Every SEO specialist will know about the “obvious” factors that influence search engine rankings.

Mobile-friendliness, content relevance, link-building authority, and keywords are all some of the most important SEO metrics, and SEO marketers will be vying for dominance in each so that their respective websites will soar to the top of the SERPs.

Given that the competition is fierce in these metrics, it becomes important to look for other SEO-affecting factors that can be exploited. You’ll need every advantage you can get if you want to stand out from the crowd.

One topic that’s been of perennial interest to SEO marketers is the humble Google My Business (GMB) review and rating, and whether it has an impact on SEO performance.

It’s true that reviews and ratings strongly influence customers’ first impressions of a business and whether or not they choose to explore them, but is there more going on behind the scenes beyond this organic influence? If this is the case, how can business owners leverage and optimize their My Business listings?

We’ll explore these and other topics about GMB in this blog entry, and hopefully provide insight into how you can use it to improve your SEO standings.

What Is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a feature that allows business owners to manage the way their business appears on Google.

In their My Business panel, owners can input information that customers will find valuable, such as contact numbers, comprehensive business hours, shop locations, and more. They can also upload photos, describe some of the products and services they offer, and even indicate whether or not they deliver, and in what areas they offer delivery services.

Having complete GMB information will be of great help to your customers when they’re looking for your business. When your business appears in a search in Google, it’ll produce a Local Knowledge panel that contains all your relevant GMB information, as well as reviews and questions and answers.

On top of that, the same information will be highlighted and displayed when someone finds your business on Google Maps. This is perfect for users searching for local businesses in the vicinity.

Google My Business also allows owners to discover insights about their business. Metrics such as site visitors, directions requests, and users who called you directly through the “call” button in Google are all available for business owners.

Google My Business Reviews

As mentioned above, Google My Business also allows users to review businesses they’ve visited. These reviews consist of a star rating, from 1 to 5, as well as an optional text review for users to describe their review in more detail.

The average rating of these reviews, as well as the number of reviews, appears in Google My Business listings on both Local Knowledge panels and in Google Maps. Users will be able to see all reviews and their details, as well as a breakdown of the number of reviews for each rating from 1 to 5 stars.

Owners can respond directly to each review, which can help build trust with customers. Reviews to which the business owner has replied will show up with a label, “Response from the owner.”

Do Google My Business Reviews Impact SEO?

Google My Business itself has certain direct impacts on SEO. Simply having GMB information already highlights you in your very own Knowledge Panel, and more complete information with greater engagement has a chance of putting you in the Google carousel that appears when users search for local businesses. These are considered massive SEO benefits and will promote your site immediately.

However, reviews are a trickier subject. There’s no explicit information about how they impact search engine results—though to be fair, there is almost never any explicit information about how Google’s algorithms work.

Organic Impact

To prospective customers, GMB reviews, and indeed reviews of any kind, are very strong indicators for the quality of a business. With or without any direct algorithmic benefits to SEO, there are organic benefits that make GMB reviews a great thing for your business.

For one, studies show that nearly all users read online reviews and take them into account. Alongside this, about 91% of consumers 18-34 years old will trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.

User reviews as a whole are considered an authentic indicator of a business’ performance. Customers may treat positive reviews from large publications or endorsers with some degree of suspicion, thinking about the possibility that these endorsements may have been paid for or otherwise sponsored. Online reviews can be seen as genuine evaluations from “real people” who have actually used the business in question.

Good reviews have measurable impacts on a business’s performance. An increase in rating by one star can improve revenue by as much as 9%. Indeed, 72% of surveyed consumers say that good online reviews for a business will improve their trust in it.

In addition, when a business engages with their customers by responding to reviews, it shows that the business is looking at feedback. Responses to positive reviews can be considered a form of thanks, while apologetic and reassuring responses to negative reviews show that they are always listening to customers’ needs.

Indeed, customers are 16% more likely to recommend a business, and even rate it more highly, if they see that the business is responding to reviews. This, of course, relies on responses to reviews being constructed effectively.

Conversely, negative reviews have the opposite effect on customers choosing a business. 57% of surveyed consumers, for instance, won’t use a business with less than 4 stars.

The quantity of reviews also plays a role in consumer psychology—on average, consumers won’t trust a business’s star rating unless there have been at least 40 reviews.

