative answers in the featured snippet. So, we know this is the way to go. 

Another pro tip: add a quick summary section to your articles.

You might have seen this in other websites. I’ve also started doing it while I refresh some older content of mine, like this section I added to this article, and some of my older but high-performing work, like my guide to aggregate rating schema. 

Adding a “too long, didn’t read” (tl;dr) to your most popular pages is an easy way of gaining a few featured snippets here and there. Making small additions to deliver your content in a simpler way can actually do a lot for your SEO. Plus, it’s a really easy way to experiment with your content. 

Use schema markups

Schema markups are lines of code that feed search engines (like Google) data in a structured manner. This helps Google better understand your content and its context, which results in improved snippets, also known as rich snippets.

Applying the right schema markup when applicable can help you win that featured snippet. Some common ones include:

1. FAQ schema
2. How-to schema
3. Recipe schema
4. Product schema

There are two ways to add schema markups to your website. The first is through plugins, the second is through hard coding. I recommend looking into the different markups you can add to your content on the Schema website.

Keep track of featured snippet targets

Lastly, always keep track of your progress. Like I said earlier, you won’t know what’s working out for your SEO and what isn’t if you don’t have a baseline to compare it to. And the same goes for your ongoing progress—so monitor those featured snippet targets.

From there, you can continue applying what works well for your website to other pages, and get rid of the strategies that don’t.

Key Takeaway

As featured snippets continue to dominate the top of the SERPS, knowing how to identify featured snippet opportunities—and how to capture them—can help you increase visibility for your website. 

There’s a lot of untapped opportunities waiting on your website, so get ready to do some research into your keywords, and deliver the right answers in the right format in simple, concise language.

The post A Guide to Seizing Featured Snippet Opportunities appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Keywords, as we all know, are the bread and butter of SEO. They are how potential customers find us online and are what we build entire strategies around.

But targeting the best keywords for your business is tough. Short tail keywords are attractive, but are often too competitive, too high volume for most to fight for—so what is the alternative? 

Here’s where long-tail keywords come in. They provide an untapped opportunity to drive more relevant traffic to your website and connect with customers further along their purchase journey. 

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the essence of long-tail keywords, examining their importance, advantages, and—most importantly—how to incorporate them effortlessly into your content strategy. 

What is a Long-Tail Keyword?

Long-tail keywords in SEO are keyword phrases with more than three words that are extremely focused and specialized. These keywords are more targeted and reflect users’ exact search intentions than generic or broad-based keywords. They can also provide users with a more customized search experience.

The Power of Precision

When you are conducting keyword research, you can specifically target the wants and demands of your target market. You may draw readers who are more likely to convert by including these certain terms in your article. 

For instance, if you own a running shoe business, it will be very difficult to rank at the top for the keyword “best running shoes,” much less gain much traffic from your efforts. 

If, however, you decide to target the keyword “women’s running shoes for wide feet” instead, then you are more likely to draw highly interested customers who are looking for that exact product.

After all, when someone enters that very long, very specific keyword, they are demanding one thing: the kind of product that they just searched for on Google. 

By positioning yourself as someone who can answer their demand, you grab their attention, answer their search question, and ultimately bring in users who are more likely to buy your product. 

There is a value of precision that specific keywords provide. You may attract people who have a precise aim and are inclined to become clients by using such focused terms. 

Less Competition=Less Cost

Though these keywords often have lower search volumes since they are more specific than short tail or broad keywords, there often are fewer opponents for this from other websites. 

In that sense, you can also easily rank at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for these keywords, and attract more customers by focusing on untapped niches in a crowded online market.

So, this level of specificity of the keyword not only helps you reach a particular target audience but also distinguishes you from your competitors who may only optimize for broader keywords like “best running shoes.”

By catering to the needs and preferences of your audience, you also position your website as a trusted and reliable source for those looking for that particular product.

Providing people with exactly what they’re looking for will allow you to gain traffic almost effortlessly in a less competitive space, and drive conversions on your website. 

What is an Example of a Long-Tail Keyword?

To further comprehend the idea of what a long-tail keyword is, let’s look at an example. 

Consider a bakery that specializes in making desserts and sweets without gluten. 

Instead of optimizing your website for a short tail keyword like “dessert,” an extended keyword example you might consider is “gluten free chocolate chip cookies.”

This phrase is extremely particular, addressing the dietary needs of a smaller audience looking for a particular type of dessert. 

Aside from dietary needs, another way to find long-tail keywords is to look at the preferences of a potential customer. Things like flavor, color, or size can lead to a long-tail keyword. A customer might look for “mini chocolate frosted cupcakes,” which is another area you could target.

In short, almost every descriptor or variation of the products you offer is a long-tail keyword that you can potentially target.

Why Should You Integrate Long-Tail Keywords in Your Blog Posts?

Using long-tail keywords doesn’t just have to be on your website pages—it’s a great strategy for your monthly blogs, too. 

Integrating these in your blog posts can have a significant impact on both your entire content plan and SEO efforts.

Focused Traffic

As I said earlier—these keywords reveal users’ intentions when they look for certain knowledge, goods, or services. 

You can draw readers who are more interested in your content and offers by including long-tail keywords in your blog entries. 

These users are also often further along in the purchasing process, which increases their likelihood of becoming customers. 

You can direct targeted visitors to your blog and improve your chances of accomplishing your conversion goals by tailoring your content to their particular demands.

Enhanced Relevance

By focusing on writing for long-tail keywords, you can produce content that is incredibly relevant to the particular wants and needs of your target audience. You can satisfy their expectations by providing them with useful and informational blog entries by answering their specific questions. 

This can also position your blog post as a reliable source of information in SERPs—usually in the form of a featured snippet or rich result for that search query. 

Improved Search Rankings

High competition makes it difficult to rank highly in the search results for short, generalized keywords. 

On the other hand, long keywords frequently have a lower search volume and face fewer competitors. By targeting these, you drive better results for much less effort and time spent. This is especially helpful if you work in a cutthroat industry. 

You can quickly build your online presence, improve your exposure, and increase organic blog traffic by concentrating on long keyphrases.

When Should You Use Long-Tail Keywords in Your SEO?

To maximize their impact, long keyphrases must be used in the right situations within your SEO plan. 

Here are some pointers on when you should use these keywords.

Niche Targeting

Long-tail keywords might help you more successfully reach your target market if your company works in a particular niche or caters to a specialized demographic. Although they could draw in a larger audience, generic keywords do not guarantee that they will be interested in your particular services. 

You may boost your chances of bringing in highly relevant traffic by selecting keywords that represent the particular demands, preferences, or pain points of your audience. 

