If it doesn’t, you could be dealing with a content gap, which is more common than you might think.

A content gap occurs whenever there’s a difference between the type of content your audience wants and the content actually provided on your website.  

In other words, your site isn’t delivering the goods for certain hot topics, so your audience will look elsewhere.

A quick example would be a user looking for a tutorial video on how to plant roses. If they can’t find one on your gardening site, they’ll look somewhere else until they find it. 

Content gaps aren’t good for your business, as it’s likely that those views (and potential dollars) will flood your competitor’s websites to consume their content instead. 

How can you find out if you have a content gap?

You can by conducting a content gap analysis, which is what we’re going to teach you how to do today. 

Besides uncovering costly gaps in your content, a content gap analysis is also an excellent tool for generating hundreds of valuable content ideas. 

This is enormously helpful due to the sheer amount of content most websites have to publish to maintain their brand’s reputation and SERP (search engine results pages) rankings. 90% of marketers now include content in their marketing strategies, and those ideas have to come from somewhere! 

Stay tuned to learn how you can conduct a content gap analysis on your website and score tons of content ideas in the process. 

What Is A Content Gap Analysis?

At its core, a content gap analysis is a way to identify missing topics (or gaps) in your current library of content. 

The goal of using content to improve marketing and SEO is to consistently generate traffic from your target audience, and the only way to do that is to cover the topics that mean the most to them. 

Ideally, your content should:

1. Identify your audience’s primary pain points and problems 
2. Address and provide solutions for said issues (typically through the use of one of your products or services) 
3. Cover pressing news stories that matter to your audience 
4. Entertain and delight your audience 

However, even with an airtight content strategy that ticks all the boxes presented above, content gaps can still occur. 

This is because it’s next to impossible to stay on top of every trending topic and pain point that pops up for your target audience. Besides trending news stories, it can be difficult to predict what your audience will search for next, which is why regular content gap analyses are a good idea. 

Whenever a content gap occurs, it means your audience members are searching for content topics on your site that aren’t there. 

As a result, they’ll likely turn to your competitors to find the content they need. 

However, conducting a content gap analysis will help you identify and eventually bridge these gaps. 

Filling your content gaps will ensure your target audience always finds what they need on your site, negating the need to turn to your competitors. 

A typical content gap analysis involves:

1. Evaluating your current content by looking at what you already have and determining where it might be falling short for your audience.
2. Investigate what your rivals are offering and where they might excel, all while highlighting potential areas for improvement or differentiation.
3. Pinpointing the missing content pieces and keyword opportunities that could lead to increased traffic, engagement, and, ultimately, sales.

Why is a content gap analysis important?

A content gap analysis is a time investment and, depending on the tools you use, can also cost money. 

For these reasons, it may take a little convincing before you’re 100% on board with the idea. 

Here are the main reasons why a content gap analysis is worth the effort:

Guide your audience: You’ll be able to fill in the missing pieces of their buyer’s journey, seamlessly directing them towards making a purchase and becoming a loyal brand advocate. 

Unlock new opportunities: During your gap analysis, you’ll likely come across new keyword opportunities that you can use to create new pieces of powerful content.

Outsmart the competition: Take what works for your competitors and re-engineer it to work in your favor.

Make your content count: Once you’ve cleared any content gaps, you’ll ensure that every piece of content you create serves a purpose for your audience and contributes to your overall goals.

How to Conduct a Content Gap Analysis in 6 Steps 

To properly conduct a content gap analysis, you must find ways to learn about the type of content your audience wants but that you aren’t currently creating. 

This can be a tall task, especially without a sense of direction. 

That’s why we broke down the process into these 6 digestible steps. 

Step 1: Understand your buyer’s journey 

Every day online, qualified prospects from your target audience search for answers to questions related to your products or services. 

However, people don’t usually just wake up and buy something on a whim. 

Usually, a deliberation process takes place before buying a product or service. We call this the buyer’s journey, and it has several stages. 

Buyer’s Journey Stage #1: Awareness 

The first stage occurs whenever a prospect becomes aware that they need a product or service. 

It could be that they ran into a new problem that they aren’t equipped to solve or simply desire something new. 

Whatever the cause may be, the first stage of the buyer’s journey begins the second a little lightbulb forms behind your prospects’ head (metaphorically, of course) as they realize they need to search online for a new product or service. 

Content types for this stage include:

• Informative blogs that answer questions 
• How-to’s and tutorials 
• FAQs
• Educational blogs that dive deep into relevant topics 

Buyer’s Journey Stage #2: Consideration 

Next, the prospect begins considering their options regarding products and services that can potentially resolve their issue or fulfill their burning desires. 

This means they’ll do targeted searches for content like:

• Comparison posts (pinning two products and services against each other) 
• Buyer’s guides (breaking down the best available options on the market right now) 
• ‘Best of’ posts (taking a look at the cream of the crop) 

For this stage, your best bet is to create content that compares your products and services to those of your competitors. Of course, you want to position your brand as the best solution to your audience’s problem (unless you want to give your competitors the business). 

Buyer’s Journey Stage #3: Decision 

At this point, the prospect has weighed their options, and their wallet is about to come out. 

Nobody waits around forever, and your prospect will eventually make a buying decision. Your job is to convince them to go with your business instead of a competitor, and your content is one of your strongest weapons. 

The decision stage is where most website’s ‘money’ pages show up. These are sales pages, product pages, and other landing pages that you optimize for conversions. 

Put differently, these pages are the final checkpoint before the prospect buys something or reaches out for a consultation. As a result, these pages should drive the hardest to achieve conversions. 

So far, you’ve built the prospects’ trust through targeted content at every stage of their buyer’s journey. This means you don’t have to beat around the bush anymore, so hit them with a clear and concise call-to-action (CTA) to get them to complete your desired action (i.e., making a purchase or booking a spot on your calendar). 

Buyer’s Journey Stage #4: Success 

The buyer’s journey doesn’t end once the prospect converts into a customer. 

Instead, it kicks off the success/delight stage, which lasts into the immediate future. After all, ensuring your existing customers are happy is half the battle, so you don’t want to neglect your newly converted customers. 

Something as simple as a Thank You page or as complex as a series of follow-up emails are both great ways to show your appreciation to new customers. 

If you choose to send them follow-up emails, don’t forget to connect them with your customer support team or to ask for a review. 

Why mapping your buyer’s journey matters 

Here’s why it’s worth taking the time to map out your customer journey during a content gap analysis:

Targeted Content Creation

By understanding the buyer’s journey, you can create content that addresses your audience’s questions and concerns at each stage. 

This is a terrific way to ensure your content is truly helpful to your audience, which will increase engagement and guide them toward becoming a customer.

Targeted Keyword Selection

Each stage of the buyer’s journey is associated with different keywords and search intent. For example, in the awareness stage, people might search for broad terms like ‘best running shoes.’ 

In the decision stage, they might use more specific terms like ‘Nike vs. Adidas running shoes.’ By understanding these distinctions, you can select the right keywords to target at each stage, increasing the chances that your content ranks higher in the search results.

Identifying Gaps

Mapping the buyer’s journey reveals where your current content may be lacking, which is the whole point of a gap analysis. 

For example, you might discover that you have plenty of content for the awareness stage but very little for the consideration or decision stages.

That means you’ll need to even things out in order to appeal to users during the crucial consideration and decision stages (which matter most for landing sales). 

Understanding your buyer’s journey gives you a roadmap for your content gap analysis. It ensures that your content is relevant, engaging, and strategically aligned with your goals. 

Step 2: Conduct market research 

While mapping the buyer’s journey is a crucial step, it’s not 100% effective at identifying all possible content gaps that may exist on your site. 

That’s where conducting market research enters the picture. 

After all, one of the best ways to come up with effective content ideas that resonate with your target audience is just to ask them what they want directly. 

How do you do that?

The best way is to conduct a market research survey. It will uncover your audience’s burning questions, pain points, needs, desires, and goals. 

Create a quick and easy anonymous survey using Google Forms or a similar tool, and ask your target audience questions like:

• What questions do you have about [topic]?
• What are your biggest challenges when it comes to [topic]?
• What solutions have you tried in the past?
• Why didn’t those solutions work for you?
• What are the top three things you look for in a [service/product]?
• Where do you usually search for solutions like [service/product]?
• What factors influence your choice between [Solution A] and [Solution B]?

These responses will fuel your strategy and guide you toward creating content that truly speaks to your audience.

Step 3: Audit your existing content 

A content gap analysis isn’t just about generating ideas for new content; it’s also about auditing your existing library of content to see if anything’s missing. 

Also, it’s normal for content to become outdated and irrelevant after a certain period of time, and a content audit is the best way to identify aging pieces that need a refresher. 

Put simply, a content audit involves comprehensively evaluating all the content currently populating your website. 

You can think of it like taking inventory of your digital assets, where you count, catalog, and analyze each piece to assess its quality, accuracy, and relevance. 

Along the way, keep the market research that you gathered in step 2 in mind. 

Take a look at your customers’ answers to your survey questions and compare them with your current content. 

Does the content provide what your audience is looking for, or are your old pieces way off base?

Here’s a helpful chart for evaluating the effectiveness of your existing content:

By analyzing your existing content through this lens, you can identify underperforming pieces and uncover opportunities for improvement. 

This could involve:  

• Updating old content to re-optimize it for better rankings
• Creating new content to fill in gaps
• Removing irrelevant or outdated content that no longer serves your audience. 

Remember, even content published a year ago might need a refresh to make it relevant and competitive in search rankings again. 

In our case, we’re constantly refreshing and updating our blogs, which is due to the rapid pace of the digital marketing world. 

Our team is constantly adding new algorithm updates, updating the names of old tools (like Google PageSpeed Insights getting included in Google Lighthouse), and making other tweaks to keep our content fresh. 

Step 4: Take a look at your competitors

No content gap analysis would be complete without taking an in-depth look at what your competitors are doing. 

There are two different types of competitors you should consider:

• Direct competitors: These are businesses that sell the same products and services as you do.
• Indirect competitors: Businesses that don’t sell exactly what you do but sell to the same audience.

The best place to find direct and indirect competitors is to search online. 

Here’s how: 

1. Search for keywords and phrases related to your products or services on Google and other search engines.
2. Identify the websites that consistently rank high in the search results, as these are your top competitors.

Besides Google, we have a free tool on our site that will quickly identify your top competitors on Google (it’s powered by Semrush’s data, so it’s incredibly reliable). 

The Search Competition Tool works by entering your URL, and you’ll get to view a full competition report:

Once you find your competitors, another tool on our website comes in handy. With our free Keyword Gap Analysis Tool, you can look at the top-performing keywords of up to three competitors.

Make sure to use http:// or https:// before the URL: 

Pro Tip: Feel free to change out the competitors to get the best results. Sometimes, if you have a competitor with a big site, they might rank for keywords that are not super relevant, so just switch them out with a smaller competitor. Additionally, you can use specific URLs instead of entire domains to narrow down the results.

Step 5: Identify keyword opportunities

When you run the tool, it will pull up many keyword ideas (usually 100+ if you use the right competitors).

These are all keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you aren’t, so pay close attention!

Look for keywords or topics that make sense in your customer journey, and then prioritize them accordingly. 

You should also consider the search volume and keyword difficulty for each term when selecting your targets. 

Competitor keywords are great because:

1. They can inform you of content gaps. 
2. You can generate ideas for new types of content. 
3. You may uncover interests you didn’t know your target audience had. 

Ideally, the keywords you choose to use should have A) a high search volume and B) a relatively low keyword difficulty score. 

Step 6: Create the content

Based on your analysis so far, prioritize filling any content gaps that align with your business goals and your audience’s needs. 

From there, put together a content calendar that outlines all the topics, formats, and publication dates for your new content ideas. This will help you solidify your general ideas into concrete pieces of content that have deadlines – which will provide you with a tangible goal and a roadmap to success. 

Remember, quality beats quantity in an age of oversaturated AI-generated content. 

This means you should take your time creating truly valuable content that contains original insights, first-hand experiences, engaging visuals, and demonstrates your expertise. 

Also, don’t forget about repurposing existing content to fill gaps or reach new audiences that you know are interested in what you do. 

Final Thoughts

Performing a content gap analysis is the #1 way to uncover costly gaps in your content that could be feeding your competitors lots of business.

By mapping your customer’s buyer journey, analyzing your competitors, and conducting market research, you’ll gain an intimate understanding of the type of content your target audience wants to see. 

This will give you an edge over competitors, so you have every incentive to dive into the minds of your customers to learn what makes them tick. 

Do you still have lingering questions about content gaps or SEO in general?

If so, feel free to reach out and schedule a call with one of our experts today to learn more! Also, check out HOTH X, our fully managed service that provides hands-off SEO success! 

Content Gap Analysis FAQs

What is a content gap analysis?

A content gap analysis identifies missing or underperforming content on your website compared to your competitors, industry standards, or the needs and interests of your target audience. 

It involves evaluating your existing content, researching competitors and keywords, and identifying opportunities to create new content that fills those gaps.

Why is a content gap analysis crucial for SEO?

A content gap analysis is crucial for several reasons:

• Improved SEO: By filling content gaps with targeted keywords and topics, you increase the likelihood of your website ranking higher in search results, leading to more organic traffic.
• Enhanced UX: Understanding and addressing your audience’s needs through relevant content improves their overall experience on your website, increasing engagement and potentially leading to conversions.
• Competitive advantage: A thorough analysis allows you to uncover areas where you can outshine your competitors by providing unique and valuable content they might be missing.

How often should I conduct a content gap analysis?

Conducting a content gap analysis at least once a year or whenever you notice a significant change in your industry or target audience’s behavior is recommended. However, you can also perform more frequent analyses if you feel they’re necessary.

What are some common content gaps to look for?

Some common content gaps include:

• Missing topics: Important topics or keywords that your audience is searching for but you haven’t covered yet.
• Outdated content: Information that is no longer accurate or relevant.
• Underperforming content: Content that isn’t generating traffic, engagement, or conversions.
• Lack of content for specific buyer’s journey stages: Not having content that addresses the needs and concerns of your audience at each stage of their decision-making process.

How do I prioritize which content gaps to fill first?

Consider factors such as:

• Relevance: How relevant is the topic to your target audience’s needs and interests?
• Search volume: How many people are searching for information on this topic?
• Competition: How competitive is the keyword landscape for this topic?
• Potential impact: How much of an impact could filling this gap have on your overall goals?   

The post Content Gap Analysis: How To Find 100+ Content Ideas in No Time! appeared first on The HOTH.

Yet, these are all on-page and off-page SEO techniques, as technical SEO factors often get overlooked. 

While fixing broken links and improving your loading times aren’t as exciting as content creation, technical SEO is still undeniably crucial if you want your content to rank. 

For example, even if you have the highest quality content in the world, If Google isn’t able to crawl & index your site due to a technical issue, you won’t appear in the SERPs at all. 

If on-page SEO is the brash movie star soaking up the glory and fame, technical SEO is the director working hard behind the scenes to make the movie a reality. 

While the movie star’s charisma and daring stunts are what draws in the audience (stellar content), nobody would be able to bear witness to it without the director’s cameras (your technical SEO strategy). 

Technical SEO involves tweaking your webpages so that they’re effortless for search engines to crawl & index them. 

That means implementing a mobile-friendly site design, an organized site structure, optimized page speed, and a consistent URL structure – just to name a few technical aspects that affect SEO. 

Even in the age of AI-powered content creation, technical SEO still matters, so stay tuned to learn how to master it. 

Understanding Technical SEO 

Most digital marketers will break down SEO into three core components; on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. 

On-page SEO refers to everything you do to increase SERP (search engine results pages) rankings on your website. It primarily has to do with content that tells search engines what your website is about, such as meta descriptions, image alt text, headings, internal links, and keyword usage. 

Off-page SEO is your SEO efforts that occur off your website, such as high-authority backlinks, guest blog posts, videos on platforms like YouTube, and social media marketing. 

Technical SEO refers to your efforts to adhere to the technical requirements of search engines like Google & Bing. In addition to making it easier for search engines to crawl, index, and render your website, some technical SEO factors also improve user experience, like boosting your website’s loading times. 

Search engine crawlers can become confused if your technical SEO isn’t on point, which can lead to you disappearing from the SERPs altogether. 

Common factors that affect technical SEO include the following:

• Duplicate content issues
• Broken links 
• XML sitemaps (or a lack of one)
• Structured data 
• CSS & Javascript
• Schema markup
• Site architecture 
• Indexing issues 
• Poor load speed 
• Mobile-friendliness 
• 404 pages 
• 301 redirects
• Hreflang attributes 

As you can see, quite a bit goes into technical SEO, so you need a strong understanding of the fundamentals if you want your web pages to show up in the SERPS.