All of these are indirect impacts on SEO, but they nevertheless strongly affect a prospective customer’s decision to do business with you, when they see your star rating in Google search results.

Direct SEO Impact

Now comes the big question—is there any evidence that Google My Business reviews actually impact SEO? A variety of studies across the Internet provide the answers.

First up, one 60-day case study that researched the direct influence of GMB reviews indicates that increasing the number of meaningful reviews for a business listing that previously had 0-1 reviews, has a significant effect on search engine rankings after two months.

The study employed the researchers’ personal accounts, which meant that the maximum possible influence they could have had on the listings was highly limited. In real-world scenarios, a large number of reviews could have an even greater impact!

Another study, which performed research on high-ranking businesses, came to several conclusions about the impact of GMB reviews, primarily correlating positive rankings with review quality and quantity.

A lot of the important data is related to the top 3 search results. This is because the top 3 results in a local business search are presented in the form of the “Google 3-Pack,” where the top 3 listings get featured in a special box above the Web search results.

For one, the top 3 businesses in search engine results are very likely to have a higher rating than the rest of the businesses in the top 10. Specifically, 64% of all top-rated businesses are also in the top 1-3 search engine rankings.

The actual differences between the star ratings aren’t actually that high. Businesses at rankings 1-3 have 4.47 stars on average, while positions 4-6 have 4.46 stars, and positions 7-10 have 4.45 stars. From a statistical perspective, these are very low values, but they may represent the key difference that will lead a customer to choose a higher-ranked business (even if it’s rated only slightly higher) over another.

The average number of ratings for high-ranking businesses may also play a big role. The top 3 businesses have an average of 47 reviews, whereas rank 7-10 listings have 38 reviews. Local businesses have an average of 39 reviews across all industries.

A similar study conducted on over 20,000 local listings came to similar conclusions. The study showed that the three highest-ranked local businesses have 472% more reviews than those in the 4-6 spots.

At this point, there’s enough strong evidence to suggest that improving one’s GMB reviews creates a somewhat related effect in improving one’s SEO rankings. This may be because of a real relationship between ranking and reviews, or because the process of improving GMB reviews results in other SEO ranking improvements.

Moz suggests that 9% of the Google algorithm is determined by reviews. This is very much in line with Google’s preference for trustworthy and authoritative businesses, and a large quantity of diverse and positive reviews is a very strong signal for trustworthiness.

Even if all of these impacts are merely correlative and not causative, you also have to consider the organic impacts of positive reviews, which translate to improved business performance.

A Strategy For Improving Google My Business Reviews

We’ve established that there’s a strong relationship between GMB reviews and SEO performance. Now, the next question is:

How do you improve your Google My Business reviews?

Quantity

Sometimes, it’s as simple as asking the customer to review your business.

Oftentimes, the problem is simply that customers are unaware that they can leave a review, so informing them or reminding them about this opportunity to leave feedback can lead to positive results. 70% of consumers, when asked to leave a review, will do just that.

You can remind your customers to review you in your email blasts, marketing materials, landing pages and sales funnels, or by advertising your Google My Business listing and asking for reviews. Unlike Yelp, Google is actually perfectly fine with you asking for reviews from your customers, as long as you don’t incentivize them to do so.

By doing this, you can increase the number of reviews on your local business listing, increasing the trustworthiness of whatever star rating you have.

Quality

It’s a big no-no to try and artificially inflate your reviews with fake accounts or incentives. Many black-hat SEO marketers will try it anyway, and will probably crash and burn.

The most obvious way to improve quality is to simply be a better business in comparison to your competition, but you should be striving for that anyway.

One other way to improve your review standing, however, is to engage with the reviews you already have, both positive and negative. As we described earlier, engaging with reviews shows that you’re listening to feedback. This is explicitly stated by Google’s support pages!

On top of this, studies show that consumers who have left negative feedback have a good chance of a change of heart after getting a response from the business they reviewed. 33% would go on to post a positive review after getting a response, while 34% deleted their negative feedback.

A similar study from Harvard Business Review came to the same conclusion, that engaging with both positive and negative reviews has a net positive result on ratings.

Of course, as we said, this is reliant on a properly constructed response. Some tips to constructing a good review response include thanking them for the feedback (whether negative or positive) and showing empathy for their concerns.

It’s also important to offer solutions to negative reviewers, to help fix the problem they have with the business. You can also outline the concrete steps you’re taking to make sure that whatever negative experience they had doesn’t happen again.

