Do you want to promote your local business through search engines like Google?

If so, setting up a Google Business Profile (GBP) is paramount to your success. 

That’s because GBP is Google’s in-house business directory, and it uses its data to display local businesses in Google Maps and its regular search results. 

A GBP listing is also necessary for appearing in the local pack, which is a special SERP (search engine results pages) feature that appears at the very top of the search results. 

Here’s an example of a local pack that triggers when we search for ‘best pizza near me’ (which is an extremely common search phrase for finding local businesses):

As you can see, the local pack highlights three local pizza restaurants and includes information like their address, hours of operation, and average rating out of five stars. 

However, there’s something each of these restaurants has in common, and it’s that they all have optimized Google Business Profile listings. 

If they weren’t in GBP, they wouldn’t appear in the local pack, which is why setting up GBP is imperative for all local businesses. 

Some quick stats to prove our point:

• ‘Near me’ keywords (like the one listed above) are the most popular queries on Google, as they account for 84% of all discovery searches. 
• GBP listings that are 100% complete are 7 times more likely to receive more clicks than incomplete profiles. 

Knowing what you know now, are you ready to claim and fully optimize your Google Business Profile listing?

Awesome, stay tuned to learn how! 

What Is Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile is an online business directory that allows local businesses to control how their business information appears in Google Search, Google Maps, and even Google Shopping.

It works by allowing local business owners to create listings (and claim existing ones) that provide crucial information like:

• The business’s NAP (name, address, and phone number) 
• Customer reviews 
• Hours of operation 
• Email addresses 
• Photos of the business 

It’s extremely important for business owners to keep this information accurate and up-to-date to avoid confusing potential customers. 

The biggest thing to know is that your GMB business listing is still intact. It’s all saved in your Google account. 

With a Google Business Profile, you can add photos, create compelling business descriptions, display your hours and contact information, and monitor/reply to reviews that customers leave for your business on Google. 

You can also create short posts to update customers on new developments and promote special deals. 

Google Business Profile’s Main Features 

Now that you know what GBP is all about, let’s take a deeper dive into its features and capabilities.

GBP’s primary features revolve around three areas:

1. Maintaining accurate information about your business across Google’s product lineup 
2. Interacting with your existing customers 
3. Attracting new customers 

There’s quite a bit to unpack here, so let’s take a closer look at each feature. 

Manage your business information 

On GBP, you can provide essential details such as your business name, address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and more. 

This information helps potential customers find and contact your business. It’s also the data Google will use to display your business in Google Maps, Google Shopping, and SERP features like the local pack. 

Customer engagement

There are a few ways you can interact with your customers on GBP, including:

• Reviews: Customers can leave reviews and ratings on your profile, which will build trust and credibility. Responding to reviews (both positive and negative) will also show that you care about customer feedback, so do your best to respond to every review that you receive. 

• Q&A section: The Q&A feature allows customers to ask questions directly on your profile, which you can answer to provide more information and engage with your audience. A fleshed-out Q&A section will likely reduce the amount of customer support queries you receive, so it’s worth the effort to write one. 

Add photos and videos

You can upload photos and videos of your business, significantly enhancing your listing’s appeal. 

High-quality images can attract more customers by giving them a visual representation of your business.

However, you should only include immaculate photos that make your business look amazing. Translation: get professional photos taken instead of snapping some pics with your smartphone and calling it a day. 

Share posts and updates

The ‘Posts’ feature allows you to share updates, special offers, events, and other content directly on your profile. 

There are lots of ways you can leverage this feature to your benefit, such as showing off a new product or informing your audience of an upcoming promotion.

Getting more creative, you can incorporate 360° street views from Google Maps, user-generated content like customer photos, and seasonal content.  

Gather insights 

Google provides valuable insights into how customers interact with your profile, such as how many people view it, how they found it, and what actions they take (e.g., visiting your website, requesting directions, or calling your business).

Understanding customer behavior will help you improve your services and make better business decisions, so it’s worth analyzing the data GBP has to offer.

Bookings 

Google Business allows customers to book appointments or services directly through your profile if applicable.

This is an excellent way to drive conversions, as it’s always best to make things as simple as possible for new customers. 

Instead of having to click through to your website to schedule an appointment, users can simply hit the ‘Schedule’ button that will appear next to your search result. 

Attributes

The attributes feature lets you highlight specific aspects of your business, like being women-led, veteran-led, Black-owned, or LGBTQ-friendly. 

This can help you connect with specific audiences and provide accessibility information, such as if your business has wheelchair ramps. 

Products and Services

Here, you can showcase your offerings with detailed descriptions, photos, and pricing. 

This gives customers a preview of what you offer before they even visit your website or physical location, which is another way to boost conversions. 

Once again, your goal is to make interacting with your business as quick and easy as possible for prospective customers. 

Build Customer Trust With GBP

GBP’s primary function is to present established, reliable businesses to online search users. 

Without a fully optimized listing, searchers may not completely understand what you offer, or they may suspect your business is not legitimate. 

So, when you claim and verify your business on Google, it signals to potential customers that your business is legitimate and trustworthy. 

Don’t believe us? 

Consider these stats that come directly from Google:

• Customers are 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable if they find a complete GBP listing.
• Customers are 70% more likely to visit and 50% more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with an optimized GBP listing.

However, if you want to generate more business, you’ll also need to build trust with your customers. 

Unsurprisingly, positive reviews are one of the best ways for businesses to build trust. 

Research shows that 84% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That’s why they matter so much for your ranking and overall brand. 

Maximize Your Local SEO

People who are searching for local businesses are often ready to make a purchase.

They’ve already done their online research on your products or services (thanks to Search and Maps) and are ready to purchase a product, make a reservation, or book an appointment with you. 

Note that the Google Map results don’t always show up at the top, but people still tend to click on them even if they are farther down the page. 

Juris Digital did a heat map study and discovered that around 32% of people clicked on Google Maps results, while the remaining users clicked on organic search results or paid ads. This means you have a very real incentive to appear in Google Maps results, which is only possible through GBP. 

Also, according to Moz’s local search ranking factors, Google Business Profile consistently ranks first for ranking factors in local map search and is also a significant factor in local organic search.

Increased Visibility in Google Search and Maps

Having a Google Business Profile is essential for improving your business’s visibility in local search results, especially when users search for services or products ‘near me.’ 

This increased visibility has the potential to drive more foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar business. 

How’s that?

It’s because a GBP listing makes your business more accessible to potential customers who are ready to purchase.

Backlinko’s research found that 76% of consumers who search for ‘near me’ keywords on Google will visit the physical business within a day, so we didn’t just pull this fact out of nowhere! 

That’s not to mention the additional benefits you’ll reap from appearing in the local pack SERP feature mentioned previously. 

While the exact criteria for appearing in the local pack are not fully known, these factors can significantly boost your chances:

• Optimizing your Google Business Profile
• Accumulating customer reviews
• Engaging on social media
• Being listed on top citation sites like Yelp or Yahoo Local

Next Steps: Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Now that you understand the importance of a Google Business Profile listing for your local SEO, your next step should be to start optimizing it to fully benefit from Google’s offerings. This is where you can get creative to attract new customers and increase conversions.

Our Learning Hub chapter, “How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile Listing,” provides step-by-step instructions on how to make your profile stand out.

Here’s a sneak peek of the optimization advice we provide:

• What’s the most important information to include in your listing?
• Where can you include keywords?
• How should you format your business’s NAP?
• What’s the best way to photograph your business?
• Is it worth adding videos to the GBP listing?

Also in this guide: 

How to Use Google Posts: This section will show you how to master Google Posts. Learn what they are, how to create engaging content, and track your results to watch your visibility soar! 

How To Claim Your Google My Business Listing: This section includes step-by-step instructions on setting up your Google Business Profile and optimizing it to rank higher in local search.

How To Get Google Reviews: Discover proven strategies to earn authentic reviews and build trust with potential customers. Plus, learn how to tackle fake reviews effectively.

Ready To Grow Your Business?

Now that you can officially answer the question ‘What is Google Business Profile?’ It’s time to put that knowledge into practice. 

If you don’t have an active online presence on Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), you could be missing out on a ton of potential customers. 

Our local SEO gurus are experts at optimizing web pages with localized keywords, getting your business listed in high-traffic directories, and making your Google Business Profile the best it can be – so don’t wait to try out our services. 

Also, feel free to contact us if you need help getting started with your marketing strategies. 

The post What Is Google Business Profile? appeared first on The HOTH.

Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for Google’s search algorithm, so you’ll need to take part in link-building if you want to reach the #1 position. 

The only problem is building links is a time-consuming process that can be downright confusing. 

However, if you use Semrush for link-building, you’ll have access to a fleet of tools that contain features for:

• Uncovering top-tier backlink opportunities in your field 
• Auditing your current link profile to ensure it’s in tip-top shape
• Identifying the exact number of links you need to close the gap with competitors 
• Conduct, automate, and monitor link-building outreach campaigns 

In other words, these tools will transform you into a link-building extraordinaire.

According to research, the #1 search result contains an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2 – #10, which is a testament to the ranking power backlinks provide. 

That’s why it’s worth learning how to use Semrush’s tools for link-building, and that’s exactly what we’re going to teach you in this article, so stay tuned. 

An Overview Of Semrush’s Link-Building Tools 

Here’s a glimpse at all the link-building tools you gain access to with a subscription to Semrush:

• Backlink Analytics. This tool provides a general overview of your backlink profile, including any new or lost links. The Analytics tool features the largest and fastest link database on the market and provides extremely accurate competitor data.  

• Backlink Audit. With the Audit tool, you’ll be able to avoid Google penalties by getting rid of any harmful links. It’s also a useful tool for ensuring the quality of your link placements. 

• Backlink Gap. How many links do you need to build to bridge the gap between you and a competitor? That’s the central question this tool answers. 

• Bulk Backlink Analysis. One of the most annoying aspects of link-building is how time-consuming it is. This tool eliminates that problem by analyzing competitor websites and new link opportunities in bulk.  

• Link-Building Tool. Conducting outreach is cumbersome, and it’s easy to lose track of if you’re not using a central tool like Semrush. The link-building tool serves as your central hub for your link-building campaigns, as you can manage and automate your outreach efforts. 

Now that you’ve taken a peek inside the toolbox, let’s learn some of the best ways to use Semrush to improve your link-building campaigns. 

Checking What’s New With Your Link Profile (Backlink Analytics) 

It’s crucial to keep an eye on your website’s backlink profile, as it’s subject to change quite often. Try to check it at least once per week, especially if you’re actively trying to build more links. 

The Backlinks Analytics Report is what you want to use to check on your link profile, including any new developments. 

You’ll be able to see if your outreach efforts paid off by selecting New and Follow (to only show dofollow links) from the filters list. 

Yet, if you’ve been building press links, you’ll also want to include Nofollow links to see if you picked up anything new. 

Other important metrics in this report are:

• Your authority score 
• Total number of referring domains and backlinks 
• Monthly visits 
• Organic traffic

Further down the page, you’ll find insightful features like your TLD (top-level domain) distribution, top countries, backlink types, and link attributes. 

Find and Recover Lost Backlinks 

Not all backlinks last forever, which is an unfortunate fact of life. However, Semrush keeps track of all the links you lost via the Lost backlinks filter on the Analytics Report. 

There are a number of reasons why you may lose a backlink. 

It could be that the site owner moved the page containing the link but forgot to add a redirect, resulting in a 404 Not Found. 

Or it might be that a competitor convinced them to use one of their links instead. 

Whatever the case may be, you can use the Lost Backlinks filter to quickly identify your lost backlinks. Not only that, but the report will even tell you what the issue is, such as a broken domain, page redirect, or if the site owner removed the link manually. 

Once you know which links you lost, you can reach out to the site owners and hopefully convince them to resurrect your backlink. 

Audit Your Anchor Text Profile 

The anchor text (the text masking the URL) you use matters to Google, and it’s important to have a balanced anchor text profile. 

In particular, you want to avoid using ‘exact match’ anchor text too often. 

That’s where your anchor text consists of a keyword important to your business and nothing else. This screams spam to Google, so it’s best to use exact match anchor text sparingly. 

A better bet is to use ‘partial match’ anchor text, where you combine keywords with other phrases. Branded anchor text and naked URLs should also be thrown into the mix. 

Semrush makes managing your anchor text effortless with the Anchors report in its Backlink Analytics tool. 

Here, you’ll be able to view a breakdown of the different types of anchor text your backlinks have, which will help you determine if you’re using too much of one type. 

Set up Automated Notifications for Your Backlinks 

Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool features an extremely handy notification feature. 

It will notify you via email any time there’s a change to your link profile, including:

• Acquiring a new backlink 
• Losing a backlink 
• Broken domains 

Turning on notifications will ensure that you’re fast to act on lost backlinks and broken domains, which is essential for maintaining a healthy link profile. 

Find Valuable Content Ideas from Competitors 

One of the best ways to build links without going nuts conducting outreach is to create outstanding content that naturally attracts links from other websites. 

Yet, that’s often easier said than done, as it can be tricky to know which type of content to create. 

Semrush’s Indexed Pages report is your secret weapon for uncovering content ideas that generate links. 

This time, you’ll want to enter a competitor’s URL into the tool instead of your own. Once that’s done, navigate to the Indexed Pages report to see the web pages that have generated the most backlinks for them. 

From there, take notes on which content types attracted the most links, and then create similar content for your brand. 

Try Out Semrush With an Exclusive 14-Day Free Trial 

Those are only a few ways you can use Semrush’s tools to improve your link-building campaigns. 

The platform contains a comprehensive suite of SEO tools, and we’ve only scratched the surface. 

If you’re ready to see what Semrush can do for your business, don’t wait to take advantage of our exclusive offer – an extended 14-day trial of Semrush Pro. The standard trial only lasts 7 days, so don’t forget to use our special link!  