If you’ve got rock-solid content that’s optimized for relevant keywords, but you still aren’t seeing the results you want, technical issues may be the culprit. 

It can be incredibly frustrating to lose organic traffic due to avoidable issues like broken links & 404 pages, so you need to take technical SEO seriously. 

Why Does Technical SEO Still Matter in the Age of AI?

Now that intuitive AI platforms are widely used to generate content, is there still a need for technical SEO?

The answer is a definite yes. 

While AI chatbots and content generators are indeed impressive, they still can’t account for technical aspects taking place behind the scenes. 

Accordingly, you still need to keep a close eye on your technical SEO, ensuring that you don’t run into duplicate pages or indexing issues. Beyond that, you still need to implement an organized site structure if you want your content to get properly crawled & indexed. 

If you upload your AI-generated content on orphan pages (web pages containing no internal links pointing to them), you can kiss all the potential organic traffic it could generate goodbye. 

However, that’s not to say that there aren’t AI tools out there that can make technical SEO easier for you. 

You can use AI tools to do the following:

• Automate the creation of XML sitemaps
• Generate JSON-LD schema
• Automate crawl directives 
• Aid with programmatic content 

Leveraging AI in this manner will help you automate certain aspects of your technical SEO strategy, which will free up a lot of your time to focus on other things. 

Yet, it’s important to distinguish the difference between AI content generation and using AI to help with technical SEO. Generating AI content and mindlessly uploading it to your website won’t work, as you need to be more calculated than that. 

If you can successfully blend AI content with rigorous technical SEO, you’ll see the best results. 

A Crash Course in Technical SEO 

Are you a total beginner to the technical aspects of search engine optimization?

Not to worry, as this brief yet informative crash course will teach you everything you need to know about the technical side of an SEO strategy. 

That way, you’ll be able to start optimizing your website so that it’s easier for search engines to crawl, index, and render your website, which will help boost your online visibility immensely. 

Using a flat site architecture 

It’s imperative to start your technical SEO with your site architecture, as it will inform & guide the rest of your strategy. Lots of technical issues pop up because the site architecture isn’t optimal, so perfecting it from the get-go will help you avoid problems later on. 

It’s akin to beginning on-page SEO work with in-depth keyword research. 

In particular, you need to have a logical, organized site structure wherein every page is connected via internal links. Not only that, but each webpage should only be a few clicks away from the homepage. 

That’ll make it extremely easy for search engine bots to crawl & index every page on your website. 

If your site architecture is all over the place, you may inadvertently create orphan pages with no internal links. 

That’s disastrous for your SEO, as it’ll be near impossible for bots to locate, crawl, and index orphan pages. 

Airtight site architecture is an absolute must if you run an eCommerce store with dozens of product pages. That’s because a messy site structure can get out of control fast, and fixing it can be a nightmare if your website has thousands of pages. 

An unorganized site structure also makes it extremely difficult to identify and resolve indexing issues, which is a headache that you don’t need. 

How can you find out what your site architecture looks like?

Visual Site Mapper is an excellent free technical SEO tool that provides a visual representation of your internal linking structure that’ll help you avoid orphan pages. You can also use our free SEO Audit tool for in-depth insights into technical SEO factors like page load speed, link structure, and more. 

Use a uniform URL structure 

How you structure your URLs is as crucial as your site structure – and yes, the two are directly related. 

URLs have subfolders (i.e., www.mysite.com/blog) and subdirectories (i.e., blog.mysite.com). 

It’s crucial to know the distinction between the two when deciding on the structure for your URLs. 

Most importantly, once you decide on a URL structure, it needs to be set in stone. Consistency matters for URLs, and you’ll confuse both bots and online users if you stray from the formula. 

Also, try making your URLs short and to the point. There’s no need to muddy the waters with lengthy descriptions of each web page. Other best practices include only using lowercase characters, using dashes to separate words, and including target SEO keywords. 

Categorizing your pages is another great idea that’s helpful to bots & users. 

Your online users will always know where they are on your website if you categorize your pages logically (i.e., grouping together resources, tools, and blogs in specific categories). 

In addition, Google’s crawlers like knowing what role a page plays in the larger context of the website, as evidenced by this quote from Google’s Search Engine Central. So if your pages are categorized, crawlers will be able to garner more context about them, which can help your rankings. 

Create & upload an XML sitemap to Google Search Console 

Once you’ve got a well-organized site structure in place, you need to create an XML sitemap for it. 

What’s that?

A sitemap is a file that serves as a blueprint for your site structure, containing information about all the web pages, pictures, images, and videos on your website. 

There are two distinct types of sitemaps, HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps. 

An HTML sitemap is a series of hyperlinks to help users navigate your website. You tend to see them at the very bottom of websites, where there’s an archive of hyperlinks – typically in different categories like Company, Products, and Resources (you can see our HTML sitemap at the bottom of our homepage). 

XML sitemaps, on the other hand, help search engines better navigate your website. An XML sitemap will let crawlers know how many pages your website has and exactly where to find them. That means you’ll have a much better chance of getting 100% of your web pages crawled & indexed. 

There are plenty of XML sitemap generators online that make creating one very easy. 

Once you have one ready, you need to manually upload it to Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools (if your SEO strategy includes Bing). 

If you aren’t already set up on GSC, check out our extensive guide on Google Search Console. 

Once you log in to GSC, go to Indexing > Sitemaps from the sidebar. From there, all you have to do is copy & paste the URL of your sitemap and hit submit, and Google will have full visibility of your web pages. 

It can’t be understated how necessary it is to take this step, as there’s no reason not to upload your sitemaps to ensure proper crawling & indexing takes place. 

Leaving a trail of breadcrumbs 

The ‘breadcrumbs’ style of navigation is excellent for SEO, as it adds more internal links to your category pages. 

Users also love breadcrumbs because they greatly simplify website navigation. 

How they work is akin to Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back home. Whenever a user begins navigating pages on your website, a breadcrumb menu will provide a series of internal links at the top documenting their journey. 

Here’s an example of what a breadcrumb menu looks like:

Home > Resources > Learning Hub > Start Learning SEO 

As you can see, there’s a trail left behind for every page they visited before ‘Start Learning SEO.’ That way, if a user wants to navigate to a previous page, they can easily do so via the breadcrumbs menu. 

Your users aren’t the only ones who benefit from breadcrumbs, though, as bots and web crawlers also use them. 

However, for bots to make sense of your breadcrumb menus, you need to add structured data markup language to provide the proper context. 

If you aren’t sure how to add structured data to your website, check out our guide on local schema markup. 

Robots.txt files & noindex tags 

Any time a web robot crawls your website, it has to check your robots.txt file first – AKA the Robot Exclusion Protocol. 

What’s that?

It’s a file that gives the power to allow or not allow certain web robots to crawl your website. You can even control whether the bots can access certain web pages or not, which will help you allocate your crawl budget. 

There are certain web robots out there that have malicious intent, and they can start posting spam on your website if you aren’t careful. Luckily, you have the ability to ban these bots via a noindex robots meta tag. 

Then there are noindex tags that you can use on web pages that you don’t want search engines to crawl & index. 

Since you have a crawl budget, you don’t want to waste it on crawling pages that add no value to your SEO profile. 

Which types of pages are worth noindex tags?

Here are a few common examples:

• Thank You pages 
• Login pages 
• Author archives 
• Attachment pages 
• Admin pages 
• Community profile pages 

There’s no benefit in generating organic traffic to these types of pages, which is why it’s best to use noindex tags to preserve your crawl budget for more important pages (blogs, videos, podcasts, and infographics). 

Canonical tags 

Duplicate content is a huge no-no for SEO, as there’s no faster way to confuse web crawlers than by having two near-identical pages. 

However, that poses an interesting conundrum for eCommerce website owners, as duplicate content is almost inevitable. 

That’s because it’s common to have multiple pages for slightly different versions of the same product. As an example, say you sell cowboy hats online that are available in 10 different colors. 

Well, you’ll need to create 10 pages for each hat, and those pages will be duplicates of each other except for one minute detail – the color of the hat. 

In these types of situations, you need to use canonical URLs or canon tags. 

Here’s the way they work; you set a canon tag on the primary version of the cowboy hat (i.e., the one with default settings). That lets search engines know that it’s the ‘canon’ version of the product that they should crawl & index, all while ignoring the other variations. 

That’ll help you avoid duplicate pages while still having unique URLs for each color & size of your cowboy hats. 

Optimizing page speed 

Next, your site speed is a huge part of technical SEO, so you need to make sure it’s up to par. 

Google takes page speed & responsiveness extremely seriously, which is why they developed the Core Web Vitals test that they run on every website. If you don’t pass the test, you won’t show up in the SERPs. 

How can you practice for the test?

PageSpeed Insights is a free tool that will help you diagnose loading speed issues on your website. 

Beyond that, here are some candid tips for improving your site’s loading times:

• Compressing & optimizing images
• Reduce the number of redirects you have
• Enable browser caching 
• Cache your web pages
• Clean up messy Javascript & CSS
• Get rid of unnecessary plugins 

Once your page speed is lightning-fast, you’ll pass Google’s test, and your users will enjoy a faster, better experience. 

Finding and resolving indexing issues

Lastly, you need to discover if your website has any indexing problems that are holding it back. 

What’s the best tool for finding indexing errors?

You guessed it, Google Search Console. 

After all, Google’s the #1 search engine online, and GSC will let you know if there are any issues with indexing your web pages. 

From the homepage, navigate to the Coverage Report to see if there are any indexing issues that you need to address. Common problems include:

• Soft 404s (301 redirects will fix)
• Redirect errors 
• Unauthorized request 401 (usually password-protected pages that you should noindex)
• Blocked due to 4xx issue 

Google’s URL Inspection Tool is excellent at fixing these common issues, so don’t hesitate to use it. 

Final Thoughts: Technical SEO in 2024 

By now, you should have a better understanding of what technical SEO is, why it matters, and why you can’t do without it. 

A rock-solid technical SEO strategy is required to achieve top SERP rankings, so you shouldn’t neglect it. 

Do you need help with the technical SEO at your company?

Then we’d love to help you at The HOTH, so don’t wait to check out our in-depth managed technical SEO services today.      

The post Technical SEO in 2024: Why it Still Matters & How to Perfect It  appeared first on The HOTH.

Put another way, valuable backlinks are what help you secure a bigger slice of the $6.33 trillion E-commerce pie.  

Why is that?

It’s because authoritative, relevant backlinks are crucial ranking factors in search engines, especially Google. 

Therefore, if you want to extend your brand’s reach and increase your revenue, you need to rank in the #1 spot for keywords related to your products.

Google only ranks websites that it trusts, and backlinks are how you build that trust. 

According to research, organic search accounts for 41% of E-commerce traffic, which is why SEO is a necessity for online stores of all sizes. 

More specifically, link-building is your secret sauce for climbing higher in search results and getting in front of ready-to-buy customers.

And no, you don’t have to wait for links to come to you.

If E-commerce store owners are strategic with link-building, they can start reaping SEO benefits and more sales, pronto.

In this article, we’ll teach you 10 effective E-commerce link-building strategies, so read on to learn how to start ranking higher while generating more revenue.

Types of Links that Matter for E-commerce

Let’s kick things off by defining the different types of links that matter for SEO.  

A basic hyperlink directs you to another web page when you click on it. Hyperlinks can either use A) the ‘naked’ URL of the page it links to (i.e., www.thehoth.com) or B) use anchor text to mask the URL and give readers a hint at what the link directs to (i.e., The HOTH Digital Marketing Agency). 

Both hyperlinks listed above direct to our homepage; it’s just that one uses anchor text and the other doesn’t. 

Also, there are two types of links you should know about: external links and internal links. 

External links will direct users to another website online, and are most commonly used for backing up claims with evidence.

Here’s an example of two external links we included in one of our blogs. 

We included them to provide readers with hard proof for the figures we provided, and they both link out to reputable sources. 

Search engines like Google notice when you link out to trusted websites, as it’s proof that you’re providing readers with accurate information. Therefore, relevant external links will help your search rankings. 

Internal links direct users to other web pages on your website. 

Here’s an example of an internal link we included in the same blog from before:

This link directs readers to the page for our official affiliate program. We included the link to give readers a quick and easy way to sign up as a HOTH affiliate. 

It’s crucial to include internal links in your content because:

1. They keep readers engaged in your content loop (and on your site for longer) 
2. They can direct users to product and service pages to land conversions (through calls to action)
3. Internal links provide search engine algorithms with additional context (which helps search rankings) 

Both internal and external links are crucial for SEO, so you should include them both in your content. 

Understanding the importance of backlinks

A major part of SEO is building relevant backlinks from trusted websites. 

What are those?

A backlink is a hyperlink on another website that ‘links back’ to yours (which is where the name comes from). 

Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors on search engines like Google because they act as ‘credibility votes’ for the quality and accuracy of your content. 

Think about it this way: if a giant (and trusted) site like The New York Times starts linking to your content, it’s a strong sign that your content is also high-quality and trustworthy (otherwise, they wouldn’t link to it). 

As a result, SEOs are always trying to get respected industry websites to link back to their sites in an attempt to build clout. 

Take it from us; backlinks are often what move the SEO needle for our clients more than anything else. 

However, more links aren’t always better, which brings us to distinguishing high-quality links from low-quality links. 

High-quality links vs. low-quality links: How to know which is which 

Not all backlinks are of equal quality. 

For a backlink to positively impact your search rankings, it has to come from an authoritative website. 

What’s that?

A website is considered authoritative when it has:

1. A large audience of regular readers 
2. Top-tier content that attracts links from other websites 
3. Backlinks from trusted websites 
4. A recognizable brand name 
5. A sizable library of content (that’s frequently updated) 

As you can see, quite a bit goes into a website’s authority, so it can be difficult to know which sites to target without doing extensive research into them. 

This is where domain authority metrics come in handy. 

Since Google keeps its authority metric a secret (but we do know it exists due to the recent leaks), SEOs use third-party metrics like Moz’s Domain Authority and Ahrefs’ Domain Rating. 

These metrics provide a quick and easy way to judge the ranking power of a domain via a score ranging from 1 – 100. 

Higher scores mean more authority, so it’s always best to look for websites with high DA scores to target for backlinks. 

However, sites with sky-high scores (80 – 100) are often legacy websites like Amazon and Wikipedia. This means most websites target sites with DA scores anywhere from 20 – 80. 

Besides domain authority, a high-quality link must hold some type of relevance to your content. Otherwise, it won’t impact your search rankings at all. The domain could cover the same topics as you, or they could run a one-time piece that relates to your brand (which would be contextual relevance). 

Lastly, the anchor text also determines the quality of a backlink. 

As stated before, anchor text refers to the text housing a hyperlink. Google doesn’t like to see keyword spam in anchor text, so you should avoid using target keywords as anchor text (at least include a few other phrases with them). 

Comparing high-quality links with low-quality links

Here’s a head-to-head comparison of high-quality vs. low-quality links to give you a better idea of what to look for/avoid:

For example, let’s say you sell computer accessories. Ideally, your backlinks would be from computer-related websites since their readers are likely people who love and use computer gear.

You also want the links to use relevant anchor text to help search engines associate the link with your products. This might be broad text like “mouse pads” to link to a product category. Or “Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics card” to link to a specific product.

Why do you need backlinks? 

Still don’t believe us that backlinks are one of the most crucial ranking factors?

Challenge accepted! 

Here’s why backlinks are the real deal.  

Research shows that the top three organic search results receive the majority of the clicks, with the first position capturing approximately 28.5% of all clicks.

The reason for this is search engines like Google are designed to provide the most relevant and authoritative results first (ideally). 

How, then, do you get Google to trust your site as authoritative? 

Backlinks. 

Backlinks play a critical role in how search engines determine the quality and relevance of your content. Here’s why backlinks matter:

1. Authority: Backlinks act as endorsements from other websites. When reputable sites link to your content, it signals to search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative.
2. Referral traffic: Quality backlinks not only improve your site’s search ranking but also drive traffic directly from the linking sites, which can expose your content to new audiences.
3. Crawling and indexing: Search engines use links to discover new content. A well-linked site gets crawled more frequently, ensuring that its content is indexed faster and more thoroughly. For reference, search optimizations won’t take effect until Google recrawls your content, which is how quick indexing comes in handy. 

However, not all backlinks are created equal. The quality, relevance, and context of the linking site are all crucial. A few high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites in your industry are far more valuable than a hoard of low-quality links.

10  Effective Link Building Strategies for E-commerce Businesses

Now that you know about the significant role link-building plays in E-commerce SEO, let’s unpack 10 proven strategies for generating high-quality backlinks that drive sales.