For positive reviews, you can offer extra value, such as the chance to test out new features before they’re released publicly. Don’t advertise this, of course, or else you’ll be incentivizing positive reviews.

Conclusion

There’s certainly a definite relationship between Google My Business reviews and SEO rating, and it’s not just a minuscule factor that can be overlooked. Good reviews may end up being a key advantage in your competition for the top spot in the rankings, and you’ll do well to try and maximize them the best you can.

It’s also important to note that improving your online reviews also means doing better business in general and engaging with your customers in more meaningful ways. These are things that will have far greater positive impacts than just a better star rating.

The post Correlation And Causation: Do Google My Business Reviews Impact SERP Rankings? appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Local search had long expanded from searches using PCs to searches using mobile phones where users are on-the-go and are often ready to visit a store or to purchase on the spot. According to a study by 15Miles/Neustar Localeze/comScore, 78% of mobile searches result in a purchase.

Optimising your business for local search means allowing your business to be found easily when a potential customer in your area is searching for a service you offer, whether they are on a PC or a mobile device.

This is done by ensuring that your business is optimised along the top local search ranking factors. This is especially important if you have several competitors sharing the same local area.

Here are the most important ranking factors based on a Moz study:

1. Google My Business Listing Signals

Make sure that you have completed your registration to Google My Business so that you will appear in searches and maps. Make sure that your information is accurate and complete.

Your location(s) must be verified as well – Google provides a verification process.

Keep your opening hours accurate. Entering and updating your opening hours, including special hours for holidays and special events, lets potential customers know when you’re available and gives them confidence that when they travel to your location, it will be open.

Photos also help your potential customers find your business across Google properties. Showcase your products and services to people who are looking for what you offer. So add photos, and add them regularly.

2. On-page Signals

On-page signals include the presence of NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) on your pages, keywords in titles, domain authority and more.

When Google crawls your web pages, they extract the content of those pages and add it to their indexes. Google’s algorithms then figure out if your pages are of sufficient quality to be ranked well for search terms.

3. Link Signals

Inbound links to your site is a ranking signal. This includes the inbound anchor text, the domain authority of the sites linking to your business, the quality and quantity of links among others.

Google does not just look at the content of your pages; it also looks at the number of links pointing to your pages from external websites and the quality of those external websites. The more high-quality websites link to you, the more likely you are to rank well in the local search results.

Links from websites within your location will be helpful. As well as links coming from websites that fall under the same industry category your business is in.

4. Citation Signals

A citation is any mention of the name, address, and phone number for your business online. Citations can occur on local business directories, and on social platforms. Citations help potential customers discover your business and also impact local search engine rankings.

Create citations on major local business data platforms such as Google My Business, Acxiom, Localeze/Neustar, and Infogroup which exist to publish this type of data. Key local business listings can also be built on popular social and review-oriented sites like Facebook and Yelp.

You can also build listings on websites that are specific to your industry and geography. Some of these sites include Chamber of Commerce websites or the websites of professional associations.

Make sure that you also build citations on a wide variety of publications, including blogs, news sites, apps, maps, government databases, and more.

5. Review Signals

Make sure that you have positive reviews and star ratings by providing an excellent product and remarkable service. Avoid negative reviews by responding to customer issues and resolving them before they take it to the public online.

Install mechanisms to collect reviews from happy customers while the experience is still fresh. Seven out of ten customers will leave a review online when you ask them to.

In a recent online poll, it was found that 84% trusted online reviews as much as they would a recommendation from a friend or family member. That’s up 4% from last year showing that more people are relying on online reviews to guide their buying decision.

Positive reviews and high star ratings are indicators that your local business is a reputable one that people should consider. And so if your business has good review signals, it will have a higher probability of ranking in the local search results, as well as a higher chance of getting the click

6. Behavioural Signals

Behavioural signals include click-through rate or CTR, clicks-to-call (on mobile), check-ins, navigational paths, time and duration on your site, and frequency of visits.

Some tactics that increase CTR are well-crafted catchy titles and descriptions that entice users to click.

The more customers interact with your website as measured by the CTR and clicks-to-call, as well visits to your place as indicated by check-ins, the stronger signal your business sends that it is worthy of getting displayed in the local search results.

7. Social Signals

At a minimum, your local business should have a business profile on Google+, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.