For instance, if you sell eco-friendly yoga mats, you may reach yoga practitioners who are concerned about the environment and are looking for sustainable products by optimizing your SEO using long keywords like “natural rubber non-toxic yoga mats.”

Entering Competitive Industries

In highly competitive industries, it might be difficult to rank effectively for generic keywords in highly competitive sectors. Long-tail keywords provide you the chance to stand out and draw in a smaller but more intent audience.

You might find several long-tail keywords once you start your competitors’ analysis. When you do, you’ll see that the difficulty of targeting these is low, since they have lower search volumes and fewer people actively trying to rank for them. 

This may be a golden opportunity for you—you can enter your industry through what is essentially a side door. Take gaming laptops, for example, where your website could enter by marketing your “thin and light budget gaming laptops.”

Focusing on a very specific part of the market can draw visitors who are actively looking for the exact goods, services, or information you provide. And, before you know it, you’ll have secured territory in a competitive arena.

Content Optimization

I said earlier that long-tail keywords are great for blog posts, and this plays into a larger strategy for content optimization.

Users frequently utilize longer and more precise keyword phrases while looking for information or solutions to their problems. You can give thorough and specific responses to these questions by including long keywords in your blog posts, articles, and FAQ sections. 

Providing useful material not only enhances user experience but also helps address any content gaps your posts or pages may have. They can help you establish authority in your field and draw in people looking for in-depth information by including them in your content optimization plan.

How do I Search for long-tail Keywords?

Using tools like SE Ranking and Semrush are pretty useful for when it comes to finding potential keywords, but here are a few free ways to do your keyword research:

1. Google Suggestions: A great place to start as we know these are phrases that people are searching for.
2. Google’s Related Searches: Always check the bottom of the SERPs for more suggestions linked to your keywords.
3. Google Search Console: The performance report will show you the long-tail queries search queries that drove people to see or click on your pages. If you don’t have pages that are optimized for the queries you’re showing up for the most, consider making one to improve conversion and user satisfaction.
4. Q&A Sites: Since these forums contain plenty of potential pain points and queries from users, it’s a great source for your blog topics, FAQ section, and more.

Key Takeaway

Long-tail keywords are a potent optimization technique that increases conversion rates and drives focused visitors. You attract interested visitors who are more inclined to take action by concentrating on precise, pertinent keywords. These keywords provide you with a huge competitive advantage simply because of how targeted and exact they are. 

Maximize your SEO potential now with long-tail keywords. Take charge of your website’s visibility, attract highly engaged visitors, and drive conversions like never before.

The post Long-Tail Keywords: Game-Changers for Your Website Traffic and Rankings appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

January 25, 2023, the day that Yandex—Russia’s search engine—was hacked. 

Its complete source code was leaked online. And, it may not be the first time we’ve seen hacking happen in this industry, but it is one of the most intriguing, groundbreaking events in years.

But Yandex isn’t Google, so why should we care? Here’s why we do: these two search engines are very similar in how they process technical elements of a website, and this leak just showed us the 1,922 ranking factors Yandex uses in its algorithm. 

Simply put, this information is something that we can use to our advantage to get more traffic from Google.

Yandex vs Google

As I said, a lot of these ranking factors are possibly quite similar to the signals that Google uses for search.

Yandex’s algorithm shows a RankBrain analog: MatrixNext. It also seems that they are using PageRank (almost the same way as Google does), and a lot of their text algorithms are the same. Interestingly, there are also a lot of ex-Googlers working in Yandex. 

So, reviewing these 1,922 ranking factors, which come from the “Kernel” archive (and are only just one of the many sets of factors in the Yandex codebase) is a must. Understanding how they play into search rankings and traffic will provide some very useful insights into how search engines like Google work. No doubt, this new trove of information will greatly influence the SEO industry in the months to come. 

That said, Yandex isn’t Google. The chances of Google having the exact same list of ranking factors is low — and Google may not even give that signal the same amount of weight that Yandex does. 

Still, it’s information that potentially will be useful for driving traffic, so make sure to take a look at them here (before it’s scrubbed from the internet forever).

An early analysis of ranking factors

Many of their ranking factors are as expected. These include:

• Many link-related factors (e.g., age, relevancy, etc.).
• Content relevance, age, and freshness.
• Host reliability
• End-user behavior signals.
• Clicks.

Some sites also get preference (such as Wikipedia). FI_VISITS_FROM_WIKI even shows that sites that are referenced by Wikipedia get plus points. 

These are all things that we already know.

But something interesting: there were several factors that I and other SEOs found unusual, such as PageRank being the 17th highest weighted factor in Yandex, and the 19th highest weighted factor being query-document relevance (in other words, how close they match thematically). There’s also “spam karma” for dubious sites,  based on Whois information. So sites used for spam and link farming and such are likely to take a hit.

Other interesting factors are the average domain ranking across queries, percent of organic traffic, and the number of unique visitors.

You can also use this Yandex Search Ranking Factor Explorer, created by Rob Ousbey, to search through the various ranking factors.

The possible negative ranking factors:

Here’s my thoughts on Yandex’s factors that I found interesting: 

FI_ADV — this factor means having tons of adverts scattered around your page and buying PPC can negatively affect rankings. 

FI_DATER_AGE — this one evaluates content age, and whether your article is more than 10 years old, or if there’s no determinable date. Date metadata is important, so if it’s missing from your content, it can lower your rankings. 

FI_COMM_LINKS_SEO_HOSTS — this can be a negative factor if you have too much commercial anchor text, particularly if the proportion of such links goes above 50%. Pay attention to anchor text distribution. I’ve written a guide on how to effectively use anchor texts if you need some help on this. 

FI_RANK_ARTROZ — outdated, poorly written text will bring your rankings down. Go through your site and give your content a refresh. FI_WORD_COUNT also shows that the number of words matter, so avoid having low-content pages.

FI_URL_HAS_NO_DIGITS, FI_NUM_SLASHES, FI_FULL_URL_FRACTION — urls shouldn’t have digits, too many slashes (too much hierarchy), and of course contain your targeted keyword.

FI_NUM_LINKS_FROM_MP — always interlink your main pages (such as your homepage or landing pages) to any other important content you want to rank. Otherwise, it can hurt your content.

FI_HOPS — this factor shows us that the longer it takes to get to an important page, the less likely it will rank. So, reduce the crawl depth for any pages that matter to you. No important pages should be more than a few clicks away from your homepage. I recommend keeping it to two clicks, at most. 

FI_IS_UNREACHABLE — likewise, avoid making any important page an orphan page. If it’s unreachable from your homepage, it’s as good as dead in the eyes of the search engine.