#1: Create high-quality, shareable content

One of the best ways to build backlinks is to create stellar content that other websites can’t wait to share. 

This approach is great because it doesn’t involve any outreach. Instead, you’ll gain backlinks from the strength of your content alone. 

Granted, not every type of content is suited for attracting backlinks, as some types perform better than others. 

According to research by the Content Marketing Institute, the following content types are the most effective for building backlinks:

• Original data and research (70%). Read any blog post or news article online, and you’re bound to find links to research papers, surveys, and studies. Accordingly, producing original data and research for your industry is an extremely effective way to generate backlinks. For an additional punch, include internal links to important pages, like your product pages. Doing so will pass the ‘link juice’ (i.e., ranking power) from your original research to other pages on your website (which is what you want to improve rankings). 

• Videos (66%). Coming in at second place is video content, which attracts tons of shares due to its visual nature. If you’re able to produce a high-quality video covering the same topic as a blog post, the video will always generate more shares – so put your director’s hat on if your goal is to generate backlinks. 

• Infographics (61%). Once again, visual content reigns supreme for generating shares. Infographics are fun ways to deliver information, tell stories, and educate readers. Make sure you include social share buttons and a line of embed code to make your infographics especially easy to share. 

Content creation tips and tricks 

Remember that for your content to generate backlinks, it truly has to stand out. This means creating content that speaks to your target audience, which can be easier said than done. 

Here are some tips for creating outstanding content:

 Identify Competitor Link Magnets:

• Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or our free backlink checker to analyze your competitors’ backlinks.
• Look for their top-performing pages in terms of backlinks and organic traffic.
• Identify the types of content that attract the most links (e.g., blog posts, guides, infographics, tools, original research).

Elevate Your Content:

• Create content that surpasses your competitors in-depth, quality, and value.
• Go beyond basic information – offer unique insights, data-driven research, interactive tools, or visually appealing formats (like videos and infographics).
• Ensure your content is well-researched, engaging, and shareable.

Optimize for SEO:

• Conduct keyword research to identify relevant terms and phrases for your content.
• Optimize your title tags, meta descriptions, and headers for search engines by adding keywords.
• Use internal links to connect your linkable assets to other relevant pages on your site (and pass the link juice).

Promote Your Assets:

• Share your content on social media platforms, relevant forums, and industry communities.
• Reach out to bloggers, journalists, and influencers who might find your content valuable and link to it.
• Consider paid promotion (e.g., social media ads, sponsored content) to amplify your reach.

#2: Build Relationships to Build Links

Organic backlinks aren’t quite unicorns, but they can sure feel that way due to how hard they are to find. 

Instead of going nuts playing the waiting game, you can always reach out to other websites, blogs, or even your suppliers to see if they’re willing to link to your content.

This is relationship-based link-building, the new and improved (and lemon-scented) way of building backlinks. 

It trades cold outreach for warm requests, and you’re more likely to get what you want (with a little schmoozing).

Here’s how it works:

1. Make a shortlist of websites in your niche with a high Domain Authority and low spam score.
2. Get the name and email of the person to contact.
3. Connect with them on LinkedIn and X to start nurturing the relationship.
4. Ask, and ye shall (hopefully) receive! 

Bonus points if:

• You have an article in mind you’d like to be included in, AND
• You show them where they can include the link naturally, AND
• You give them the URL and anchor text you want them to use. 

Basically, you should do everything for them except add the actual backlink. 

It’s a long game, but it can pay off in spades.

#3: Leverage Online Directories and Business Listings

Business directories and local citations are how you put your business on the digital map. 

These directories provide a home for your business details, like your NAP (name, address, and phone number). They’re basically the online version of the old-school Yellow Pages from the phonebook (speaking of which, The Yellow Pages is now an online directory, too). 

Or, as we like to call them … free links!

Here is why business directories matter for backlinks: 

1. Enhanced local visibility: Citations in relevant directories help search engines understand your business’s location, which is crucial for local search rankings. When someone searches for businesses like yours in your area, you’re more likely to appear in the results. This is especially true for Google Business Profile, as it’s necessary for appearing in Google Maps. 
2. Boosts website authority: Many directories provide backlinks to your website, signaling to search engines that your site is trustworthy and relevant. This can boost your overall search engine rankings.

Below are the must-have listings for any E-commerce business: 

Google Business Profile (GBP): This free tool from Google is a must-have for any local business. It allows you to manage how your business appears in Google Search and Maps, providing essential information like your address, phone number, website, hours of operation, photos, and customer reviews. You can also make short posts on GBP to inform customers about upcoming promotions and events. 

General business directories: Consider listing your business on platforms like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Foursquare, and Better Business Bureau.

Niche directories: Look for directories specific to your industry or niche. For example, if you sell clothing or accessories, consider listing on platforms like Lyst, ShopStyle, or niche directories focused on specific styles (e.g., vintage, sustainable fashion).

Local citations: Don’t forget about your local Chamber of Commerce or other city-specific directories.

Optimize your directory listings 

Once you decide which directories to use, you’ll need to optimize each listing for search engines (as always). 

Here are some tips to get it right: 

• Be consistent: Ensure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across all listings. Any discrepancies can confuse search engines and harm your local rankings (not to mention confuse and turn away potential customers). 
• Complete your profile: Fill out all available fields in each directory. This includes your business description, hours, categories, services, photos, and other relevant information.
• Encourage reviews: Positive customer reviews can significantly impact your online reputation and local search rankings. Encourage customers to leave reviews on platforms like Google Business Profile and Yelp. Why bother? 72% of people say positive reviews make them trust a business more, and customers are willing to spend 31% more at a business with excellent reviews. 
• Quality over quantity: Focus on high-quality directories with strong domain authority rather than just listing on as many directories as possible.
• Keep it up to date: Regularly check your listings for accuracy and update them as needed.

#4: Unlinked brand mentions 

There are times when other websites may mention your brand name but not include a backlink to your site. 

These are called unlinked brand mentions, and they’re easy-win backlink opportunities. 

Why is that?

It’s because an unlinked brand mention is typically easy to sell to a site owner. They’ve already mentioned your brand in their content, so all they have to do is add a link to your website (which they may have intended to include but simply forgot). 

The primary challenge is locating unlinked brand mentions, but we know two easy ways. 

Here’s how to find unlinked mentions using Google Alerts:

1. Set up alerts for your brand name, product names, and key team members (like your C-suite). 
2. You’ll then receive email notifications whenever someone mentions your brand, team, or products online. 
3. From there, it’s just a matter of reviewing the mentions to identify the ones without backlinks. You should also check the website’s domain authority to ensure it’s a suitable target for a backlink.  

Here’s how to find unlinked mentions using Ahrefs’ Content Explorer:

1. Search for your brand name in the Content Explorer tool. 

2. Next, select the ‘Highlight Unlinked’ filter and add your domain.

3. Click Apply, and you’ll see a list of all the websites that mentioned your brand but didn’t link back to you. 

Sample outreach email

Once you’ve hunted down some unlinked brand mentions, you’ll need to reach out to the site owners. Outreach doesn’t have to be complicated, but it isn’t something you should ignore, either. 

Do your best to craft personalized outreach emails with eye-grabbing titles to ensure a high response rate. 

Here’s a sample outreach email you can use as a template: 

Subject: Quick Question About [Article Title]

Hi [Site Owner Name],

I hope this email finds you well.

I’m reaching out from [Your Company Name]. I recently came across your article titled “[Article Title]” on [Website Name], and I really enjoyed reading it.

I noticed that you mentioned [Your Brand/Product Name], but a link wasn’t included. Would you be open to adding a hyperlink to [Relevant Page on Your Website]? 

It would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for your time, and keep up the great work!

Best,

[Your Name]

#5: Find unattributed images 

Ask any online store owner, and they’ll tell you that E-commerce has a serious problem with image theft. It’s commonplace for online stores to steal each other’s images, but you can actually use this to your advantage. 

By executing a reverse image link-building campaign, you can snag backlinks from online stores that are using your original photos without your permission. 

Here’s how to make it happen:

1. Select original, high-quality images from your website (product photos, infographics, custom illustrations).
2. Perform a reverse image search using TinEye. Paste or enter your image URL to find all instances where an image appears online. 
3. Manually review each website that appears in the results and check if your image is used and if proper attribution (link to your site) is given.
4. Find the website owner’s email address (often in the “Contact Us” section) or use a tool like Hunter.io to find email addresses associated with the domain.
5. Craft an outreach email. Here are some suggestions for handling the email appropriately: 
   1. Be polite and professional.
   2. Explain that they’re using your image without permission.
   3. Offer them two options: add proper attribution with a link or remove the image.
   4. Provide the exact URL of the page where your image is being used.
   5. Include the URL of the original image on your website.

Sample outreach email 

Since reverse image outreach can be a tad awkward, it’s imperative to handle it professionally. 

Here’s another sample outreach email you can use as a template for websites using your images without your permission:

Subject: Image Usage on [Website Name]

Dear [Website Owner Name],

I hope this email finds you well.

My name is [Your Name], and I’m the [Your Title] at [Your Company Name].

I was recently conducting a search online and noticed that you’ve used one of our images on your website: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_images.asp.

While we appreciate your interest in our work, the image is copyrighted and should be credited with a link back to our website: https://www.lireo.com/how-to-find-original-image-source/. 

Please can you link to our site as an attribution for the image? It would be a great help to us.

We can also provide you with a different image to use, or you can simply remove it.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

[Your Name] 

#6: Influencer product reviews

Influencers are an E-commerce store owner’s best friend. Not only do influencer sponsorships build brand awareness, but influencer product reviews will also build backlinks. 

How? 

When influencers review your products and share their experiences with their audience, you can get them to link back to your website or product pages. 

Once they do, you’ll have valuable backlinks that will generate referral traffic and boost your search rankings.

Here’s how you can track down influencers in your field: 

1. Identify the right influencers: There are several software tools available that can help you find and manage influencer collaborations: BuzzSumo, Upfluence or AspireIQ.  In the case of BuzzSumo, it will connect you with over 770k high-impact journalists and influencers on social media. It acts as a central hub for finding, pitching, and responding to influencers and journalists in your field.
2. Reach out: Once you’ve pinpointed a few influencers you want to work with, craft personalized outreach emails to them. As with the outreach templates provided before, use the site owner’s name and mention a few details about their content/business that you appreciate. 
3. Follow up: Send a gentle reminder if you haven’t heard from them in a week. Restate your interest and offer to answer any questions they might have.
4. Send them a product to review: Make the unboxing experience as pleasant as possible for the influencer. Consider adding a personalized note. Also, don’t forget to include details about the product, usage instructions, and any promotional materials.
5. Engage with their content to show your appreciation. 
6. After the collaboration is over, take a look at the metrics (website traffic, sales, social media engagement).

#7: Get featured on a podcast 

You don’t have to have an audience the size of Joe Rogan’s to benefit from podcasting. 

Getting featured on podcasts in your niche, however small, is a great way to build backlinks (and your website’s authority in the process). 

Whenever you’re featured as a guest on a podcast, you can request that the host provide a backlink to your E-commerce store in the episode description. This provides listeners with a way to learn more about your brand and products. 

Sometimes, podcasts include resource links that the guest mentions. So, if you’re able to bring up specific products or blog posts, the host may include backlinks to those web pages too. 

Here are some tips for finding podcasts to get featured on:

1. Start with Google. Enter your niche plus the term “podcast” and get searching! 
2. Listen Notes is a podcast search engine that you can use to find podcasts in your niche. Here’s how you can use it:

1. Identify relevant podcasts: Look for podcasts focusing on entrepreneurship, business growth, and e-commerce.
2. Craft a compelling pitch: Tailor your pitch to highlight what unique insights or stories you can share that interest the podcast’s audience.
3. Engage with the podcast community: Share the episode with your own audience and engage with listeners who comment or ask questions, driving further interest and engagement.
4. Follow-Up: After the episode airs, follow up with the host to ensure all relevant links are included in the show notes and promotional materials.

Here’s an example of a podcast appearance:

Podcast example: The Tim Ferriss Show

Episode title: “Tobi Lütke — From Snowboard Shop to Billion Dollar Company“

In it, Tobias Lütke, the CEO of Shopify, details his journey from online snowboard shop owner to becoming the creator of a billion-dollar company. 

It’s an engaging listen that raises brand awareness for Shopify, and it’s an example of how you can use podcast appearances to build backlinks and get the word out about your online store. 

#8: Find resource pages to link to

As the name implies, a resource page contains a long list of valuable resources. In essence, it’s a web page containing a boatload of backlinks, and getting featured on such pages is a great way to build links. 

Yet, not every piece of content is resource page-worthy. 

If you want your content to get picked up by resource pages, it has to be truly valuable and useful. 

This is why you must start by identifying your strongest content:

• Review your existing content and identify pieces that offer unique value, insights, or solutions.
• Consider creating new content specifically tailored for resource pages (e.g., in-depth guides, original research, tools, templates).
• Ensure your content is high-quality, well-researched, and relevant to your target audience.

From there, you need to find relevant resource pages. One of the best ways to do this is to use search engines like Google with targeted queries:

• “[Your Keyword] + resources”
• “[Your Keyword] + useful links”
• “[Your Keyword] + helpful resources”
• “[Your Keyword] + links”
• “[Your Keyword] + roundup”
• “best [Your Product/Service]”

Once you’ve found some resource pages, prioritize high-authority websites with relevant content and good user engagement. Also, look for pages that are actively maintained and updated, as Google will index them frequently. 

Lastly, check if your competitors are already listed on these pages (this could indicate a good fit).

#9: Link insertions

Link insertions have become a very popular way to build backlinks in recent years. 

They involve finding content relevant to your products and then reaching out to the webmasters to request that they ‘insert’ one of your backlinks into the piece. 

It’s a valuable technique because A) it doesn’t involve any content creation and B) you’re adding backlinks to content that’s already in Google’s index. 

Here’s how you can target link insertions:

1. Search for blog posts, articles, or resource pages that discuss topics related to your products or industry. Look for content that’s already ranking well on search engines.
2. Contact the website owner or editor and bring up the idea of adding a relevant link to your e-commerce site within their existing content.
3. Tell them how this insertion will add value: Offer to enhance their content by adding valuable information, updating statistics, or fixing broken links.

The best way to find success with link insertions is to find content where your products fit right in. 

An example would be inserting a link to an online store that sells guitars in an article about learning to play guitar. 

In our case, we use our free SEO tools to target link insertions all over the web. Since our tools provide value to readers, they’re an easy sell for link insertions. 

Here’s an example:

10. Outsource Your E-commerce Link-Building

If you don’t have the time, skills, or knowledge to do something, someone else does. It’s true with plumbing, and it’s true with link building.

If you’d rather leave link-building to the experts, it’s time to enlist the help of a link insertion outreach service with experience in E-commerce. 

That way, you’ll be able to capitalize on their network of relationships, professional-grade tools, and the sheer amount of time they’ve spent perfecting the process.

You’re bound to get high-quality links from reputable sources, plus you won’t have to wade through a sea of rejections!

Start Your Journey to Link-Building Success

E-commerce link-building is an extremely effective marketing channel when handled properly. Top-tier backlinks will boost your search rankings and direct tons of traffic to your most important product pages. 

Do you not have the time or experience to conduct a link-building strategy for your E-commerce store?

Then, check out Hoth Link Outreach, which should be your next stop online. Our experts will take the entire process off your hands so you can get back(links) to business.   

The post Link Building for E-commerce: 10 Strategies to Send Your Sales Soaring appeared first on The HOTH.

If so, only targeting Google for your SEO efforts probably won’t cut it anymore. 

Instead, you’ll have to expand to an international SEO strategy, which typically means doing SEO for other search engines and possibly creating alternate versions of your website in other languages. 

While it’s true that Google is still the global king of search, with a claim to 90.8% of the market, its dominance doesn’t reach everywhere. 

For example, Yandex only accounts for 1.58% of the search market worldwide, but it holds 70.59% of the search engine market share in Russia (Google only accounts for 28.26% of Russian searches). 

This means if your international business includes Russia, you’ll need to partake in some Yandex SEO. 

The same is true for China, which has seen a rapidly changing search engine market in recent years. For eons, Baidu was its dominating force, but it has since been overtaken by Microsoft Bing. 

Therefore, businesses expanding into China should consider Bing and Baidu for SEO campaigns. 

Also, international link-building isn’t exactly simple. 

It’s vastly different from traditional link-building, and it can be difficult to find international backlinks that won’t get your content flagged as spam. 

Private blog networks (PBNs) are still popular in India, for example, and linking to them could cause your website to receive a manual action (which could reduce your rankings or remove your website from the search results).     

That’s why you’re better off using white-hat link-building techniques around the globe. 

In this article, we’ll simplify some white-hat international link-building techniques that you can start using today. 

