24 Steps To Rank Your Blog On Google’s 1st Page

Matt Cutts, the lead of Google’s web spam team, spoke about why WordPress is the best optimized blogging platform for search engines and gave some tips for all bloggers on how to start getting search traffic. It is a classic WordCamp talk that has stood the test of time and is a great introduction to SEO for any blogger. In short the advice is to produce a lot of quality content and follow a few simple tips in order to optimize your site and get better in Google’s results.

WordPress is “a fantastic choice”

Matt Cutts praised WordPress for being SEO-friendly platform. WordPress automatically solves a ton of issues bloggers might have. It is a fantastic piece of software, makes your site easily crawlable by search engines, solves some 80-90% of mechanics of SEO and is the first big step anyone can take towards creating a popular online business. Watch the full presentation and see the full list of tips below:

What bloggers need to know about Google

Google provides value to the searchers by displaying the most relevant and useful content in the search results. The goal is to reduce and eliminate ranking of unsubstantial and useless content. Algorithms such as Panda extensively evaluate different aspects of a site to assess its value and quality. As these algorithms constantly evolve Google’s advice for content publishers is to focus on creating the best user experience instead of working on tweaks and patches to keep up with the latest algorithmic update.

Google cares about relevancy and reputation when choosing which sites to rank in their listings. You want your site to be a very reputable place with a lot of relevant quality content about your topic. Reputation is external, it is what people say about you in social media and how people link to you from their websites. It is about the number of links and the importance of sites that link to you.Relevancy is internal, it is the stuff that you write and create content about. This is what you need to do:

• Create quality content. For gaining a good reputation and good links, high quality, linkable and sharable content makes a difference. More on how to do this is further down in this article.

• Post new content often. By producing more content you have more material that search engines can find. It also helps get people to come and visit you more often.

• Be natural. To be relevant you need to think about what your target group would type into Google to find the topic you write about. Create content in regular English, in language that people in your target group speak.

• Research keywords. Use Google Keyword Planner to find the demand for the different keywords. When you know in-demand keywords that you want to target, include those keywords naturally when writing your articles.

• Use Analytics for ideas. Look into your Google Analytics data to see where people are going on your page in order to get ideas for new topics to create content about.

• Revisit older content. Some of your content might have been published a year ago but still gets traffic and ranks in search engines. Revisit your older content, update it, make sure it is still relevant and correct.

• Link quality not quantity. It is not all about the number of links pointing to you though, it is about the quality and importance of places that point to you. The higher the quality of a site that links to you the more importance that link gets.

• Get free links. In Webmaster Tools go into “Crawl Errors” to find links to non-existent pages on your site. See “Linked From” to identify sites that linked to these pages and either fix the page or contact the author of the link to get them to update it.

• Avoid shortcuts and scams. There are no easy ways and tricks to the top of search engines like some people will promise you. Follow the principles in this post instead.

How to optimize WordPress

As seen above Matt Cutts’ advice is not to worry about small things, but to spend time on producing great and targeted content that your audience would share and link to. There are though few things he recommends you do in your WordPress admin to optimize it. These are the things you should do after installing a new WordPress blog:

• www vs non-www. Create a permanent redirect of your domain name. Decide what is the URL of your website. In Settings – General choose either www version or non-www version and stick with it. If you decide your main URL is yourblog.com (without www) make sure to always and from anywhere link to yourblog.com, and not to www.yourblog.com or any other alternative. Also set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools.

• Create a sitemap. Google uses your XML sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to hopefully increase the exposure your pages get in its results. Install a sitemap plugin, activate it and submit it to Google Search Console.

• Pretty permalinks. Create a custom permalink structure of your posts and pages. Having keywords from your post titles in your URL is a very important step in ranking well in search engines. Go into Settings – Permalinks and choose “Post Name” or “Custom Structure”: /%category%/%postname%/

• Descriptive categories. If you use categories when publishing your posts, make sure that categories have keywords in them as well.

• Change the URL. Have a post title be different than the URL itself to help cover few more keyword alternations that you couldn’t cover if they were both identical. Use the “Edit” button on the side of your permalink when writing a new post to change the URL.

• Show related posts at the end of your articles to reduce bounce rate and increase page views and time spent on site. Several plugins are available for this including YARPP.

• Your design needs to be simple, effective and clutter-free. It needs to help your visitors explore more.

