SEO Tactics That Will Not Work Anymore

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There are those who believe that SEO is dead or dying this 2018. This has led to confusion for new business owners who have come to know about SEO and its relevance in building a brand. Does SEO still work?

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The truth of the matter is search engines have evolved and there are SEO tactics and strategies that will not work anymore if applied today. These so-called strategies can be considered dead or dying when it comes to SEO.

Search engines have always prioritized high-quality content as a ranking factor in order for a website to get higher rankings in search results. This has led some experts to think that as long as you come up with great content, you no longer need to do SEO. Content marketing is an important factor, but it can’t work well on its own. Without the proper SEO optimization of a website, there is a chance that no one will get to know about your stellar content. This is why SEO still has a role to play, which can’t be overlooked.

There was a time when SEO practices that are unethical or what we call black hat were getting results in search engine rankings. Now that we have the Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird updates a lot of these tactics are now being penalized. These updates make SEO all the more relevant today. Websites should be using SEO practices that are in line with current Google updates and guidelines.

With the current SEO trends, there are things that will not work anymore. To answer the question, does SEO still work? It is alive and kicking in 2018.

Gone are the days when people can stuff their content with a lot of keywords and get good results in page rankings. Links that are paid for are also a thing of the past, same with spamming and coming up with low quality and irrelevant content. Search engines have gotten rid of all artificial page rankings and this has made their users get a higher satisfaction rating with their search engine experience.

Having websites that are optimized for mobile is now a necessity. Businesses have reported that they get a lot more inquiries from mobile devices than their desktop versions. This makes mobile optimization more important than ever. With Google’s shift to a mobile-first priority, companies cannot have just one version of their website that is not compatible with mobile. Research has also shown that many mobile users buy or transact directly from their mobile devices.

This is a trend that business should take advantage of. They should come up with ways to make things faster and more convenient when it comes to closing and making transactions with their mobile version websites. Security features should be upgraded to give consumers a reason to trust you with their sensitive information like credit card credentials.

Speed in website loading and closing transactions is essential for users. Your website may be loading at a lightning-quick pace, but customers may be put through so many procedures in order to buy a product from you. Being efficient with transaction procedures will help give customers a great user experience and make them want to deal with you more often and may even recommend their friends and family to buy from you if they are satisfied with your product or service.

Search engines are also starting to process real speech patterns. This should be taken into consideration when coming up with short and long tail keywords. Experts expect a trend in shifting to voice search options especially with new technologies like better speech recognition in our devices. Typing in a search may be slightly different from using a voice search. We need to take note of these small differences because they may affect search engine display results. This is why we should start changing our keywords to mimic real speech patterns.

What You Need To Know About Black Hat SEO

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When it comes to SEO there is a right way to do things and there is a wrong way. Blackhat SEO is a technique used to get higher rankings in search results that go against search engine guidelines. These are considered unethical and has a corresponding penalty from search engines. search engine optimization guide.

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Having your website on the front page of search results is vital for building a brand. Some of the known black hat tactics include keyword stuffing, buying links and low-quality content. In this article, we give you a search engine optimization guide so that you will know more about these tactics and avoid them at all costs.

Google penalizes black hat tactics because they want their users to have the best experience and get search results that are of the highest quality. Algorithms are updated on a regular basis in order to fight and penalize those who continue to use black hat.

White hat SEO is the accepted way of doing search engine optimization. Ethical tactics are used which takes into consideration terms and guidelines that search engines have set. White hat SEO focuses on providing the highest quality of content possible in order to attract more visitors to a website.

It is useful to learn about black hat tactics not only to avoid them but also to learn how they can be used to further enhance your white hat SEO tactics.

Keyword Stuffing
This refers to the practice of putting irrelevant keywords in a lot of places on your content. The aim is to manipulate the search engines so that a page will rank higher in the search results. Having too many variations of the same keyword does not give value to the user. These may include phone numbers that are not needed by the user and texts that contain locations a web page is trying to sell to.

It is quite easy to spot if keywords start sounding like a broken record, then that is a perfect example of keyword stuffing for you.