The post How to Use Semrush for Link-Building: Tools and Strategies appeared first on The HOTH.

Besides content from your brand, your audience gets flooded with countless emails, blogs, videos, and podcasts from others. 

Yet, there’s still one surefire way to grab your audience’s attention, and that’s with visual content. 

Humans are largely visual creatures, as we retain 65% of the information we see, compared to only 10% of what we hear. 

Accordingly, content like videos and infographics generates 650% more engagement than static content that contains only text. 

If you want your content to generate lots of backlinks without having to conduct outreach, infographics are even more important. 

That’s because blogs containing infographics produce 178% more backlinks than ones that do not. 

So, if you haven’t been producing infographics for your SEO content, you’re missing out on lots of traffic, social shares, and backlinks. 

The good news is infographics are an incredibly diverse content medium, so they can apply to virtually any industry or niche. They’re simply visual representations of a data set or piece of information, and they’re excellent for conveying complex concepts in easily digestible, eye-catching ways. 

In this article, we’ll teach you how to harness the SEO power of infographics for greater online visibility, so stick around. 

What are Infographics?

The word infographic is short for information graphic and is a way of conveying data or information visually. Infographics use a combination of charts, graphs, images, and minimal text to present complex topics in visually engaging ways. 

For instance, you could write a 1,000-word blog post explaining how to operate a hedge trimmer, or you could greatly simplify things by creating a detailed infographic breaking down each step. 

Infographics are extremely powerful communication tools for this reason, as they help audiences quickly grasp concepts through the aid of compelling visuals. 

Here are a few examples of common elements found in infographics:

• Images
• Icons
• Text
• Charts
• Graphs
• Diagrams 
• Maps 
• Graphics (people, places, things, etc.) 

Here are the top characteristics of engaging infographics:

Clarity: The message should be clear and easy to understand.

Engagement: The design should be aesthetically pleasing and hold the viewer’s interest.

Accuracy: The information must be correct, reliable, and up to date.

Simplicity: Use visuals to break up complex data in a way that’s easy to grasp.

Visual Appeal: Color, layout, and typography should enhance understanding and retention.

Different types of infographics

As stated before, infographics are an incredibly diverse type of content that can take on many different forms. 

You can use infographics to break down statistics, cover a timeline, map out directions, and provide step-by-step guides on how to do something – just to name a few. 

Here’s a look at the most popular types of infographics. 

Statistical infographics

A statistical infographic visualizes sets of data with charts, graphs, and numbers to provide clear, easy-to-digest insights. 

Statistical infographics are one of the most reliable ways to generate backlinks since bloggers and digital marketers are always on the hunt for relevant stats to use in their content. 

Therefore, if you can centralize a bunch of relevant industry statistics into one visually pleasing infographic, you can bet that writers and marketers will link to it like gangbusters. 

Nearly every industry has important statistics that readers and marketers need to know, from the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns to following OSHA guidelines and beyond. 

Informational infographics 

Sometimes, the purpose of an infographic is purely to educate your audience. Defining key terms, outlining complicated concepts, and explaining industries are all ways you can use informational infographics. 

For example, the digital marketing world is filled to the brim with confusing jargon and acronyms, which are perfect candidates for informational infographics. 

You could create a visual aid breaking down acronyms like SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay-per-click), and other digital marketing terms. 

Just remember to include as many visual elements as possible to ensure the infographic isn’t too text-heavy. 

Timeline infographics 

Do you want to educate your viewers on the history of the desktop computer?

If so, a timeline infographic is the perfect type of content to make it happen. These types of infographics map out historical events, trends, or milestones in a visually appealing format. 

Once again, be sure to include as many visual elements as possible to cut down on the amount of text. 

Map infographics 

Maps make excellent templates for infographics, even if the information you want to convey isn’t geographical. 

For instance, you could use a visual map of the United States to double as a timeline of sorts, highlighting different historical events in different areas around the country. 

Of course, you can also use map infographics to highlight routes, locations, and other geographical points of interest. 

Comparison infographics 

These types of infographics compare two sets of data, most commonly comparing two products, services, or concepts. 

A comparison infographic is the perfect type of content for commercial intent keywords, which are search terms that represent commercial intent (i.e., the user is doing research to make a purchase). 

Instead of having to sit down to read a 5,000-word blog post comparing your service with another, why not create a simplified infographic that does the same thing?

Comparison infographics provide users with quick, easily digestible ways to compare products and services. 

How-to infographics 

Lastly, you can use infographics to teach your audience how to do something in a step-by-step format. 

The sky’s the limit here, as you can create a how-to infographic for just about anything. From learning how to tie your shoes to breaking down how to file taxes, how-to infographics are extremely versatile and effective. 

Just like statistical infographics, how-to’s are great for generating lots of backlinks and shares on social media. 

If your goal is to generate backlinks and build brand awareness, how-to infographics, and statistical infographics will be your best friends.

Why Are Infographics Important for SEO? 

Play your cards right, and infographics will be your ticket to higher search engine rankings, better brand awareness, and loads of organically generated backlinks (which are the best kind, by the way). 

If you want your infographic to stick in your audience’s minds, demand their attention, and persuade them to take a certain action, you must make proper use of:

• Color
• Negative space
• Graphics 
• Copy (short and to the point) 
• Fonts 
• Structure (a beginning, middle, and end) 

It’s crucial for your infographic to have some sort of conclusion; otherwise, it will feel incomplete. 

You can use infographics to:

• Increase social shares
• Boost website traffic
• Raise brand awareness
• Assist with link-building efforts
• Show up in Google Images search
• Help you establish yourself as an industry expert or thought leader 

In fact, infographics are the #1 way digital marketers can present data or information in a graphic, visual manner. 

In terms of SEO, infographics provide some very specific benefits, especially for brands that have trouble standing out from the competition.  

Specifically, these benefits are:

• Boosted organic traffic
• Improved link-building 
• Achieving thought leader status 
• Relevancy
• Versatility 

You should tailor each infographic to the specific wants, needs, and desires of your target audience. If it catches on, it’ll work wonders for your brand’s online visibility. 

According to Search Engine Journal, the two most important ranking factors for Google are the quality of your content and link-building efforts. 

However, that doesn’t stop link-building from being one of the most challenging aspects of SEO. Building high-quality links takes countless hours of conducting research, writing guest posts, and finding broken links – just to name a few tactics. 

The good news?

Infographics are a great way to simplify the link-building process. 

Bloggers, marketers, and influencers are constantly on the lookout for relevant content to share, link to, or retweet. If you’re able to tap into the minds of your audience and produce an infographic that touches on the topics they’re writing about, you’ll start generating backlinks left and right. 

The best part is you won’t have to conduct any email outreach to build these links. Instead, online users will start linking to your content due to its pure merit and quality (which is the way Google wants you to build links). 

The best infographics have some real staying power, too, as they can circulate on the internet for years. 

Try to think of unique angles for approaching common topics in your niche. The more original your infographics are, the more likely it is that they’ll catch on and continue generating links for quite some time. 

Also, with a clever content marketing strategy, you can repurpose one infographic into many different pieces of content (i.e., a blog post and video covering the same topic). 

Here are some other benefits of using infographics in your content:

• Highly shareable on social media
• Reduces bounce rate
• Increases SERPs rank
• Easy to understand
• Better outreach opportunities
• Boosts brand awareness
• Shows your expertise
• Strengthens your SEO

Are you still not sure if you should invest time and money into creating infographics?

If so, then you should take a look at the following reasons why infographics are integral for modern SEO campaigns. 

Increased traffic and engagement

Infographics use color, design, and negative space to present information in a memorable and visually appealing way. 

This leads to increased social shares, higher website traffic, and better user engagement.

Backlinks and authority  

High-quality infographics are likely to be shared and linked to from other websites. 

These backlinks signal to search engines that your content is valuable and credible, making it more likely for your content to rank higher (considering the rest of your SEO is on point). 

Improved link building

One of the most challenging aspects of SEO is building quality backlinks. 

When you create compelling infographics, people are more likely to share them and link back to your website as the original source – meaning you’ll generate links without having to lift a finger.

Search engine visibility

Infographics will help you show up in Google Images search results, offering another avenue for people to discover your content.

Content versatility

A single, well-designed infographic can be repurposed across your digital marketing strategy.  Use it in blog posts, break it into smaller social media visuals, or include it in presentations.

Establish thought leadership

Infographics help you present complex topics in an easily understandable format. 

This positions you as an industry expert and a reliable source of information, causing your audience to trust you as an authority figure in your field.

If that wasn’t enough, here are some more benefits of infographics for SEO:

Reduced bounce rate and better dwell time: Engaging visuals keep visitors on your site longer, reducing bounce rates and extending dwell times.

Better outreach opportunities: Infographics make compelling content to pitch to websites or bloggers for guest posts, further expanding your backlinks.

How Do I Create an Infographic for SEO?

Let’s use David McCandless as an example here. He’s the author and creator of Information is Beautiful and has done a good job of using visuals to explain what an effective infographic or data visualization looks like. 

With that said, he incorporated four elements into his project. 

Here are the four best practices for infographic and data visualization:

1. Display: A good infographic needs valuable, accurate information.
2. Story: Think of your infographic as a mini-narrative that contains a clear beginning, middle, and end. 
3. Goal: Besides the presentation of information, what is the reason you want to create an infographic? Make sure your visuals match the goals of your brand.
4. Visual form: Is your infographic easy on the eyes, or does it burn your retinas? Use color theory and other graphic design tips to make your visual data appealing to look at.

8 Steps to Create SEO-Friendly Infographics

Here are some actionable steps for creating an infographic design from scratch:

Step 1: Begin with your goal

What do you ultimately want to achieve from creating an infographic? Do you want to generate lots of backlinks, or is establishing your brand as a thought leader more important?

Your goal will inform the style of infographic you create (such as creating statistical infographics to generate lots of links), which is why you need to define it first. 

Step 2: Choose a topic your audience cares about

Pick a topic that your target audience is passionate about; otherwise, interest in your infographics will fizzle out before you know it. 

Research your audience by building a buyer persona (if you haven’t already) that encompasses your audience’s pain points, desires, habits, and demographics. 

Step 3: Choose the best keywords and titles

Your keywords are how you appear in relevant user searches, so you should conduct thorough keyword research for your infographics. 

Try to find keywords that relate to each topic that feature high search volume yet low competition. You can use our free keyword planner tool to help you identify the best keywords to use. 

Step 4: Create your infographic based on that keyword and topic

Once you know which keywords to use, structure your entire infographic around it and the topic it relates to. 

Yet, it’s important not to spam your keywords, as that’s never a good idea (and it ruins the user experience for your infographic), so use them sparingly. 

Step 5: Optimize for SEO (use alt-text, metadata, etc.)

Don’t forget to add crucial SEO tweaks like using your keywords in the metadata. Also, you should write a few lines of alt text for the infographic. 

What’s that?

Alt text serves two purposes, as it helps the visually impaired, and it lets Google’s bots know what your image displays (the bots lack computer vision). 

As such, don’t forget to include your target keyword in the alt text. 

Step 6: Collect your data and consider your colors

Next, collect all the data that you’ll use for the infographic (statistics, facts, images, graphics, etc.) and store it in one location for convenience. 

Also, decide on the color scheme that you’ll use. Ideally, your color scheme should be visually appealing and align with your brand’s colors. 

Step 7: Create a copy outline

Create a brief outline that describes the infographic. This is the copy that you’ll use to supplement the visuals. 

Remember that less is more for text copy in infographics. It’s a visual medium, so do your best to show, not tell. 

Step 8: Select a good layout template

There are plenty of infographic templates out there, so do your best to choose one that suits the topic. 

Here are some free infographic templates you can use from Canva. 

Follow best infographic design practices

There are more than a few best practices you should follow when designing your infographics, some more intuitive than others.

Here’s an overview of the top infographic best design practices to consider. 

Content and planning 

• Clear focus. Make sure you know your topic and have a clear message ready for it. Don’t overload your infographic with information, as that defeats the point. 
• Target audience. Consider the needs of your target audience, especially in terms of tone, color scheme, and the infographic’s visual layout. 
• Accurate data. Double-check that all the stats and figures you include are accurate and up to date. 
• Storytelling. Follow a narrative structure (beginning, middle, and end) for your infographic. 
• Outline. Before you get started, create a simple outline to ensure the infographic has all the necessary elements and a logical flow. 

Visual Design 

• Visual hierarchy. Structure the infographic so that the viewer’s eye catches all your most important points. 

• Readable fonts. Go with fonts that are easy to read, and use visually pleasing color schemes (i.e., don’t use bright colors). 

• Color palette. Speaking of color, ensure the infographic’s color scheme aligns with your brand and complements the topic. 

• Charts and graphs. Choose appropriate visualizations to represent your data, such as charts, graphs, and timelines. 

• Icons and images. Too much text is boring, so include fun graphics, icons, and images to break it up. 

• White space. A cluttered design will overwhelm viewers, even if your infographic is sparse in text. Provide plenty of ‘breathing room’ around visual elements to avoid clutter.

Technical considerations 

• File format. For the clearest visuals, choose a high-resolution file format like PNG, JPG, or SVG. 

• File size. Compress your infographic so that the file size is as small as possible without losing quality. File sizes that are too large can cause your website to load slowly, which is bad news for your user experience. 

• Accessibility. Don’t forget to include things like image alt text and transcripts to provide accessibility for all internet users. 

Additional Tips 

• Branding. Include your brand elements without overdoing them (using your logo and branded colors is enough). 

• Call to action. You likely want users to complete a specific action after viewing your infographic, so spell it out for them with a clear CTA (call to action). 

• Promotion. If you’re going to spend time and resources creating an infographic, you need a way to promote it to ensure it gets seen. Spend time strategizing how you’ll share your new infographic, such as posting it on your social media accounts. 