You should be active on at least 2 or 3 social media platforms that your current and potential customers use the most. You should be posting content on a regular basis to connect with and engage your audience through likes, shares, as well as interacting with them through comments and direct messages.

Ensure that your Local SEO strategy builds on these signals and your business will gain more visibility in the local search results.

The post Critical Factors to Local SEO Success appeared first on Marketing Digest.

It might come as a surprise, but there at least 200 known Google ranking factors in their algorithm that can directly affect how your web pages are ranking. But once you realize where all these factors are coming from, it will make more sense. These can be anything from user-interaction signals such as; repeat traffic, number of comments, how long a visitor spends on your site, your bounce rate, etc., to site level factors such as your site trust, site usability, and mobile optimization.

You could go over all 200 and start making the changes you need. And if you start now, you’re going to need to set aside a considerable amount of time for this. Some elements aren’t very difficult that you or your web developer can start working on now. With that in mind, this article focuses on some of the most important factors you should start looking at.

Critical Technical On-Page Factors

Technical factors that affect your website and its ranking should be a first priority. Take into consideration that Google confirmed in 2014 that websites with strong HTTPS encryption are going to outrank pages that are unsecure HTTP websites. In fact, Google Chrome now marks sites that have not switched to HTTPS as unsafe. It is especially important that if a website does any type of business transactions, or gathers any user information at all, it should use HTTPS encryption.

Site visitors are starting to catch on to this, and it’s been made easier as Google Chrome will tell them that the page is secure next to the URL in the browser. Not using HTTPS encryption and still using HTTP? Get the security certificate and make the switch as one of the first things you do.

Your website should also have proper structure and use H1 and H2 headings in the source code. Data collection has shown that there is a strong correlation between higher rank and websites or landing pages that make use of at least one H2 heading.

Interstitials will cause you problems unless you are using them correctly. Pop-ups that end up covering the main content on a website, including ads or any call to action pop-up. It’s especially bad if these pop up, and then when clicked, take the user to another page. You can have interstitials, just make sure they aren’t interfering with the user’s ability to get the results they were looking for. There are exceptions, of course, such as logins, legally-required pop-ups such as age verification, and small banners which probably should be easy for the visitor to dismiss.

Comprehensive Content Contributes in Rankings

It cannot be stressed enough how important good and relevant content is when it comes to getting your website ranked. But it seems that a lot of website owners think that stuffing a lot of content on a lot of pages is going to get you ranked higher than another site with less pages and less content. This has been a misconception for a while now.

It’s a fact that websites that have less content, and fewer pages than another comparable site can have better rankings. And if you’re asking yourself how that’s possible, it’s pretty simple actually. A page that has more comprehensive, useful and relatable content is going to outrank another site based on the same niche. Take this to another level with extensive, exhaustively researched content that will naturally take more than 500 words, then you got yourself a better contender.

What this really means is giving the visitor content that gives a very detailed description, and answers every possible question about a subject. If a visitor to your website doesn’t find all the information they were looking for about a specific query, or product, then you need to go back and look at the value of your content again.

It’s important to reiterate that a website isn’t going to rank by stuffed pages upon pages of 500-word articles on it. It’s more about the quality, and the quantity doesn’t hurt either. And if you’re going to provide information for someone, then make sure to hit all the possible points and answer all their questions. You will need more than just a 500-word article in many cases.

A recent study showed that pages ranking on Google’s page 1 have an average of 1890 words.

User Experience is More Critical Than You Think

One of the things that most website owners are missing looking into is their website’s user experience. When looking at and testing user experience, you need to consider several factors. There are more people using their mobile devices to go online and find products or services.

Let’s face it, mobile devices have changed and driven a lot of changes when it comes to user experience. There are many websites still running online that are impossible to view on a mobile device. It’s important that your website is mobile friendly, meaning that not only it can be viewed easily but also comfortably usable. Design elements will play a big part in how friendly your website is to a mobile user. Having small buttons that make it difficult for a finger to tap on, text that is too small to read will contribute to a bad user experience.