The possible positive ranking factors:

FI_IS_COM— .com domains get a boost in rankings.

FI_YABAR_HOST_VISITORS — the more traffic you get, the more ranking power your site has. The strategy of targeting smaller, easier keywords first to build up an audience before targeting harder keywords can help you build traffic.

FI_BEAST_HOST_MEAN_POS — the average position of the host for keywords affects your overall ranking. This factor and the previous one clearly show that being smart with your keyword and content planning matters. If you need help with that, check out these 5 ways to build a solid SEO strategy.

FI_YABAR_HOST_SEARCH_TRAFFIC — this might look bad but shows that having other traffic sources (such as social media, direct search, and PPC) is good for your site. Yandex uses this to determine if a real site is being run, not just some spammy SEO project.

This one includes a whole host of CTR-related factors. 

It’s clear that having searchable and interesting titles that drive users to check your content out is something that positively affects your rankings.

Google is rewarding sites that help end a user’s search journey (as we know from the latest mobile search updates and even the Helpful Content update). Do what you can to answer the query early on in your article. The factor “FI_VISITORS_RETURN_MONTH_SHARE“ also shows that it helps to encourage users to return to your site for more information on the topics they’re interested in. Email marketing is a handy tool here.

FI_GOOD_RATIO and FI_MANY_BAD — the percentage of “good” and “bad” backlinks on your site. Getting your backlinks from high-quality websites with traffic is important for your rankings. The factor FI_LINK_AGE also shows that adding a link-building strategy to your SEO as early as possible can help with your rankings.

FI_SOCIAL_URL_IS_VERIFIED — that little blue check has actual benefits now. Links from verified accounts have more weight.

Key Takeaway

Yandex and Google, being so similar to each other in theory, means that this data leak is something we must pay attention to. 

Several of these factors may already be common knowledge amongst SEOs, but having them confirmed by another search engine enforces how important they are for your strategy.

These initial findings, and understanding what it might mean for your website, can help you identify what to improve, what to scrap, and what to focus on when it comes to your SEO strategy. 

The post Yandex Hack: How it Affects SEO appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

There exists an AI bot that is used by a number of SEO professionals to build whole websites that create massive amounts of search traffic because of its capability. If I told you that you can use this software right now for free, how would you feel?

Well, you’re in luck.

Because it is indeed free to use. And you can, in fact, rank first page for a ton of keywords by piggybacking on its capabilities.

Say hello to ChatGPT – an artificial intelligence chatbot that could understand and do the different prompts and requests you give to it.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. It is trained to answer questions or perform certain tasks that users give to it in a surprisingly human-like way. Some of the tasks it can efficiently do are writing essays, creating solutions for math problems, and even writing scripts for plays or video production.

But all those possibilities are backed with limitations – so know that this artificial intelligence is limited to the data it was trained on. As of writing this article, the latest data sets that were fed to the AI date back to 2021. Therefore it cannot answer questions or do prompts that are post-2021.

So if you’re thinking about just using ChatGPT rather than Google for your questions and research, you may find yourself still having to verify the data in Google’s search database.

How could ChatGPT affect SEO?

If you’re considering using ChatGPT to replace your entire content writing team, you will be like a hundred percent of all SEO specialists who have come upon ChatGPT for the first time.

UNTIL you read my article about the predictions on AI content and how it would negatively impact your rankings long-term.

It is important for us to know that tools like ChatGPT are not designed to replace human professionals, but rather to assist and help us improve our work.

As more and more SEO professionals began to see the benefits of using ChatGPT, it has been severely abused. However, as with all things that are automated and abused by unethical SEO practitioners, Google would soon catch up and outrun these strategies and tactics. It is only a matter of time before articles published with the body of the content coming solely from AI output will be given a significant drop in rankings.

And here are some of the SEO-related tasks I think where ChatGPT could be useful:

• Idea generation – it can be a helpful tool in the creative writing process by suggesting ideas or helping writers generate new content about a certain topic quickly and efficiently.
• Language translation – it can be a big help in translating your content from one language to another, making it easier for both search engines and people who speak different languages to understand your website.
• Content optimization – it can create whole short write-ups for a website’s SEO content (we recommend that you still edit at least 60 – 80% of the final publication) such as meta descriptions and title tags.

 As magical as all this sounds to be, I reiterate that ChatGPT is NOT a replacement for human creativity and expertise. While it can generate ideas for content that is coherent, it may not be able to produce content that is at the level of a person who has been perfecting the skill of writing for a long time. 

What is the future of ChatGPT and SEO in the future?

In my honest estimates, ChatGPT is being used thoroughly by SEO specialists and savvy business owners around the world to replace mediocre content writers, researchers, and perhaps even SEO specialists.

With this in mind, I do believe that ChatGPT will keep on updating its database to reflect current data sets, perhaps even do it in real-time. If that does happen, I believe that systems and processes would be built by smart business owners around it so that the requirement for manpower would be less across industries.

Software and AI are a lot more predictable, faithful, and reliable compared to human beings. This is the sad reality of things, especially today when a lot of younger professionals hop from job to job without consideration for the people and work they would be leaving behind.

Overall, it is likely that ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence-trained software will continue to play a role in the world of SEO, but not in the role of a content writer but more of a tool that could help gather data in research and analysis.

Key Takeaway

ChatGPT is NOT and WILL NEVER be a threat to highly skilled and knowledgeable professionals and practitioners in digital marketing, specifically the SEO industry. Tools like these can help us in doing tedious work easier and more efficiently, however, the big picture strategy should always be directed by someone who is a master in the profession.

The post Is this AI Bot going to Beat Google or Make you Rank #1? appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

You are stuck in a maze and you’ve tried every possible turn but there is no way out.

This is what our brains feel like sometimes and if you haven’t tried banging your head against the keyboard out of frustration with your content strategy, you have no business reading this.

Yes, even I have those days when getting the mix of SEO and the client’s technical writing desires in your content strategy seems like an unsolvable puzzle.

So here are 5 things to keep close when planning your content strategy so you don’t ever have to damage your keyboard again. You will rank and you will also provide the best possible content to your client and your readers – win, win and win.

The Importance of a Strong SEO Content Strategy

Before anything else, it’s important to acknowledge that quality content is one of the defining components of an SEO strategy. Great content paired with SEO efforts has always been the backbone of any successful campaign. Regardless of other standard SEO practices- if your content isn’t good enough for Google, then your website isn’t good enough to rank.