• Use a mobile-responsive design. Google is expanding the use of mobile-friendliness as an important ranking signal. Find a quality theme with a clean code, clean CSS and mobile responsive design. Help on finding theright design theme is here.

• Fancy, complicated navigation tends to turn visitors away quite quickly. And the Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images, Flash navigation or links contained within Javascript. So keep it simple and use good old text based menu navigation towards the top of your blog. Most WordPress themes are optimized for this so in most cases you will be fine out of the box.

• Upgrade your software to keep your site secure. Older versions of WordPress are easier to hack and that will negatively affect your site. More tips on making your site secure.

• Speed up the loading time. Make sure your site is fast to load as that is another factor that contributes to people staying longer. See here how to do that.

• Check for broken links. Search engines and your readers do not like broken links so use the Broken Link Checker plugin to discover and fix broken links. It is a simple plugin that automates the process for you.

• Use HTTPS instead of HTTP. Google prefers encrypted and secure sites as these protect the users better.

• Authorship in Google’s search results is no longer relevant as Google has dropped the authorship functionality on August 28th 2014.

5 elements of a user-friendly (and Google-friendly) website

Google has a list of evergreen questions that you can use to assess the quality of your site. Reviewing these questions will help you figure out what to improve in order to regain your rankings, get back to that coveted first page and future proof your site. I’ve split the 23 questions into five categories:

How to create quality content and add substantial value

Great content is key to your search rankings. Without great content you will not have any visitors, loyal followers and any traffic from search engines.

Google constantly preaches about high-quality vs low-quality content. Google wants you to focus on creating high quality content. Quality content means original content such as reports, analysis, insights and research. Low quality means content with no value added to the visitor, material that is not useful or that is copied from another source.

The way some bloggers and content creators go wrong with Google is by being so obsessed with search engine optimization that they neglect the importance of quality. Forget about SEO. Start with your audience in mind. Focus on creating the best experience for people that are interested in your topic and that are using your site.

Here is how you can create quality content that gets visitors, social media shares and links:

• Be interesting. Nobody wants to spend time on or share boring content. Thrill and delight your target audience. Your content needs to engage and grab the interest within the first couple seconds.

• Provide a useful service. Help people. Sort their issues.

• Do original research and reporting. Don’t just repeat what everyone else is saying, create some value on top.

• Give great information, tutorial and guides. Be substantial, insightful and comprehensive. Teach and educate your audience on how to do something.

• Make lists. People love lists.

• Publish videos. Videos are very sharable and linkable, people enjoy watching them, they spread fast and tend to rank very well in search engine results.

• Create controversy. Make people respond and take action. Make them either agree or disagree with what you’re saying.

• Create content that is timeless and does not expire or become irrelevant few days or weeks after being published.

• Start experimenting with long form content that mixes textual storytelling with different multimedia aspects. Introduce high quality pictures into your content. Present data and information in nice looking infographics.

For more information check out my complete guide on creating compelling and sharable content.

Quality control measures

You need to put strict quality control measures in place when publishing content. Your content needs to be of such high standards that it could be published in a magazine or in a book.

• You should double and triple check everything before publishing. Have achecklist of things to do before posting an article and actually take the time to go through the list. Use a spell checker. Look for typos and sentences that don’t read well. Check your facts and sources. Review the links.

• Get a second pair of eyes to review your content and be an editor for you. Second opinion will help you improve and spot mistakes that you may have missed.

Trustworthiness

Google values trust and wants to rank trustworthy sites. This means that you need to build a trustworthy site. But how do you actually make a site that is trusted by people?

• Design plays a big role in building trust. Start by having a professional looking design. Using WordPress is a good first step as with it you have access to a large selection of great designs. Look for something clean, pretty to look at, fast to load and mobile friendly as described earlier.

• Personalize your site. Present yourself, show your face, tell your story and explain why you are worth listening to. What are your achievements? What is your experience? One of the main elements you need to get right is your about page.

• If you are a company include full company information, address, phone number and other contact details.

• If you are providing services or selling products include testimonials and reviews from real customers and people.

• Work on the social proof. Build your following and shares on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This is not about buying followers. It is about creating real and lasting connections with people in your audience. Display your social media profiles, your follower counts and number of shares your content gets on your site by using one of the many WordPress plugins.

• Limit the number of banner ads, especially those prominent banners above the fold. Banners are not the best monetization method as you need tons of pageviews in order to get a decent income and those numbers are out of reach for most. If possible remove banner ads entirely and focus onother revenue sources which have more potential such as creating your own product or selling services.