Cloaking
This tactic uses different pieces of content shown to users and search engines. The goal is for the website to rank for a variety of keywords that are really irrelevant to the content. Spam websites are notorious for doing this and they try to avoid crawlers from finding out the spam content they give to users.

It is ok to come up with different content that targets different groups of users. Your desktop website may have more content compared to your mobile version which is acceptable. Language may also be changed depending on the location being targeted.

Redirects
This tactic sends a user to a different URL than the one clicked on. A shady tactic to confuse a crawler to one page and other users to another page.

Highly trusted pages can be redirected to an irrelevant page so that rank position will be higher. The acceptable way of using redirects is when you are changing your website completely.

Low-Quality Content
This is a common strategy employed by black hat experts. Usually done by coming up with duplicate content and irrelevant content taken from other websites. You can’t add invisible keywords to your content. This is done by making the text color the same as the page background.

Bait and switch is also a black hat way of misleading search engines. Content is created on a topic that you want to rank for, once the page gets the ranking in the searches the content is changed to something else. This gives users a bad experience and this should not be practiced.

Now that you know about black hat SEO tactics, it is best to avoid them and start working on white hat SEO strategies that you can apply to your online marketing campaign

Best SEO Tools For Agencies

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We can’t discount the importance of SEO in online marketing today. Getting free traffic to your website by ranking high in search engines is one of the goals of having good SEO. It’s just something that online marketing companies can’t live without.

Having a website alone is not a guarantee that your business will have success online. If customers don’t know that you exist, then no matter how good your product or service is it will all be useless if you can’t be found on search engines like Google or Bing.

With great SEO or Search Engine Optimization, your website will appear on the top search results which will lead to traffic going to your website. This is not just any ordinary traffic that you will get but visitors that are looking for the products and services that you offer.

Many business owners don’t have the time anymore to do their own SEO. It is good to know that there are a lot of great SEO marketing agencies that you can hire to work on your company’s SEO needs.

We need to be careful in choosing the right agency because there are a lot of scam agencies that don’t produce results. They are a total waste of time and money so better watch out for these types of agencies.

There are also a lot of SEO companies that use only ethical techniques like white hat strategies. In order to give good SEO services, these companies need SEO tools for agencies. We take a look at two of these tools, one is for link building and another tool is best for doing a website audit.

AuthoritySpy
One of the SEO tools for agencies that can help with link building. It looks for the top influencers in your niche and help you get connected. They claim to be the most powerful software in finding and analyzing people of influence on the internet.

You can do so much with your AuthoritySpy, we show the best features of the software:

-Find influencers by just entering a search term, thousands of results are pulled in just seconds after you press the “enter” key. Results can be further enhanced by the addition of authority rankings like “Klout Score.”
-Manage multiple projects by creating new ones in a specific niche that you are doing research on
-Get to export reports for a client or team member to a CSV file
-Save time and effort looking for influencers manually, AuthoritySpy can do the job for you.
-Get to know the top blogs in your niche or industry which is based on having a large audience and active followers.

Deepcrawl
One of the features of this software is the performance of a technical audit for your website. What sets them apart when it comes to website crawlers is the ease with which users can review historical data to know trends and issues.

Once you monitor progress, areas that need to be corrected will come up like server response errors, link errors, and empty pages in the website.

After you perform a crawl with the software, results will be reported so that you can see if there was an improvement in website performance or not. This shows if corrections made had an impact on rankings and traffic for your site.

Having the best SEO tools can help marketing agencies in providing the best SEO services for their clients. Clients should do their due diligence in choosing the right SEO agency that is best for them. Doing online research is one of the best ways to find out if these agencies are legit or scams

Should My Business Use a Free Press Release Service?

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Businesses have a choice when it comes to getting a press release service. They can opt for paid and free.

 

Any new business can be tempted to try free distribution websites because they seem to provide easy PR techniques. However, PR professionals advise not to fall in this trap.

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What benefits you’ll get with free services? What is really free?

 

Free distribution sites are tempting, especially for startups and small businesses. They have little to no budget for press release distribution, but the fact that they are free makes them want to try this marketing strategy to gain a wider exposure and earn publicity.

 

Some experts treat these sites as “press release directories.” Sites that earn this reputation has a low rank on the search engines and are given a poor authority.