Excellent infographic examples 

Here are a few examples of infographics around the web that we find particularly appealing and effective (and they can help get your creative juices flowing):

The Design Roadmap 

This infographic’s simplicity is also its greatest strength. It makes excellent use of a timeline and uses simple graphics to drive the point home. 

True Colors: What Brand Colors Say About Your Business

This infographic is equal parts colorful and informative, and it never overstays its welcome by being too wordy or visually cluttered (don’t forget to take notes). 

The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People

Have you ever wondered how someone like Benjamin Franklin spent a typical day? This infographic answers that question by making clever use of colored line charts.

How to Optimize Infographics for Better SEO Results  

Just as you would optimize a web page to rank better on search engines like Google, you also need to optimize your infographics. 

An optimized infographic has a much better chance of generating backlinks, getting shared on social media, and ranking high on Google image searches. 

Here are some helpful tips for optimizing your infographics. 

Tip #1: Use the right keywords 

Thorough keyword research is the name of the game here. Identify relevant, high-volume search terms related to your infographic’s topic. From there, weave your target keyword(s) strategically into the infographic’s:

• File name (e.g., ‘social-media-marketing-trends-2023.jpg’). Use a descriptive filename incorporating your keyword (avoid special characters).
• Alt text (a concise image description).
• Surrounding text (the accompanying blog post or article).
• Header tags and meta descriptions for the page where the infographic is featured.

Metadata Matters

Alt text: Accurately describe the infographic in a few sentences, incorporating your keywords. This is essential for screen readers (ensuring accessibility) and helps search engines understand the image’s content.

Title tags: Consider adding a title tag to your infographic image for further context. While less impactful than alt text, it can still provide additional information for search engines.

Why is this important?

Metadata, like alt text and title tags, helps Google and other search engines index and crawl your website.

In addition to boosting SEO, it enhances user experience by making your visuals accessible to those with visual impairments and helps convey your message clearly to all users.

Tips for Effective Metadata:

Be descriptive: Clearly explain what’s depicted in the image.

Keyword integration: Include relevant keywords naturally within your descriptions.

Keep it concise: Aim for alt text under 125 characters.

Avoid redundancy: Don’t start your alt text with “picture of” or “image of.”

Tip #2: Focus on User Experience

Optimize your infographic’s file size for fast loading times. Tools like TinyPNG or image compression plugins can help. Also, design your infographic to display well across all devices, including smartphones and tablets.

Tip #3: Optimize the Surrounding Content

To achieve the best results, optimize your infographic like you’d optimize any blog post or image. This helps Google understand what the infographic represents since it can’t actually see the images. Include:

Word count

Include a decent amount of text (consider 300+ words) on the page where your infographic lives. This gives search engines more context.

Header Tags

Use H1, H2, and H3 tags with relevant keywords to structure your content.Header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) offer a preview of your content for both your audience and search engines such as Google. 

They help organize your page, making it easier to scan and provide context about the information within each section.  It’s best practice to incorporate your target keywords naturally into your header tags in a way that doesn’t feel forced or spammy.

Tips for Effective Header Tags:

One H1: Use only a single H1 tag per page to define your main topic.

Logical hierarchy: Use a combination of H2, H3, and H4 tags to create a clear outline.

Keyword-rich: Aim to include target keywords where they fit naturally.

Be descriptive: Clearly summarize the content of each section.

Tip #4: Create a meta-description

A meta description is a short summary of your webpage’s content designed to entice searchers to click on your link.  

It’s the brief bit of text that appears underneath the blue hyperlink to your content on search engine results pages. 

Think of it as your advertisement in search results.  While Google may not always use your exact meta description (sometimes they use auto-generated descriptions even if you wrote one), it’s still important to craft compelling ones for the users who see them. 

Also, Google’s crawler bots won’t always pay attention to your meta description, so it’s typically only for the benefit of your readers. For this reason, it’s wise to always include a CTA in your meta descriptions to convince users to click on your result over others.  

Tips for Creating Effective Meta Descriptions:

Target your audience: What pain point does your content address? What will the reader gain?

Be unique and helpful: Stand out from the other search results.

Optimal length: Aim for 155-160 characters to avoid being cut off.

Include a CTA: Guide the reader (“Learn more,” “Sign up,” etc.).

Naturally use keywords: If you have room, include your target keyword where it makes sense.

Here’s an example:

Blog Post on Infographic Design

Target Keyword: “Infographic design tips”

Meta Description: “Learn proven infographic design tips to make your data visually stunning. Get actionable advice on layout, color, and storytelling.”

Tip #5: Optimize your URLs

URLs are the addresses of your web pages that play a role in how search engines like Google understand and rank your content.  Keywords included in your URLs signal relevance to search queries. 

Short and descriptive URLs are also easier to share and improve the overall user experience.

Best practices for URL optimization:

Data-driven decisions: Analyze your existing site data and conduct thorough keyword research to identify the most relevant terms to include in your URLs.

On-Page and Off-page SEO: Optimize your URLs to work in conjunction with your greater SEO strategy, including the use of keywords in content and external links.

Mobile matters: Ensure URLs function properly and display correctly on mobile devices.

Descriptive and concise: Use keywords to describe the page’s content clearly, but keep the URL as short as possible for better readability.

Hyphens are your friend: Use hyphens to clarify words within your URLs.

Here’s an example of what we mean:

Instead of a long, parameter-filled URL like:

https://www.example.com/page?id=578&category=blog 

An optimized URL would be:

https://www.example.com/blog/infographic-design-tips 

Tip #6: More tips for optimizing your infographics 

Include social sharing buttons: Make your infographic easy to share on platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter (X) by including social share buttons.

Call to Action (CTA): Guide your readers with a clear CTA that matches their search intent. Examples include subscribing to your email list, visiting a product page, or sharing the infographic on social media. 

Best tools for SEO infographic creation

Visme

Visme is a cloud-based design platform that helps users to create various types of visual content, including presentations, reports, social media graphics, and more. 

For infographics, it offers a user-friendly interface and extensive customization options.

Key Features for SEO Infographic Creation

An extensive template library: Visme provides a wide variety of pre-designed infographic templates, giving you a great starting point and saving design time.

Design elements: Visme includes a rich collection of icons, illustrations, charts, graphs, data widgets, and maps to visually represent your data.

Customization: You have control over colors, fonts, layouts, and can upload your own images or brand assets.

Integration with data sources: Link to Google Sheets or other data sources to keep your infographics up-to-date.

Embed options: Generate embed codes to easily place your infographics within blog posts or web pages.

Collaboration: Visme’s real-time collaboration features are useful if you’re working in a team.

Pros	Cons
User-friendly: Visme has a drag-and-drop interface, making it accessible for non-designers. Versatility: You can create various visual content formats beyond infographics. Design quality: Templates and graphics are professionally designed. Affordability: It offers a free plan with basic features and affordable paid plans.	Limited customization in the free plan: Some design elements and features might be locked behind paid tiers. Occasional performance issues: Some users report slowdowns when working with complex designs. Learning curve: While intuitive, maximizing all of Visme’s features might take some exploration.

Venngage

Venngage infographics creator tool offers a ton of template charts, maps, and icons. This data visualization tool offers website owners three steps to help them create an infographic design. 

With this tool, you can:

• Drag and drop library pictures 
• Create custom icons 
• Font customization

The tool allows you to save your infographics as images or PDFs. It’s also easy to share your infographics on social media platforms, websites, and blogs.

Key features for Venngage

Intuitive collaboration tools: Venngage integrates flawlessly with popular programs like Asana, Trello, Teamwork, and Basecamp. 

Plenty of options for data visualization: Whether you want to incorporate charts, graphs, or other types of visualizations – you’ll find them all here. 

Comprehensive image editing: Venngage contains a comprehensive image editor complete with tools for cropping, resizing, rotating, and opacity.  

Handy image search feature: Need a quick stock photo to use for an infographic? Venngage’s image search bar makes it effortless.  

Pros	Cons
User-friendly: Venngage makes it easy to export and view your infographics at any stage of the process, and in your preferred format. Versatility: No matter your industry or brand, you can use Venngage to design any type of graphic.	Not enough color options: It would be nice to see more comprehensive color options such as fading and ombre. Lack of customizability for templates: There are elements in Venngage’s pre-made templates that you cannot delete, which will be frustrating for designers eager to expand on existing infographic templates.

Canva

Canva is an amazing graphic design tool that allows you to design infographics, presentations, resumes, business cards, logos, and so much more. 

You can even animate videos and some irons. Canva offers versatility in design creation, whether you’re trying to make personal or business designs. 

This awesome tool has everything you need to create some of the best-looking visual content. 

Key features for Canva 

Tons of infographic templates: There are countless templates you can use and edit with Canva’s drag-and-drop editor.  

Drag-and-drop editor: You won’t run into any confusion with Canva’s editor, as it’s one of the easiest to use in the business.  

Background remover: Are there details in your infographic or a stock photo that you don’t like? Canva’s background remover makes it easy to get rid of them. 

Tons of stock elements to use: Canva has an extensive library of stock images, graphics, and templates. 

Pros	Cons
User-friendly: Canva is one of the easiest design programs to learn, and there’s no shortage of educational materials to help you get the hang of it.  Free to use: While Canva Pro is an option (and can definitely be worth it), a regular Canva account is completely free.	Occasional slow down: Since Canva is an SaaS (software-as-a-service), you’re dependent on their servers. Whenever things slow down (which can be quite common), there’s nothing you can do about it. Not every font or template is free: Certain fonts and templates are blocked behind paywalls, which is unfortunate.

Infographics and Your SEO strategy

Infographics, when done right, offer all kinds of SEO benefits. 

Their visual nature and easy-to-digest format make them highly shareable, increasing the potential for going viral and attracting valuable backlinks. 

Studies even suggest that content featuring images or infographics receives 94% more views, so they’re definitely worth your time.

Tips for Integrating Infographics into Your SEO Efforts

1. Strategic Planning: Define clear goals for your infographics (brand awareness, traffic, etc.). Ensure your infographics target your audience, and then select the best platforms for sharing them.
2. Design with Purpose: Create high-quality infographics that make sense of compelling data. Optimize them with relevant keywords and hashtags (for social media platforms like Instagram and X).
3. Promote Widely: Develop a multi-channel promotion plan. This includes social media, link-building outreach to relevant blogs/influencers, and repurposing the infographic’s data into other formats.
4. Never Neglect SEO: Treat your infographic like any other piece of content. Optimize file names, alt-text, surrounding text, etc.
5. Track and Adapt: Analyze results to see what works best. Are certain topics or visual styles more popular? Use this data to refine your future infographics.

Let’s Wrap it Up

Infographics are an extremely powerful tool for boosting your website’s visibility, engagement, and overall user experience. 

Following the strategies outlined in this guide will transform complex information into breathtaking visuals that drive results for your digital marketing campaign.

Ready to take your SEO to the next level with infographics? Here’s how to get started:

Explore our resources: We offer free SEO tools and resources to help you get started on the right foot. Sign up for free today! 

Need Expert Guidance? Book a call with one of our SEO experts to develop a custom infographic strategy tailored to your business.

Enhance Your existing plan: If you’re already on a HOTH X managed SEO plan, inquire about adding custom infographic creation to take your content marketing to new heights.

Remember: Infographics are an investment in your brand’s online success. Don’t miss out on their massive potential!   

The post Infographics for SEO: Boost Traffic, Shares, and Engagement appeared first on The HOTH.

That’s why conducting regular eCommerce SEO audits is a must for maintaining (and exceeding) your current search engine rankings. 

How does SEO change?

Google updates happen (like the recent update to their Quality Rater Guidelines), competitors pick up steam, and trending keywords begin to lose their popularity. 

Not only that, but technical issues can also affect your SEO profile, like broken links, indexing errors, and page speed issues. 

If you don’t periodically audit, optimize, update, and refresh your page content, your web pages may disappear from the SERPs (search engine results pages) entirely. 

Yet, if you stay on top of your SEO audits, you will maintain your rankings as your content will remain relevant & optimized. 

The benefits don’t stop there, though. 

eCommerce SEO audits will help you identify opportunities for quick wins (traffic & revenue boosts that happen within a week or two), avoid duplicate content, boost your conversion rates, and generate more organic traffic overall. 

Quite a bit of work goes into an SEO audit, but it’s worth it in the long run. 

To make auditing your online store easier, we’ve prepared this extensive checklist containing everything you need to do to conduct a successful audit – so read on to learn how. 

How are eCommerce SEO Audits Unique?

While most SEO audits follow the same formula, there are a few factors that make eCommerce audits unique from the rest. 

For one, traditional SEO audits involve analyzing blog posts, infographics, videos, and other forms of content for proper keyword placement and other SEO best practices. 

eCommerce stores are a tad different in that they primarily feature product descriptions, category pages, and product pages as their main form of content. 

Some eCommerce sites have blogs, but for the most part, you’ll be dealing with product pages and category pages. 

You’ll need to optimize them for your target keywords, as well as uncover your top-performing pages with the strongest conversion rates. 

If your store features blogs and other types of online content (videos, infographics, etc.), you’ll need to audit those, too. 

Besides that, you also need to focus heavily on technical SEO factors like page speed, site security (SSL certificates are a MUST for eCommerce stores), and mobile friendliness. 

Page speed is a vital SEO factor for any website, but it’s doubly important for online stores. 

Modern internet users aren’t known for their patience, so they won’t stick around if your product pages don’t load at the drop of a hat. 

60% of modern consumers prefer to shop on their mobile devices, which is why mobile optimization is so crucial.

Lastly, another unique challenge facing eCommerce SEO is the prevalence of duplicate content. Since online stores tend to sell multiple sizes and colors for products, that leads to nearly identical product pages – which confuses search engines. 