Page speed is also a significant factor. There are a couple of main reasons for this, and it’s not simply because Google wants your page to load fast. They want your page to load fast for users who simply will not wait too long for your website to load. A visitor on a mobile site will not wait longer than 4-5 seconds for a page to load before they think that either the website is broken, or that the page doesn’t exist. And there can be many reasons for a slow loading website. Websites that have images with big file sizes, don’t have optimized code, or using full videos that need to buffer are the likely reasons your page isn’t loading fast enough. If your website is taking too long to load on a mobile device, have your web developer take a look and see where the problem is.

Is Backlinking Still a Viable Strategy?

Backlinking is still an important strategy, but if you’re not doing it right, or your SEO service provider has no idea what quality backlinking is, then you may even get penalized for certain backlinks, even if you don’t think you are doing anything wrong. Backlinking isn’t all about getting other sites to link back to you. Yes, that is the definition of the term, but there are other factors that you’ve got to look at when it comes to building links. Some SEO’s think that linking to authority sites help send trust signals back to Google. However, it’s good idea to keep your outbound links relevant to your main content. It’s also not a good idea to have too many outbound links as your websites can leak PageRank. In short, you don’t want to be simply a reference page. Link out only when you need to supplement your content with that link.

Some people might say that PageRank is no longer significant. Page Rank was not something that was done away with. Google just doesn’t supply website owners with that information anymore. And many developers probably recall that the PageRank toolbar was done away with and no longer updated. You can be certain that PageRank still exists, but it’s not something that you can easily utilize. When it comes to internal links, it’s important to point out that the number of internal links pointing to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on your site. If you are simply linking pages to link them together, instead of linking pages based on relevance, then you could hurt your website’s’ ranking.

Backlinks from other sites (that you do not own) to your content are more valuable than internal links, and they should be links that are relevant or supplementing the content of the linking website. Getting sites to backlink to you is the most difficult part. But the big secret here comes down to having the best content you can create. To be successful in the backlinking game, you should develop exceptional content that other website owners will love to backlink to.

These are just a few things that make up some of the most important factors when it comes to ranking a website. They are arguably the most important. The bottom line comes down to the user experience. When you offer your visitor a good user experience, Google rewards your efforts.

The post Does Your SEO Strategy Include these Top Ranking Factors? appeared first on Marketing Digest.

SEO Tips: Using High-Quality Content for a Minimalist SEO Approach

When it comes to online marketing, SEO is the first term that comes to mind. Marketers work with specialists to enhance the ranking of the websites they are optimizing in organic search results. Needless to say, their work is guided by multiple factors, SEO news say these factors number to around 205 (and counting). To execute large campaigns, giant corporations usually hire their own team of experts for full-time work, but for startups and small businesses, SEO need not be viewed as complicated.

According to Jayson DeMers, in his article for Forbes.com (@Forbes), most entrepreneurs can get by using the minimalistic approach. By focusing more on the basics, they will be able to strengthen a few key aspects of their online marketing rather than be merely intimidated by its complexities and intricate details. The author suggests starting with the production of high-quality content.

Well-researched, value-adding articles help a company build credibility and trust with its online market. Regular content update promotes a boost in SEO ranking as well since it keeps the website from becoming stale and stagnant. Search engines and audiences alike favor websites with fresh, relevant and up-to-date content.

Thousands of books and blogs share tips about how to write great quality content. Here, we’ll compress its essential elements into six.

1. Length: Should you write something lengthy or concise? If you want it to rank high in desktop searches and attract links, go for 1000+ word content. If you’re targeting mobile users, trim it down to important points so the audience can read it fast.

2. Graphics: More people respond better to content supplemented with visual elements like images, videos, and infographics. In addition, Google factors in multimedia when ranking pages.

3. Obviously, grammatical and spelling errors as well as content with ideas popping like they’re taken from out of the blue won’t make you appear credible.

4. How is the flow of your content? Are points listed into bullets? Are you using subtopic headings? Is there appropriate white space? Is the font style and size readable? Basically, the easier it is for the reader to scan the text, the better.

5. Content must be written with expertise. If the author himself is not an expert in a topic, then at least leading industry sources must be cited to make the content more factual and credible.

6. Shares and comments. Shares increase a content’s value so if the page lacks a social media button, it signals that you aren’t that tech savvy. Moreover, if you have healthy, positive comments, the content will be deemed of high quality.

Content is a major component of a minimalistic SEO strategy. By giving it a good deal of focus, your business could gain better search engine visibility. Note that more savvy SEO tips are available in online resources like Marketing Digest.