Read on to learn how to build a backlink profile that’ll help you reach the top of the SERPs in any county of your choosing. 

What Are International Links? 

International backlinks are hyperlinks from websites in other countries that point back to your site. Depending on their country of origin, these links may come from websites written in other languages. 

An example would be a cooking appliance eCommerce store from Australia linking out to a cooking blog in America. 

Perhaps the eCommerce store owners found recipes on the American blog they thought were perfect for their customers to make with the products they sell – so they decided to link to them on one of their product pages. 

Regardless of the reason, the American cooking blog now has a backlink pointing at it from Australia, which can have numerous benefits. Now that the site has an Australian backlink, it signals to Google (and other search engines) that the blog’s content is relevant to users in that location. 

Therefore, the American cooking blog may see a slight boost to its search rankings in Australia. 

This is a simple (and slightly exaggerated) example, but it illustrates one of the strongest benefits of international backlinks: they act as popularity votes for your website’s content in search rankings around the globe. 

The more backlinks you have from a certain country or region, the better your content will perform in the local rankings there. 

Here are a few other reasons why international backlinks are important:

• Expand your online reach. Building international backlinks is one of the best ways to reach a broader audience that stretches beyond your primary market. Who knows, your content may blow up in another country like Germany or Japan, which is why dipping your toes into international link-building is always worth a try. 

• Build your website’s authority. Regardless of where a backlink comes from, if it originates from a high-quality website with a trusted reputation, it will boost your site’s authority and search engine rankings. This means expanding your link-building strategy to include other countries will make dethroning your competitors easier. 

Speaking of building authority, if you’re having a hard time getting your brand noticed through digital PR in America (or if you just want to give your brand an additional boost), going international can be a great strategy. 

That way, you’ll be able to target major publications in the UK, Canada, and Australia instead of constantly trying to get featured in The Washington Post and The New York Times. 

What Makes International SEO Unique?

The difficulty level of an international SEO campaign depends on the areas of the world that you plan to target. 

For example, if you’re an American business expanding into Australia, conducting an international SEO campaign won’t be too difficult. 

That’s because Australians also speak English, so there’s no need to produce a separate version of your website in a foreign language (although you will need to create a version of your website that features Australia’s country code top-level domain, which is .au). 

Additionally, Google is the #1 search engine in Australia (with 93.88% of the market share), so you can stick with your tried-and-true SEO tactics.

Yet, SEO becomes noticeably more complicated if you’re trying to expand into China. 

Why is that?

It’s because you’ll need to conduct keyword research in Mandarin, hire a bilingual writer, and create a separate Chinese version of your website. 

International SEO is by no means impossible; it’s just a different beast than traditional SEO. 

But before you plunge headfirst into international SEO, you need to determine if it’s right for your business to go global in the first place.   

When Should You Go International?

Is going international the right move for your business?

While going global is a dream of most businesses, it’s important to consider how feasible it is. 

Before expanding, confirm that you have a reliable customer base in your target countries (and that your products/services are a good fit for their needs). 

How do you do that?

A quick and easy way is to use Google Analytics – a free tool that lets you view a geographic breakdown of your website visitors.

This will let you know where a majority of your customers come from, and it will let you know if you have an international audience you didn’t know about. 

Here’s how to use it. 

Once you log in, navigate to Audience > Geo > Location. 

From here, you’ll see a geographic breakdown of your audience on a world map (ours is blank since it’s an example):

If you notice that you’re getting a lot of customers from other countries, then going international may be viable for your business. However, you should only expand into the countries that provide you with the most customers. 

Once you know that you’ll have a viable audience and a search engine to optimize for, you can start constructing an international SEO campaign. 

How to Build International SEO Links

 Arguably, the biggest challenge with an international SEO campaign is link-building. 

After all, where do you get links from if your new website is in German? Can you still use US-based links?

The answer is yes, as long as the links are relevant to your content. 

For instance, if your German fragrance website links to a French forum about perfumes – the link would be considered natural. 

Why is that?

It’s because relevancy trumps all. 

Believe it or not, language and country of origin don’t really matter for backlinks, so don’t worry if you aren’t able to find any relevant backlink opportunities in German. 

In fact, you’re far better off linking to relevant websites in other languages than you are linking to irrelevant sites in the same language. 

Since search engines prioritize relevancy over language, it won’t matter if a web page requires translation if it’s topically or contextually relevant to your content (like the fragrance website example). 

According to our research, most websites on the internet link to .com domains, which are predominantly based in the United States. 

To summarize, you should seek out backlink opportunities that are relevant to your products and services – regardless of their language or country of origin. 

Here are some international link-building techniques that will help you acquire high-authority backlinks. 

Identify which pages would benefit from international link-building 

First, you need to pinpoint which web pages will benefit the most from international backlinks, as you won’t need to target every page on your site. 

In particular, you should target content that’s already attracted significant traffic from other countries. These pages have proven appeal from international markets, so you should focus on building links to them first. 

Also, don’t forget about building backlinks to high-value pages like your homepage and product pages. 

Lastly, create long-form educational content for international audiences, as this is a great way to start accruing backlinks without having to do any outreach. 

An example would be writing an in-depth buyer’s guide on how to select the right fragrance and have it translated into French. If it’s truly valuable, fragrance bloggers and influencers will link to it (especially if you feature their products, so don’t be shy about giving shout-outs).  

Analyze your competitor’s international link profile 

As with traditional link-building, you can let your competitors inform your link-building strategies. 

Once you know which country and industry you’re going to focus on, you can conduct some targeted searches to find your competitors. 

Let’s say that you plan on expanding your car detailing business into Australia. 

Since Google is their most popular search engine, you search for the keyword ‘car detailing Australia.’ 

Car Care Products, a popular Australian car detailing products and service provider, is the top-ranked result, which means they must have a strong backlink profile. 

You can use a tool like our free Backlink Checker to determine if this is true. 

After assessing their links, we can see that one of their backlinks comes from a blog post from a website all about motorbikes (including how to properly detail them). 

This may mean it’s a good website to target for backlinks. You could reach out to write a guest post or request a shout-out for one of your blog posts/products. 

That’s a simple example, but it demonstrates how easy it is to find relevant backlink opportunities by examining your competitor’s link profiles. 

Build relationships with related websites 

Relationship-based link-building has been gaining much traction amongst SEOs lately for plenty of good reasons. 

By building relationships with related websites in your niche, you can become link partners – meaning that you help each other score high-authority backlinks. 

That could mean trading off guest posts or sharing your link resources with one another to expand your influence and network. 

Traditionally, link-builders would spend countless hours reaching out to random website owners in the hopes of scoring just one backlink.

Once they got what they wanted, they’d move on to the next opportunity without a second thought. 

Relationship-based link-building ditches that model in favor of building lasting bonds with relevant websites. 

Of course, you should be fairly picky about who you choose to partner with, as becoming link partners with a low-quality website with a poor domain rating won’t lead to stronger link profiles for either of you.

Ideally, you want to find a link partner that doesn’t directly compete for the same business but is in the same industry. 

A perfect example would be the website all about motorcycles partnering with the Australian car detailing website. Since they don’t compete for the same business (the motorcycle website is strictly for enthusiasts), it’s a win-win. 

Also, they should have desirable SEO metrics and a good reputation amongst your audience. 

That will ensure both parties benefit from sharing link-building opportunities. 

Creating high-value content with bilingual writers

Traditional link-builders know the value of being a thought leader, as other websites will link to your pieces of content without you even having to ask. 

Educational content pieces like infographics, videos, and long-form blog posts will attract lots of valuable backlinks. 

But how do you create excellent content for international audiences?

Should you write in English and use translation software?

The answer to that is a big, fat no! 

Translation apps are notorious for being unable to understand context, leading to confusing mistranslations. 

Instead, you should seek out freelance writers who can write in both English and the language of your country of choice. This ensures the content won’t have any mistranslations or awkward phrasing. 

There are plenty of freelance marketplaces like FreeUp out there that will connect you with talented freelancers from around the globe. 

With a bilingual writer by your side, you’ll be able to produce high-value infographics and blogs that attract high-value backlinks. 

Leverage your corporate website’s linking power 

Your original website likely has a valuable backlink profile that you built up over time. The good news is you can tap into this power for the international versions of your site by following these steps:

Step 1: Analyze your backlink profile. Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush (or our free tool) to analyze backlinks pointing to your corporate website. Pay close attention to links coming from your new website’s target market. 

Step 2: Identify redirectable links. Look for links pointing to your original website that would be more relevant if they pointed to the new, international version of your website. These might include:

• Blog posts or articles mentioning the local market
• Resource lists where the local site is a better fit
• Old links from when a local version of the website didn’t exist

Step 3: Request link updates. 

• Compile a list of websites with links that should be redirected.
• Draft a polite outreach email explaining the benefits of updating the link for user experience (readers in their country will prefer your local site).
• Consider having the company reach out directly, as this may yield a better response rate.

This strategy is great because it’s a way to boost the link profiles of your international websites without having to start from scratch. 

It also enhances your user experience since you’ll be guiding visitors to the most relevant version of your website for their geographic location (i.e., Australian visitors getting directed to the .au version of your corporate website). 

Lastly, it improves your online visibility for the new countries you’re expanding into, which will help your brand hit the ground running. 

Don’t forget about social media

The great thing about social media is it’s extremely popular worldwide. 

As long as you choose the right platforms for your international audiences, you’ll attract new traffic, boost brand visibility, and improve local search rankings. 

Here are some tips for leveraging social media for international SEO campaigns. 

Know Your Audience 

Research the most popular social media platforms in your target countries. For example, Facebook is extremely popular in India. Don’t assume they mirror your home market’s preferences. Focus on platforms where your international target audience spends their time.

Content Strategy

Content-wise, you should localize ‘universal’ content. These are content pieces that anyone can appreciate, such as how-to’s and buyer’s guides. 

Also, adapt your content to resonate with local audiences – such as tweaking the language and cultural references. 

Visual content also has a global appeal, so don’t forget to include eye-grabbing images, infographics, and videos to catch audience member’s attention. 

Build your network

You can use social media to start networking in other countries. Uncover relevant influencers, bloggers, and thought leaders in your target countries. 

Search around for popular groups, forums, and communities related to your target audience to uncover individuals worth reaching out to for link placements and guest blogs. 

From there, don’t forget to interact with your audience on their preferred social platforms to build brand awareness and loyalty. 

Other strategies for acquiring international links 

We’ve covered a lot so far, but it’s worth exploring these alternative strategies for building international backlinks. 

Get your business listed in local directories

Listing your website in business directories is link-building 101, and it also applies to international markets. There are countless directories out there, and they aren’t of equal quality. 

Here’s what to look out for:

• Relevance 
• Traffic (you can use our free website traffic checker to find out) 
• Authority score (our free domain authority checker comes in handy) 

As long as the numbers check out (i.e., high traffic and an authority score of 20 or above), it’s worth listing your website in the directory. 

Promote your new website with a press release

A well-crafted press release distributed to local press and industry publications is a proven way to build links and buzz for your new international website. Here’s what to include:

1. Clearly articulate your business, core values, and what you bring to the local market.
2. Include a quote from a key figure emphasizing your commitment to the region and its people.
3. Create a media list encompassing national, regional, and niche industry publications relevant to the new market.
4. Personalize your communication for each tier. Highlight how your story aligns with their audience’s interests.

These strategies will increase the odds of your press release getting picked up, generating valuable backlinks, boosting local awareness, and giving your website’s authority a strong initial push.

What if Link-building Opportunities are Scarce in your Target Country? 

The harsh reality is not every country is bustling with link-building opportunities, which is bum news if you’ve got a potential target audience in a country that’s scarce on backlinks. 

This doesn’t mean that building up your backlink profile in these countries isn’t possible. 

When faced with scarce marketing opportunities in a target country, think beyond borders. 

Here’s an idea for broadening your options. 

Look for similar markets 

Target neighboring countries or those sharing cultural or linguistic ties. This expands your reach while ensuring your marketing messages resonate effectively. 

For instance, countries like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden share strong cultural connections and often have similar consumer preferences. Targeting these markets in tandem can increase your overall impact.

Also, since the US has such a robust online presence, building US-based backlinks can have a ripple effect that leads to organic international links down the line. 

Wrapping Up: International SEO Links 

Link-building for international audiences is definitely challenging, but it’s by no means impossible. 

With the right strategy for acquiring international SEO links, you can dominate the SERPs on any search engine in any country.

Do you need help expanding your business worldwide?

Then don’t wait to check out our five-star Link Outreach and Link Insertion Services from The HOTH. Our team of experts can build winning link profiles for any country (and we’ll simplify the entire process for you), so don’t wait to get in touch now.        

The post How to Acquire International SEO Links the White-Hat Way appeared first on The HOTH.

If so, you need to perform an SEO competitor analysis to understand why they always seem to be on top. 

Otherwise, you’ll be shooting in the dark with your SEO efforts, making it highly unlikely that you’ll ever crack the code. 

Even if you somehow manage to outrank them through random tactics, you won’t know why – making it incredibly difficult to maintain the edge. 

With an in-depth SEO competitor analysis, you’ll learn precisely why other sites are outranking you, such as a considerable gap in the number of backlinks you have compared to sites ranking in the top 5. 

When it comes to analyzing your SEO competitors, there’s no better platform to use than Semrush. 

Why is that?

It’s because Semrush provides a whole host of tools perfect for sizing up the competition. 

These tools allow you to do the following:

• Identify top competitors in your field 
• Analyze competitors’ backlink profiles and authority scores
• View keywords competitors are ranking for that you aren’t 
• Discover lost keyword rankings 
• Learn your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses 
• Compare your SEO performance to other sites

As you can see, you can use Semrush to uncover invaluable SEO insights that’ll supercharge your campaigns. 

We’ve only scratched the surface so far, so stay tuned to learn how to perform a complete SEO competitor analysis with Semrush. 

What’s a SEO Competitor Analysis, and Why Does it Matter?

The search engine landscape is fiercely competitive, with websites from every industry and niche duking it out to rank as high as possible on the SERPs for their most important keywords. 

Google’s ranking algorithm is kept under lock and key, so SEOs are constantly experimenting with new ways to boost their online visibility and position rankings. 

These tactics have varying degrees of effectiveness, and while there are certain SEO best practices that most sites follow, SERP rankings can be mysterious at times. 

That’s why taking a peek behind the scenes with a competitor analysis is so helpful. 

For example, if a website is beating you in the rankings for your most important keyword, there could be a million reasons why. 

They could have higher quality content, better keyword optimization, more backlinks, tighter technical SEO factors (like faster loading speed), and the list goes on and on. 

Only when you sit down to do a competitor analysis will you finally learn why another site is getting the best of you on the SERPs. 

Once you know why you’re getting left in the dust, you’ll be able to make the necessary modifications to your site to start closing the gap and eventually outrank them. 

Knowledge is power, and Semrush will equip you with the tools you need to learn your competitors’ secrets. 

If you’re ready to take your SEO game to the next level, don’t wait to try out Semrush Pro today.      

How to Use Semrushto Conduct an SEO Competitor Analysis Step-by-Step 

Semrush has an entire suite of tools dedicated to competitive research on its SEO dashboard, which includes the following:

• Domain Overview
• Traffic Analytics
• Organic Research 
• Keyword Gap 
• Backlink Gap 

Each tool contains ways to garner valuable insights from competitors, so let’s dive in for a closer look. 

Step #1: Square up competitors with the Organic Research tool 

First things first: You need to learn who your top competitors are, and Semrush’s Organic Research tool is the easiest way to find them. 

The tool is extremely easy to use, as you just need to enter your domain, select your country, and hit the Search button. 

From there, you’ll be greeted with a ton of widgets breaking down things like your top keywords, position changes, and keyword trends. 

However, what we’re interested in is the Main Organic Competitors widget near the bottom of the page. Here, you’ll find a list of your top 5 organic competitors. You can also view the entire list of your competitors (ours contains 7.5k sites, so we’ll stick with the top 5). 

Step #2: Use the Keyword Gap tool to peek at their keywords 

Next, the true analysis begins. The Keyword Gap tool will let you know about all the keywords your competitors are ranking for that you aren’t.

This is super helpful for two reasons: A) you get to uncover valuable keyword opportunities you wouldn’t have known about otherwise, and B) you’ll be able to tell if competitors are outranking you due to their use of keywords. 

You can enter up to four competitors to compare keyword profiles. 

The Missing filter will let you know which keywords they rank for you, but you don’t, while the Weak filter lets you know which keywords they’re better optimized for than you. 

Step #3: Use the Backlink Gap tool to size up their link profile 

Backlinks are a huge ranking factor for Google Search, so if a competitor has stronger backlinks than you, they’ll likely outrank you. 