As such, eCommerce stores deal with duplicate content issues far more often than other types of businesses (more on how to remedy them in a bit). 

Product pages 

In traditional SEO strategies, blog posts tend to be your main focus when conducting a content audit. 

eCommerce websites are different in that you need to focus on optimizing your product pages and category pages the most, even if you also have a blog. 

That’s because your ultimate goal is to drive the most traffic to pages where potential customers can convert and try out your products. 

While blog posts are handy for attracting prospects at the top of your sales funnel, most of your revenue will come from commercial and transactional queries. 

To see the best results, you need to optimize your product pages for both search engines and your customers. 

That means using SEO best practices like keyword-rich product descriptions while not neglecting the quality of the copy (i.e., writing engaging descriptions that encourage users to convert). 

You also need to optimize your product images by compressing them to help with page speed – and adding alt text containing your target keyword for each product. 

Metadata is another crucial factor for your product page optimization. 

You need to write enticing meta descriptions that contain CTAs to encourage users to choose your content over your competitors on the SERPs. 

Including your target keyword in your title tags is also a must, as it helps search engine crawlers understand which keywords your content relates to. 

Category pages 

Equally as important as your product pages are your category pages, so you’ll need to optimize them for search engines and users too. 

Most of the product page optimizations also apply to category pages, including:

• Using keyword-rich meta descriptions and title tags.
• Optimize all images with compression (if necessary) and alt text containing keywords. 
• Include keywords in category page titles. 

Besides making these tweaks, you’ll also need to ensure the following:

• Your category pages need to follow a logical structure that’s easy for search engine crawlers to understand (i.e., categories, subcategories, and products). 
• You need to employ a user-friendly UI that’s effortless for customers to navigate. 
• Highlight your best product images on your category pages (without forgetting to include keyword-rich alt text). 

These optimizations will ensure that your category pages are easy for search engines to crawl & index and for customers to navigate and find the products they need. 

Optimize for humans first, search engines second 

Remember that your overall goal is to provide an outstanding user experience for your customers and that the SEO tweaks are simply a means to an end. 

Search engine crawler bots won’t be the ones placing orders for your products, so you shouldn’t place too much emphasis on catering to them. 

For instance, while it’s crucial to include your target keywords in your content, you should always do so in a way that doesn’t affect the quality of your copy. 

Not only that but getting too crazy with keywords can lead to keyword stuffing, which is very bad for your SEO. 

Let’s say that you’re selling customized dog bowls using the keyword ‘dog water dish.’ 

Here’s an example of how to write a product description containing the keyword in an organic manner that doesn’t diminish the quality of the copy:

“This premium dog water dish is large enough to quench any pup’s thirst. It’s fully customizable and comes in a wide variety of colors & designs to perfectly match your dog’s style.”

It’s concise, contains the keyword, and lets users know how the dog dish will benefit their lives. 

Conversely, here’s an example that puts search engines first instead of customers:

“Need a new dog water dish that you can customize? Our five-star dog water dishes are sure to satisfy, as they’re customizable dog water dishes that come in a variety of colors and designs.”

While it contains the target keyword three times, the sentences are clunky, awkward, and don’t provide enough value to users. 

What Can eCommerce Audits Do for Your Business?

If you’ve recently started an SEO strategy for your eCommerce store, you may be wondering why it’s necessary to conduct regular audits. 

After all, if your product pages are ranking where you want them to be, why try to fix what isn’t broken?

As stated in the intro, SEO is always changing and evolving – so if you want to maintain those rankings, you need to keep a close eye on your website’s content. 

That means conducting regular audits even if things are running smoothly. 

You never know when an indexing error or new Google update will rear its head, both of which can cause top-ranking content to vanish from the SERPs overnight. 

Consider Google’s recent Link Spam Update as an example of this. 

In December 2022, Google released an update that negated the impact of backlinks that had been purchased through third parties. 

Almost immediately, thousands of websites saw huge drops in their online visibility due to this single update. 

That’s why regular audits are a must, as you need to do everything you can to stay on top of new trends, changes, and algorithm updates. 

Besides preventing potential issues and ranking fall-offs, eCommerce SEO audits can provide numerous benefits for your business, so let’s take a look at them. 

Find ways to boost your organic traffic

The chances are high that some of your product pages & category pages aren’t performing as well as they could be online. 

There are plenty of reasons why, including targeting the wrong keywords, poor page speed, indexing errors, and a plethora of other SEO issues. 

The point is you won’t ever uncover these issues if you don’t conduct a site audit to analyze how well each page is performing. 

For instance, let’s say that you uncover a product page that’s lacking relevant keywords. As a result, it’s one of the lowest-performing pages on your entire website. 

By conducting some new keyword research to find more relevant search terms, you can boost the page’s online performance by a significant margin. That means the page will start to generate more organic traffic than before, granting you more opportunities to convert organic visitors. 

Or it could be that a page lacks authority due to a link deficit. 

Once again, the only way to identify these types of issues is to conduct thorough eCommerce SEO audits. 

Besides discovering your lowest-performing pages, you will also identify your most important pages. 

These are the product & category pages that are currently ranking the highest and generating the most organic traffic for your store. 

It’s crucial to identify these pages because you can pinpoint why they’re working so well and then copy their success to other pages. 

Increased conversion rates 

Site audits are also invaluable for finding ways to boost your conversions. 

Just like organic traffic, you can use tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to discover your highest-converting pages. 

What about these pages causes them to convert so well? Did you use any techniques that you aren’t using on your other pages? Is the CTA on your top converting page especially convincing?

These are all crucial questions to ask once you know which pages are seeing the most action from customers. 

From there, you can copy the techniques that worked so well on those pages for the rest of your products & categories. 

That’ll increase your conversions across the board, earning you more revenue as a result. 

Gain an edge over competitors 

eCommerce SEO audits can help you gain a serious competitive edge in your niche if you’re thorough enough with them.  

First, your goal should always be to outdo your competitors, as that’s the only way to reach and maintain the top spots on the SERPs. 

As such, the more in-depth you are with your audit, the greater the chances that you’ve outdone your competition. 

You should never leave it to a guessing game, though. 

There are plenty of tools out there that can help you gauge where your competitors are at, not only on the SERPs but also with their domain authority, backlink profile, and more. 

Of course, all it takes is a quick Google search of one of your target keywords to see who’s outranking you. 

But you can also use free tools like our backlink checker from The HOTH. 

With it, you can view the complete backlink profile of any website online, which is invaluable for gauging your competitors. 

Additionally, you can also use our free SEO audit tool to view crucial metrics for competitors’ websites instantly. You’ll get to view their keyword usage, current rankings, domain authority, and more. 

You can use these two tools to not only size up your competition but also identify ways to outdo competitors and copy their success with your own content during the audit. 

For example, you can use the backlink checker to find high-authority links that you can poach from your competitors through the skyscraper technique. You can also copy their keyword strategies, site structure, and structured data markup. 

Identify quick win opportunities 

A notorious drawback of SEO is how long it takes to start to see results. On average, it takes around 6 – 12 months to start to see an ROI from your SEO efforts. 

That’s a long time to wait while you’re constantly putting in work or paying a digital marketing agency. 

The good news?

There are ways to identify ‘quick win’ opportunities that can speed up the process and provide results within a few weeks instead of months. 

To find these golden opportunities, you need to conduct an SEO audit. 

How do you find quick wins?

You can start by identifying pages with keywords that are within ‘striking distance’ of ranking near the top 10 SERP results. 

These are pages that just need a little push to obtain a desirable ranking on search engines like Google. 

By implementing a few SEO best practices like proper keyword placement (in the first 100 words, title tag, meta description, alt text, etc.), you can push the web page over the edge and start generating more organic traffic in a week or two. 

Other quick-win opportunities include acquiring a few high-authority backlinks that don’t take too much time to build. 

For instance, a savvy SEO agency may find a few opportunities for link placements (also called niche edits), which can provide a quick boost to your link profile. 

The great thing about link placements is they occur in existing content that’s already in Google’s index, so you don’t have to wait long to see its impact on your rankings. 

Further, develop your eCommerce SEO strategy 

Lastly, a significant reason why you should conduct regular website audits is to keep evolving your SEO strategy. 

Running an online store is extremely demanding, so you won’t have much time to focus on developing your SEO during the day. 

eCommerce SEO audits are so essential because they give you the time to slow things down and focus on improving your tactics. You’ll be able to closely examine every aspect of your online presence, which will help you brainstorm ideas to take your SEO to the next level. 

For example, if you last conducted keyword research 2 years ago, it’s highly likely that those keywords have begun to lose popularity. 

While not every piece of content is evergreen (meaning it stays fresh forever), you can always update outdated posts with new information and fresh keywords.

Audits can also spark ideas for backlink opportunities, either by examining your own backlink profile or your competitors. 

Let’s say that you’re examining a competitor and find that they’ve been guest posting on sites you didn’t know about. 

Since they’re in your niche, you can also conduct outreach to the same websites in the hopes of obtaining guest posts. 

It’s crucial to keep your eyes open when auditing your eCommerce store, as you never know when you may uncover something new that’ll take your SEO strategy to new heights.  

An Extensive eCommerce SEO Audit Checklist 

Now that you know more about how comprehensive website audits benefit your business, it’s time to learn how to conduct one. 

Quite a bit goes into an eCommerce SEO audit, and it can easily get overwhelming if you don’t have a guide to follow. 

To make things easier to digest, we’ve broken down the audit into three main categories: on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO. 

Auditing Your On-Page SEO 

Let’s start by looking at all the tasks that fall under the umbrella of on-page or on-site SEO. 

As the name implies, this type of SEO involves making tweaks that occur on your website – and are usually visible to both search engines and your users. 

That means optimizing visible on-site factors like adding keywords to product descriptions, writing enticing meta descriptions, and using stand-out images with keyword-rich alt text. 

It also involves making user experience optimizations, such as including pricing and all other essential product information on the top half of the page so the user doesn’t have to scroll down. 

Here’s a look at all the top on-page SEO factors you’ll need to consider when conducting your audit. 

Keyword research and placement 

Everything related to keyword optimization falls under on-page SEO, so now is the time to analyze every target keyword for your product & category pages. 

You can use our free keyword planner tool to check the validity and relevance of each search term. 

The tool will let you know if the keyword is currently trending up or down in popularity, which is useful information. If a keyword is trending down, it may be worth retargeting similar keywords that are gaining traction and have the same context. 

For the most part, you need to ensure that each page has a viable target keyword and that it’s placed in the following locations:

• The title tag and meta description 
• Your H1 tag 
• The first 100 words of the product description/category page
• Your URL (this matters most to search engines like Bing & Yahoo, but it’s still a good rule of thumb)
• Image alt text 
• Headings (H2, H3, H4, etc.) 
• FAQ pages 

As long as your target keywords appear organically in these key areas, you should be golden.

Pro tip: To get the most bang for your SEO buck, you should front-load your keywords in your headings, especially your H1 tag. That means placing the keyword at the very front of the headline so that it’s the very first thing that search crawlers (and your users) see. 

It’s best not to overthink or overuse keywords, as that can lead to keyword spam, which will harm your SEO instead of helping it. 

Optimize your metadata 

It’s imperative that every product and category page on your store has a title tag and meta description. 

It’s all too common for larger eCommerce stores to neglect or forget about their metadata entirely, which will cripple your SEO efforts. 

Why is metadata so essential for SEO?

It is because title tags and meta descriptions are what appear in the SERPs. So if you don’t have an optimized title tag and enticing meta description, search engine users will have little reason to click on your result instead of the others that DO have engaging descriptions. 

Your title tag shows up as the blue hyperlink on Google results pages, and the meta description is the brief sentence describing the web page that appears underneath. 

You should include your target keywords in both, but it’s doubly important for your title tag. 

That’s because search engine crawlers will look at your metadata BEFORE they crawl the content of the page, so your title tag will be the first instance of your keyword they come across. 

Meta descriptions are more for online users, but they’re equally as important for your business, especially for improving click-through rates (CTR). 

When auditing the metadata for your online store, you also need to ensure that your titles and descriptions fall within the character limit. 

Your title tag should be no more than 60 characters, and you need to keep meta descriptions within 160 characters. 

These character limits represent the dimensions of Google results, and exceeding them means your title or description may be too long to display in full. 

Refining product and category pages 

Remember, you’re not just here to cater to the needs of search engines. 

You should also focus on improving the user experience of your online store, especially when making on-page optimizations. 

In particular, you should refine the user interface (UI) of your product and category pages to ensure a pleasant experience for shoppers.

Here are the components you should strive to include on each page:

• Keyword-optimized product descriptions that hype the benefits customers will enjoy from purchasing your products (benefits over features)  
• Pricing and purchase options are included in the same window 
• All relevant information is listed at the top of the page, so there’s no need to scroll down 
• High-resolution product images that show off your products in great detail (multiple angles and focal lengths) 
• Add to cart options 
• A concise CTA that lets users know what you want them to do next 

These optimizations will make your eCommerce store effortless to use, which will increase your chances of landing conversions.

When writing product descriptions, remember to focus on benefits instead of features. 

What do we mean by that?

Features are static, and while they may be impressive, they don’t let customers know how the product will change their lives. 

While you shouldn’t completely ignore features, always include benefits to go along with them. 

For example, instead of just saying a pair of gardening shears has remarkable tensile strength, also include that it’ll tear through any stubborn bush with ease, which will improve their landscaping skills. These types of benefits will appeal to customers more than simply listing a product’s features.

URLs and site architecture 

Next, you need to optimize your URL & page structure to make your website easier to crawl and index. 

If you’re running SEO campaigns on Bing and Yahoo, then you’ll definitely want to add your target keywords to your URLs. 

That’s because keywords in URLs are a direct ranking factor for Bing and its related search engines. 

URL keywords used to hold the same clout on Google, but updates in recent years have changed that significantly. 