Authority

Authority goes hand in hand with trust. What can you do to make yourself and your site more authoritative?

• First of all you should actually be an authority. You must know your topic. Knowledge and experience helps you create great content that will get other people to take notice, share your content in social media and link to it from other sites. Links from quality sites and social media shares are keys to becoming a recognized authority.

• Proactively reach out to other webmasters and influential users. Give people a reason to link to you. Show them why they should interview or in any other way feature you on their sites.

• Guest posting on the authoritative sites in your field is another great way of getting quality links. Remember that this is not about writing bad content or outsourcing your content production and posting on any site that will accept you. This is about strategically choosing a handful of popular and relevant sites and posting great articles that will drive views and social media engagement.

• Include the list of sites and other media that you have been featured in so your visitors are aware of your status and your authority.

Audience focused

• Common advice pre-Panda was to publish large quantity of posts in order to rank for a variety of long tail keyword phrases. Post-Panda having less pages (but of higher value) can actually result in more organic traffic from Google.

• Don’t just rely on keyword research and on publishing weak articles targeting keyword phrases people search for. Don’t post content on topics that you don’t care about, that you have nothing interesting and useful to say about.

• Review your entire content archive as low quality content on parts of your site can impact the rankings of the rest of the site. Are there any very short articles? Are there bad and spammy guest posts that you have featured? Are there posts that you copied from another site? Do a search on Google for “site:yourdomain.com” to get a list of pages from your domain that Google ranks.

• Review all the page and don’t be afraid to remove any bad content. Spend a lot of time and effort on adding to, enhancing and improving the content on individual pages that are short, shallow and not extensive.

• Merge similar articles to create “ultimate guide” type of posts where you put all the important information on one topic in one post. Aim for one ultimate guide per individual topic area instead of having several smaller and shorter articles on that one topic. It’s quality over quantity.

That’s it. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Google is the biggest search engine and a very important referral of traffic for most online publishers. These SEO tips are very valuable in order for your site to get ranked and get traffic from search.

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6 Tips For Creating The Most Killer Viral Gallery Content

Boom! You created the world’s next big viral content site. You have a great name, solid content, and enough server bandwidth to support the entire population of North America viewing your site concurrently. However, you don’t know how to structure your content pages for maximum user engagement. 

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and while we don’t know how accurate that statement is, we do know that content featuring impactful images garners at least 30% more shares on social media than those without images. Gallery or slideshow pages are a great way to display image-driven content and provide a significant uplift in page views per user.

 

Here are 6 tips for optimizing your gallery pages for maximum performance.

 

1. Is the slideshow format effective for your content?

While galleries give your users a sense of control, they also require continuous interaction with the page. Before you turn your content into a slideshow, ask yourself these questions:

 

• When is it effective to use a gallery?
• Does your content feature instructions with clear steps?
• Do you have an image for each concept?
• Do you have more than 4 items but less than 20?
• Will breaking up the content improve readability?

If you can’t answer those questions with a “yes,” the slideshow format may not be appropriate for your content.

 

2. Create interesting titles that encourage clicks.

Keep in mind that, for the user, navigating through your gallery content can be a pretty big time commitment. To keep them clicking through, you need to create an irresistible title. By creating an impactful and relevant title, your audience will be drawn to work their way through your content. Here are a few methods to consider:

Benefits are always a plus

• 10 Decorating Secrets for a Feng Shui Apartment
• 8 Ways to Find Your Inner Peace in a Chaotic World 

Curiosity is also very effective 

• Hollywood’s 10 Most Physically Fit Actors
• 14 Incredible Uses for Paperclips 

Keeping your audience engaged and diving deeper into your site is key to optimizing page views. Interesting titles are way more likely to grab their attention than your standard title.

3. Create compelling content!!!

Above all else, your content must be compelling! You can’t just slap a photo on a page and expect to hold your audience’s attention for long. The goal is to get the user to navigate your entire slideshow to optimize for page views. Establish your quality from the beginning – make sure that every slide has solid content, period.

 

4. Mobile is the future, so don’t neglect the small screen!

 

eMarketer reports that in 2017, mobile ad spend is projected to blow past display, posting $35.62 billion in ad spending compared to the desktop’s $27.21 billion. OPA also reports that mobile ads in native format drive 4X higher click-through rates than mobile banner ads and are viewed 53% more frequently by consumers. 