 

They are synonymous to PR spam. This can damage your ranking.

 

What are the cons of using a free service?

 

  • Some of them don’t distribute your releases. It’s only syndicated on their websites. If you think that you have saved a lot of bucks,
  • they will convince you to take an upgrade for a bigger fee to distribute your releases to other locations.
  • These sites place Google ads and outside links that may opt the visitors to click off your content. Some of the links may be from your competitors.
  • They don’t have customer service, which is hard when you have questions or follow ups.
  • They don’t provide analytics reports where you can monitor the performance of your campaign. You will be left guessing if it is hit or a miss.
  • You have to put a lot of effort, even if you hired them.
  • They don’t publish your content immediately.

Here is a list of 10 free distribution sites:

 

  1. 1888 PressRelease.com
  2. 24-7PressRelease.com
  3. Betanews
  4. Business Wire
  5. GGldir.com
  6. ClickPress
  7. Contactanycelebrity.com
  8. EboomWebSolutions
  9. Ereleases.com
  10. Express-Press-Release

If you decided to use a free website, don’t expect that you’ll have guaranteed results. They publish your content to sites, but less than the paid distribution companies.

 

PR experts advise to use paid distribution companies for press releases than a free site. They believe that the cost is worth the result you’ll be getting.

 

These companies have tie ups with a large network of reporters, influencers and news outlets. They have built relationships with them, that’s why you can expect to see your content on popular sites and locations. Your news is distributed in portals, databases, online news sites and search engines.

 

You can send them multimedia, such as images, video, infographics which add more value to your releases. You can also have access to social media and hyperlink features.

 

They have customer service that can accommodate all your inquiries and issues regarding the distribution. Your story can reach to journalists through RSS. Your story lands to the journalist who cover your industry.

 

If you’re a new business, you can take advantage of their writing service. They can advise you on the basics and have them write your release.   

 

Tracking the result of your campaign is important. With paid sites, you don’t need to ask them about it. They provide their clients with analytics reports where the key performance indicators or metrics corresponds to a value.

You’ll know if your release has a wide traffic, high clicks and media coverage. You’ll also know your leads, which sites your visitors came and other factors that affected your campaign.

 

Whether you choose a free or paid distribution service, make sure that you track the result of your releases. Decide which one can help you with your PR and marketing plans.

 

Don’t forget the saying, “you get what you pay for.”

How To Rank My Blog

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Let’s get it right. Ranking a blog is not just about knowing all the intricacies of keyword search and Google’s algorithms and trying to use technical expertise to be number one. Blog ranking is first of all based on excellent blog production or excellent content conceptualization and good blog writing, regardless of the relevant keywords, or so it seems.

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The experts at HOWTOMAKEMYBLOG or Search Engine Optimization for Blogs have significant things to say that are truly worth noting. The goal is how to rank higher in Google. Organic traffic flows into the search engine of Google, and it’s free. People can discover your blog through the search mechanism.

What bloggers should know is that Google continually looks for new content by crawls on the internet, and then indexes the newly discovered content in its search results where it feels is appropriate. The media giant detects new content by following links, reading sitemaps, and looking at social media shares.

Since Google wants to please its millions of users, If someone uses Google to search for your blog, Google displays the most relevant and reputable content on top of its search results to answer any user’s query directly on the results page.

Meet Marko says there are no shortcuts, no easy ways and tricks, and scams that can get your blog to the top of search results. Although you can learn by buying SEO products, your primary focus has to be on the production of quality content, a long, hard way to the top of Google’s results and Google is evident on that. So how to rank your blog is how directly related to how to make high quality, relevant content that people will like, read, and later trust.

The higher the readers trust on your blog content and writing, the higher your blog will likely rank on Google’s pages, since the Google algorithm combined with artificial intelligence also reads the comments on your blog. Two essential elements are essential here. To get your blog content on top of Google’s search results, take care of the content relevancy of your blog and site reputation where your blog will be posted.

If you want your blog to rank higher on Google’s page, publish only incredible content that people care about, that visitors love and that honestly answers questions real people have. Reach out to influencers such as niche community admins, other bloggers, and journalists and get them to share and link to your content.