It’s still a good idea to use your target keywords in your URLs, but it will matter far less for your Google SEO. 

What matters equally to both Bing and Google is the architecture of your online store. 

In other words, every page on your website needs to follow a logical structure to make it easy for search engines and users to navigate. 

In general, it’s best to stick with a flat site architecture, where every page is only a few clicks away from the homepage. 

For eCommerce stores, this type of structure works best:

• Your homepage links to your primary category pages 
• From there, each category has a list of subcategories
• Lastly, the subcategories link to all your products 

This is the quickest and easiest way to organize an online store, and it’ll help you avoid orphan pages. 

A page is considered ‘orphaned’ whenever it doesn’t have an internal link pointing to it, making it difficult for search engines and users to navigate to it. 

Orphan pages often don’t appear in the SERPs at all, so use a site crawler like Screaming Frog to get your URL structure in order. 

Optimizing product images 

Rounding out the on-page SEO checklist is to optimize all your product images, both on your product pages and category pages. 

High-resolution images are a necessity for any online store, as your customers will want to get an in-depth preview of your products before making a purchase. 

Ideally, you should have multiple photos of each product from different angles and focal lengths. 

While you want your images to have flawless quality, it’s also essential to compress them as much as possible. 

Why is that?

Images can quickly start to accrue in size, especially if you’re using multiple images for each product. If the file sizes become too great, it can start to slow down your site speed. 

Poor loading times will tank your online visibility & conversion rates, so you should strive to compress each image as much as possible without sacrificing quality. 

Every image also needs a line of alt text containing the primary keyword for that product page. 

What’s alt text?

It’s a brief description of what an image displays and it serves two purposes. For one, it improves the accessibility of your site by enabling blind visitors to understand what your images show. Next, it helps search engine crawlers understand your images and how they relate to your target keyword. 

Since crawler bots are technically blind (they lack computer vision), they won’t be able to see any of your images – hence the need for alt text. 

If you don’t include alt text for your product images, Google & other search engines will have no way of knowing that you’ve included images in your content (which is a pretty important ranking factor when gauging the quality of a post or product page). 

Technical SEO Audit Checklist 

Now that your on-page optimizations are complete, it’s time to move on to technical SEO factors. 

Technical SEO refers to all the behind-the-scenes factors that affect your visibility on search engines. 

In particular, technical SEO efforts revolve around making your web pages as easy to crawl and index as possible. 

That means doing things like uploading your XML sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC), addressing any indexing errors, and using canonical tags to avoid duplicate content. 

Here’s a look at the top technical SEO factors you need to look at during your eCommerce audit. 

Addressing indexing and crawlability errors 

First, you need to set up Google Search Console for your eCommerce store if you haven’t already. 

That’ll grant you the ability to view the Page Indexing Report. 

It will let you know the indexing status of all the URLs on your website (that Google knows about, anyway). 

This is an invaluable tool because it lets you know how much of your website is visible to Google. 

Why aren’t some of your web pages showing up in Google’s index?

There could be a variety of reasons why, including the lack of internal links pointing to them and any number of indexing errors. 

The good news is you can view any indexing errors Google ran into straight from GSC via the Index Coverage Report. 

Here, you’ll get to see all your web pages that are valid, excluded, contain errors, or are valid but contain warnings. 

Besides that, you’ll get to view a full list of crawling & indexing errors that popped up on your site. 

Common errors include issues with redirects, soft 404s, pages blocked by your robots.txt file, and more. 

GSC will also provide recommendations for fixing these errors, which is a huge plus. Once you’ve addressed and fixed all your most pressing indexing errors, you can move on to the next step. 

Avoiding duplicate content with canonical tags 

As stated previously, eCommerce stores face many issues with duplicate content. 

Whenever two pages attempt to rank for the same keyword, it confuses Google as it doesn’t know which one to rank on the SERPs. 

The problem occurs whenever you sell products in multiple colors and sizes. That’s because you’ll have a couple of versions of the same product page that contain identical descriptions & target keywords. 

The most common solution to this problem is to use canonical tags to distinguish the version of the product you want to rank from its duplicates (other colors and sizes). 

The vanilla version of each product should receive a canonical tag, while similar pages need to receive a noindex tag. 

That’ll let Google and other search engines know which version of your product to rank on the SERPs and which to exclude – effectively avoiding all duplicate content on your online store, which will help your SEO profile in a big way. 

Improving page speed 

By now, you already know that your pages need to load fast in order to stop customers from clicking off your site and back to the SERPs (which is bad for your bounce rate). 

Moreover, your website needs to pass Google’s Core Web Vitals test if you want your content to appear in its search results.

It’s a test that checks your website’s loading speed and responsiveness. 

Luckily, you can check your page’s loading times by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It’ll also provide candid suggestions for speeding up your website, such as cleaning up your Javascript or compressing your images/videos. 

The faster your website loads, the better you’ll perform in the organic search. Not only that, but you’ll also see more conversions by improving your website’s performance. 

Website security (SSL certificates) 

eCommerce businesses need to place a strong emphasis on website security, as your customers will be entering their sensitive financial information to make purchases. 

That means you need to keep their data encrypted at all times, so HTTPS and SSL certificates are both necessities. 

If your site doesn’t feature ample security, you’ll have a hard time finding customers willing to enter their credit card numbers into your purchase forms. 

HTTPS will encrypt all user transactions that take place on your online store, so you need to make the switch if you haven’t already. Once your website is secure, don’t forget to advertise it! Your customers will appreciate knowing that their data will remain safe on your site, so don’t stay quiet about it. 

Off-Page SEO Checklist 

Lastly, you need to make a few off-page optimizations. 

Off-page SEO refers to all your promotional efforts that occur off your website, such as on social media platforms. 

Here are the off-page factors you’ll need to tweak during your eCommerce SEO audit. 

Backlinks 

Obtaining backlinks (outbound links that point to your website) is crucial for SEO, especially for campaigns on Google. 

Common link-building tactics include:

• Getting your website listed on directories related to your niche (Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc.) 
• Link placements and insertions (placing backlinks on existing pieces of content on related websites) 
• HARO links (getting backlinks through press mentions) 
• Posting links on related forums and social media groups 
• Guest posting on other eCommerce blogs 

If you aren’t sure how your backlink profile stacks up to competitors, you can use our free backlink checker tool that we linked previously. 

Social media posts 

You can and should promote your eCommerce products through social media profiles, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more. 

Which channels you select will depend on the preferences of your target demographics. 

For instance, if you primarily sell to Gen Z’ers, posting on TikTok is the most reliable way to reach them. 

If you’re after an older crowd, Facebook and LinkedIn are the ways to go. 

Ensure that your posts contain your target keywords and provide value to your audience, and you should be all set. 

Wrapping Up: Conducting an eCommerce SEO Audit 

eCommerce SEO faces some unique challenges, but it’s still the best way to boost your online visibility and acquire new customers. 

Conducting regular SEO audits is a necessity if you want to maintain the rankings that you worked so hard to obtain. 

Do you need help developing a winning eCommerce SEO strategy for your online store?

If so, then don’t wait to check out HOTH X, our managed SEO services. Our SEO gurus will help you take your eCommerce store to new heights, so don’t wait to get in touch now.     

The post The Ultimate eCommerce SEO Audit Guide for Better Rankings  appeared first on The HOTH.

Just as a physician checks your vitals to ensure you’re in good health, the Core Web Vitals test does the same thing for websites. 

The only difference is that Google checks for things like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability instead of weight and blood pressure.

However, one of the Core Web Vitals, known as First Input Delay (FID), is about to go by the wayside. 

Google introduced a new Web Vital metric called Interaction to Next Paint (INP) back in May 2023 with the aim of replacing FID in early 2024. 

The new year is here, and INP is about to become an official part of Google’s Core Web Vitals on March 12th. 

How will this affect SEO?

If you aren’t able to pass the Core Web Vitals test, you won’t be able to rank in the top spots on Google’s SERPs. So, if your website has slow interactions (which is what INP measures), you may see negative effects on your Google rankings. 

Stay tuned to learn everything you need to know about INP, how it differs from FID, and how you can ensure you pass the test. 

What is Interaction to Next Paint?

You can separate Google’s Core Web Vitals into three key areas that affect a website’s user experience the most, which are:

• Speed
• Interactivity 
• Stability 

Accordingly, Google has a metric that measures each:

• Last Contentful Paint (LCP) measures a website’s loading speed.
• First Input Delay (FID) measures how long it takes for users to begin interacting with the site.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a website. 

These metrics were the ‘big three’ up until last May when Google announced Interaction to Next Paint, which is a new and more comprehensive way of measuring interactivity. 

Why does Google need two metrics for interactivity?

They don’t, which is why INP is set to replace FID, the current interactivity metric. 

Google discovered some key limitations with First Input Delay in 2022. This led their team to experiment with a different way of measuring a website’s interactivity, leading to the creation of INP. 

While it’s still in the ‘pending’ phase, INP will become a stable Core Web Vitals on March 12th, 2024. 

How is INP different from FID?

It didn’t take long for the cracks to begin to show with First Input Delay, as it’s not a very reliable way of gauging a website’s interactivity.

Why is that?

It’s because FID only measures a user’s first interaction with a website and doesn’t consider any interactions that take place after. 

Going by FID alone, the Core Web Vitals test could determine that a website has ample interactivity since the first interaction loaded quickly. What FID failed to uncover, though, is that the same site struggles to load other interactions during the lifecycle of a user’s visit. 

For example, let’s say you visit a web page and click on the login box. The click registers almost immediately, causing Google to assume the site has acceptable interactivity (going by FID). 

Right after logging in, you attempt to interact with the site’s navigation menu, which is meant to drop down whenever you hover over an option like this:

However, it takes several seconds for the drop-down menu to appear, causing you to assume that the feature is broken (and making it difficult to navigate through the site). 

That’s why FID isn’t a good metric for interactivity; it only measures the first interaction. 

INP measures interactions during the full lifespan of a user’s visit 

That brings us to INP, which takes a more comprehensive look at a website’s interactivity. 

Instead of only measuring the first interaction and calling it a day, INP measures every interaction a user has during their visit to your website. 

Here are the interactions that INP measures:

• Mouse clicks 
• Touchscreen device taps 
• Physical or onscreen keyboard key presses

If you want your website to have a pleasant user experience, then your site’s responsiveness must be on point. 

We’ve all experienced the frustration that comes with delayed interactions, such as trying to click on an accordion-style menu only for the site to freeze up for several minutes before completing the task. 

Improving your INP will reduce instances like this, boosting your user experience as a result. 

Is Your Website Prepared for the Change to INP?

The good news is if you’ve already been optimizing your website for FID and the other Web Vitals, you shouldn’t have much trouble. 

Optimizing for FID provides a strong foundation for improving your INP, so you’ll already be well on your way. 

Even if you haven’t done any tweaking to improve your Core Web Vitals, it’s never too late to start, and there is no shortage of tools out there to help you. 

In particular, Google’s PageSpeed Insights should be your go-to when improving your site’s loading speed, interactivity, and stability. It’s an official tool from Google, and it lets you view how well your site scores on the Core Web Vitals test. It also provides helpful insights and actionable tips for improving your user experience. 

Here’s an overview of the INP threshold:

• A score of 200 milliseconds or under means your site has good responsiveness.
• Scores above 200 milliseconds but under 500 milliseconds need improvement. 
• An INP score over 500 milliseconds means your website has poor responsiveness.

Therefore, achieving an INP score of 200 milliseconds or less should be your goal. 

Suggestions for improving INP scores 

If you discover that your website has poor responsiveness, here are a few things you can do:

• If your interactions are taking too long to begin processing, you should optimize your input delay.
• Look out for excessively complex CSS selectors, as they can cause delays when users try to interact with your site. 
• Longer tasks may need optimizing if you have a lot of JavaScript getting in the way. 
• Minimize DOM size wherever possible. 

Should none of these suggestions resolve your issue, you can always check out this Google-recommended guide for optimizing INP. 

Making a Smooth Transition to INP from FID 

As long as you optimize your site to have quick responsiveness, the transition to INP from FID shouldn’t affect your website too much. 

Improving your INP score will make drastic improvements to your user experience, so there’s no reason to ignore it. With a strong responsiveness score, you’ll enjoy better SERP rankings, user engagement, and dwell times, which is why improving INP is worth the time and effort. 

Do you need help optimizing your website for INP?

Then you need HOTH X, our managed SEO service that lets you put your digital marketing on autopilot. If you’re ready to remove all the complexity from SEO while enjoying stellar results, don’t wait to get in touch.      

The post Core Web Vitals: Google Replaces FID with INP on March 12th appeared first on The HOTH.

Then investing in premium link-building services is one of the smartest (and most productive) moves you can make. 

What are those?

It’s where you enlist the help of a reputable link-building agency to acquire premium links to improve your visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, and others. 

A ‘premium link’ is a backlink from a high-quality site that’s already crushing SEO. 

As a result, its ‘link juice’ is far more potent than a link from a subpar website. 

In other words, premium-quality links will do a lot more for your search rankings than links from sketchy, low-grade websites. 

Premium links will matter even more in the age of SGE, as Google will only cite trusted and authoritative websites in its new ‘AI Snapshots.’ 

Yet, building premium links isn’t easy, as it takes an existing infrastructure to yield the best results. 

What kind of infrastructure are we talking about?

Here at The HOTH, we have one of the largest link networks in existence. 

This is a network consisting of countless media outlets, news websites, blogs, and other trusted websites in virtually every industry. 

It took us many years to build, but it’s one of the primary reasons why we’re one of the most popular providers of premium link-building services on the internet. 

We also have a team of link-building gurus, outreach experts, and tons of other tricks up our sleeves to score the best links for our clients. 

Stick around to learn why you need to invest in premium link-building services to remain competitive in the changing search landscape. 