To find out if links are the culprit, navigate to SEMrush’s Backlink Gap tool from the SEO Dashboard. 

It works exactly like the Keyword Gap tool, where you can enter up to 4 competitors to compare link profiles. 

This tool is amazing for uncovering valuable backlink opportunities from your competitors, such as syndication networks and sites that accept guest posts. 

Step #4: Analyze their traffic and metrics 

Lastly, don’t forget to take a look at your competitor’s traffic and site metrics using the Traffic Analytics and Domain Overview tools. 

The Traffic Analytics tool provides metrics like bounce rate, dwell time, unique visitors, device trends, and top traffic channels. 

These will help you better understand your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, which you can use to your advantage. 

The Domain Overview tool is where you’ll find competitors’ authority scores (which represent how likely they are to appear in the SERPs), total backlinks, and organic search traffic. You can also view their traffic distribution by country to understand where most of their traffic comes from. 

Using Semrush to Crush the Competition 

Performing an SEO competitor analysis is made simple with Semrush, and the platform contains other tools to help bolster your SEO strategy. 

Once you understand why your competitors are beating you on the SERPs, you’ll know the exact steps you need to take to leave them in the dust (instead of the other way around). 

If you’re ready to take your SEO game to the next level, don’t wait to try out Semrush Pro today.      

The post I See What You Did There: Analyzing Competitors with Semrush appeared first on The HOTH.

Or maybe you’re having trouble getting a page to rank even though it features outstanding content and is well-optimized for SEO. 

Either way, you’re experiencing Google ranking issues, which are far more common than you might think. 

There are countless on-page and technical SEO factors that can affect your rankings, and some of them can be very sneaky. 

For instance, all it takes is one missing asset (such as an image or JavaScript file) to cause a web page to display a 404 error. If that web page happens to be a high-ranking blog or product page, its rankings and traffic will plummet immediately. 

Besides issues that occur on your website, external factors can also affect your Google rankings. 

Google algorithm updates, lost backlinks, and changes in user behavior can all impact your SERP rankings in a big way. 

For instance, Google’s recent Link Spam Update negated the impact paid backlinks had on SEO, causing many websites to see dramatic ranking drops virtually overnight. 

Additionally, Google dishes out manual penalties to websites that violate its Webmaster Quality Guidelines. 

Black-hat SEO techniques like cloaking, content scraping, keyword spam, and link schemes will land you a penalty if you’re caught, and your rankings will take a serious hit as a result. 

The good news is that you can uncover and resolve all these ranking issues, which is what we’re here to help you do today – so read on to learn how. 

Understanding Google’s Ranking Factors 

To get a better grasp of Google ranking issues, you need to understand how their ranking system works. 

Google uses over 200 known ranking factors, and some carry more clout than others. 

Not only that, but Google is constantly updating and tweaking its algorithm to resolve issues and provide a better user experience. 

As a result, it’s crucial to keep up with the latest Google updates, as well as understand which ranking factors matter most for your content. 

10 of the most important ranking factors on Google 

While we don’t have enough time to cover all 200 ranking factors, here’s a condensed look at what most SEOs agree are the top 10 factors that affect search rankings on Google. 

1. Content quality. The relevance and quality of your content are among the most important ranking factors for Google Search. 
2. Content length. Google’s algorithm values long-form posts that provide a lot of value to users. Research shows that the sweet spot lies around the 2,500-word mark. 
3. Backlinks. High-authority backlinks are one of the strongest ranking signals on Google, with the #1 spot containing an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions 2 – 10. 
4. Loading speed. Google’s Core Web Vitals test will check to see if your website’s loading speed meets its standards. You won’t appear in the top results if you’re too slow. 
5. E-E-A-T. Google’s quality raters follow an acronym that stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. These four factors are what Google believes a high-quality result will encompass. 
6. Keyword optimization. Even if you have outstanding content that’s relevant to your audience, that won’t matter if it’s not optimized with the right keywords. 
7. Mobile-friendliness. Ever since 2017, Google has practiced mobile-first indexing. That means if your website doesn’t work on mobile devices, you won’t be able to dominate the SERPs.
8. Content freshness. Google doesn’t want to provide users with outdated information, which is why they prioritize ranking newer content the highest. 
9. Site architecture. If your website doesn’t use a logical internal linking structure, some of your most important content may not appear in Google’s index. 
10. Site security. Google prioritizes safety for its users, which is why they rank sites that use HTTPS higher than HTTP sites. 

If any of these 10 factors are missing from your website, that’s likely the cause of your Google ranking issues. If everything checks out, then something else is the culprit. 

The Most Common Google Ranking Issues 

Whether one of your web pages lost its top ranking spot or you haven’t been able to penetrate the top 10, knowing how to fix Google ranking issues will save the day. 

SEOs have been optimizing their websites for Google for decades now, and they’ve run into just about every ranking issue in existence. 

That’s actually a good thing, as they’ve likely already figured out a fix for the ranking problem currently giving you headaches.

Here’s a look at the most common Google ranking issues and how to resolve them. 

Crawling & indexing errors 

If Google’s search bots aren’t able to crawl and index your website, you won’t appear in the SERPs at all. 

There are lots of factors that disrupt the crawling process, which is why technical SEO audits are so important. 

Redirect errors, soft 404s, noindex tags, and canonical issues will cause crawling errors, bringing the process to a screeching halt. 

So if the content you worked so hard on isn’t appearing in Google’s SERPs, it could be that it’s not even in Google’s index. 

How can you discover if crawling errors are affecting your website?

You can do this by using Google Search Console (GSC), an extremely useful (and free) tool for site owners to see how Google views their website. 

In particular, the Page Indexing Report will let you know how many of your web pages appear in Google’s index. 

Moreover, the Index Coverage Report provides a detailed breakdown of any and all crawling/indexing errors Googlebots ran into. The best part is that GSC lets you know details about each error (such as if it’s a problem with a redirect or 404) to make them easier to fix. 

Exceeding crawl budget 

Also, you need to keep your crawl budget in mind when viewing the Page Indexing Report. 

Why is that?

It’s because Google will only have the bandwidth to crawl some of your URLs, namely your most important pages (i.e., blogs, product pages, landing pages, etc.). 

So if you’re attempting to index nearly every URL on your website, Google’s search bots will max out your crawl budget – and it may cause some of your most crucial web pages to get left out. 

To ensure that all the pages you want to rank on Google’s SERPs appear in its index, you need to choose which pages to index and which to ignore. 

Admin pages, login pages, and thank you pages are examples of web pages that you should hit with a noindex tag. 

That’s because including these web pages in Google’s SERPs won’t provide any value to your business. There’s no reason why someone would search for one of your admin pages or author archives – nor would generating organic traffic to these pages provide any benefit via sales or leads. 

As such, you should only index pages that will help your business and website grow. Everything else should receive a noindex tag to get the most out of your crawl budget. 

If you run an eCommerce store, you’ll need to use canonical tags for the ‘vanilla’ version of each product you sell. If you sell multiple colors/sizes of a product, you don’t need to include each one in Google’s index. 

Not only does this preserve your crawl budget, but it’ll help you avoid duplicate content. 

Blocking Googlebot from accessing your website 

If you wake up one morning and realize that your content has disappeared from the SERPs entirely, it could be that Google’s bots can’t access your website to crawl & index it. 

Sometimes web administrators grow frustrated with bots browsing their sites and leaving comments on their messaging boards. 

As a result, they head into your website’s settings and block all traffic originating from bots. 

Now your site will be free of bot spam, and everything will be peachy, right?

It would be, only that now your web pages won’t be able to appear in Google’s search results. Since Google’s search bots are still bots, blocking all traffic from bots will also block them, and they won’t be able to crawl your site. 

To ensure this doesn’t happen, make sure that your website allows traffic from bots. 

If you aren’t sure if Google is blocked or not, you can use their Rich Results Test to find out. Request a URL from your site and see if it’s able to work. If it doesn’t, it could be that you’ve inadvertently blocked Google from accessing your website. 

Page speed slowdown 

If a high-ranking web page falls more than a few positions at once, it could be that something is increasing the page load time. 

As stated before, Google’s Core Web Vitals test checks every website for loading speed and response times. 

Fail the test, and you can kiss your excellent rankings goodbye.

Lots of factors affect page loading times, including JavaScript and CSS, images, videos, plugins, hosting companies, and more.

To discover if your website is having trouble with loading times, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It’ll let you know if your website is running slow, and it’ll provide suggestions for speeding things up. 

If your site is starting to load slower, here are some quick tips for remedying that:

• Minimize JavaScript and CSS (i.e., shorten lengthier lines of code if possible) 
• Compress all images and videos 
• Consider using a content distribution network (CDN), as they can speed up your website 
• Cut back on the number of plugins you use on your website, especially if they’re outdated or aren’t necessary 
• If your site has too many redirects, it can slow things down, so try to minimize their usage when possible 

Google algorithm updates 

If you experience drops in SERP rankings, checking for a Google algorithm update should be one of the first things you do. 

Google is constantly making modifications to its algorithm in order to provide a better user experience, resolve issues, and keep up with modern trends. 

Most recently, Google released two updates very close to one another in late 2022. 

First, they came out with a Link Spam Update on December 12th, 2022. 

Just three days later, they announced the update to their Quality Rater Guidelines (E-E-A-T). 

Algorithm updates can cause changes in SERP rankings, so it’s essential to do your best to roll with the punches. 

Besides major algorithm updates, Google is always making smaller tweaks and changes that draw less attention. For instance, it was uncovered that Google made over 3,000 changes to its search algorithm in the year 2018, and that number has likely increased as time has gone on. 

Also, ranking drops don’t always happen overnight, as sometimes the impact of an algorithm update takes some time to appear. 

So if you start to notice your rankings are slowly slipping away, an algorithm update could be the reason. 

Making changes to your website 

Did you recently switch CMS providers and totally redesign your website?

If so, that’s certainly going to affect your search rankings. 

The same is true for virtually any change you make to your website, whether you’re switching to HTTPS or tweaking your site architecture. 

It’s crucial to note that while some of these changes may cause a temporary drop in rankings, that doesn’t mean that they won’t help your SEO in the long run. 

For instance, if you tighten up your site architecture (i.e., using a flat-style design), you may see a brief rankings drop-off, but your SEO profile will be better off – and you’ll likely recover (and maybe even rank higher than before). 

Losing backlinks 

Lastly, it’s common to experience Google ranking issues whenever you lose a backlink. 

As mentioned previously, backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors on Google Search. 

Yet, backlinks aren’t set in stone, and website owners may choose to remove your backlink in favor of another one. 

After all, that’s the entire methodology behind the skyscraper technique, where you target desirable competitor backlinks to poach by outdoing their content. 

That means that the same thing can happen to you in reverse, where one of your competitors snags one of your most effective backlinks. 

You can use our free backlink checker tool to review your backlink profile to see if you’ve lost any of your top-performing links. 

Concluding Thoughts: Google Ranking Issues 

There are lots of factors that can affect your existing Google rankings, some of which are completely out of your control. 

The most important thing is to stay calm and perform an SEO analysis whenever you see changes in your rankings. That way, you’ll be able to identify & resolve the issue as soon as possible. 

Do you need help ranking higher on Google’s SERPs?

Then you need to check out HOTH X, our five-star managed SEO services. We’ve helped countless clients climb to the top of Google’s search results, and we’d love for you to be next – so don’t wait to get in touch now.    

The post Google Ranking Issues: How to Identify & Resolve Them appeared first on The HOTH.

One thing to note is the Top 3 URLs on the SERPs get 75.1% of user clicks. 

If your site doesn’t appear on the first page of search engine results pages (SERP), the chances of people finding it are slim to none. 

One solution is using long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords change how search engines like Google respond.  

Below, we’ll look at how long-tail keywords work and why they are important to your SEO. Lastly, how you should use them in your content marketing for excellent results. 

Let’s get started!

What Are Long-tail Keywords, and Why are They Important for SEO?

Long-tail Keywords are exact search terms and rank better and bring in more combined traffic. 

They attract quality leads and generate a higher conversion rate than short-tail keywords. Searchers use them to get more specific results. 

Plus, they often have a very attractive (i.e., low) search volume.

So, what exactly are long-tail keywords, and how do they improve search volume? 

Generally speaking, long-tail keywords are specific phrases of 3 or more words relevant to certain niches. 

Here are some examples:

• Stainless steel, double-wide toaster for bagels
• Running shoes for people with wide feet
• SEO services for start-up organizations

Long-tail keywords have lower competition

Long-tail keywords are typically easier to target due to less competition. 

For example, long-tail search terms usually have lower traffic volume potential. This can lead to higher search volume and conversion rates from your content marketing and search terms.

By targeting long-tail keywords, you’ll rank faster. Also, you’ll see similar total traffic levels as head keywords.

Long-tail keywords drive overall traffic to a website, landing page, or other online content. They also have a higher conversion rate than other search terms.

For example, long-tail keywords achieve up to 2.5 times higher conversion rates than short-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords increase the effectiveness of your blogging strategy. 

They improve the SEO of your content marketing and help your rank high on search engine results. 

How? 

By adding relevance and context to your content. They also help you get closer to that all-important first page on Google with every piece of content you publish.

Plus, long-tail keywords appeal to voice-assisted searches. 

This search type is becoming more popular thanks to voice-assisted devices like Siri and Alexa.

In short, long-tail keywords are a significant traffic source when doing keyword research. Plus, searchers now use voice assist, increasing the use of long-tail keywords significantly. 

Why not make long-tail keywords work harder for you? 

Here’s how:

How to Find Long-tail Keywords

Keyword tools are fantastic for finding long-tail keywords in bulk and optimizing your content and search volume. 

If you need quick data on potential keywords for content and search volume, go straight to the source: Google. 

Using Google’s auto-suggest features, you can uncover some incredible data.

Start with a list of “seed keywords.” These search terms reflect how your competitors and customers talk about your products or services. 

The HOTH’s free tool keyword extraction checker can help you gather a list of different keywords used by your competitors.

Next, type each seed keyword into the Google search box and note the automated suggestions. 

These will show the most popular terms that use the beginning parts of the phrase you entered.

Then, for each search, scroll to the bottom of the search results and take note of related search suggestions. You can add these to your long-tail keywords list while doing your keyword research.

Here’s a great tip; plug these new long-tail phrases into a keyword tool to double-check keyword data for more specific traffic metrics. 

Alternatively, you can use Google Keyword Planner on AdWords. 

Use Keyword Research Tools to Find the Long-tail Keywords that Work Best

If you want to take your keyword research a step further, use keyword research tools. These include Ubersuggest, Keyword Tool, and Answer the Public. 

All provide additional ideas and search queries. Keyword research tools are an excellent way to perform keyword research on different keyword phrases. 

They can positively affect your SEO, conversion rates, and every piece of content you create. Additionally, they boost your search traffic, conversation rates, and overall user experience. 

Answer the Public, and Ubersuggest can also help generate topic ideas. If you don’t have pages that correspond to existing keywords, you can use these new keywords to generate more content.

With Answer the Public, you can discover challenging variations of your keywords. That includes both short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords. 

Using visualization for data, you can see common questions related to your topic that you can address with blog content, optimizing the SEO on every piece of content you create.

You can also get ahead of your digital marketing competition by keeping an eye on up-and-coming keywords that reflect trends in your industry. 

Use keyword research tools like Google Trends to spot trending topics. 

Then, create content or offers before others by comparing search trends, predicting seasonal peaks, and identifying opportunities for reactive content.

Google Trends is key for tapping into more viral topics and connecting them to your niche. It’s a great tool for improving search volume and bringing more online searchers to your virtual door.

How To Incorporate Long tail Keywords into Your Content Strategy

Instead of jamming every long-tail keyword into a limited number of web pages, you can use this list of keywords to increase your content marketing strategy.

Publishing new content marketing keeps your website and landing pages on search engine radar. 

Each unique piece of content allows you to rank for a specific long-tail keyword.

Don’t look at long-tail keywords as more work. 

Think of them as more opportunities. Searchers on Google will help your conversion rates and get you closer to Google’s first page. 

Related keywords in every piece of content will help your SEO strategy. (Even if they aren’t super competitive keywords.)

Here’s how to integrate long-tail keywords into your content strategy:

1. Clearly state your objectives and goals

Clarifying the goal for each piece of content you publish will help you determine the search intent (more on that below). 

Also, the correct long-tail keyword to rank for.

The objective of every piece of content should align with your organizational and marketing goals. That will provide the best results on Google search and other search engines. 