Don’t get obsessed with search engine optimization and backlinks that you neglect your target market and the content quality. Since Google algorithms evolve continually and change, don’t try to patch your blog to keep up with the latest algorithmic update. Don’t worry about the technical aspects of SEO and all about search engines and their algorithms.

If you trick your way up to the top of Google’s rankings using SEO, this will only make things worse for your blog. Worry how you are going to produce and publish great content, or high-quality content that could add value to the visitors. The bottom line is, generate high-quality blogs that people would love to read. Google will take care of the rest.

How To Write Blogs With Creative Writing

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First, we can take a closer look at the features of creative writing. There are mainly two categories of creative writing—the non-fiction type and the fiction stories. In the Non-fiction, the genre may be found the feature stories or blogs. In the fiction type of stories,

A writer’s creativity may also be found in feature writing where the writer’s insights and analysis about an event are incorporated into the written material, not just a writer’s opinion but an intelligent discussion of issues based on data and research. In feature writing, a writer’s opinion is placed under the microscopic lens of critical thinking, analysis, even imagination.

Blog writing is a modern way of feature writing, except that in a blog, a writer’s observations may dominate the article written. A blog is an event, a scene (a landscape), a thing (such as a product) as seen through the eyes of the blogger. The blog could be posted directly on a website or sent to a web service provider for posting. There are many blog sites where one can post a blog for free. A sponsor may hire a service provider where it can distribute a blog to different locations.

Copyblogger has presented “ten terrific creative writing blogs” in its site that includes some topics written by various blog writers and featured in the Copyblogger site. One blog is about becoming a professional writer, as written by Jeff Goins, including, according to him, how to get a writer’s work published and how to succeed at the creative life without “losing your marbles.”

Another creative blog is that written by Jane Friedman who is also a media professor and speaker, where she emphasizes how technology affects writers, marketers, and people.

Joanna Penn’s “The Creative Penn” makes it to the top ten list with her favorite blogs on writing, publishing and book promotion. Through her Author 2.0 Blueprint eBook, she guides budding writers on how to write, publish and market a book. If you look at the table of content of her eBook, you’ll find out how the topics are presented in a simple, easy to understand manner, without any confusing technical language, yet it shows a highly creative work.

If you’re inclined to write about romantic topics, you might want to check out the “Romance University” according to copyblogger a fascinating site to help romance writers in both the genre fiction and non-fiction, especially for male writers. It’s a site where writers can meet and publish their work and interact with each other to improve creative writing.

 

“The Artist’s Road” is about Patrick Ross’s career that took him from journalism to communications consulting and back to creative writing. He describes his blogs as an ongoing conversation between the author and its readers concerning the challenges and rewards of pursuing a life committed to art.

WordPlay is fiction writer K.M. Weiland’s tagline in “helping writers become authors,” which shows that she has put a lot of creative writing into her work and also understands how to create an idea in the headline. She has offered advice to fiction writers for the improvement of their craft and including reading guides and other material for readers.

6 Metrics That Measure The Success of a Press Release Service

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In any campaign, including press release distribution, you have to know how well it performed. Did you reach your target goals?

You have to track the performance of your campaign. It is your basis for your future activities. It is how you’ll know whether you need to change, adjust or delete something.

press release distribution

In hiring a press release distribution online business service, ask for tracking reports that give you these 6 metrics:

The amount of reads.

You have to know how many people have read your release. They should give you the number of reads per location.

The figure should also be accompanied by where the reads are coming from. Knowing which part of the world or country is interested in your story is a big opportunity for your business.

You’ll be able to target them the next time you launch a campaign. For instance, you receive higher reads with your release about your new product feature than the release about your new company CEO. This gives you a hint on what type of content resonates with your audience.

The number of clicks.

How many people are clicking on the links that drive to your website? This gives the impression that your release is interesting that it generates interest.

If you’re not reaching the number of clicks that you’re targeting, there may be a problem with how you place the hyperlink. Place the hyperlinks to a keyword that can drive the readers to click rather than “click here.”

Make sure that your call-to-action (CTA) is clear and engaging. If it is confusing, you may not generate your target clicks.