The post SEO Tips: Using High-Quality Content for a Minimalist SEO Approach appeared first on Marketing Digest.

What Local Marketing News Say About the Value of Customer Reviews

When looking at local marketing news or any informative article about local SEO, one can see that online marketing experts value customer reviews. This article will look at customer reviews and will discuss why they are important.

Why Customer Reviews Matter

The Digital Wheelhouse discusses in depth why local businesses need customer reviews. The foremost noticeable benefit to local SEO is both from the standpoint of search engines (machines) and users (humans). Google’s search algorithms are complex and their exact inner-workings remain a secret. However, it is known that the algorithms take into account customer reviews in ranking for local search. On the user side, the majority of online shoppers (77%) use reviews when making a purchasing decision. Furthermore, reviews also affect the overall online reputation of a business.

Tips on How to Effectively Use Customer Reviews

While customer reviews are indeed important, simply having reviews is not enough. A business must have positive reviews in platforms where they matter. Business 2 Community (@B2Community) points out the power of Yelp in this instance. The article mentions the result of several studies: having a Yelp account can potentially increase a business’s revenues by up to $8,000 a year. This is due in large part to 90% of Yelp users basing buying decisions from positive reviews, and 93% actually making purchases at the businesses they were searching for. The surprising fact here is that 87% of small businesses have yet to use Yelp.

Now, Yelp is just one platform and is a general listing. Google pulls listings from different review sites, depending on the industry of the business. Finding out what these review sites are can be done with some research and inquiry.

Of course, Google primarily fronts the reviews from Google+ itself. As such, Google+ should be targeted by local businesses for reviews. Google recently updated its presentation of local business results to feature ratings and reviews prominently so that users can immediately see feedback.

Encouraging reviews is just one aspect of local marketing. Once the reviews are coming in, they should be properly managed. Publications that provide local marketing insights dictate that reviews should be monitored, with each responded to accordingly. To stay updated with strategies on utilizing reviews, it’s a good idea to check local marketing resources, such as Marketing Digest.

How is your business faring in reviews? Have you attracted positive reviews lately?

The post What Local Marketing News Say About the Value of Customer Reviews appeared first on Marketing Digest.

SEO Insights: Here’s What You Must Avoid to Get on Google’s Good Side

SEO news sources, such as Marketing Digest, have seen SEO trends come and go, and make a point of promoting SEO techniques that produce great results and warning against the use of SEO techniques that could get websites penalized. An article that appeared in Quick Sprout (@neilpatel) highlighted five SEO techniques that SEO practitioners and business owners need to stop using immediately.

When it comes to implementing SEO for your website and other web properties, there is a general rule to follow: any practice that is considered unethical, outdated, or beyond the confines of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is considered to be bad SEO, and should be avoided.

Read on to learn more about the SEO techniques that could get your website on Google’s bad side:

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing used to work with the search engines back in the day when the bots simply counted how many times a keyword was mentioned on a particular page. Not anymore. The world’s top search engines, including Google, now actively discourage keyword stuffing. As noted by Neil Patel in the Quick Sprout article, keyword density should not be the prime focus of SEO practitioners and writers. Instead, SEO practitioners and writers should focus on creating relevant and informative content for readers. Great content, not keyword density, can improve a site’s visibility on the SERPs.

Short and Insubstantial Content

Blogs and news sources that provide SEO insights note that many SEO myths still pervade the online community. Some think that short content invariably performs better than longer content, and vice versa. The truth is, when it comes to creating great content that will rank well on the SERPs, length is not the only consideration. Great content is substantial, and should be crafted to suit the needs and expectations of its target audience.

Moreover, studies show that longer content tends to perform better than shorter content. This is because a higher word count typically results in more search traffic. “Evidence suggests that the more content your page has, the better chance it has of a top position in Google results.”

Duplicate Content

Let’s get this straight: search engines will penalize websites for having duplicate content on different pages. Guaranteed. Furthermore, this rule applies not only to on-site pages, but across the entire Web as well. Creating content that’s similar to that found on another website is sure to dip rankings if proof of authorship and authenticity is nowhere to be found.

Link Buying

There’s absolutely no sense in buying as many links as possible if you don’t even know where these links came from. In other words, sub-par, irrelevant links will incite harsh penalties, no matter how many there are.