What Makes a Link Worthy of the ‘Premium’ Label?

Backlinks from different websites online aren’t equal, as they vary in quality by a considerable margin. 

The reason why has to do with the original idea behind backlinks, which were the brainchild of Google’s Larry Page. 

image source

As a staunch academic, he was used to citing journals and studies in term papers to establish credibility – and he viewed backlinks in a similar vein. 

In his mind, if a website contains links from credible, trusted websites – it, in turn, boosts its trustworthiness and credibility. 

This is the central idea behind backlinks as a ranking factor, and it’s the philosophy that drives link builders to target links from top-tier websites.

Therefore, backlinks from legacy websites like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wikipedia carry the most clout. Links from educational institutions and government agencies are also extremely powerful (sites that end in .edu or .gov). 

Of course, not every website will get the chance to build links from mainstream sites like the New York Times. 

The good news is there are plenty of premium links in every industry and niche. 

As long as a site has excellent domain authority, a link from it is worthy of the ‘premium’ title. 

Understanding website domain scores

A website’s domain authority refers to its likelihood of ranking on the SERPs, and it’s represented by a score of 1 – 100. 

Scores 40 – 60 are average, and any score over 60 is when you enter the ‘premium link’ range. 

However, domain authority is only one domain metric out there, as you’ll run into a few in the SEO space. 

Unfortunately, there’s no official Google domain scoring system, as it’s kept under lock and key to prevent websites from ‘gaming the system.’ 

Moz and Ahrefs have both developed their own domain scoring systems, and they tend to be what most SEOs use to judge the quality of a backlink. 

We’ve already discussed Moz’s domain authority, but there’s also Ahrefs’ domain rating. 

What’s the difference?

Here’s the simplest way to differentiate the two:

• Ahrefs’ domain rating score is calculated entirely by examining a site’s backlink profile. 
• Moz’s domain authority looks at numerous other factors besides a website’s backlinks (these tend to align with Google’s other ranking factors). 

It’s up to you which scoring system to use, but when in doubt, why not use both?

The difference between premium and low-grade links 

Is it really worth investing in premium link-building services? Can’t you just build a large volume of low-grade links and call it a day?

While quantity link-building has its place, you should never settle for low-grade links (although average links work just fine if building bulk is your goal). 

The difference between premium and low-grade links is akin to top-shelf spirits vs. house liquor. 

Sure, the cheap stuff can work in a pinch, but if you really want to impress big clients – your bartender needs to reach for a bottle of Grey Goose or Patron. 

Premium links from quality websites work the same way. 

If you want to impress Google’s algorithm to earn higher rankings, you better have some top-tier links vouching for your most important content. 

As such, if you build premium quality links, you’ll be drinking Don Julio instead of house tequila (metaphorically speaking). 

Why Premium Link-Building Services Still Matter 

The search landscape is currently undergoing significant changes, as 2023 was one of the most volatile years in SEO to date. 

Things like the prevalence of AI content, Google’s SGE, and zero-click searches have been changing the way users interact with search engines. 

Organic SEO is about to go through some major changes whenever SGE sees widespread adoption. 

How is that?

In particular, site owners will want to target longer, more conversational keywords to mimic how users will interact with SGE. 

Content must be extremely informative and relay first-hand experiences to users, as Google’s Hidden Gems algorithm and Perspectives Tab both prioritize authentic content produced by humans. 

One thing that won’t change is the impact of premium links on a website’s SERP rankings and online visibility. 

As long as you continue to build premium links, Google will trust your content, greatly increasing the chances of better SERP rankings and appearing in the AI Snapshot and Perspectives Tab. 

In fact, according to our predictions, if you employ a solid content and link-building plan that follows our guidelines, you’ll be able to avoid the impending 25% traffic loss every website will experience due to SGE. 

The traffic that you’ll lose will be from uninterested users who were never going to convert anyway, allowing you to come out completely unscathed. 

The Links That Keep On Giving: Top Benefits of Premium Links 

Lots of SEOs engage in the quality vs. quantity debate in regards to links, which is pretty silly if you ask us. 

Merging quantity with quality has always been the way, as sometimes you need to close a significant link gap in order to become competitive on the SERPs. 

That doesn’t mean that you should settle for low-grade links from spammy websites, as that’s never the way. 

Yet, links from real sites that have average DA scores instead of spectacular ones are fine to target if you’re trying to close a gap. 

However, a profile jam-packed with so-so links won’t be enough to become a ranking behemoth. 

Once you have an adequate number of links, you’ll need to balance your profile with premium links from high-quality websites that provide real value to users. 

These are links from websites that sell great products, write accurate & informative articles, and entertain users with outstanding content. 

Premium links like these are what will truly put in work for your backlink profile. 

If you’re having trouble outranking a stubborn competitor, premium links are what make the most difference. 

Here’s a look at the top benefits you’ll enjoy from premium link-building services. 

Premium links yield quicker results than so-so links 

If you need to start seeing results fast, or if you’re just impatient, you’ll want to target premium links above all others. 

Link-building and SEO are both lengthy processes that take quite some time to gain momentum. 

However, there are shortcuts to speeding up both. 

Where ‘easy win’ keywords are the ‘express lane’ for SEO, premium links serve the same role for link-building. 

If you’re only building low-grade or average links, it can take up to 12 months to start ranking in the top 10 for your most important keywords. 

The proof?

Ahrefs did a study where they randomly selected 2 million websites and tracked their ranking position history for every keyword they ranked for at the time. 

They found that only 5.7% of pages ranked in the top 10 within one year, the most impressive of which did so within 61 – 182 days. 94.3% of pages took at least 12 months to crack the top 10, which is a long time to wait to start seeing an ROI. 

What did those 5.7% of pages do differently?

You guessed it; they built premium links (and had flawless on-page and technical SEO factors) – which skyrocketed their keyword rankings within a few months. 

Reaching the masses: boosted online visibility 

There’s no better way to get the word out about your business than by improving your search engine rankings. 

That’s especially true if you sell products and services online, as 89% of users begin their buying experiences by conducting research on search engines like Google and Bing. 

We’ll be the first ones to tell you that nothing improves search engine rankings like premium links. 

Time and time again, it’s the quality links that we build for our clients that move the SEO needle. 

While outstanding content and flawless on-page SEO factors are a must, premium links are what will put considerable distance between you and your competitors. 

As the search landscape begins to transform, the quality of your link profile will matter more than ever. After all, your links are how Google determines the authority and trustworthiness of your site, so premium links will help you appear in SGE’s AI Snapshot and Perspectives Tab. 

Once you start ranking in the top 10 for vital short-tail and long-tail queries for your business, you’ll enjoy a virtually endless pipeline of organic visitors that you can convert into leads and sales. 

Word of mouth: more referral traffic

Premium links do a lot more than boost your SERP rankings (although that’s a pretty amazing benefit). 

Besides traffic coming from search results, your premium links will also lead to more referral traffic. 

How does that happen?

It has to do with how you obtain most premium links, which is through techniques like:

• Guest posts
• Link insertions
• Article syndication
• Press releases

All these tactics involve publishing content that contains links to your most important web pages. 

For example, let’s say you write an insightful guest post for a related blog in your industry. In the post, you add a few links to your homepage and one of your landing pages. Readers of the other site enjoy your post, so they decide to navigate to your website to learn more. 

Voila, you’ve just generated referral traffic courtesy of one of your backlinks. 

The exact same thing can happen with a link insertion, a syndicated article on another website, and a press release. 

As such, your backlinks will drive traffic to your site from all sorts of places, not just Google’s SERPs. 

Premium links are the best way to build authority 

Remember what we said before about domains with high ‘authority’ scores?

Well, they weren’t granted that authority by the internet police. 

Instead, they built it by generating lots of links pointing to their site from trusted websites – and you can do the same. 

Whenever you acquire premium links, they will increase your authority scores according to metrics like Moz and Ahrefs (and Google, too, but you won’t be able to see it). 

Premium links will do more for your authority than average links, which is why it’s worth the time and effort to build them. 

The more authority you have, the easier it’ll be to dominate the SERPs for your keywords. 

If you’re curious about the health of your backlink profile, you can use our free backlink checker tool and SEO audit tool to keep an eye on your metrics.  

The Most Effective Ways to Build Premium Links 

Now that you know why premium links are so awesome, it’s time to learn how to start snagging them. 

Most of the information on link-building online is very outdated, and a lot of the techniques you’ll find out there aren’t nearly as effective as they once were. 

There’s also no shortage of ‘black hat’ link-building techniques that you should avoid at all costs, as they’re only good for acquiring spammy links that’ll do more harm than good. 

Here’s a look at some of our favorite ways to build premium links. 

Rubbing elbows: Modern link outreach 

Link outreach has gone through a serious evolution and maturing process over the years. 

In the past, the move was to target as many websites as possible and churn out cold outreach emails. 

While some SEOs still practice outreach as cold as Antarctica, building long-lasting relationships with other websites is a far more effective play. 

In relationship building, you form a link partnership with a relevant website in your field. That way, you’ll be able to build lots of links together instead of targeting a one-off link with an impersonal outreach email. 

This approach takes a lot of nuance, as you’ll have to engage with the prospect for quite a while before bringing up the idea of becoming link partners. 

Cut and paste: The power of link insertions 

Another tactic that’s gained popularity recently is using link insertions instead of always targeting guest blog spots. 

A link insertion is where you insert a backlink into an existing piece of content from another website. 

As long as you provide some sort of value to the other website (we recommend suggesting a few ways to update the piece to make it relevant again), link insertions are a quick and easy way to generate backlinks. 

Another perk is that link insertions don’t take very long to impact your SERP rankings. 

Why is that?

It’s because you’re adding a link to a web page that’s already in Google’s index, so you won’t have to wait for a fresh crawl to index something like a brand-new guest post. 

Link insertions also require less outreach and effort than targeting guest posts, which comes in handy if you don’t have a lot of time to spend crafting outreach emails. 

Press releases and article syndication 

Is there a big development happening at your company?

Then, why not pick up a few backlinks off of it?

As long as the development isn’t time-sensitive, you can create a press release for it that you use to acquire backlinks. 

For this to work, you’ll need existing relationships with relevant news sites and media outlets to distribute your press releases to – which aren’t always easy to come by. 

Yet, if you do have a distribution network, your press releases will boost your link profile and provide referral traffic. 

Article syndication is another great tactic if you have a network of sites that accept syndicated pieces. 

It’s a way for you to get more value out of your ‘greatest hits,’ such as a blog post that received lots of engagement and praise. 

Put Premium Link Building Services to Work For Your Business 

As the SEO world goes through significant changes this year, one thing remains clear: premium links and outstanding content are what will keep you safe. 

Those are the two components that make search engines like Google tick, which is why they’ll continue to keep putting in work for your business. 

If you’re ready to invest in premium link-building services, don’t wait to check out our highly reviewed services from The HOTH.      

The post Why Premium Link-Building Services Are Still Your Best Friend  appeared first on The HOTH.

Yet, the conversation looks a lot different now than it did just a few years ago. 

In particular, Google’s SGE is set to throw a wrench into traditional search methods due to how drastically it alters the search experience. 

Organic search results will appear beneath helpful AI Snapshots that directly answer users’ questions – thus diminishing the top-ranked organic spots on queries featuring a Snapshot. 

Paid ads are also getting an overhaul, as they’ll appear in conjunction with Google’s new generative AI features. 

Things like voice search are set to become more prevalent in 2024, and CPC fees (cost-per-click) have been on the rise due to inflation. 

As such, there are lots of new considerations to take into account when comparing SEO and PPC that didn’t exist just one year ago. 

Don’t get us wrong; they’re still two of the most effective marketing channels that exist online and will continue to be for many years to come. 

If you want to make the most out of your marketing strategies, you’ll need to understand the differences between SEO and PPC to determine which is best for your business.  

Read on to learn everything you need to know about paid ads and organic SEO, including notable pros and cons. 

SEO 101: Understanding Search Engine Optimization 

First, let’s take a look at what SEO can do for your business. 

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s the practice of modifying your web content to rank better for your most important keywords on search engines like Google. 

Search engine crawler bots look for specific ‘ranking factors’ when determining the order of search results for a particular query, and SEO is all about learning and incorporating those factors. 

Touch on the most crucial factors, and the search engine gods will reward you with high rankings (positions 5 and up) for keywords related to your business (queries your target audience looks for online). 

Some of the most important ranking factors include:

• The quality and relevance of your content (do your web pages satisfy the user’s search intent?)
• Keyword placement and usage (first 100 words, title tag, and H1 heading, numerous times throughout the content) 
• The strength of your backlink profile (the number of trusted websites that link to your content) 

That’s all well and good, but what about the bottom line?

We’re glad you asked. 

SEO as a marketing practice has endured for so long for one very important reason: it works. 

Why is SEO effective for digital marketing?

Whether your audience wants to look up information, answer a question, or make a purchase – they all turn to the mighty Google first (93% of the time, to be precise). 

Therefore, if you’re able to obtain the #1 position for keywords related to your business, you’ll generate loads of organic traffic that you can then convert into leads and customers. 

When you combine SEO with CRO (conversion rate optimization) – the sky’s the limit with what you can achieve. 

Scaling your business and expanding internationally become possible with a winning SEO strategy. 

Another reason SEO is so popular amongst marketers is there’s no upfront cost involved. 

In fact, if you have loads of free time and a small website, you can develop and roll out an SEO campaign almost entirely by yourself (although you’ll probably need assistance with link-building). 

Also, SEO efforts famously have a compounding effect, where the content you worked hard to establish continues to generate traffic, leads, and sales for many months to come. 

If your content is evergreen (meaning it doesn’t go out of date), a highly-ranked piece of content will continue working for you indefinitely. 

By updating older pieces (such as changing 2023 to 2024), you can make them relevant again – which means they can generate more moolah for your business. 