Ways of Setting Up An Effective SEO Content Strategy

Do Keyword Research Above All Else

Keyword research is like the egg to your omelet- all your ingredients won’t come together without it. Never start building your SEO content strategy without gathering your keywords first. Your keywords will be the foundation of any type of content that you’ll be publishing to your web pages. It’s important to keep in mind these guidelines when doing your keyword research:

• Use keywords that acknowledge your target audience
• Ensure keyword relevancy to your website
• Understand the search intent of each keyword in the list
• Only consider keywords that have good monthly search volume

Learn more about the latest keyword research practices!

Identify Website SEO Content Opportunities

It’s a fairly general SEO practice to commit all your content publications as blogs for your website. While this particular SEO content strategy proves to still be very effective in attracting website traffic- wouldn’t it be ideal if you could attract THAT traffic straight to pages that have higher possibilities to convert?

Imagine an e-commerce site with a web page that purely displays product listings as its content.

By including a frequently asked questions (FAQ) type of information, we allow that page to target SEO-friendly keywords increasing the chances for it to have a strong online presence.

This is an example of an “SEO content opportunity” on your website. Instead of simply publishing blog articles, you can direct your writing efforts to pages where there’s an opportunity to target a keyword.

You can mainly identify these SEO content opportunities by analyzing search results and identifying what type of pages are ranking. For example- when searching for the term electric scooter, the search result returns product listings. Therefore, there’s a higher chance of ranking a page that mainly displays products. Which makes it a good target for additional content.

Keep Your Content Human

Build your content for users.

The rising popularity of AI-written content allowed web pages to rank high within search results. This led to unnaturally written articles being presented to users. As a result, Google continues to release algorithm updates that punish these pages’ rankings.

It is very important to note in your SEO content strategy how the articles should be written. Always bear in mind to present information in a way that’s digestible and easily understood by readers. Not only will this help keep Google’s eyes away from you, but it will also increase user retention.

Acknowledge Your Competitor’s Content Strategy

In any card game, there’s a benefit to knowing what hand are your opponents playing. The same concept applies when building your SEO Content Strategy. Your competitors have done the work, so why not learn from them?

Noting your competition’s implementation of content in web pages, topics they publish in their blogs, and how they’re structuring their content can give you an idea of how can you improve your own content strategy.

The tool that I mainly use to gauge my competition is SE Ranking’s competitive research tool.

This allows me to see what organic keywords are they using on their website, in addition to manually browsing through their content.

Optimize As Much As Needed

Let’s assume that you’ve already started publishing your content- the only way to maintain and improve its quality is to perform regular on-page SEO optimizations. Not only can it serve as the solution to ranking changes, but it also allows you to be flexible in the content you have on your website.

Here are some of the things that you should consider when performing on-page SEO optimizations:

• Maintain the quality of the SEO factors being implemented in your pages by ensuring proper keyword usage in SEO factors such as title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and the like.
  
• Look for opportunities to improve/update existing content- such as enhancing keyword usage and content comprehension.
• Point out and correct any existing UI/UX issues to improve the visitor experience
• Ensure proper indexing practices such as appropriate robots and sitemap implementations that guarantee website visibility.

Key Takeaway

There are honestly a lot of ways that you can approach your website’s content. But instead of overloading yourself with information, learning these 5 ways of building a solid SEO content strategy can allow you to focus on the basics. Only then can you start applying other SEO practices that can help you formulate a successful SEO campaign.

If you want to learn more about content marketing, check out our guide on how to write your content!

The post The 5 Key Elements for Successful SEO Content Strategy appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

As the holiday season is just around the corner, you should be prepared for all the opportunities it comes with. This time of the year is when people will be taking a break from their usual 9 to 5 jobs and will be on vacation.

This means that they will have more time to spend on the internet, the question now is – are you going to be visible to them?

In this article, you will find out key things you should be focusing on to improve your online visibility this upcoming holiday season!

Study Last Year’s Trends

In preparation for the upcoming holiday, you should be looking at the trends and keywords that performed well for you and your website last year. Through this, you can analyze if you are sticking with the old strategies and keywords from last year or if you are going to research and find new ones that could further improve the quality of your SEO for this year’s holiday season.

The bottom line here is that the keywords you select should drive a fair to a high amount of traffic while still being relevant to your brand.

As an example, here are the SEO trends for 2021:

• Optimize for Core Web Vitals and Page Experience
• Focusing on User and Search Intent
• Verify Website on Google Search Console
• Utilize AMP
• Apply Schema Markups

You can check out this article we wrote about the SEO trends of 2021.

Research about Seasonal Keywords

One of the most critical things about SEO is keywords, that’s why trying to rank for the seasonal keywords can be a big boost for your website for the upcoming holiday season.

For example, this Christmas season brings in keywords such as:

• Christmas decorations
• Christmas foods
• best Christmas gifts
• top Christmas destinations

Another holiday is the upcoming New Year which brings another set of keywords:

• New Year firework show
• New Year countdown party
• best foods for New Year

In short, you will have a hard time being visible in the search results if your brand or website does not include seasonal keywords on your product pages, landing pages, blogs, or articles. That’s why you should always do your keyword research to find out the keywords that are most used by searchers and consumers during the holiday season.

Here are some tools you could use for your seasonal keyword research:

• SERanking
• SEMRush
• Google Keyword Planner
• Google Suggest

Create Content for the Holiday Season

Content is king!

Content that attracts and engages audiences can definitely help boost your website traffic during the holidays, so use creative content as leverage during this time of the year. Write how your brand can make this holiday celebration more special, you could provide gift ideas, or even share celebration stories with your readers!

You can also create a specific landing page on your website and add some design or flare that will make them feel more the essence of the celebration. This makes your website look festive and cheerful even for a short period of time but can make a lifetime impression on your audiences.

Here’s a checklist for a good content strategy:

• Always have a 1-3% keyword density for your focused keyword/keyphrase
• Engage with your target audience by writing long-form holiday content
• Avoid keyword stuffing; try using related phrases and keywords and spread them throughout your content.
• Create visually appealing content, and add videos, images, infographics, or even GIFs!

Optimize Your Website’s ‘Basic SEO’

In your goal to create content and be visible during the holiday season, you might overlook the basic SEO of your website. Here are the technical things you should be checking to ensure your website has a good SEO foundation:

• Review and resolve pages with error ‘400’ for the deleted or broken pages
• Fix the 301 redirects for broken links and lost landing pages
• Optimize your page speed – both desktop and mobile
• Check your server if it can handle high-load traffic
• Clear and Visible Call To Action (CTA)

There are many tools out there, but one of the most reliable tools that I personally use in tracking a website’s SEO is Screaming Frog.

Key Takeaway

As the holiday season is just around the corner, it is never too late to optimize your website to be visible during this time of the year. Make use of these tips and strategies not just for this season but also to help jumpstart your website’s SEO for the new year!