Here are some excellent examples: 

• Educate searchers about their challenges and how to overcome them.
• Attract searchers with usable, real-world information that helps solve an issue or challenge.
• Drive high-quality leads to your website with search terms that align with searchers‘ needs, wants, and desires.
• Move searchers through the sales funnel with engaging, persuasive content geared towards their ultimate goal.

Each piece of content should serve a direct purpose and influence your SERP. Content creation for the sake of content creation is worthless. 

When the searcher is finished, they haven’t gained anything of value.

2. Align your long-tail keywords with search intent

The search intent behind any particular long-tail or short-tail keyword is just as important as the keyword itself. 

The keywords should appear in a context that addresses your visitors’ needs, wants, or desires. 

When they do, the page is more likely to rank high on search engines and improve your SEO and SERP.

Intent-based optimization identifies topics and questions your customers want to know about. 

They will search using a specific long-tail keyword. This fact helps you create content that meets their needs, which is what every searcher is looking for.

There are several types of search intent, including informational, navigational, transactional, and commercial. 

Your landing page’s objective should match the keywords’ search intent to drive traffic. Start with your top landing pages to get a good grasp of your visitors’ search intent.

Find out why searchers landed on a page, what they were searching for, and what answers they hoped to find.

Time on-site is a great metric to see if your content matches your intent. This analysis assesses the relevance of your long-tail keywords. A longer time on-site indicates you’re keeping searchers interested.

Next, identify keywords you should optimize to provide useful content and increase conversion rates. You’ll deliver a relevant user experience with every piece of content you create.

If you’re struggling with search intent, simply Google the corresponding keywords to those you’re targeting. Then, scan the top related searches. 

Look closely at the big-name brands targeting these queries to get ideas about intent.

How to Use Long-tail Keywords for E-commerce

SEO for e-commerce websites presents more opportunities. The objective is to drive quality traffic. Plus, find searchers ready to make a purchase and take advantage of how your target prospects are searching.

Here’s how long-tail keywords can help improve your e-commerce SEO:

1. Descriptive Phrases

Searchers looking for a specific item are more likely to make a purchase. They use longer and more descriptive long-tail keywords, like “green running shoes for women.”

The depth of their search terms shows that they aren’t new to this research. These searchers are, in many cases, much further along the buyer’s journey than someone searching for a basic term like “workout shoes.”

That’s precisely why descriptive long-tail keywords capture high-quality traffic better than short-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords better describe your products or services.

That takes us to another keyword research tool; surveys and social listening. Using both, you can get direct insight into consumers’ exact searches rather than generic keyword ideas and search terms.

Here’s how; The on-site search terms report in Google Analytics. These on-site terms provide easy wins when suggesting products that users commonly search for and the search terms they use to find them.

You’ll discover long-tail keywords and search terms you haven’t been using in your pieces of content. Start using them to improve your SEO and conversion rates and reach the first page on search engines.

2. Commercial Intent

Search engine algorithms take intent into account. Because of this, you want to inform visitors they can purchase products or services from your website.

Focus on using keywords with commercial intent on your e-commerce product pages, such as:

• “Buy now” keywords (e.g., coupon, discount, deals)
• Product keywords (e.g., review, best, specific product, or brand name)
• Informational keywords (e.g., how to, ways to, when to, etc.)
• Tire kicker keywords (e.g., free, no charge, BOGO)

3. Landing Pages

It pays to consider the entire customer journey. An incohesive user experience can increase your bounce rate and hurt your SEO and search volume. 

Create content or product pages around long-tail keywords and phrases. 

Select a landing page with the most relevant product or content your keywords are ranking for. 

Your content marketing will deliver a coherent user experience and increase your conversion rate.

Give the searcher precisely what they ask for, always. They will reward you with sales, loyalty, and repeat sales.

What are the Benefits of long-tail Keywords in SEO?

As mentioned, long-tail keywords are composed of many words, which generally makes them more specific keywords to search results. Instead of heavily saturated popular keywords, use more targeted phrases to find the right people. 

This means that both you and your audience generally get a better experience. Your brand gets traffic from the right audience, and your target audience is happy because they found what they’re looking for. 

This also improves the ability to effectively bring new customers into each stage of the buyer’s journey. 

There are several benefits to using long-keyword suggestions:

• They’re more specific, although they usually have fewer monthly searches.
• They have lower search volume and competition.
• They increase your rank on SERPs.
• They have higher conversion rates.
• They improve the visibility of your online content,
• They can improve the ranking on your pages quickly.
• They can optimize your SEO and blog strategy.
• They allow for more personalized content with higher intent.
• They help your organization prepare for future trends.
• They’re more popular using AI-assisted voice search.

Let’s Wrap it Up!

It’s not impossible to rank high on search engines, find excellent search terms and improve the SEO and results of your content marketing.

With the correct long-tail keyword strategy, you can improve your SEO, help searchers find you, and move closer to that all-powerful first page. 

Visit The HOTH and schedule a talk with an SEO expert today! 

Our SEO specialists can provide up-to-date, actionable advice on finding, using, and profiting from long-tail keywords. 

The post How to Get Ahead in SEO Using Long-tail Keywords appeared first on The HOTH.

No matter how fancy your website looks, without SEO no one will find it. 

SEO allows your website to appear in relevant search results and drives customers to your business for free. 

The remaining article will cover how to do SEO for a new website and other helpful tips and tricks to get you started. 

Ready to boost your traffic? Keep scrolling!

How to Do SEO for a New Website 

You should begin your SEO efforts as soon as possible, and that process starts with your domain name. 

Think of it as your very own slice of online real estate. It’s going to shape how customers find you, and also the credibility of your brand moving forward.

For that reason, there are a few key factors to keep in mind before selecting and securing the right domain for you.

A good website should be easy to search for. This means it needs to be:

• Short
• Memorable
• Use a .com
• Use keywords in your domain
• Make it easy to pronounce and spell
• Keep it unique 
• Avoid hyphens
• Don’t use double letters

Aim for a domain name that relates to what you do or sell, with little to no punctuation getting in the way.

Here are a few other tips for new website SEO suggestions: 

Make it crawler-friendly

Despite domain keywords not being as important today as they once were, domain names still count as a valuable ranking factor.

Search engines like Google and Bing have crawlers that will analyze your domain name to gauge what your site is about. 

For this reason, it’s a good idea to include your primary keyword in your name.

If you’re unsure about your target keywords at this point, a quick search on a free keyword planner tool can help you out.

However, try not to overload your domain name with several target keywords as this appears spammy to search algorithms and is often referred to as “keyword stuffing”.

Strive for brand authority

Not only will a keyword-heavy domain name like “keyword-keyword.com” look spammy to search engine crawlers, but it also looks untrustworthy to potential customers. 

Internet users are scam-savvy, and anything other than “yourcompanyname.com” can ring alarm bells. 

Choosing a domain name that is solid, credible, and trustworthy will provide the perfect foundation to build brand authority online. 

And the more brand authority you have online, the higher search engines will rank you.

An easy way of finding domain name ideas is to run a few searches on a domain checker. 

This will tell you if your company name is available as a domain, and provide other formats and ideas if it is not. 

You could also try using a free domain authority checker tool to see how your competitors’ domains are performing. The domain names of top-performing sites could influence your choice. 

Technical SEO

The next key step in making your new site search engine optimized is setting it up in a way that is easy for search engine bots to crawl. 

This is called “technical SEO”.

Search engine algorithms prefer to rank websites that fulfill certain technical criteria, as it ensures they are recommending the most user-friendly sites to browsers.

When you are in the process of setting up a new site, it’s the perfect time to make sure you’re ticking all of the following boxes:

Pagespeed

Pagespeed is essential.

In fact, 53% of web browsers leave pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load.

And a mere second delay has been shown to reduce page views by 11%.

Not only does a slow website produce fewer page views, but Google’s crawlers also have a limited amount of time to spend analyzing each website. 

As a result, faster loading sites will always rank higher in searches. 

There are several easy ways that you can boost your site’s pagespeed, including:

• Make sure you are using a fast DNS (domain name system)
• If you are building your site on WordPress, you can try to limit the number of plugins you use
• Use smaller image files without compromising on quality and user experience
• Compress your site’s web pages

Friendly for mobile devices

Google has stated that 79% of people say that they are more likely to revisit or share a mobile site if it is easy to use. 

Therefore, having a mobile-friendly site is an important ranking factor in the Google algorithm.

Ensuring that your website features a “responsive” design means that it will automatically adjust the user experience to best suit those browsing on a desktop, mobile, or tablet.

Map out your web pages

The architecture of your website not only makes it easier for customers to find their way around but also makes it easier for crawlers to index your site.

Before you start building your website, or before you finalize and publish it, sketch out a site map that includes all relevant web pages.

The core pages on any website will be the homepage, the contact page, the about page, a page for services, as well as any individual service pages you might need. 

It’s also a great idea to include a blog page so that you can publish more content that boosts your SEO.

All of these core pages should be easily accessible via your main menu. You can then opt to include another menu in your site’s footer that adds to the user navigation process.

Planning your menu and page structure ahead of time will help you organize your site’s content in the most user and bot-friendly way.

Once your site is ready, use a sitemap generator to create an XML sitemap. 

This provides search engines with the valuable information they need to index each page, as we’ll explain in the next step.

Register with Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that allows you to submit your website to be indexed by the search engine. Bing also offers a similar tool called Bing Webmaster Tools. 

Once your site is complete and published, submit your XML sitemap to both of these tools so that they can index your pages and start displaying you in their search results.

Keyword Research

Keywords are the words and phrases that browsers enter into search engines, so incorporating the right ones into your website content will help you appear in relevant search results.

Keyword research helps you find the right keywords for your site. It tells you exactly what your target audience is searching for, and any relevant questions they have that you could answer.

It also tells you the keywords that are searched the most, the terms that are easiest to rank for, and some tools even show you the keywords that your competitors are ranking for.

We’re going to dig into our top 3 free keyword research tools on the web and explain how to use them. 

Then we’ll follow up with how to do SEO for a new website and how to find the most useful keywords.

How to do SEO for a new website using keywords

Your keyword research tools will have provided a variety of key terms, phrases, and long-tail keywords. 

And each one will be paired with data on search volume and competition.

You can then use this data to locate keywords that will help you rank higher on Google. 

An ideal keyword would have a high search volume paired with low competition, but unless you’re running a very valuable niche this probably won’t be an option.

However, you can locate easy and valuable keywords to target by:

• Ignoring key search terms that have little to no search volume
• Prioritizing relevant keywords that have low competition

However, you may want to take a look at Google Trends to see if any terms with a lower search volume are projected to rise in popularity in the future.

If your keyword research reveals a low competition term, try running a Google search to see how many sites have relevant and up-to-date articles for that term. 

If there are less than 5 pages battling it out, you have an opportunity to win a top ranking by default.

All of the above keyword SEO tools will provide you with the appropriate target keywords for your on-page SEO. 

Now, let’s get into how to write and format a website that search engines will love.

The HOTH Google Keyword Planner Tool

We can’t help but begin this list with a shameless plug for our own tool – and why not?

It’s a totally free, easy-to-use tool powered by Semrush, and we wouldn’t be recommending it if we didn’t believe it was one of the best on the market.

To use our tool, simply enter any keyword or phrase related to your website/business into the search bar. 

Hit the button that says “view keyword research” to reveal high-volume relevant keywords and phrases related to the subject of your site.

You can then use this list and relevant data to decipher a primary keyword to begin targeting, in addition to long-tail keywords that will help draw searchers to your site. 

Your search will reveal a list of key terms and phrases in order of the highest search volume. 

You’ll also see the cost per click (CPC) for each term, level of competition, number of results, as well as the search trend.

When choosing your main keyword, you will want to look for a balance between relevance to your business, high search volume, and low competition.

Unless you’re setting up an especially niche site, there will probably be a certain degree of compromise here.

Google Keyword Planner

If you already have a Google Ads account, the search engine’s keyword planner is free to use and can be helpful for guiding your keyword research. 

The tool has been designed to inform your PPC campaigns, but it also offers valuable insights into search trends and competition.

Using Google’s Keyword Planner is a fairly similar process to the other tools mentioned on this list. 

You simply enter one or several keywords related to your website, and your search will reveal relevant key terms and data. 

Wordstream’s Free Keyword Tool

The unique thing about this free tool from Wordstream is that it offers strategic advice. 

It is also an especially handy tool for PPC research if you decide to reinforce your SEO efforts with paid marketing.

To begin, you can enter either a keyword or a URL to reveal a list of key term suggestions. 

Every term includes the cost per click for both Bing and Google, search volume, and competition. 

They offer 24 industry verticals to filter your search by, in addition to 23 countries.

On-Page SEO for a New Website

How to do SEO for a new website involves on-page SEO practices of optimizing your web pages so that they rank better on search engines. 

You will need to use the keywords you found in step 3 in order to make the following elements more Google-friendly:

• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• HTML code
• URL structure
• Images
• Page content
• Internal linking

Optimizing each of these aspects of your web pages will allow Google’s crawlers to better understand what your pages are about so that they can rank you in the most appropriate search queries. 

Consequently, you’ll end up with organic traffic from the warmest leads.

We’ll guide you through optimizing each of these on-page elements:

Title tags and headings

Your title tag is the page title of your web page in an HTML format.  

This title tag will appear as a clickable headline in search engine results pages, so you will want it to be a short, snappy, and accurate description of your page’s content. 

Depending on your content management system or website builder, you may sometimes see title tags referred to as “meta title tags”.

When crafting your title tags you will want to ensure that they are the right length. 

Google has a 600-pixel width limit, so we recommend keeping your title under 60 characters. 

For SEO purposes, it is also a good idea to place your keyword or phrase as close to the start of your title as possible.

You can use our free title tag generator to create optimized header ideas. 

Once you have your title tag, you can go ahead and build the content for that specific page. 

In which case, there are certain HTML tags you should be using for headings throughout the page:

• The primary title should use the H1 tag.
• Secondary headings should all use the H2 tags.
• And any other subheadings should use H3 and H4 tags accordingly.

Meta Description

The meta description is the little preview snippet that will appear below your clickable headline in Google search results. 

Just like the title tag, search engines have some guidelines that will help you optimize these snippets.

• Make sure your snippet is around 155 characters
• Use your focus keyword, and some synonyms where possible
• Make sure it concisely summarizes the content on the web page

Meta descriptions are important as they will help you generate click-throughs to your page. 

Although Google is not actively crawling meta descriptions to decide where they rank you in searches, they do measure click-through rate.

URL Structure

The URL is the web address that provides access to a web page. 

URLs matter for website SEO because they tell Google exactly what your page is about, and they also affect the user experience.

You will want to ensure that every page on your website has a simple and logical URL slug.

Sometimes website builders can automatically generate a URL that’s just a bunch of numbers. 

This tells Google nothing about the web page and they will struggle to rank it in their search results. 

Simply change this slug to use one or two words, and if that includes a keyword – even better!

For instance, your about page URL should be: 

• yourcompany.com/about

Once you have some blog posts on your site, these will also need a special slug too. The best way to do this is by using hyphens.

For instance, if you had a blog post titled “SEO: 8 Steps To Optimize A New Site”. 

You may want to use a URL like: youcompany.com/blog/seo-for-new-site

Images

Images are a huge part of the user experience, as many browsers will be intimidated by a wall of text on a web page. 

Images are key for quality content, but only if they are relevant and helpful. 

However, for SEO purposes there are a few other factors to consider when uploading images to a page. 

• Reduce the file size to ensure images load quickly.
• Use alt text tags to tell Google what the image is about – include a relevant key term.
• Give your images titles and file names with relevant keywords.

Page Content

When writing new content for a web page, you will want to ensure you utilize your keywords from step 3.

To decide how to best use the results of your keyword research, you might want to begin by dividing them into groups based on each web page on your site map. 

Every page should have a target keyword, as well as a range of related keywords, long-tail keywords, questions, and synonyms. 

You will want to use all of these terms wisely in your page content. 

For every web page, you will want to begin by mentioning your target keyword in the first paragraph. 

This not only makes the page’s purpose immediately clear to visitors but also to search engines looking to decipher your site rank. 

Furthermore, build out a plan for each page’s content before writing, taking care to plan each section and header. 

Then you can make sure that your relevant related keywords feature in H2 tags where possible. 

Outbound and internal linking

Lastly, when planning and writing your page content you should be sure to include outbound and internal linking. 

Outbound links are links in your content that lead to pages on another website. Whereas internal links are links to other relevant pages on your own website. 

Both of these are important in organic search optimization as they provide Google with more information about the subject of your page. 

Internal links make your site more crawler-friendly, and they are really easy to implement into your content. 

If you mention a product or service, pair the relevant anchor text with a hyperlink to the appropriate page. Every page on your site should be linked to several other pages on your site.

Outbound links provide you with an opportunity to link to high-quality and high-authority sources. This can help reinforce your own authority and trustworthiness.