 

What I’m getting at is mobile is where it’s at! Make sure that your site is properly optimized for mobile. Larger font sizes and navigation buttons are key to increasing readability and user engagement. If your users can’t access your content on mobile, you’re missing out on a major opportunity. 

 

 

5. For increased monetization, keep it short. 

In our experience, we’ve found that the sweet spot for proper monetization is between 4 – 10 page views per user. Only 30% of users complete a gallery session  longer than 10 slides. Experiment with multiple layouts, and try adding more than one image per slide. Find what works for your audience and roll with it, just don’t over-do it.

 

6. Don’t forget the sponsored content!

Our team at Revcontent takes pride in our reputation as the performance leader in the native advertising space. We live performance, eat it, sleep it- it’s what drives us every single day. So, trust me when I say that galleries are the perfect place to monetize with sponsored content. There are a few specific locations that work best for sponsored content placement. Take a look:

End of Slideshow:

End of slideshow placements are some of the highest performing placements that you can put your page. Why? Because it provides your audience with a one-stop shop for the next intriguing piece of content for them to feast on. Lower ad impressions but killer click-through rates.

Interstitial:

If you have to create a long gallery because your content is just too great to abbreviate, consider adding sponsored content to break it up. This is a great way to monetize the click since many people click off of the page before completing a gallery session anyway. These placements are particularly effective on mobile.

Below Content or Side Rail:

If your primary goal is monetization, sponsored content below the gallery and side rail placements will be your most effective placements for revenue generation. Ad visibility is at its highest in those placements and almost assures a high level of engagement.

 

Galleries are a phenomenal way to make your content stand out. Successful implementation and revenue potential rely purely on user experience, compelling content, and proper sponsored content placements. With the right format, you are well on your way toward taking over the digital universe.

 

 

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or your Revcontent rep. We are always happy to help!

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9 SEO secrets every business should know

The search engine optimization (SEO) world has undergone some big changes in the last few years—the biggest being coming in the form of Google’s heightened push towards strong user experiences. It’s hard to imagine that just 10 years ago, SEO was a discipline governed by blackhat marketers whose sole objective was to increase rankings and drive traffic. Long story short—it wasn’t pretty, and Google didn’t like it.

Today, the ‘secret’ to SEO is no secret at all. It’s common sense. Brands that rank high on search engines have great content, address their target audience’s search intent, and take the time to optimize their sites from a technology standpoint. Here are 9 SEO ‘secrets’ that will lead your brand to awesome.

1 – Stop overthinking it

The biggest challenge with SEO is that it’s ambiguous territory—but you shouldn’t let the uncertainty get the best of you. Understand that almost every marketer is exactly where you are now. Everyone’s trying to figure out SEO’s ‘hidden secrets’ with little direction. The best thing to do  is to keep your mind off the complexities and instead, focus on delivering the best possible user experience.

2 – Keep content fresh

When people conduct research, they want up-to-date, accurate information. That’s why it’s important to keep content updated. Recency is becoming an increasingly important ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm and for good reason—your audiences don’t want to waste time reading dated content.

3 – Prioritize usability

Technology is an important part of the user experience equation. In addition to providing audiences with helpful and informative content, you’ll want to make sure that your website is easy and enjoyable to browse. Make sure tooptimize your website to be mobile friendly and to ensure that it has a quick load time.

Just recently, Google announced that more than half of its US searches are now coming from mobile devices. This stat, coupled with the recent ‘Mobilegeddon’ algorithm update provide strong signals that even greater emphasis is going to be placed on businesses mobile websites in the coming years.

You can use WebSite Auditor to identify potential technical flaws and to crawl your site on a consistent basis.

4 – Build relationships, not links

“Link building” is a term that SEO practitioners use to describe the process of building credibility. The idea is simple: people link to your website when they perceive your brand as a source of authority. Often, however, SEO specialists take the expression ‘link building’ too literally. By asking for links, they end up with the extreme opposite—absolutely nothing.

Links are the key to ranking well in Google, but what marketers often forget is that links are built upon relationships with people. The best way to ‘build links’ is to forge connections and offer value to bloggers and other influencers in your niche.

Try using SEO SpyGlass to see who’s linking to your website—and to identify potential patterns.

5 – Prioritize the long-tail

Search engine experiences are becoming increasingly personalized. That’s why it’s important for businesses to focus on long-tail and location-based keywords—so that audiences can find your company based on the exact value and service that you provide.