The post 4 SEO Tips and Strategies for the 2022 Holidays appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

What to Pitch In Backlink Outreach?

If you have NEVER gotten replies for the hundreds or thousands of emails you have sent to webmasters, this guide is for you. Here is how we build backlinks effectively.

If you’re trying to jumpstart your SEO and looking for ways to do it, link building is surely something that has crossed your mind. The thing about it, though, is it’s not as easy as you want it to be. 

Link building is an SEO strategy to get other websites to link to your page. And it’s one of the most popular strategies out there because it works. Getting quality backlinks from authoritative websites is a significant factor if you want to rank competitively it sends positive authority signals to Google.

Getting backlinks is not something you can satisfyingly master the first time around. This is because most people can’t even get past one of the early, yet most important, stages of link building  – webmaster outreach. 

How do you do Backlink Outreach?

I previously provided a guide on how to start an outreach campaign. But, when it comes to link building, it’s crucial to have something to offer to the webmasters you’re reaching out to. Beyond a well-written email, you have to convince them why they should be linking to your page.

It’s also important to note that webmasters probably get a bunch of outreach emails every single day. This is why you should have something new and unique to bring to the table. At the end of the day, the question you should be asking yourself before you hit the send button to your outreach emails is: How can I add more value to this website?

If you’re struggling to figure out an answer to this question, you’ve come to the right place! Here are some content ideas that can bring a significant contribution to a webmaster’s site:

1. Share Your Expert Roundups

   Expert roundups are commonly done to provide a comprehensive article to readers on a certain topic by gathering information from various sources. 

   There are usually two ways to do it. The first is to reach out to industry experts to share their insights, opinions, and/or experiences about or relating to your chosen topic. And the second is to do your own research and dig up the most valuable information you can find on the internet. Click here for a definitive guide to writing roundups like this. 

   This link building strategy makes your job a bit easier because you’re hitting two birds with one stone – you’re creating content for your website and prospecting webmasters to reach out to at the same time. 

   Two things you have to keep in mind when finding sources for your roundups: they have to be credible and active. This way, you’re giving reliable information to your readers. 

   Here’s a roundup article I wrote way back about SEO horror stories.

   

   In the article, I reached out to other SEO professionals to know about their worst SEO experiences. Getting ten answers already gave me ten websites to link to and, potentially, ten backlinks as well.

   Taking this route also allows you to build new or strengthen existing partnerships with people in the industry. This makes link building opportunities continuously open for you.

2. Offer Your Media Content

   One of the things that make a blog post engaging is good media content. Reading informational articles can be a bit intimidating for many people. Topics like SEO can be too technical which makes it hard to follow for beginners.

   What I usually do to make complicated information digestible is to make a visual representation of my discussion. Here’s an example of how I explained technical SEO with the use of an infographic. 

   Infographics are a reliable way to break down complex points into easy-to-follow images. It works best if you’re trying to discuss charts, statistics, flows, timelines, and other quantitative information.

   Here’s an infographic my team and I made to show the progression of Google’s algorithm updates throughout the years.

   

   When media content such as infographic serves a useful purpose to its readers, then it’s definitely worth sharing with webmasters. All you have to do is look for articles talking about the same or related topic; in this case, I’d look for those explaining or reviewing Google algorithm updates. Offer your existing media content to be added to their article to make their content more engaging. 

   Note that you can do this to any type of media. If you have a Youtube channel and have been posting good informational videos, you can also offer them to be used by webmasters. Getting a backlink and Youtube views at the same time is a win-win situation you should take, after all.

3. Produce Reaction or Commentary Articles

   Do you know that more than 6 million blogs are being published daily? This means that millions of new content are being put out there for the world to see. You’re not gonna be able to read every single one of them, but some are gonna cause a buzz.

   For example, SEO is driven by content. So, there are countless SEO articles that I come across on a daily basis. Some of my favorite SEO-related content to read are experiments and case studies. I enjoy seeing how other SEO professionals figure out and refine strategies to make their websites rank better. 

   Now, what can you do with these types of content? You can either agree, disagree, or simply put their findings into practice to see if they work and react to them.

   I did this to one of the biggest marketing experts when I was writing about a guide to guest posting. Here’s a snippet:

   

   Neil Patel often has some hot takes on digital marketing strategies and they make sense. In my article, I shared and agreed with Neil’s views on guest posting because, like him, I also have my fair share of successful guest posting experiences. It worked for him and so I and so it’s worth sharing with you, my reader, as well. 

4. Make a Resource Article

   It’s always important to create informational content on your website and this is mostly true for SEO. If you’re producing content that is useful to your readers, you can gain valuable traffic to your website and make your expertise clearer to Google.

   With unique and insightful content, it will be easier for webmasters to link to your site because it will add value to theirs too. 

   Take this blog I wrote about fixing errors in Google Search Console’s Coverage tab as an example.

   

   Google Search Console (GSC) is an essential tool in making sure that your website is being indexed properly by Google. It works by showing indexing errors and warning that certain pages are flagged for so you can fix them.

   There are different errors that cause a page to not be indexed by Google and some of these are technical, so I explained the common GSC errors one by one and shared how to fix them. 

   This is the type of content beginners are looking for when they start dealing with SEO. At the same time, this is the type of content that can act as supplemental information for other webmasters when they write about related topics. 

   This is what Semrush did for their article on conducting an SEO audit.

   When discussing how to find URLs excluded in Google’s indexing, they referred their readers to my blog to understand and learn about addressing problems in indexing.  

   If you’ve written blogs that are informational in nature, make sure that they’re accurate and accessible, then you can share them with webmasters to make their content richer.

Key Takeaway

Acquiring backlinks is not an easy job, especially if you want to get them from high-quality and authoritative websites. You might think that your chances for a quality backlink are low, especially if you’re just starting out. 

However, I would argue that what you’re pitching to webmasters is what makes or breaks an outreach campaign. From roundups to resource articles, providing solid content for webmasters to work with is a great start in backlink outreach. 

Do you have more backlink outreach ideas to share? Comment down below and share your experiences with them!

The post Pitching in Backlink Outreach: The Best Ideas to Pitch To Webmasters appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

You want to rank on the #1 spot in Google. I get it. Everyone wants that spot but how come you’ve never been able to get your keywords there consistently?

I wrote this guide for you to get some of your keywords there in 30 days or less.

Just like a car needs regular tune-ups to keep it running smoothly, your website needs periodic SEO maintenance to help it maintain a high ranking.

Here are some routine tasks that me and my team in SEO Hacker do for our client’s website upkeep.