The post SEO Insights: Here’s What You Must Avoid to Get on Google’s Good Side appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Handy SEO Tips: Balancing User Experience and SEO in Your Web Design

The Entrepreneur (@Entrepreneur) article, “Be Sure to Balance SEO and User Experience in Your Web Page Design,” highlights a very important rule (in fact, the first one!) in Google’s list of philosophies: focus on the user and all else will follow. However, many SEO practitioners don’t heed this rule, as they’re focused on creating web pages designed for search engine crawlers rather than end users.

Focusing on only one of two web design core pillars (which happen to be user experience and SEO) is not the way to go these days. While it’s true that the two concepts essentially complement each other (good user experience often results in better SEO, after all), there are specific elements of user experience that affect Google’s ability to “crawl” a webpage.

Ironically, SEO has become so complex that even Google itself needs a helping hand to navigate its own algorithms. SEO news sources, like Marketing Digest, have previously reported that Google is in need of an SEO program manager for its California headquarters. This manager will be tasked with improving organic searches for Google across the Web. Other tasks include website development and optimization, blog and social strategy shaping, as well as defining web structure for international websites.

While it appears that even Google is having trouble navigating the complex world of SEO, that doesn’t mean that you need to struggle as well. Here are a few tips and tricks you can employ:

Make Web Page Content “Indexable”

Make content on your web pages more “indexable” for the crawlers and you’ll improve your site’s organic visibility on the SERPs. While Google’s crawlers can read images (images appear on Google’s Image searches, after all), they need to meet the following criteria:

• Images should have descriptive file names
• Images should include appropriate alt text
• Images should be surrounded with relevant text
• Images should not hide important text

Make Navigation a Breeze

This is probably one of the most important SEO tips regarding user experience. Clean and clutter-free site navigation is the foremost benchmark of a website’s user-friendliness, and for good reason. If getting to various pages on your site requires a ton of effort from the user, how will they ever find your site desirable?

Spread those Keywords Out

Keywords are versatile enough to be used in copy, on-site articles, the very design of the site, images, title tags, slogans, bullet points, and even URLs—the possibilities are endless.

Make Your Site Visually Appealing

These days, aesthetics relies heavily on user familiarity. Using a basic two or three-column layout is commendable since it radiates consistency and professionalism (and also makes the site responsive). Using colors that radiate brand identity is also recommended. After all, who doesn’t like a good-looking website?

The post Handy SEO Tips: Balancing User Experience and SEO in Your Web Design appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Google Continues its Lead in the U.S. Desktop Search Engine Market with 64% Share, comScore Says

In its July analysis of U.S. desktop search engine rankings, comScore (@comScore) revealed Google’s continuous dominance of the explicit core search market.

comScore released its monthly analysis of the U.S. Desktop Search Engine Market on August 14, 2015, and found that Google sites still lead the search market with 64% market share. Although Google’s market share remained stable with 0% change since the previous month, it’s notable that its share is down from 67.6% between May and June in 2014. [See Figure 1]

Figure 1 (Source: comScore)

Following Google are Microsoft sites, which, when combined with search partner Yahoo, make up 33% of the total explicit core search market. Ask Network accounted for almost 2% of explicit core searches, trailed closely by AOL, Inc. with a steady 1.2% market share.

When it comes to the actual number of searches conducted, a total of 17.7 billion explicit core searches were made in July. At the top spot is Google with 11.3 billion (up 1% from the June results), followed by Microsoft and Yahoo sites with an accumulated 5.8 billion searches. [See Figure 2]

Figure 2 (Source: comScore)

With a total of 313 million (up 4%) of searches conducted, Ask Network ranked fourth, while AOL, Inc. slipped to the fifth spot with 206 million (up 2%).

While Google maintains its lead in search market share, it remains to be seen how Microsoft sites, particularly Bing, will fare in the coming months, especially now that the search agreement between Yahoo and the company has been somewhat revised.

AOL, on the other hand, will soon be part of Microsoft too. “Beginning January 1st, 2016 Bing will become the exclusive provider of search and search advertising services across AOL properties,” Bing announced. This will give Microsoft more opportunity to vie with Google in terms of total U.S desktop search volume come 2016.

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New Study from Moovweb Shows that Mobile-Friendly Sites are Dominating the Top Google Search Results

When Google released the new mobile-friendly algorithm update known as “Mobilegeddon” (or “Google Mice”) on April 21, a lot of business websites went mobile-friendly in order to comply with Google’s latest requirements. With mobile Internet browsing now exceeding desktop Internet browsing, Google encourages businesses to go mobile-friendly if they want to maintain or boost their rankings on the mobile SERPs.

