by Marelise da Silva | Aug 29, 2018 | SEO
A decade ago, the idea of including keywords in content and headings was a novel idea. Today, many people are still overusing keywords, which can actually damage their search engine results.
If you search for something on Google, you will find that there will be many results on the first page that don’t exactly match the keyword set that you typed into the search bar. This shows that Google is very advanced in connecting topics and keywords, as well as determining what type of quality content should be presented to search engine users.
There are a few considerations that need to be kept in mind:
The first one is the search result snippet itself. You need to look at the snippet and confirm whether it is informative and useful. It also needs to be perceived as relevant and trustworthy by searchers.
- Keyword Analysis Algorithm
The keyword analysis algorithm also needs to be considered. If the keyword phrase is a question and your content is an answer to that exact question, then you should use the entire phrase as the heading of your article.
Another thing that Google looks at is topic modelling. If you are writing about pizza, for example, then the words ‘toppings’, ‘dough’ and ‘delivery’ are likely to appear in your copy.
As SEO consultants, we’ve gone from looking at the optimal number of keyword repetitions to taking a more holistic view of how we structure content. Your first and foremost concern should always be writing high-quality, educational content, and then including keywords where it makes sense.
Need help with your Search Engine Optimization? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 28, 2018 | SEO
An internal link is a hyperlink on a website that links to another page on the same website. Internal links show people where to go and it helps website visitors to navigate your site.
Getting internal linking on your site wrong can cause a lot of problems. In terms of SEO, internal links are viewed very differently to external links, but it doesn’t mean that internal links have no power in changing crawling patterns or search results.
Anchor text is something that should be considered. Search engines have generally minimised the importance of anchor text, but it’s still good to get this right. When Google sees manipulation in the internal link structure, such as stuffing anchor text into all the links, it can damage your position in search results. There is an algorithmic penalty for these types of practices, so keyword stuffing in footers, navigation or anchor text should be avoided. The good news is that Google reverses this penalty, so if you notice that your website is losing rankings, fix these issues first.
If a page on your website has a lot of external links to it, then it will gain authority. If you have very well linked to pages on your site, make sure to link out to external pages as well, as this also signals to Google that it is a high-quality page.
A solid internal and external linking strategy is needed as part of your SEO efforts.
Need help with your Search Engine Optimization? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Francois Muscat | Aug 27, 2018 | SEO
Tons of things that you do, don’t directly affect your Google rankings. Our Search Engine Optimisation experts list a few things that don’t affect your search results:
Does Google care if your website was registered in 2008 or 2018? No. If you started a website many years ago and you worked on building up authority and social signals, then there’s a good chance that your site will still rank well today. But, if you didn’t have an authoritative site in 2008 then it won’t give you an advantage over your competitors now.
- Whether You Do Or Don’t Use Google’s Apps And Services
You don’t have to use Gmail, Google Docs, AdSense or Google Analytics to get your website to rank well in Google. The engineers who work on those products and the engineers who work on search wouldn’t be happy knowing that the products are so closely linked as it would be unethical for Google to do this.
If you have a Facebook share counter on a page that shows that the page has been shared 7 000 times, it will show website visitors that the page is popular, but it won’t affect the page’s results in Google. Indirectly, it could signal that your content is good, but buying Facebook shares won’t put you ahead of your competition.
Need help with your Search Engine Optimization? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 14, 2018 | SEO
Want higher SEO rankings for your website? Then be sure to check out these two issues that may be damaging your rankings:
- Posting Too Much Content
Google doesn’t want you to publish content just for the sake of publishing content. Gary Illyes from Google recently said that Google actually prefers fewer but better-quality pages. The quality over quantity approach is the key behind some of the most popular blogs on the internet.
If you’re going to reduce the amount of content that you publish, then you need to make sure that each and every blog post you publish is great. If your site has a lot of pages that don’t provide any value, then you need to start removing them. These pages are often referred to as ‘zombie pages’ by digital marketers. Zombie pages can include:
- Old blog posts
- Old press releases
- Search results pages
- E-commerce product pages that don’t get any sales
- Pages with duplicate content
- Technical Issues That Can Damage Your SEO
There are literally hundreds of technical problems that can impact your SEO. Here are some of the most common technical issues that could be affecting your SEO:
- Duplicate or missing title tags
- Duplicate description tags
- Broken links
- Images with missing alt text
- Pages blocked by Robots.txt
- 302 redirects that should be 301 redirects
How can you go about finding these technical errors on your site? SEMRush’s site audit tool will help you find and fix these types of on-site issues. This tool will crawl your site and let you know about any technical issues that could be damaging your SEO results.
Need help with your Search Engine Optimization? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Francois Muscat | Aug 13, 2018 | SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a broad and ever-evolving field. With Google routinely updating their search algorithms, and every second digital agency punting new ways to increase your rankings in search engine results, it’s not hard to see why some people find SEO to be a daunting task.
If you want a clear-cut way to get better results on search engines, then focus your SEO campaign on these key areas:
- Competitor Analysis
Your first step is to know what your competition is doing in the market. Research their websites and their SEO strategies to determine:
- Which keywords they are targeting,
- How much content they are creating,
- How they rank in Google, and
- Whether they are spending money on PPC or not.
- Website Content
The content on your website has to be original, relevant and high quality. Make sure your content is a good source of information for website visitors and that it’s better than what the competition is doing.
- Keyword Research
Use Google’s AdWords tool to narrow down the number of keyword phrases that you will be targeting. These keywords should be included in your website content as well as in the Meta titles, the Meta descriptions, and the image alt tags.
- Internal Linking
To increase the ‘stickiness’ of your website and help Google’s website crawlers establish what your site is about, you need an internal linking strategy where relevant keywords will hyperlink to associated pages on the site.
- External Linking
You need quality inbound links to your website. Blog posts, guest blogs, article submissions and link exchanges are all strategies to explore to increase the number of external links on your site and boost your SEO rankings.
Need help with your SEO campaign? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 9, 2018 | SEO
SEO is a powerful way to claim top spots on search engines, but if you aren’t targeting specific locations, then you could be missing out on a lot of search traffic that is not only more relevant to your business but also easier to compete for. While keyword placement and PPC advertising are a good step in the right direction to kick-start a local SEO strategy, link building should most definitely play a key role in helping you achieve your goals.
First and foremost, you need to focus on getting high-quality links. As a website manager or business owner, this means focusing on links from sites that are relevant in your business industry, authority sites in the location you are targeting, or links that can boost the reputation of your business such as established trade publications or industry associations.
So, how do you go about getting these links? Here are a few ideas:
Websites, news sites, and magazine websites are much more eager to link to your website if you are creating high-quality content for them to use. Write educational and helpful articles that a journalist or content manager can publish on their site for their audience to read, and include a backlink to your website at the bottom of the page.
- Check Out What Your Competitors Are Doing
What are your competitors doing in terms of local SEO? Use SEO Spyglass to find out. You can type your competitors’ URLs into Spyglass and get basic statistics of the backlinks to their website, the IP diversity of their backlinks, and more. This strategy can also spark a few ideas on new link building opportunities that you should be exploring for your own website.
Contact us for more information today.