Publish fresh or update old content regularly

One crucial element to maintaining your website rankings is your content. Without content, search engines can’t take into account that your website is authoritative and trustworthy.

With that said, do you consistently create original and satisfying content? Have you also backtracked some of your old content and looked to see if there are articles that needs updating?

With Google’s recent helpful content update, it’s important to consider how you create content.

Below are some guide questions to help you re-evaluate previously published content and how you create new content:

• Does your content demonstrate your expertise and depth of knowledge from using a product or service?
• Does your content primarily summarize what others have to say without adding much value of your own?
• What impression will your content leave on a reader? Will they learn something new or experience something satisfying?
• Do you create valuable content while keeping Google’s guidelines and core algorithm updates in mind?
• Does your content promise to answer a question without a clear, confirmed answer yet, or one that hasn’t been confirmed?
• Does your visual content follow Google’s image SEO best practices?
• Is your content and web design and interface mobile-friendly?
• Is your content likely to receive backlinks because of its resourcefulness and value?

These questions will help you plan and create substantial content for your website that’s aligned with your audience and Google’s recommendations.

Check your internal and external links periodically

Did you know that backlinks help to establish the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) of your website? Links are an active and powerful ranking signal to this day.

When other websites cite your website or web page via links, it shows Google that you’re authoritative and trustworthy.

To maintain your website’s rankings, you will need to check your internal and external links periodically. Internal links or interlinks are hyperlinks that point from a page in your site to another page on your site.

Internal links help users navigate your site and find the content they are searching for.

What internal links do for SEO is that it helps search engines find and understand the value, relevance, and relationship between your web pages.

On the other hand, external links or outbound links are hyperlinks that point from your website to an article on a third-party website. Every time you link to another website altogether, it is an external link.

I’m guessing your next question here is, does creating outbound links matter in SEO?

Some SEO specialists agree it matters in SEO, while some don’t. In any case, how I decide is if it helps the reader know more about the topic or the content that I wrote, I will link out for sure. Every external link included in our content is meant to cite relevant and authoritative sources.

Consequently, these links let my readers learn more about the topic deeply. In addition, it also gives me the opportunity to build some expertise and authority to the content I wrote as well.

An experiment done by Reboot Online showed how external links can help improve your website’s ranking. Their study concludes that “outgoing relevant links to authoritative sites are considered in the algorithms and do have a positive impact on rankings.” To learn more about their updated study in-depth, you can read about it here.

What this study and my personal experience concludes is that linking to sites with good contextual authority has a positive impact on your content’s rankings when done correctly. It helps send trust signals to Google.

But why do you need to occasionally check your hyperlinks?

Remember, we create content for people. If someone clicks on a link and receives an error message, they are more likely to leave the site. Links that no longer work or are inaccessible are called broken links. While broken links do not directly affect your website’s rankings, inaccessible links directly affect user experience – which I could argue is a ranking factor.

Optimize your titles, meta descriptions, and alt text for images

You shouldn’t neglect the small details like titles and meta descriptions that contribute to your website’s organic traffic and ranking. Titles and meta descriptions play a major role in making your website visible in the search results.

These elements aren’t considered on-page ranking factors per se, but what they do is they help searchers see and understand what your website or your webpage is about straight from the search results page.

A lot of people click on titles and meta descriptions on search engine results pages (SERP) that contain relevant summaries. When searchers click on your website’s title and meta description related to their query, your click-through rate (CTR) increases.

On the other hand, adding alternative text (alt-text) to your images plays a role in making your websites rank because of its importance on Google Image Search. If an image doesn’t load or is inaccessible to a web browser, an alternative text provides a helpful description of the image to users.

In essence, adding alternative text to images is like hitting two birds with one stone: it helps searchers who may have images or scripts turned off in their web browser understand what your image is about. Similarly, it helps Google bots crawl and index your website better.

So, if you haven’t optimized your website’s titles, meta descriptions, or your images’ alt-texts yet, now’s the time to do so. If you don’t know how to optimize your meta description, here’s a helpful post where we share some useful tips on how to do it.

Key Takeaway

In SEO, nothing is sacred. This is why SEO is never a one-time fix. Rankings in search results aren’t permanent. Search engines like Google constantly update their algorithms. Plus the fact that your competitors can catch up and get ahead if they employ better SEO strategies. Whatever tactic or strategy you have in place now for your website to rank may not work tomorrow.

This is why SEO maintenance is important. By regularly performing these and other web maintenance tasks, you can help your website earn high rankings in search results and keep it there.

Did you find this article helpful? Let me know in the comments below.

The post Beginner’s Guide to Optimizing Websites for Better Rankings appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

There are so many copies out there that are meant to rank well in the search results but then it flops. Ever had that experience with your team? Perhaps this article can tell you exactly where you failed.

As many consumers nowadays are searching on the web whenever they need something. SEO copywriting is very critical for you and your business, it helps you make sure that your website and content will be seen by the target market.

What is SEO copywriting?

Let us first define what is SEO and copywriting.

SEO is the process of improving your website’s ranking in the search results, through practices that are based on data and guidelines. On the other hand, copywriting is the craft of creating persuasive messages that will inspire people to take action.

Now, what is SEO copywriting?

SEO copywriting is the combination of both, writing persuasive content that is not only engaging to your readers but also recognizable by search engines as relevant and value-giving when it gets crawled by it.

In simpler terms, SEO is the science, and copywriting is the art. Having a perfect balance of both ‘the science’ and ‘the art’ can definitely make you outrank your competition in the search results.

How beneficial can SEO copywriting be?

A great SEO strategy involves well-written and searchable content. From your landing pages, blog posts, or even your ‘thank you’ pages, all those pages need copywriting that is on point. This is to ensure that your website and its content will be visible to users browsing the search engine results page (SERPs.)

By utilizing SEO copywriting, you can:

• Increase your website traffic
• Create more leads
• Build your authority in your industry or niche.

So here’s the thing – you may be left in the dark with the wrong things your team might be doing when it comes to SEO copywriting, right? No problem – I’ve done the work and identified the most common problems and mistakes you could commit to prepare you to have the best SEO copywriting practices for 2023:

• Not Identifying your Target Audience
• Disregarding Keyword Research
• Failure in Organizing your Ideas
• Forgetting to Optimize your Content for SEO
• Ending with an Uncompelling Message

Now that I got that out of the way, I’ll clarify what these really mean for you on the points below as you read on:

Not Identifying your Target Audience

Before anything else, you need to identify who you are writing your content for. Who are they? What matters to them? What are they looking for? How can you help them?