But surprisingly, some websites haven’t heeded Google’s warnings and have remained non-mobile-friendly. And so today, they are facing a serious threat as a new study reveals that the Google Mice update has gone into full swing—with visibility and ranking consequences evident for non-mobile-friendly sites.

New research from San Francisco-based mobile expert company Moovweb (@Moovweb) indicates that mobile-friendly sites are clearly conquering the top Google search results: 83% of the time, the sites that appear on the first page of the SERPs were tagged “mobile-friendly”. Moreover, the top three results were mobile-friendly 81% of the time. [See Figure 1]

Figure 1 (Source: Moovweb)

The study further revealed that 77% of the results in the Google mobile SERPs are mobile-friendly. “These results appear to be stable over time. For the 6 weeks we tracked the data, the number of mobile-friendly results on the first page has hovered around the average of 7.7 out of 10 results,” Moovweb stated.

Figure 2 (Source: Moovweb)

Since the rollout of the update, Moovweb has been examining over 1,000 important e-commerce keywords in a range of industries in order to ascertain how the Mobilegeddon update has affected the rankings of sites in Google’s mobile search results.

The keywords were selected across different industries, such as transportation, retail, travel and hospitality, healthcare, insurance, and education. During the analysis, Moovweb found that some sectors appeared to be more prepared for the update than the rest. “When we separated the keywords by industry, we found that keywords in some industries had a much higher percentage of mobile-friendly webpages in their top 10 keyword positions,” the company noted.

Out of all the examined categories, the transportation industry displayed the lowest percentage of mobile-friendly pages, while the retail industry remained at the top of the list. Healthcare, insurance, as well as the travel and hospitality sectors weren’t too far behind when it comes to heeding Google’s call to go mobile-friendly. [See Figure 3]

Figure 3 (Source: Moovweb)

Many claims and debates have surfaced about the actual effect of Google’s mobile-friendly update on business sites, but if Moovweb’s research is any indication, it’s safe to say that non-mobile-friendly sites, in a general sense, are being hit by this particular update. The message is clear and simple: if you want to improve your site’s visibility on the SERPs, your site must meet the needs of searchers using their mobile devices for sourcing information.

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Great SEO Insights: Rankings are Old-School; Focus on Leads and Sales

While there are numerous blog posts and articles sounding the death knell for SEO (claiming that it’s time has passed and marketers need to look to other strategies to drive their marketing campaigns), the truth is that SEO continues to lead businesses to success. One thing has changed for SEO, though: it’s not solely about ranking on search results for specific keywords anymore, as it’s also about generating traffic and sales for businesses.

SEO is still very much tied to content marketing, as the main goal of Google is to deliver relevant, high-quality search results (i.e. high-quality content) to users when they perform queries. Moreover, when it comes to SEO campaigns, it takes time before the desired results are achieved, so exercising a lot of effort and patience can go a long way.

If you want to dig deeper into the topic, then consider these actionable SEO insights:

Shift Your Focus to Generating Sales and Traffic

In his article for Forbes (@Forbes), entitled “What CMOs Need To Know About SEO,” Josh Steimle pointed out that rankings on the search results no longer work like they did before, now that Google is increasingly customizing its search results based on the users’ location, device, and context. In other words, search results are no longer uniform; hence, ranking on search results for highly desired keywords does not drive the same results.

Steimle suggests that marketers today do away with their focus on rankings as a primary metric for their SEO success, and instead veer their attention to generating more leads and sales. This can be achieved by adopting a holistic view of SEO overlapping with other forms of digital marketing—like social media, content marketing, and conversion rate optimization.

How Long Until SEO Starts to Work?

As SEO continues to evolve, the main question marketers should be asking is, “How long until SEO works to generate leads and sales?” In another article for Forbes, entitled “How Long Does SEO Take To Start Working?” Steimle says that the answer to this pressing question depends on several factors, including how long a website has been around, how much SEO has been done on it, how much useful content it contains, and what shape it’s in. Steimle does point out that four to six months is the general time frame to see SEO’s beneficial results.

To stay updated with the latest SEO news and developments, make sure to subscribe to websites like Marketing Digest.

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