Source of traffic.

You need to know where the traffic is coming from. This information will give you information on how the audiences found your release.

You will also get which keywords are used by the audience to find you. Moreover, it also gives you the information on how much of the traffic came from the search engines. Knowing which keywords people use to find your content is important for your next releases.

Headline impressions.

The analytics report they give to you should contain headline impressions. It gives insights on the location of your release headline.

When your headline is found in numerous sites, it means that you have used the right keywords. If you have a good headline impressions score, it tells how good you are at crafting a headline that generates interest.

This is why you should spend some time learning how to write an attention-grabbing and interesting headline. It’s not enough that you just wrote one.

Review how you can write a compelling headline that generates interest. It should also be optimized for the search engines.

Is your CTA effective? One way to measure this is when you have a good rating for interactions.

Your readers should be able to follow what you ask them to do. If you want them to subscribe to your channel, did they subscribe? Did they sign up for newletters, watch your video clip or avail your 10 percent discount offer?

If they engaged with your brand, it measures how you gained their trust. Their interactions can provide you insights on what interests them and what actions they would take.

If you haven’t attained a good response from them, you better review your CTA or change your technique to increase their interaction towards your brand.

For instance, if you found that many shopping carts are left by your customers before checking out, design a tactic that will increase sales. You may send a follow up email offering them a 10 percent discount once they completed their purchase.

Social engagement.

Does your audiences liked, shared, retweeted or commented on your releases? You need to have an idea how well your audiences perceived your content on social media.

The information gives you details on the total number of people who shared your content on a number of social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.

If you are getting likes, but few shares and comments, you should think of tactics to improve your interactions with the audiences. Social media can help your release to go viral.

Viral releases have the potential to be on top of the search engines. As you gain followers on social media, you build awareness, engagement and boost your sales.

 

Different Types of Blog Writing

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Blogs are pieces of writing based mainly on the author’s experience and knowledge about specific subjects. Blogs look into the qualities of a particular person, event, product, process, incident, or thing that the blogger writes for publication.

Blogs are usually published on blog sites or a website that specializes in specific topics that the blogger has written. Blog writers have some experience in writing, while some have undergone training in writing or have developed their innate talent in writing.

If you are not a writer and still want to create a blog, look for a writer who writes blogs, and convey to him or her your story, and the way you want the story to be written. In the long run, you will be able to write a blog for publication.

Blogs are more of feature articles rather than news articles. Since people read blogs that interest them most, blogs are written to satisfy the curiosity of readers regarding a particular topic. There are as many blogs as there are issues on this planet. We can classify blogs according to trends in blog sites.

News-oriented blogs. These type of blogs deal with current local and global issues that affect particular groups of stakeholders. The most common among the news-oriented blogs are political blogs and commentaries. Some blog writers also deal with disaster events while some write about fashion, actors and actresses and social events. However, such blogs, if not well written by a seasoned news writer could be subject to misinterpretation.

Travel blogs. These blogs are getting famous and more and more people who can write are into travel blog writing. Travel experiences of people are the ones that get more attention from readers. Readers are usually interested in a particular place, a beach or restaurant, a unique shop or just about any form of travel. Travel blogs are not only informative but entertaining as well.

Tech blogs. Technology blogs are written by people who have a good knowledge about technology in general and a specific product in particular. Examples of tech blogs are the different laptops in 2018 and how these laptops differ from one another regarding performance and price. Another is the features found in a new cell phone compared to other mobile phones in the market. Tech blogs can also appear in tech magazines aside from standard blog sites.

Garden and plant blogs. These blogs attract thousands of readers because of the popularity of backyard gardening, especially in the United States. Still, others go into more interesting areas like marijuana gardening, aside from planting herbal teas, culinary herbs, and other medicinal herbs. Selling these herbs online can bring unlimited income every year. Garden and plant blogs are one of the most popular blogs with a wide readership.

Financial blogs. This type of blog is getting the attention of more and more people because it could teach people how to save and invest money and how to spend one’s fortune. Financial blogs could be written by people who have extensive experience in financial planning and investment. Blogs about Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency trend have attracted more attention from readers.