To help you answer these questions, try putting yourself in their shoes and think like how they think to find out their pain points. It shouldn’t be hard for you since it is the market you desire to serve. Through this, you could create the perfect persona that will be your guide for the rest of your SEO copywriting efforts.

Using this persona you created as a guide, generate topic ideas to what questions you think that persona would have. Shortlist the ideas and try categorizing them from the topics that you have a lot to say about down to the topic that you need to do a ton of research on. From there, you can choose the topic that speaks to you most and what you think you can give out the most value.

Disregarding Keyword Research

In order for you to execute SEO copywriting effectively, you certainly need to be smart on your target keywords. These keywords will be a core part of your whole SEO strategy; as you’ll be integrating them all throughout your content.

But also know that it’s not about putting multiple keywords inside the body of your content, as this can hurt your reputation/ranking in Google’s eyes. This method is known as keyword stuffing and it is already considered a malpractice in the SEO industry. Some experts even go so far as to say that it is a strategy for black hat SEO.

Going back to our first point, put yourself in your target market’s shoes and think from their perspective. And through that, you now have to narrow down the list of keywords you want to focus on. Now you have to check if those keywords have enough users searching for them.

There are a lot of tools that can help you with this process, such as SE Ranking’s Keyword Research Tool. SE Ranking can tell you how much monthly search volume a certain keyword has. This helps a ton in allowing you to lock in the keywords you will center your SEO copywriting efforts around.

There are four types of search intent in SEO:

• Informational – to get information (who, what, when, where, why, and how)
• Transactional – to purchase a product/service (e-commerce)
• Commercial – to buy in the near future (reviews/comparisons)
• Navigational – to go to a specific website (brand names)

Tip: The best way to know the ‘search intent’ of a keyword is to search it on Google and see what type of content or suggestions shows on the search results page.

As an SEO copywriter, your main goal is to give solutions or answers to users searching on the web, that’s why your content should be suited to the intent of your keywords. So that whenever users search for it, you will be seen as the most value-giving website and crush the rankings in the search engine results page (SERPs.)

Failure in Organizing your Ideas

After gathering the needed information about your target audience and keywords, it is now time to write. In SEO copywriting, the flow of your content is very important. Bored readers are not good for you. Be clear, concise, and straight to the point. Creating an outline can really help you construct the structure of your content.

Here’s an example of how you can outline your idea:

• Title (Headers)
• Intro Paragraph
  • Bulleted list with explanation 1
  • Bulleted list with explanation 2
  • Bulleted list with explanation 3
• Paragraph with Supplementary Information
• Summary and Closing Paragraph

This makes it so much easier to construct the foundation of all the topic ideas you gathered on one page. Always remember that you’re writing for people first. Optimizing it for search results can come later. Your main goal is to answer all the questions you have come up with in the rough draft thoroughly.

Then polish your draft. This part is where you improve the readability and fix all the errors in your copy.

Here’s a checklist of things to do while polishing your rough draft:

• Check for grammatical errors
• Add images (supplementary visual aids)
• Break up long paragraphs
• Assign headings for each section (H2 and H3)
• Utilize bullet points or lists wherever necessary to make it easier for your readers if possible
• Lastly, try reading it out loud (this is to know if it sounds as good as it is written.)

Forgetting to Optimize your Content for SEO

As most copywriters write just for readership, the searchability aspect of their content tends to be forgotten. No matter how valuable and well-written your content is if it is not visible to users when they search on Google, then it is ultimately going to be an opportunity lost and consequently, we can consider it a wasted effort.

In optimizing your content, you now transition from writing for people to putting in what matters for search engines too. This is the time when you make use of all of the data you gathered from your keyword research.

Let’s start with metadata such as Title Tag and Meta Descriptions as these will be the first two things that search engines will see when they crawl your website.

Here are some tips for writing your title tags and meta descriptions:

• Title tags:
  • Include your keyword at the beginning of the title tag
  • Place your brand name (towards the end)
  • Keep it within the limit of 65 characters
  • Make sure it is a satisfiable summary of your content – much like how a book’s title or subtitle tries to capture the essence of the book

You can check out how we did the title tag for one of our clients, Dynamiqes for their keyword ‘SAP Business One’ here.

• Meta Descriptions:
  • What will the reader get out of your page?
  • Keep it within the limit of 155 characters
  • Support the title tag’s promise to the reader
  • End it with a call-to-action (click here, learn more, etc.)

SEO-optimized content contains a balanced number of keywords all throughout its headings and body. A good rule of thumb is to have a keyword density of at least 1%. Make sure that you have at least one keyword placement in the introduction, H2 heading tag, and in the body of the content.

Tip: Remember not to overdo it as this can result in ‘keyword stuffing’ that could affect your site’s ranking.

Look for variations or synonyms of your keyword as this can help with your article’s readability, depth, and SEO. Try checking out the ‘People Also Ask’ and ‘Related searches’ features from Google as this shows how people really search on the web. You can indirectly use these questions as a guide in looking for the variations of your main keywords.

And lastly, take advantage of linking strategies. Many copywriters disregard link building. But this, in fact, is a critical part of your overall SEO strategy.

This will help boost your website’s authority when you link to other websites as sources or even to your own website as you install relevant internal links. Also note that you should be building links only from reliable and credible sources, as you don’t want your website to be linked from low authority or low trust, questionable domains.

Ending with an Uncompelling Message

SEO copywriting all goes down to achieving that one goal, whether it may be selling your product and service, or simply convincing readers to subscribe to your email list. Your writing must be persuasive in order for you to achieve that goal – and that’s why you should always end each copy very strongly coupled with a “call-to-action.”

People shy away from hard selling techniques, such as absurd claims and overpromises, you do not want to sound like a salesman who’s blasting a product or service at your audience’s faces right?

But, how can I sound so persuasive without being pushy?

Think, act and sound like a consultant. People don’t like the feeling of being sold to but they love the feeling of someone assisting them in answering their life’s pressing questions.

From the introduction of your copy all the way to the call-to-action, you should be considering your reader’s point of view. Assure them that you understand their pain points and that you can help them in making those concerns go away.

Let me give you an example.

You just finished writing your article and you would want them to subscribe to your email list. Instead of bombarding them with a “SIGN UP NOW!” button, explain to them how your article has helped them and how your future articles can further help them improve their lives.

Key Takeaway

I hope that by pointing out these common SEO copywriting mistakes you are able to avoid committing them in your next article. It’s not difficult to be very good at SEO copywriting but it takes a lot of intentionality and practice.

The post SEO Copywriting 2023: 5 Common Mistakes and Tips to Avoid Them appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

In the SEO industry, it is common for businesses who are looking to acquire SEO services to request an audit of their website. I know from experience that SEO audits can make or break the deal. It shows potential partners the agency or freelancer’s level of competency and expertise. It also allows potential partners to set expectations and KPIs.