Lastly, SEO content creation is an excellent way to become a thought leader in your field, as proper keyword research will ensure that your content topics are exactly what your audience wants to see. 

Unpacking PPC: How Effective are Paid Ads for Promoting Your Business?

Now, let’s dive into the world of pay-per-click (PPC) ads to see how they differ from traditional SEO. 

With PPC, you pay a service like Google or Microsoft a fee every time a user clicks on one of your ads. The tradeoff is that your ads will appear directly at the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages). 

That saves you the trouble of having to do months (or even years) worth of organic SEO to reach the top-ranked positions. 

Another bonus is that PPC ads appear above the organic search results, meaning you’ll reign above even the #1-ranked organic result. 

The catch?

Paid ads are hit with a sponsored tag for the world to see, letting everyone know that you paid for your spot. 

Regardless, paid ads are an effective way to start generating traffic and leads from day one, which comes in handy for new sites still trying to overcome their obscurity on the SERPs. 

Yet, PPC requires some smart planning and in-depth keyword research to yield the best results. 

Do it wrong, and you’ll waste your budget on clicks that don’t lead to conversions. 

Remember, just because someone clicked on your ad is no guarantee that they’ll make a purchase or sign up for your newsletter. 

Just like SEO, you need to incorporate CRO into your PPC strategy for maximum effectiveness. 

That way, your ads will direct users to landing pages designed to convert, greatly increasing your chances of generating a lead or sale. 

How Are SEO & PPC About to Change?

The search engine marketing and advertising world is on the cusp of some huge changes, and both SEO and PPC will look drastically different in a few short months. 

Why is that?

It primarily has to do with the advent of generative AI in search engines, particularly Google’s SGE, which is set to go live in early 2024. 

As stated previously, acquiring a #1-ranked organic spot is a very powerful position to hold, and PPC ads appear even above that on the SERPs. 

However, SGE’s AI Snapshot is about to mix up SERP real estate in a big way. 

For some queries (not all), Google will generate an AI Snapshot where its GAI (generative AI) directly answers the query and cites 3 online sources. 

This AI Snapshot appears ABOVE the organic search results and SERP features, which means most users will get what they need from the Snapshot and stop scrolling. 

Paid ads still appear at the top of the page, and SGE even incorporates PPC ads into some of its auto-generated results. 

Also, evidence shows that if you’re already ranking in the #1 or #2 spot for your keywords, Google is far more likely to cite your content in the Snapshot. 

Moving forward, both SEO and PPC strategies will focus heavily on getting featured in the AI Snapshot, which means targeting longer, more conversational keywords. 

Organic SEOs will need to create lots of informative content that answers common user questions in-depth, as users will ask conversational-style questions to interact with Google SGE. 

To Optimize or Not to Optimize: The Pros and Cons of SEO 

Now that you’re familiar with SEO and PPC let’s weigh the pros and cons of each, starting with search engine optimization. 

Pros 

SEO remains one of the most effective digital marketing channels, and it’s a must for any business wanting to boost its online visibility. 

That’s because when done correctly, SEO has an incredibly high return on investment. 

32% of businesses even claim that SEO has the highest ROI out of all their marketing channels, which is a testament to its earning power. 

Longevity is another advantage that SEO has going for it, as the content that you create will remain on the internet – and if you keep it updated (and make sure the links direct to the correct page) – it’ll continue to rank and generate traffic for you.

SEO is the gift that keeps on giving in this regard. 

That’s in stark contrast to PPC because as soon as you stop spending money, your ads disappear – and your online visibility shuts off virtually overnight. 

At its core, SEO is about establishing a robust online presence in your field. 

In other words, enough high-quality content and authoritative backlinks make it virtually impossible to ignore you online. 

Therefore, if you want to build your brand and gain a loyal following, SEO is arguably the best way to do so. 

Lastly, SEO isn’t going anywhere. 

Even with innovations like SGE and voice-powered search (using virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa), search engines remain incredibly popular – and it’s still more than viable to use them to market your products and services. 

The tactics may change a bit, but seasoned digital marketers are used to that already. SEO has been an ever-changing and evolving game since its inception, and the laws of Darwinism have always applied. 

To put it bluntly, if you don’t adapt, you won’t survive – and SGE SEO is just the latest iteration of that philosophy. 

Cons

Since SEO is about building a massive online presence, it’s a long-term game. 

As such, it takes quite a while before you’ll start seeing results, which discourages some in the beginning. 

It’s normal for SEO to take up to 6 months to start bearing fruit (if you don’t have any easy win keywords, that is). 

That’s especially true for brand-new websites still mired in obscurity. 

Google prefers to rank established and trusted websites near the top of the results, which is why newbies have such a hard time getting their foot in the door. 

SEO is also fiercely competitive. 

Every industry and niche has literally thousands of websites competing for the #1 and #2 spot for their respective keywords. 

Some industries feature so much competition that focusing on short-tail ‘industry’ keywords becomes next to impossible. 

Legacy websites like Wikipedia, Amazon, and the NY Times have zillions of backlinks and tend to dominate the #1 spot for some keywords, and it’s pretty much impossible to compete with them. 

In those instances, websites must shift to long-tail keywords that don’t have much search volume. 

That’s not to say that you can’t kill it with a long-tail keyword strategy, as you definitely can – just that the competition you’ll run into online is no joke. 

To Pay or Not to Pay: The Pros and Cons of PPC Advertising

Now, let’s dissect PPC ads to see if they’re truly worth opening your wallet. 

Note that these pros and cons apply to both Google and Microsoft PPC campaigns. 

Pros 

New website obscurity is real, and it can be a real pain to deal with for new businesses. 

A major advantage of PPC ads is how great they are for new websites. 

With a little keyword research and some bid auctioning, you’ll be off to the races at the top of the SERPs. 

This will help you generate some much-needed traffic to your new site, which is certainly a plus. 

If your landing pages are optimized for conversions, you can generate some considerable revenue with PPC ads. 

Another perk is the amount of control that PPC campaigns provide. 

Unlike SEO, you’ll know precisely where your ads appear on the SERPs, as there’s no guessing involved. Beyond that, you’ll have control over the following factors:

• Locations
• Audiences
• Schedule (when the ads appear) 
• Destination (blog post or landing page)
• Keywords 
• Ad Copy and Message 

This amount of control will improve your chances of generating leads and sales from your PPC ads. 

Cons

As stated previously, if you don’t pay, you can’t play. 

That means as soon as the money runs out, your time running PPC ads will come to an abrupt end. 

Also, there’s no guarantee that a click will turn into a conversion. 

If your CRO isn’t on point or if your customers simply prefer your competitors, your PPC campaign will waste a lot of dollars without generating any in return. 

Not only that, but CPC fees are on the rise due to inflation. 

As a result, CPC campaigns are more expensive than ever before, which definitely isn’t good for newer websites – who, coincidentally, are the ones that need to use PPC ads the most. 

SEO vs. PPC: Making the Right Choice for Your Business 

Now that the two are done duking it out, it’s time to declare a victor. 

What, you didn’t think we were going to hit you with a lame “it depends on the situation” answer, did you?

After much consideration, we feel that SEO is the superior option due to its cost-effectiveness, longevity, and ongoing effectiveness. 

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use PPC whenever you need a quick boost in traffic or to gain visibility for your new website – just that it should always be in tandem with an organic SEO campaign. 

Are you ready to reap the benefits of a successful SEO campaign? Then don’t wait to check out HOTH X, our renowned managed SEO service.     

The post SEO vs. PPC: Which Will Yield the Best Results in 2024? appeared first on The HOTH.

Additionally, search engines direct 300% more traffic to content websites than social media channels. 

So if you want to increase your leads & sales while boosting your overall online visibility – SEO is the way to go. 

The catch?

Since SEO is so effective, it’s also extremely widespread – and many competitive industry rankings are practically set in stone. The companies that dominate the SERP rankings for their niches tend to have loads of high-quality content, flawless technical SEO, and impeccable backlink profiles. 

That means it’ll be incredibly tough to rank in top spots for keywords in competitive niches like finance, real estate, law, and others. 

This causes many small-to-medium-sized businesses to shy away from high-value keywords that have lots of competition. 

Instead, they focus on keywords that have decent search volume and don’t have too many competitors. 

But is this always the best approach to take?

Not always. 

The truth is there are plenty of ways to snag top spots on highly competitive SERP pages; you just need to get creative with your tactics. 

So instead of getting intimidated by high volume, high-difficulty keywords – stay tuned to learn how you can obtain competitive industry rankings without blowing your budget. 

How Can You Tell if a Niche/Keyword is Competitive?

First, you need to know how to identify which industries & keywords have high amounts of competition and which don’t. 

There are several ways to do so, the most common of which is to check a keyword’s difficulty score (KD score), which is a numerical score of 1 – 100 representing how hard it is to rank for a keyword, with 100 being the most difficult. 

Here’s a quick breakdown of what each score range means:

0 – 20 (very low). If the KD score is 20 or lower, there’s next to no competition for the keyword. While it’ll be easier to rank, the search volume for these keywords is also likely very low. 

20 – 35 (low). Keywords in this range are still considered low, but they tend to have higher search volume, making them ideal for smaller companies to target. 

36 – 50 (normal). This is the average difficulty range that most keywords fall under. 

50 – 65 (difficult). Here’s where things start to get interesting. At this difficulty range, you’ll need an airtight SEO strategy if you want to compete. This is also the range that we’ll be discussing in this article. 

66 – 80 (very difficult). Things start to become dicier at this range, but ranking is still doable with the right strategy and an impeccable backlink profile. 

81 – 100 (near impossible). This range is exclusively for mega websites like Amazon, Wikipedia, and eBay. 

Finding keyword difficulty scores 

Where can you find a keyword’s difficulty score?

Our keyword planner tool from The HOTH will display the KD score for any keyword you want, and it’s entirely free to use. 

All you need to do is enter a keyword related to your niche, and the tool will provide you with a long list of relevant keywords. 

Alongside each query, you’ll get to see its KD score. 

As an example, let’s do a basic search for a competitive industry keyword like ‘real estate.’ 

Here’s a glimpse of the results:

Alt tag: Competitive industry ranking for the keyword ‘real estate.’

As you can see, the KD score for each keyword is displayed under Difficulty. 

Also, note the exceptionally high difficulty scores for these keywords, a sign of the competitiveness of real estate SEO. 

Out of these keywords, ‘real estate social network’ (39) and ‘compass real estate’ (50) show the most promise as far as KD score & search volume goes. 

Should you avoid any keyword that has a KD score at or over 70?

Not necessarily.

While the KD score is an accurate assessment of how hard it is to rank for a query, it’s not infallible, and sometimes ranking for a keyword isn’t as difficult as you might think. 

If you have a creative SEO strategy to employ and you want to take advantage of high search volume, don’t let a higher KD score intimidate you. 

Other important competitive industry ranking metrics 

Besides difficulty, another essential metric to pay attention to is a keyword’s search trend. 

This is a line graph that represents the interest in a keyword over time. In particular, you should pay attention to the direction the line points at the end. If it’s pointing up, it’s a sign that the keyword is growing in popularity. If it’s pointing down, interest in the keyword is beginning to fade. 

Ultimately, keywords that have high search volume and are trending up are the ones you should target. 

Another metric that’ll help you gauge the competitiveness of a keyword is its CPC (cost-per-click). 

This lets you know the average cost of a keyword in the PPC (pay-per-click) market. 

Most of the time, the higher the CPC, the more competition there is to rank for a keyword – as it’s a case of supply and demand. 

So if you want to get the most realistic view of a keyword’s competition, pay attention to both its KD score and its CPC. 

If you notice that a keyword has a super high KD score but a very low CPC, one of the metrics may be unreliable – which may be a sign that the keyword isn’t as difficult to rank for as its KD score would imply. 

What are the Most Competitive Industries for SEO?

Some industries and sub-markets have more SEO competition than others, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the context. 

For instance, if a niche doesn’t have much competition online, it could be that A) it’s a newer industry that’s just starting to catch on, and you’re an early adopter (a good thing), or B) that there’s simply not much interest in the topic (a bad thing). 

However, there’s no denying that the industries with the most competition have no shortage of organic visitors to pass around. 

The problem lies in the fact that most of those organic visitors will go to the top few results on the SERPs, leaving everyone else hanging in the wind. 

Which industries are the most competitive on search engines?

To find out, let’s take a look at which industries spent the most on PPC campaigns. This is a good indicator of competition because most companies only use PPC whenever their organic efforts aren’t yielding results – which is usually a sign of steep competition. 

Besides that, PPC campaigns are popular for appearing above the organic SERP results, which is another sign that the industry is fiercely competitive. 

Here’s a list of the industries that spend the most on Google Ads:

• Finance and Insurance
• Retail Sales 
• Travel and Tourism
• Jobs and Education 

Other highly competitive industries for SEO include:

• Legal Services
• Construction Companies 
• Healthcare 
• Car Dealerships 

If your business falls into one of these industries, you’ll likely have no shortage of competitors trying to rank for the same keywords. 

How location affects online competitiveness 

Local businesses face an additional challenge when launching SEO campaigns – which is how geography can affect competition. 

What do we mean by that?

What’s popular in one area might not be as popular in another, which can work for or against you. 

Let’s say that you run a vegan sushi restaurant in Portland, OR. 

Well, the popularity of the keyword ‘vegan sushi’ is bound to be a lot higher in Portland than somewhere like Kansas or Oklahoma. 

If you’re running a vegan sushi spot in Kansas, the good news is that you won’t have much in the way of competition. 

Yet, if you are in Portland, OR, you’ll face tougher competition trying to rank for that keyword than you would somewhere else. 

When to Avoid Attempting to Rank for Competitive Keywords 

While this article is all about standing strong against competitive industry rankings, sometimes being brash isn’t the move to make. 