Develop A Content Marketing Plan

No digital marketing strategy is complete without a content marketing plan. Remember when we told you to make sure there is a blog page on your new site? Now is the time to use it!

If you are a small business without a large online marketing budget, content marketing provides a low-cost way to attract organic traffic and warm leads to your business. 

Furthermore, when you plan your content ahead of time – it’s pretty pain-free too!

Boost organic traffic with a content calendar

Securing a content marketing plan before your site’s launch ensures that you will be continuing to boost your SEO efforts, rising through the ranks and attracting more of your target audience.

You already dabbled in SEO writing when you wrote your on-page content. 

However, these pages like the “homepage”, “about us”, and “services” page are permanent to your site. 

Blog content allows you to target all of those specific keywords, phrases, and questions that you haven’t been able to use yet. 

Additionally, blog content provides an opportunity to regularly expand your website’s content and increase your organic traffic.

Most bloggers aim to publish a new search engine optimized blog every week. 

You can put together a basic content calendar for every month of the year, ensuring you’re always working a month in advance. 

Every week should have a topic, a title, and a target keyword to begin with.

If you are a plumbing and heating business your keyword research may have revealed search queries about pricing, repairs, and certain products. 

In which case, you can sketch out an article title that answers these search queries.

Then go back to your chosen keyword research tool and search for your new focus keyword. 

This will reveal an array of related key terms and phrases to also include in your content. 

Off-site SEO

Off-site SEO refers to factors outside of your own website that impacts your search engine performance. These factors include:

• Backlinks
• Anchor text
• Link equity

These factors help inform search engines of your site’s authority, authenticity, and relevance.  

The core of any off-site SEO strategy is link building or backlinks, which are links from other sites that lead to your web pages. 

The more authority a website accumulates, the more sites will naturally link to them as a resource. 

It can feel challenging to accumulate links as a new website, but we’ve put together a list of methods to receive low-hanging, easy-to-access links.

Link building for a new site

Securing a few quality backlinks from high authority sites can provide you with the fast track you need to rise through the search results ranks. In theory, this is easy to do. 

You simply have to ask a relevant site for the backlink. 

However, you have to understand that a lot of these backlink requests will be ignored. 

Some easy ways to begin your link-building portfolio include: 

• Ask your suppliers and manufacturers
• Ask relevant colleagues, business partners, friends, and family.
• See if your college has an alumni list complete with website links.
• Industry directories online.
• Look for relevant broken links.
• Submit guest posts.
• Contribute to crowdsourced posts.
• Ask bloggers for product reviews.
• Look for micro-influencers on social media.

Analytics

An SEO strategy is worthless if you can’t track the results. So get ahead of the game and learn all about analytics before your site gets off the ground. 

There are a variety of SEO analytics tools available on the market, some paid and some free. However, the best place to start is with Google’s own analytics tool. 

Getting started with Google Analytics

First, you’ll need to make sure that you are signed up and have an account with Google Analytics that’s paired to your website. 

Once your website is up and running you will be able to see all kinds of metrics about your site’s traffic. Including:

• Organic and paid traffic.
• Where you are acquiring site visitors from.
• Website visitor behavior.
• Where website visitors are located.
• How much time do users spend on your web pages?
• Bounce rate.

You can then utilize this information to enhance your website. 

For instance, if users are spending more time on one specific type of content you can add more content like this to your site. 

Check your domain metrics

A free domain authority checker tool can help you check and track key SEO metrics for your website. 

You will be able to see an overview of organic traffic to your site, as well as the strength of specific pages compared to others. 

You can also use this tool to compare a page on your website to a similar page on a competitor’s site. 

All of these factors can show you where you need to improve in order to perform better in search engine results.

Takeaways

Search engine optimization is a never-ending process as search engines continue to update their algorithms all of the time. 

If you need help getting your new website to rank, give us a call today!

The post How to Do SEO for a New Website appeared first on The HOTH.

Yet, if you want to find success with SEO, you need the proper tools to analyze your progress through KPIs like click-through rate (CTR), impressions, and page views.

If you’re brand-new to the SEO world, you likely won’t have the budget for fancy programs with robust reporting features.  

But if you want to rank on Google, you’ve got to start somewhere, and you have to dive in with something. 

A great place to start is using Google’s set of free tools.

Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console (GSC) is what they’re calling it these days (seriously, I’m still getting used to saying Google Ads instead of Adwords).

You can also access GSC from any mobile device (for SEO insights on the go). Google Search Console tracks 16 months’ worth of data and has detailed page analytics, new tracking flows, and improved reports – making it a must for all website owners serious about improving their search performance. 

Read on to discover how you can use GSC to optimize your website for Google’s search engine. 

What Is Google Search Console Good For?

GSC is an invaluable tool if you want your landing pages to rank higher on Google. 

Why’s that?

It’s because it lets you view how Google crawls your website. In other words, you’ll get to view your web pages through the eyes of a Googlebot. As such, you’ll get to view and address any crawl errors and indexing issues. 

That will ensure that your web pages are all indexed and appear on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). 

The last thing you want is to spend lots of time and money optimizing your website for Google – only for it to not get indexed due to an error. That means all your SEO efforts will be for nothing until you resolve the issue. 

But if you aren’t using GSC, you may not even realize that your web pages aren’t showing up in the search results. That’s one of the reasons why GSC is such a crucial tool for website owners to use (it’s a good rule of thumb to check it once a day or at least once a week to avoid any issues popping up). 

GSC is also useful for viewing:

• Which search queries you show up for 
• How often users click through to your site (click-through rate or CTR)
• Viewing backlinks
• Troubleshooting mobile usability 
• Monitoring your website’s core web vitals
• Evaluating the search performance of new content
• AMP

Differentiating GSC from GA 

GSC also works hand-in-hand with another one of Google’s free tools, Google Analytics (GA). At first glance, it may seem as if both tools provide the same information – but there are subtle differences. 

Google Analytics primarily provides data on who is visiting your site. For example, you’ll see detailed analytics for how many guests you receive, how they got to your site, and how much time they spend there. You’ll also discover where most of your users come from geographically. 

Google Search Console is more about displaying your site performance as Google sees it. You get to see if there are any indexing or crawling errors and which keywords you show up for in the SERPs. 

The good news is Google Search Console easily links up with Google Analytics to allow you to see all the numbers in one place. That way, you can get the best of both worlds by looking at both your user data and how your website appears to a Googlebot. 

Other key features of GSC 

Google Search Console also makes it easier to beautify your website’s appearance. That is because Google Search Console presents how your pages appear in Google’s SERPs. That will give you valuable insight into your user experience as well.  

Furthermore, you can view how your content will look in the rich snippets and rich cards.

So if you’re constantly going for featured snippets in your blogs, you’ll want to take advantage of this feature in GSC. 

If you want to avoid indexing issues – the best way is to make sure your title tag, meta description, and headers are all optimized. You’ll also want to minimize orphan pages (web pages that don’t have inbound links pointing to them) and ensure that your internal linking structure makes sense. 

And to be clear, Search Console isn’t just for the site administrator. 

SEO specialists and content marketers on your team should be familiar with it to monitor and optimize inbound traffic, and your website developers can use it to monitor and resolve issues with markup (more on adding team members in a bit).

How Do I Set Up Google Search Console?

First things first: you’ll need to set up Google Search Console in your browser, preferably the most recent version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge, and then enable cookies and JavaScript.

You’ll probably have a Google account if you’re already using Google Analytics. If not, you’ll need to set one up to get into GSC.

After that, sign up for Google Search Console and confirm ownership of your website. 

Why do you have to verify ownership?

It’s because GSC will provide you with confidential information about your site performance and influence how Google crawls the website. As such, you’ll have to prove that you’re the official owner of the domain to proceed. 

Much like getting verified as a business account on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll need to provide proof that you are, in fact, authorized to view some proprietary insights for your website.

Here’s how to add a new website to GSC:

• Log in to your Google account.
• Go to Webmaster Tools and click ‘Add Property.’
• Select ‘Website’ from the drop-down menu, and enter the URL for your site. Make sure that it’s the exact URL that shows up in your web browser. 
• Click ‘Continue’ and choose a verification method (see below).
• Add every version of your URL. That is a crucial step not to miss. That includes ‘yourwebsite.com,’ ‘www.yourwebsite.com,’ ‘blog.yourwebsite.com,’ and any others you may have. 

Note that the last step is significant. You’ll want to add every version of your domain so that Google doesn’t separate your organic traffic and backlinks for each URL. 

You’ll also want to set your preferred domain as your website’s ‘canon’ version. To do so, set up 301 redirects from your non-preferred domains to the preferred one. 

Verifying site ownership in GSC

There are a few different ways to verify ownership of your website, including:

• HTML file. You upload a verification HTML file to a specific location on your website. 
• Domain name. Log in to your domain registrar to verify your website from GSC with a DNS TXT or CNAME record. 
• HTML tag. You can verify your website by adding a <meta> tag to the <HEAD> section of a web page’s HTML code. 
• GA tracking code. If you have the ‘edit’ permission on GA, you can copy the tracking code that you use for your site. 
• Google Tag Manager (GTM) snippet code. If you use GTM, you can copy and paste the GTM container code associated with your website. Note that you’ll need view, edit, and manage container-level permissions to perform this task. 

By signing up for Google Search Console, you’ll automatically receive alerts when Google spots something that seems a little off – such as some weird markup or a page that isn’t indexed. 

Once you get into the dashboard, you won’t see data right away – it could take a few days to get everything up and running (so keep this in mind if you’re working around the clock).

Adding Your Team With Search Console Users

Members of your team will likely need to have access to Google Search Console as well, and Google gives you a few different management options: 

• Verified owner. The verified owner has complete control over all their properties in GSC. The owner can add and remove users, access all data, and use any tool. They’re the ‘head honcho’ that calls all the shots for the rest of the team. 
• Delegated owner. There are two types of owners on GSC, verified and delegated. The verified owner can designate delegated owners – who can do just about anything except change settings. A delegated owner can also appoint other delegated owners.
• Full user. A full user can see most data and even take some actions. A typical example of a full user would be a member of your blogging team so they can analyze blog performance. 
• Restricted user. A restricted user can only view data and cannot perform any actions. You can also restrict how much data they can view – such as restricting them from viewing the index coverage report.  

Whoever creates the Google Search Console account for your website property will automatically be deemed the verified owner and entirely in control of the tool.

The owner can add other delegated owners and full users with view rights and some actionable power. They can also create restricted users who can only view data for the property.

Load Your Sitemap

A sitemap is a file on your website that tells Google which pages should be indexed. 

According to Google, if you have a smaller site (less than 100 pages) – you can simply input the homepage URL for indexing as long as all pages are ultimately accessible from the homepage, and Googlebot will take care of the rest. 

So if your website has a logical internal linking structure, uploading your sitemap to GSC may not be necessary. 

You’ll only want to upload your sitemap if:

• Your site is gigantic. The larger your site is, the harder it will be for a Googlebot to crawl it without running into any issues. More pages mean more opportunities for Google to miss new changes or additions. 
• Your site is brand-new. If your website is hot off the press, the chances are high that there aren’t many (or any) backlinks pointing to it. As a result, it will be more difficult for Google to discover it, so uploading your sitemap is good. 
• There are orphan pages. Are there certain landing pages that don’t have any inbound links or backlinks pointing to them? If so, Google may miss them during the crawling process. 

If your website checks any of these boxes, uploading your sitemap should be your next step, as it’s much better to be safe rather than sorry. 

How Do I Get the Most out of Google Search Console?

Lucky for you, if you’re just starting with Google Search Console, you’re getting the best version yet. 

Believe us, this tool used to be much clunkier and more difficult to understand. 

That said, each website has different goals when it comes to SEO, so we’re going to break down each tab of the Console for you below.

Overview

For Search Console beginners, this is probably the most helpful section of the tool. Here, you get an overview of all your metrics and analytics. This page is excellent for glancing at your average position, CTR, and impressions. 

Performance

You can configure the Performance report based on which data you’d like to view (as you would in Google Analytics). Google Search Console allows you to group and filter by queries, pages, countries, devices, search type, search appearance, and date.

Basically, this will help you view where your organic site traffic is coming from, which queries are most likely to show your page, be it click-through rates from the SERP to specific pages, how your search traffic shifts over time, any searches by device, and more.

URL Inspection Tool

Put simply: input a URL from your website, and you’ll be able to access analytics for that page. 

That was part of the big revamp of Google Search Console, and it’s beneficial when you’re looking to optimize specific pages for the SERP.

Index Coverage Report

Google Search Console keeps track of all the indexed pages of your website, and you can view them here.

A high-level report will display all the URLs by index status. 

Statuses include Error, Warning, Exclusion, and Valid – which will be paired with a Reason for that status. While we won’t cover all the reasons here, you can reference this resource from Google on Search Console to learn more.

Pro tip: If your website has less than 500 pages, you may not need to use this report. Instead, you can simply search for your site on Google using this query, “site: your_site” (insert your homepage URL here), and the search results will display the pages Google knows about.

Removals

This section of Search Console will let you temporarily block your web pages from the SERP and enables you to view content on your site that Google has flagged as “adult.”

Core Web Vitals

These are an excellent addition to the Google Search Console suite that allows you to fix poor user experiences resulting from long load times, lack of interactivity, and poor stability. 

There are 3 core web vitals that Google looks at via Chrome usage data. They are the longest contentful paint (LCP), first input delay (FID), and cumulative layout shift (CLS). 

LCP refers to how long it takes your page to load from when a user clicks on it. If your page has poor loading times, your user experience will suffer (so will your bounce rate). 

FID is how long it takes until a user can interact with your web page. An example would be how long it takes until a user can start typing their credentials into a login page. 

CLS is how stable your website is when loading its content. If it’s not stable, links and page elements will jump around during the loading process. 

The core web vitals report covers each vital listed above – and ranks them as either good, needs improvement, or poor. 

This report will also be broken into Mobile and Desktop so you can identify and fix platform-specific issues.

That brings us to…

Mobile Usability Report

Fairly self-explanatory, this section of Search Console will show you with pages on your site are valid, aka mobile-friendly, or rendering an error, aka not mobile-friendly.

Now that there’s mobile-first indexing, you’ll want to pay close attention to this report.

When you’re looking to fix mobile rendering issues, Google recommends fixing them in the order they appear on the summary report page–it’ll be sorted from general issues (like templates) to more granular.

When you’ve completed fixing the errors, you can “Validate and Update Google” from here to improve your ranking.

For more details on any errors that you may encounter, check out this resource from Google.

Links

This report will give you even more insight into your top-linked pages, which domains link to you, and supplement the data you get through Google Analytics.

One of the best features here is the “top linked text,” which gives you insight into the domain linking to you and the actual text that the writer hyperlinked to your page. That is a great way to know how others value the content you are producing.

Legacy Tools and Reports

If you’re a legacy user of Google Webmaster Tools, you may be missing out on the old set-up (with way more options on the left side).

Because some of the tools that were eliminated don’t yet have replacements, Google stuck them under “Legacy Tools and Reports” for you to access.

• Crawl stats: if you’re brand new to Search Console, you probably won’t need this. Crawl stats checked the number of times Google crawled your site and how many requests it made. Developers or SEOs mostly used this. However, check this every so often to make sure Google isn’t sending too many requests to crawl your site!
• Crawl Rate Settings: use this to reduce the number of times Google crawls your site, mainly if your crawl stats show too many requests.
• Tester for robots.txt: this helped developers troubleshoot their robots.txt files and fix blocked pages on your site.
• URL parameters tools: this was a pretty niche tool for pages with parameters that changed the content of the page, e.g., for international retailers. It was tricky to use anyway, but advanced SEOs probably still use it.
• International Targeting: This was useful for international websites that feature different languages when adding hreflang tags or a primary country on your website.
• Google Analytics Association: this is a pretty big one that I still use. It imports Search Console data into Google Analytics and approves/denies other association requests from Youtube, an Android app, etc.

Google Search Console also allows you to verify and edit issues such as schema markup and errors with structured data.

Connecting Search Console to Google Analytics

To leverage data from Search Console in Google Analytics, you’ll need to authorize data sharing in your GA settings.

Go to admin, click the property you want to add, go to the Search Console setting, select the data you wish to view, and hit save.

One final note: Search Console now keeps data for 16 months, so that is the max time you’ll be able to access through GA. There is an average lag time of 48 hours before data will be shown in GA or Search Console.

Concluding Thoughts: What is Google Search Console?

By following this guide, you’ll be able to make sure you’re getting the most out of this powerful, free tool.

Take the time to correctly set up your Google Search Console and unlock truckloads of free data, including mobile usability reports, site authority, backlinks, and several other SEO metrics.