As the CEO of SEO Hacker and the lead business developer of the company, I have done and sent hundreds of SEO audits to businesses. In this blog post, I’m willing to share some of my best kept secrets that may seem simple at first but have allowed me to close more deals for our team.

Note: This post was originally published on May 13, 2021, and was updated on May 31, 2022 to include new tips and data.

Customize your reports

There are a lot of lead generation tools for SEO that offer automated SEO audits for leads and we at SEO Hacker even use them ourselves.

I would say that those are only part of the process.

What matters more is the audit that you do when you are already in talks with your partners or during your sales pitch.

Important: SEO audits should be tailored to the client. There is no one-size-fits-all SEO audit because every website and business is unique. When tailoring an SEO audit, consider the client’s business goals, target market, and budget.

I do two things to create a fully customized report:

1. Manually audit the website
2. Use a tool to automate the SEO audit

Manually audit the website

Here are some tips that may help you out in picking out the details you would want to include in your audit:

• Try to get everything out of their homepage and point out every opportunity for optimization there.
• Pick out important pages with unoptimized title tags. You don’t have to give them a full list. You just have to pick out those that could possibly be giving them more traffic and more sales.
• Check their site structure and website indexability.
• Critique their content. Many companies know that content is important in SEO but they don’t necessarily know how to write SEO-friendly articles. 
• Use a backlink checker to analyze their backlinks. Link building is a hot topic for businesses looking for SEO services so if you can point out areas of improvement there you can get higher chances of closing the deal.
• Show them screenshots and/or give a list of URLs you see that need to be optimized. Partners like to be very specific. Simply giving them a list of bullet points is not enough. 

Use a tool to automate the SEO audit

Next, use a trustworthy tool to fill in the gaps of your manual audit.

In this case, let’s use Netpeak Spider.

Note: Some of the features I’ll be discussing are under the PRO subscription.

One of the many things I absolutely love about this tool is just how simple it is to use and how easy the results are to understand.

So for a quick SEO audit that’s going to help me or the Accounts Manager take a cursory look at our prospect’s website, Netpeak Spider really takes the cake.

I’ll stress that last part: Even if your Accounts Manager doesn’t have direct experience with SEO (but at least understands terminologies—I mean, they need to be able to explain to your partners and prospects how things work, right?), you can ask them to run the tool and interpret the results on their own.

It’s that easy to understand.

My podcast’s—Leadership Stack—website can do better in terms of traffic, so let’s audit the website for our use case.

Step-by-step guide to using Netpeak Spider for an SEO audit

• Go to the Netpeak Software website and download the launcher.
• Open Netpeak Spider from the launcher. What you see below is the tool’s interface when you open it.

• Go to Settings.

• Choose which settings are appropriate for your audit. In my case, I connected the GA/GSC accounts among other things.

• Check your Parameters. They’re on the right side of the interface. Again, what you check is up to your needs and what you want to see in the report.

• Input the website’s URL on the Enter URL bar. It’s at the top of the interface.

• Press Start.
• After a few minutes (it can be pretty quick depending on the size of your website), the results will be displayed on the interface.

• Time to export the results. You can opt to click the SEO Audit PDF button at the top right of the interface…

• Or click Export and choose what parts of the audit you want to export.

• In this example, I decided to simply export the PDF. Here’s what the cover page of the report looks like:

If you’re on the PRO subscription, you can opt to add your details such as your company website and email to the report.

Once you’re done collating your data, you can list what you see on a simple Word document with your logo as the header. Then convert it to a PDF file and send it to the client. Sounds simple enough but it does work.

Most of the time, you don’t have to use flashy presentations. What you need is a clear, concise, and straight to the point website audit that is easy to digest for any potential client.

Further reading: An In-depth Crawl into Netpeak Spider

Show what you can do for them

Simply diagnosing the problems of a website and showing it to your potential client will not make the cut. They already know that their website has problems and it needs to be optimized. That’s the reason why they’re reaching out to you in the first place.

If they just wanted a simple audit using an SEO tool, they could have done it themselves (hence, the combination of manual and automated audits).

What partners are looking for in an SEO audit is how are you able to help them. You need to convince your potential partners that you are the SEO specialist for the job.

But before you add any solutions, you need to gauge your lead’s level of SEO knowledge.

If your lead is completely new to SEO, then you need to provide more details as to why the factors you listed need to be optimized and how important they are for ranking. Let’s say you’re working on an e-commerce website and you recommended that title tags of the product categories need to be changed.

Why did you recommend changing those title tags? Why is it important to optimize the title tag of a product category page? 

But for partners who are knowledgeable already with SEO, you may not need to discuss the importance of a product category page or of a title tag to them. But you still need to give your analysis on why their existing tags are not good.

You have to remember when businesses are shopping for SEO services, you are not the only one they are engaged with. They are most likely in talks with other service providers. What you are trying to do here is making them feel comfortable with you.

By crafting the right website audit, you can build trust, show your partners you’re competent and capable, and that they could give the project to you with no second thoughts.

Further reading: Learn SEO: The Complete Guide for Beginners and Technical SEO: The Complete Guide for Advanced Users (with Checklist)

Add competitor analyses in your SEO audit

Adding a competitor analysis in your SEO audits for potential partners can be a game-changer. Most businesses will usually ask for an audit of their website alone but I highly recommend that you go the extra mile and do a quick or short audit of their competitors.

What you would want to do here is to compare some of the problems on their website versus their competitors’. Show them how they’re faring against their competitors.

You don’t need a very detailed analysis. You can use Netpeak Spider on the competitors’ websites and just insert a few comments on your bullet points. Screenshots of data are also helpful especially on backlink data and rankings.

Don’t reveal all your cards

I know that I just said you should show what you can do for them but that doesn’t mean you completely reveal everything you’ll be doing for them. There are two purposes for this:

1. First is that it keeps your leads on the edge of their seats.
2. Second is to protect you or your company.

Using the sample I used earlier, let’s say you listed down the product category pages of your potential client and told them that their title tags are not good. You say why they are not good but you don’t have to say what you would replace them with.

What you’re trying to do here is keeping potential partners engaged and interested. On the business side of things, you’re trying to avoid giving potential partners free work.

Key takeaway

SEO audits are only one part of the overall sales process but they are a crucial part of it. It gives your potential partners a little sneak peak on what you can do for them after putting ink on the contract. It helps set expectations and KPIs. It can be the difference between them choosing you or a different company.

The post SEO Audit Tips to Close More Deals appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.