Ranking highly for a vague search term like ‘San Francisco Doctor’ might be an ego booster, but it puts you in direct competition with all the doctors in San Francisco, regardless of their practice area. A top rank for a more specific term, such as ‘San Francisco orthopedic surgeon’ will generate a lot more qualified leads.

6 – Use the right keywords in the right places

Get specific by taking a structured approach. It’s not enough to focus on the right keyword—you need to make sure that you’re communicating the ‘right’ information to Google in a structured way.

In order to improve rankings for long-tail keywords, make sure that they’re present in your main body copy and page titles. If your website structure doesn’t allow for this, attach a blog or news feed to your site and create content around these topics, with the long-tail keywords in the titles and copy.

A good place to start would be Rank Tracker, which can ensure your content is fully optimized for specific keywords.

7 – Replace keyword research with customer research

People turn to search engines when they have questions. When they’ve arrived at your website, they’re likely looking for immediate answers.

Think of your brand as a publisher and source of high-quality information. When you produce helpful, informative content like blog posts, how-to articles, and research, you’ll get in front of searchers and earn their trust.

8 – Don’t ignore the small details

Often, marketers will focus on optimizing elements that are direct SEO ranking factors. In doing so, however, they’ll overlook a very important detail—meta descriptions.

Your meta descriptions, for instance, provide previews of your website. It’s your brand’s chance to stand apart from competitors on search engine results pages and encourage click-throughs to your website. A well-developed meta description, in a few short lines of text, will drive more traffic to your website.

9 – Be a go-to resource by creating a dictionary

One of the most efficient ways to rank for a term is to create a ‘dictionary’ page with objective and thorough definitions. Rather than ‘keyword stuffing,’ however, it’s important that marketers take the time to create content that helps their target audiences learn.

These pages often rank highly in search engines all on their own, as they are naturally somewhat keyword dense and are usually very helpful to people who searched for those terms. They tend to position brands as authoritative sources of information and generate backlinks.

You can use this keyword research tool to identify potential dictionary terms and low-hanging areas of opportunity.

Final thoughts

The days of self-serving, scammy, and spammy SEO are long-gone. And that’s a good thing. The ‘secret’ to success with SEO is no secret at all. Just focus on serving your audience’s needs and answering their questions in a thorough and empathetic way. Focus on your customers, and take the right logistical steps to make sure that search engines can find your content. Focus on the ‘road less traveled’ with long-tail opportunities, and you’ll be set.

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SEO Caution Signs

The following are SEO caution signs to look for when considering an SEO firm. These points should also be noted when strategizing your own search campaign:

• Results can never be guaranteed. In other words, no SEO firm can or should guarantee a top “X” placement on any search engine. This is a marketing ploy. Algorithms and factors affecting your rank change over time. Beware of any guarantees.
• There is no need to submit to thousands of search engines. In fact, there is no need to submit to any engines for that matter. If you are able to acquire a few high quality links, you are ahead of the game. Doing so will get your site crawled by the notable engines (and often). Also, the concept of resubmitting to any engine is useless - it is a waste of time and does nothing for your site.
• There is no need to pay to submit to the big search engines. It doesn’t cost a penny if you do indeed decide to submit to Google, Yahoo, and/or MSN. If anyone tells you otherwise, they’re lying.

This is just a small list of signs to watch out for. There are obviously many others, but these are the most common and notable. We will update this list as times goes on. Please be sure to contact us if you have any in particular you would like to add.

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SEO: Reciprocal Links

For a long time, reciprocal links have remained at the forefront of most inbound linking strategies. This is going to have to change. Google now discounts all reciprocal links. The algorithm has been altered to identify the exchange of links by two parties for the purpose of increasing their number of inbound links.

The concept of reciprocal linking defies Google’s original intention with the algorithm. Quality content should attract links. The exchange of links is nothing more than a mutual agreement to unjustifiably promote others’ content with the end goal of promoting your own. Google doesn’t particularly like this 

Some even claim that Google is now able to identify three-way linking schemes (i.e. website A links to website B, who links to website C, who links back to A). Whether this is true or not is hard to say. One thing is for certain though: inbound linking strategies should NOT be centered around reciprocal linking. This manufactured form of link creation is not well-received and is ultimately a waste of time. Instead, focus on creating unique, high-quality content in a given niche. The links will ensue.

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