We know it can be a little overwhelming trying to decipher the data – but there’s no reason not to use Google Search Console for a small business.

If you’d like some help, you can schedule a free SEO consultation with us. We’d be happy to lend a hand and help identify some quick wins for you.   

The post What is Google Search Console? Dive in with this Beginner’s Guide appeared first on The HOTH.

For example, if one of your pages isn’t indexed, it won’t show up in the Google search results. 

In other words, your page is invisible to Google – and you’re getting zero SEO value from it. 

That’s why Google Search Console is such an invaluable tool. One of its key features will let you know if Google ran into any errors when attempting to crawl and index your site. 

As a result, you’ll be able to instantly identify any pages that aren’t indexed so you can fix the crawl issue (or another type of error).

Beyond that, GSC provides detailed reports and analytics on how your website is performing organically. That’s powerful information to have – as it lets you measure how effective your SEO tactics are, according to Google.  

That’s why I put together this extensive guide for identifying and resolving Google Search Console errors. Read on to learn how to use the index coverage report to resolve problems and improve your overall SEO strategy.

Understanding Google’s Indexing Process

In order for your website to show up on search engine results pages (SERPs), it must go through the following three processes:

Discovering 

Before Google can crawl and index your site, it has to discover it first. The most common way to discover a website is to process its XML sitemap. Google can also follow on and off-site links to discover websites, as well as other methods. 

Besides indexing errors, issues can arise during the discovery process as well. The good news is you can upload your XML sitemap to GSC to ensure it discovers your site. 

Crawling 

Once Google discovers the site, it’s in the queue for crawling. During a crawl, Googlebot will gather the metadata, title tags, alt tags, and more for the indexing process. Once the crawl is complete, it will request indexing. 

Indexing 

This is the last phase of the process, and it’s where Googlebot attempts to make sense of the information from the crawling phase. In other words, the indexer will determine how relevant the content is for a search query. 

As you can see, your website MUST make it past the indexing phase for it to show up on search engines. Errors can occur during each phase, so it’s critical to familiarize yourself with GSC’s error reports. 

Too technical? Check out HOTH Technical SEO. 

The Basics of Google Search Console 

Now that you know why GSC is such a powerful SEO tool – it’s time to learn how to use it. Before you can dive into its numerous features, you’ll need to verify ownership of your website within GSC. Otherwise, the Console won’t know which domains you own – so it won’t have any analytics to show you. 

Also, you’ll want to claim ownership of all your domains and subdomains. That includes all the different variations of your domain, such as:

• http://yourwebsite.com
• https://yourwebsite.com
• http://www.yourwebsite.com
• https://www.yourwebsite.com
• Any other subdomains that don’t contain ‘www’ (i.e., blog.yourwebsite.com)

Google will treat each of these variations as a separate website – which is why it’s imperative to claim ownership of them all. If you forget even one of them, you’ll miss out on crucial reports and data for it. 

To verify ownership, you’ll need to head to your website’s verification settings page. If you use Yoast SEO on WordPress, you can easily verify your website by using an HTML tag. To do so, head to the Verify Ownership page on GSC. That’s where you’ll find the HTML tag, so make sure to copy it. 
Inside WordPress, open the Yoast SEO plugin and paste the code into the ‘Google Verification Code’ text box in the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab. 

The performance tab 

Now that you’ve verified ownership of your domains, you can now use the Performance Tab to view your analytics. In it, you’ll be able to clearly see which keywords you’re ranking for on Google. There’s also a myriad of other helpful information and metrics, such as:

Number of clicks 

This metric lets you know how many people actually clicked on your website through Google’s SERPs. If your number of clicks is low – it can be a sign that your title tags and meta descriptions need some work. If users aren’t clicking on them, they aren’t enticing enough to warrant a click. 

Total impressions 

What’s an impression? It’s whenever your website pops up in the results for a given keyword. An example would be if you sell guitars and your website shows up for the keyword ‘guitar sales.’ That would be considered an ‘impression,’ and this metric measures how many you receive. 

Average CTR (click-through rate) 

Your click-through rate refers to the number of times that you showed up in a search and a user clicked through to your web page. In general, higher rankings translate to higher click-through rates. If you want to strengthen your CTR, try rewriting your title tag and meta description to make them more appealing (you can try including a call-to-action, for example). 

Average position

This refers to the average ranking position you had for a particular keyword or page. Yet, this tends to be the most unreliable metric of the bunch – as it can vary heavily from user to user. At the same time, it’s a useful metric to gauge if the other three metrics are accurately reflecting your position. 

The performance tab will be your go-to when measuring the success of your SEO efforts. Measuring, analyzing, and tweaking your results through GSC can bolster your digital marketing strategy – so it’s a tool well worth your while.

Index coverage tab and reports

Remember, your pages won’t bring you any SEO value if they aren’t indexed by Google. To make sure that Google has indexed each submitted URL, you can head over to the Index Coverage Tab. 

This page will let you know how many of your pages are in Google’s index since the latest update, how many are not, and if any errors occurred during indexing. 

Note: You’ll want to view the Index Coverage Report for not only the primary version of your website but all its versions as well. (i.e., the domain variations we listed before, such as http://www.yourwebsite.com)

To keep it simple, we’ll focus on troubleshooting the primary version of your website for now. 

To run the report, pull up the Index Coverage Tab first. You’ll see a dashboard containing your index coverage, performance search results, and more. Scroll to the Index Coverage graph, and click on Open Report in the top-right hand corner. 

From here, you’ll be able to discover common Google Search Console errors, indexing issues, coverage issues, and other types of problems. It’s also where you’ll be able to do maintenance to resolve and prevent these errors. The report breaks issues down into four different categories:

• Errors. This is where GSC will notify you of any major problems that took place during the discovery, crawling, and indexing process. 
• Valid. These pages were indexed with no problems.
• Valid with warnings. The pages were indexed, but there are a few issues that you should look at. 
• Excluded. Pages that were not indexed because they were set to noindex. Examples of pages that you want to leave out of the indexing process include admin pages, thank you pages, author archives, and more. In other words, you should noindex pages that you don’t want to drive traffic to. 

You’ll want to pay the most attention to the Errors category, as it contains problems with important pages that you wanted to get indexed but weren’t. There are many types of errors that can occur, including:

• Server errors (5xx)
• Redirect errors
• Blocked by robots.txt file 
• Marked ‘noindex’ 
• Soft 404 errors 
• 404 Not Found

Let’s dive into each issue to discover why they occur, how to fix them, and how to prevent them from happening again in the future. 

Server Errors (5xx) 

There are a few different types of server errors – but the most common is that your server took too long to respond. When a Googlebot crawls a website, it only waits for a set period of time for the server to load. If it’s taking too long, the Googlebot will give up, and the request will time out. Since the bot can’t crawl the site, it won’t get indexed, either. 

People often confuse server errors with DNS (Domain Name System) errors. 

A DNS error means the bot can’t even look up your URL in the first place, making it a discovery error, not a crawling one. 

Server errors take place during the crawling phase. Google can discover your URL, but the server fails to load in time for the bot to crawl it. Whenever a problem with the server occurs, it will show up as 5xx on the GSC.

What’s that mean?

5xx refers to any HTTP code that begins with 5. GSC uses 5xx to represent 500, 502, and 503 errors, among others, but they’re the most common. Here’s what each error code means:

• 500: Internal Server Error. For whatever reason, technical issues are causing the server to delay processing the request. It could be a coding error in the CMS, improper PHP code, or a thousand other reasons. 

• 502: Bad Gateway. You’ll get a 502 whenever the request is delayed due to an upstream service not responding. This upstream service could be running on the same machine or another machine. Regardless, something is causing it to malfunction and not respond within time. If you get a 502, it may be due to a problem with your WordPress CMS. 
• 503: Service Unavailable. If your server is too busy or is down for maintenance, you’ll get a 503 error. It means that the server is temporarily unavailable, but will be back later. If your server is contending with a heavy amount of traffic, it may trigger a 503 error if a bot is trying to crawl your website. 

Those are by no means the only error codes starting with 5 (there are PLENTY more), but these tend to be the most prevalent. 

How urgent is a server error?

If a server error pops up on GSC, you should strive to fix it as soon as possible. Server errors are incredibly urgent as they’re fundamental errors that will harm your site and negatively affect your search engine optimization. 

The first step is to ensure that Google can discover your website. As such, you should make sure that the Googlebot can connect to the DNS. Once you rule that out, you’ll know that you’re dealing with a server error occurring during the crawling phase. 

In addition to fixing server errors, you should put preventative measures in place to stop them from happening again. 

That’s because if server errors pop up on GSC, it’s a good sign that they’ve occurred before. If your website is running fine when they show up, it may have caused trouble in the past. That’s why you’ll want to make sure that they don’t happen again. 

How to fix server errors

Google has an official diagnostic to run to see if the search engine can crawl your website or not. It’s called Fetch as Google – a webmaster tool that you can use on the GSC. If it shoots back the content of your homepage (or another specific page) untouched, you know that Google can crawl your website without any issues. 

You’ll also want to diagnose the specific type of server error that you’re experiencing. For example, is it an internal server error or a bad gateway? Knowing this is imperative if you want to resolve the problem – so pay attention to the 5xx code you get from GSC. Here are a few methods to try to fix server errors:

• Refresh the page. The problem may be temporary, so a simple refresh may be all you need to do to fix it. 
• Clear the browser cache. This is another simple fix to try before you dive deeper into debugging your site. If it doesn’t work, you know something else is the culprit. 
• Check your CMS. There may be corrupted files in your WordPress (or other CMS) database. Try reinstalling plugins and themes, as well as reinstalling WordPress. You should also check your Javascript and CSS, as faulty lines of code may be causing your issues. 
• Check your PHP memory limit. Lastly, you may have exhausted your PHP memory limit – which can cause server issues. 

These are by no means the only fixes, but they should help you get started with diagnosing the issue. For additional help, you can consult the GSC help page to fix server errors. 

Redirect Errors

Sometimes Google runs into redirect errors with URLs. If you’ve redirected your URL more than a few times, this type of error can occur. The common causes of redirect errors include:

• A redirect loop. If you’ve used redirects for a while, you could have inadvertently created a redirect loop. That’s where redirects lead to other redirects and never point to a live URL. 
• The redirect chain was too long. Even if the redirects don’t loop, sometimes there are too many redirects in a row, and the Googlebot gives up. 
• A bad or empty URL in the chain. All it takes is one bad apple to ruin a redirect chain. If the bot comes across a bad URL or an empty one, that’s the end of that. The bot will give up and display a redirect error. 
• The redirect URL exceeded the max character length. A URL can’t be too long, or it will exceed the maximum length. If that happens, the bot won’t crawl the website. 

Since Google has so much content to crawl, it doesn’t mess around with lengthy redirects. The good news is that you can solve these issues by using a single redirect that goes to the final URL. You can also use a URL inspection tool to uncover and fix redirect errors. 

How to Fix Redirect Errors

To fix a redirect error, you’ll need to identify the original redirect and the final URL. There are various SEO tools out there that can help with this, such as SEO Minion. It will provide the entire redirect path for you to observe. That way, you can identify which area needs tweaking. 

Do your best to cut out the middle steps – as they’re likely what’s causing the redirect error. Instead, keep it simple with one redirect and one URL at the end. Once you’ve done that, run GSC’s Index Coverage Report again to see if the problem is gone. 

Blocked by Robots.txt File 

If this error pops up, it means Google could not retrieve your robots.txt file. 

What’s that?

A robots.txt file enables you to have page content that you do not want search engines to index. As stated before, there are numerous reasons why you wouldn’t want certain pages to show up on search engines. These are primarily admin pages that contain no value to readers and aren’t part of your SEO strategy. 

Note: You only need a robots.txt file if you have web pages that you don’t want to index. If you don’t have a problem with Google crawling and indexing every page on your site, you don’t need one. All that will happen is that Googlebot will index your entire website. That’s not a big deal for smaller sites, but larger sites often have pages that they want to keep secret with a noindex’ tag. 

If you have a robots.txt file, but Google cannot load it, this error will occur. It’s an urgent issue because your website won’t be crawled or indexed until you fix it. 

How to fix blocked by robots.txt file 

A reliable way to fix this issue is to use a robots.txt tester. It will let you know if there’s an issue with the file or not. Beyond using this tool, you’ll want to do a manual inspection to make sure that the file is properly configured. 

Go through the file and make sure that it’s not crawling any pages that you don’t want it to. 

Beyond that, you’ll want to look for one line of code in particular: ‘Disallow: /’. If you see it, eliminate it immediately. It should not be in your robots.txt file, as it will prohibit your website from showing up on Google. 

If you’re still experiencing issues and don’t know why it’s best to delete your robots.txt file for the time being. That’s because it’s better to go without a robots.txt file than have one that’s misconfigured. If you don’t have one, Google will crawl your website like normal. If you have one that’s not set up right – the crawling won’t take place until you resolve the issue. 

Marked ‘Noindex’ 

This is a common problem, but it’s also a relatively simple one to fix. What happens is you tell Google to crawl a page – but you don’t know or remember that the page has a noindex tag. In other words, you’re giving Google some seriously mixed signals. 

You may have noindexed pages by mistake as well. For example, an X-robots tag HTTP header response can noindex page. As such, these are more difficult to spot. 

To fix a URL marked as noindex, you need to remove the noindex directive or HTTP response. To discover which pages are marked as noindex, you can check your robots.txt file and HTTP responses. Once you remove the tag, the issue will resolve. So if you see a marked noindex error show up in your notifications, don’t panic. All you’ll need to do is remove the noindex tag, and you’ll be good to go. 

Soft 404 Errors

You’ve likely run across a 404 Not Found page during your time browsing the internet – but what’s a Soft 404? 

A Soft 404 occurs whenever a page displays 200 (which means found) but should display 404 (Not Found). In other words, the page says that it’s there, but it really isn’t. It’s a discrepancy that you won’t see on the content side of the page. All you’ll see (and users will see) is what appears to be a standard 404 Not Found page. 

Yet, on the crawler-visible side – it’s seeing a 200, not a 404 or 410 (which means gone). That’s what causes a ‘soft’ 404 error, and they can be very puzzling if you don’t know what causes them. It means the header HTTP does not return the 404 or 410 code in response to a non-existent page. 

If a page doesn’t exist, you should always return it with a 404 or 410. Fixing this issue is as simple as correcting the HTTP header code. 

Besides 200, a Soft 404 can occur due to a 301 redirect that points to non-related pages. An example would be a 301 redirect that sends you back to the homepage. So if you’re going to use 301 redirects, make sure that they’re for related content. If you use a ton of 301 redirects that point to the homepage, they’ll likely show up as Soft 404s.

The urgency of a Soft 404 depends on the pages it appears on. Pages that aren’t crucial to your operations that have Soft 404s aren’t very urgent. Yet, if Soft 404s show up on essential pages to your business, you’ll want to solve them ASAP. 

404 Not Found

You’ll see a 404 Not Found error whenever Google attempts to crawl a web page on your site that doesn’t exist. It finds these errors whenever other pages or sites link to a non-existent page. 

In Google’s Guidelines, they state that 404 pages on your site will not affect your ability to rank in the SERPs. 

Yet, that doesn’t mean that you should ignore them by any means. While a few 404s on non-essential pages won’t mean much, 404s on crucial pages will hurt your SEO. Also, sometimes 404 errors only show up on mobile devices such as smartphones. 

You’ll have a few options when dealing with 404 errors. If the page is of no relevance to your business, it’s ok to let it 404. If you’d rather redirect users to a relevant page, you can use a 301 redirect. 

You can also check your CMS to make sure that the page is indeed published and not only in draft mode. If it’s listed amongst your valid pages, then you’ll know something else is at foot. Also, make sure that the URL variation is correct for the 404. 

Concluding Thoughts: Common Google Search Console Errors

That’s a breakdown of the most prevalent crawl errors that may show up on GSC. Remember, to rank on search engines – you’ll need a Googlebot to be able to successfully discover, crawl, and index your site.

Numerous errors can occur at each of these phases, which is why GSC is such a useful tool. Remember to check the response code for each URL to make sure they add up. Also, you should test live URLs to make sure there are no redirect errors. 

As long as you keep a keen eye on the Index Coverage Tab and your valid URLs, you should be able to keep your domains running smoothly. That way, Google won’t have trouble crawling and indexing them, and your SEO efforts will get the chance to bear fruit. 

Do you want your domains to run error-free so you can generate the most traffic and revenue? If so, please don’t wait to schedule a call with our expert consultants. Our team can help you revolutionize the way you approach SEO. 

If you don’t have time to run your own strategy, we’ll take care of everything for you with our HOTH X fully-managed SEO services.  

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