There are a few instances where you should skip over keywords entirely in favor of other queries, including the following:

• Big brands dominate the top 10. If the top results for a keyword are dominated by the likes of Apple, Amazon, and Wikipedia – your best bet is to fold your hand. In this situation, you’re better off targeting long-tail keywords with less competition. 
• The intent is wrong. Even if a keyword has outstanding metrics, if the search intent isn’t what you’re going for, it’s best to avoid it. For instance, if you thought the intent was commercial, but it’s actually navigational, you should target a keyword that is actually commercial instead. 
• It’s trending down. Remember to pay attention to a keyword’s search trend, either by using our keyword planner or checking Google Trends. If a keyword has high search volume & high competition but is trending down, it’s about to lose its popularity – and you’ll see fewer and fewer organic visitors from it. 
• There are tons of SERP features. Is the SERP for the keyword you’re targeting riddled with SERP features like a featured snippet, image carousels, and a knowledge bar? If so, then even the #1 organic spot is getting overshadowed by the SERP features in position zero, so steer your efforts elsewhere. 

If you notice any of these red flags, you should abandon ship and research other keywords instead. 

How to Rank in Competitive Industries 

So far, we’ve talked a lot about overcoming steep competition to rank higher online, but how do you actually do that?

It’s time to learn how to develop a rock-solid SEO strategy that will lead to higher rankings, even in competitive niches. 

In particular, you need to do the following:

• Closely analyze your top competitors to pinpoint why they’re so successful 
• Reverse engineer their success for your own benefit 
• Employ impeccable technical SEO 
• Create outstanding content that your audience wants to consume 
• Promote your business across multiple channels 
• Bolster your backlink profile 

These are all critical factors for your SEO success, so let’s take a closer look at each one. 

Conducting a competitor analysis 

Your first step should be to size up your top digital competitors. 

Note the word digital here, as your online competitors won’t always be the same as your physical competitors. 

For example, some of your top brick-and-mortar competitors may not even have an online presence, so they won’t cause you any trouble in your SEO pursuits. 

However, there will be other companies out there (that you’ve probably never heard of) that will have a stranglehold on your niche. 

These are the companies that you want to pinpoint and analyze. 

How do you find them?

It’s a long process, but it typically goes like this:

• Conduct searches on Google (and other search engines included in your campaign) for your target keywords (yes, all of them) 
• Write down the businesses that appear in the top 5 results
• Rinse and repeat for your next set of keywords 
• Take note of the domains that keep appearing, as they’ll be your top competitors

Once you’ve found your primary competitors, you’ll need to analyze their content to determine why they’re so successful. 

Do they consistently publish thought leader-level content for their audience? Do they have excellent technical SEO and keyword placement? Do they have an impressive backlink profile?

These are all essential questions to ask when analyzing competitor content. 

Also, don’t forget to use our SEO audit tool to deeply analyze your top competitors. Our backlink checker tool also comes in handy for viewing a domain’s backlinks (which you can attempt to poach). 

Reverse engineering competitor SEO strategies 

Once you know why a competitor is doing so well on the SERPs, there’s no law saying you can’t replicate their success. 

If they’re publishing high-quality content that audiences trust, try to identify ways that you can not only publish similar content but also outdo them. 

Tips for outdoing competitor content include:

• Creating detailed infographics for the topic 
• Adding original insights and tips that aren’t present in the original piece 
• Using more high-resolution images that directly relate to the topic 
• Shooting a helpful video that goes into more depth than the original post 

These are all ways that you can create fantastic content that outdoes your competition. 

Also, when taking a look at a competitor’s backlink profile, identify the links that have the most impact – i.e., the ones coming from domains with high authority. 

If you find backlinks that you know will boost your own profile, you can attempt to snag them for yourself. 

If you’ve already created a piece of content that outdoes the original piece they linked to, a webmaster is likely to link to your piece of content instead – as that will benefit their SEO, too. 

Master your technical SEO  

Technical SEO is important for any search engine campaign, but it’s doubly crucial when attempting to rank for competitive keywords. 

That’s because the increased competition will greatly reduce your margin for error.

If you want to reach the top of the SERPs for a competitive keyword, you can’t have any indexing errors, slow loading times, or a poorly structured website. 

To refresh your technical SEO chops, you can check out our extensive technical SEO checklist. 

Here’s the condensed version:

• Your website needs to pass the Core Web Vitals Test (page speed) 
• Google Search Console’s Indexing Report will help you resolve any crawling/indexing errors
• A flat site architecture works best (where every page is a few links away from the homepage) 
• Responsive website design works best as it can display on both desktops and mobile devices 
• Website security is a must (HTTPS and SSL certificates) 

Use a multi-channel approach 

Off-page SEO matters, too, so you shouldn’t neglect to promote your business through other channels. 

In particular, social signals affect SERP rankings, so you should have a presence on all the major social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.). 

That’s especially true when considering certain demographics, such as using TikTok to appeal to Gen Z and LinkedIn for Gen X and older crowds. 

Creating content for video-sharing websites like YouTube is another way you can build your online reputation and drum up traffic for your site. 

So, in addition to posting regular blog content, you should also post on social media sites, video-sharing platforms, and more. 

Acquire high-authority backlinks 

If your SEO campaign primarily revolves around Google, then link-building needs to comprise a large portion of your strategy. 

Backlinks don’t matter as much for search engines like Bing & Yahoo, but they will still boost your online visibility to a degree. 

You need to target websites that have high domain authority scores to get the most bang for your SEO buck. 

To master the art of link-building, you can check out our HOTH guide to getting backlinks. 

Here are some quick link-building tips and tactics:

• You can target link insertions by reaching out to webmasters to insert backlinks into their existing pieces of content. 
• Guest blog posting is a popular way to obtain backlinks.
• Replacing broken links online is a white-hat tactic for acquiring links. 
• Getting listed on directories like Yelp will generate backlinks. 

The stronger your link profile is, the stronger your chances are of ranking higher on Google. 

Final Thoughts: Competitive Industry Rankings 

Certain industries have more competitive SEO than others, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t reach the top of the SERPs. 

By analyzing, copying, and outdoing your competitors, you can claim your rightful spot in the top 5 results on search engines like Google and Bing. 

Improving your link profile and creating outstanding content will also help your chances. 

Does your business need help penetrating the top SERP results for your competitive industry?

Then don’t wait to check out our HOTH X, our SEO service customized for you. Our experts will help you gain a loyal following of brand evangelists, so don’t wait to get in touch today.        

The post Competitive Industry Ranking: SEO Tips for Crowded Markets appeared first on The HOTH.

Backlinks are an essential ranking factor for Google’s search algorithms, as they value websites that get lots of links from trusted, authoritative websites. 

Out of all the ways to obtain backlinks, there’s a lot of debate surrounding link insertions vs. guest posts. 

Both are methods that can land you backlinks, but which works better?

In particular, which method will generate the most authoritative backlinks for you at the lowest cost in terms of time and money?

These are the questions that we’re here to answer today.

Link-building is one of the most effective SEO tactics, as 67.5% of digital marketing experts agree that backlinks have a significant impact on SERP (search engine results pages) rankings. 

However, it’s also one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of SEO. 

In fact, 65% of marketers feel that link-building is the most difficult & challenging part of optimizing a site for search engines. 

Since link-building is so effective yet challenging, finding the best technique to build backlinks is crucial – which is where link insertions and guest posts come into play. 

Should you target existing posts to insert your backlinks, or is opting to create guest blogs the better option?

Both methods have unique advantages and disadvantages, so stay tuned as we compare and contrast link insertions vs. guest posts. 

What are Link Insertions?

Let’s start by defining link insertions, which you’ll see go by several different names online. 

Link insertions are also called contextual links, link placements, and niche edits. 

So what are they?

Regardless of the name, they all refer to the same thing – placing a backlink into an existing post on a relevant website. 

For instance, if you’re in the fitness niche, you could target other fitness blogs and websites for link placements. 

Scroll through their blog archive until you find a post that aligns with one of your target pages (i.e., the pages you want to acquire backlinks for). It could be that the post mentions a similar topic or one of your products could be a perfect fit for the content. 

To try and snag a link placement, you would then reach out to the webmaster to ask if you can place a link on the page you found. 

To sweeten the pot, you can offer a few ways to update the post and make it fresh again, such as adding new insights. 

That’ll increase your chances of securing the link insertion since it’ll be beneficial to the webmaster to update an aging piece of content – making it relevant & rankable again. 

Another way to convince webmasters to add your links is to offer money or another type of reward in exchange for the placement.

However, this is technically against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, hence why offering money for link placements is considered a ‘gray hat’ technique. 

How Do You Target Link Insertions?

There are a few ways to go about acquiring link insertions, and they don’t always involve bribing web admins with money – which is good news. 

The ‘white hat’ way to acquire link insertions is to offer value to the webmaster – either by updating their content or offering something else of value, like a guest post spot on your blog in return. 

These methods are far less likely to land you in hot water with Google, which is why they’re considered ‘white hat’ (the good guy way). 

However, targeting these types of link insertions tends to be the most time-consuming, which is why some site owners choose the gray hat route instead. 

Two other methods for targeting link insertions are finding broken links and unlinked brand mentions online. 

Broken link-building 

Link rot is a very real phenomenon that affects every website in existence, regardless of industry. 

It’s where links no longer point to their original destination, either because they’ve been relocated to a new address or aren’t available anymore. 

According to a link rot study by Ahrefs, approximately 66.5% of links placed in the last 9 years are now dead.

The good news?

Broken links are goldmines for link insertions, as you can find broken links on related websites and replace them with a link to your content instead. 

This is another mutually beneficial technique, as the webmaster gets to get rid of a broken link (which is notoriously bad for SEO), and you get a link insertion. 

Ahrefs has a broken link checker tool that you can use to uncover dead links on websites in your niche. 

You’ll want to find websites that have excellent metrics; otherwise, acquiring a backlink from them won’t do you any good. 

You can use our free backlink checker tool from The HOTH to gauge the quality of each domain. If the website has a strong domain authority score, it’s worth pursuing a link insertion. 

However, websites that have poor link profiles aren’t worth your time, so don’t target a link insertion until you find the right site to target. 

Unlinked brand mentions 

Even if your site isn’t a household name, there are likely instances where other websites mention your brand online but fail to link to you.

It could be that a blog mentioned your business or a website may have reviewed one of your products. 

They mention your brand, which is great, but they didn’t link back to your website. 

These are known as unlinked brand mentions, and they’re excellent targets for link insertions. 

After all, the website already mentioned your business, so why not take the extra step and add a link back to your site?

What’s great about these unlinked mentions is that you get to choose which page you want the link to point at, so it doesn’t have to be your homepage only. 

Ideally, you should try to build an adequate number of links for each page that you want to dominate the SERP rankings. So if you can find an unlinked brand mention, you should link to your pages that are in desperate need of link juice.

To find them, you can use advanced search modifiers on Google. 

By searching for ‘site:yourdomain.com,’ you can find instances where other websites mentioned you. 

There are other modifiers you can use, too, like the exact match modifier “query” or the similar query modifier ‘Query OR query.’

Besides searching for your brand name, you can also try searching for prominent employees, your products, and company phrases/slogans. 

The Advantages of Link Insertions 

Now that you know more about link insertions and how to target them, why should you bother? What are the upsides of using link placements over other link-building techniques?

Here’s a breakdown of all the benefits of using link insertions. 

Outreach is quick and easy

Conducting outreach for link insertions tends to be far less time-consuming than guest posts. 

Instead of pitching a brand-new piece of content, you’re simply asking to place a link in an existing piece. 

Since outreach is so simple, you’ll be able to reach out to twice as many websites as you would with guest posts. 

You can target any website in your niche 

Guest posts are limited in that you can only write for websites that accept guest posts. 

You don’t have that problem with link insertions, so any website that posts related content is fair game. 

The posts are already indexed

This benefit is a really significant one. Whenever you place links in existing posts, they’re already in Google’s index. 

That means you won’t have to wait long to see the backlink’s impact on your SERP rankings. 

Whenever you create a brand-new guest post, you have to wait for Google to index it – which can take weeks or even months. 

The Drawbacks of Link Insertions 

It’s not all peaches and roses with link insertions, as there are some noticeable downsides. 

For one, even white hat techniques can land you in hot water with Google at times, as, technically, any form of link-building violates their guidelines. 

Another drawback is it can be difficult to convince web admins to add links to their existing pieces, especially if you don’t have any ways to add further value to the post. 

What are Guest Posts?

Guest posting is a tried-and-true link-building tactic that’s been around for a while. 

It involves writing guest blog posts for other websites in your niche in exchange for a link that points back to your site. 

In addition to acquiring a backlink, guest posts also expose your content and brand to a new audience, which is a bonus. 

For a guest post to count toward your link profile, it needs to take place on a relevant website that directly relates to your content. 

That means you won’t be able to target just any website for a guest post, only related blogs in your industry.

If the guest posts you create truly add value to your target audience, they’ll help you build authority, generate more traffic, and convert users into customers. 

It’s common for two blogs to trade guest posts; that way, each website benefits from a backlink and exposure to a new audience. 

How long should a guest post be to see the best results?

In general, your guest posts should always be long-form and contain at least 2,000 – 3,000 words. 

Research has shown that users are more likely to share long-form content over shorter posts, as they tend to be more informative and educational. 

How Do You Target Guest Posts?

Targeting guest posts is a tad on the tricky side, as you can only target websites that accept guest posts – and not all do.

That’s why link insertions are easier to target than guest posts, as you aren’t limited to sites that accept outside posts. 

However, obtaining guest posts is by no means impossible; you just need to know where to look. 

Once again, advanced search operators on Google are here to save the day. 

The easiest way to use them is to copy this format: your niche keyword “guest post.”

Here’s an example for the fitness industry: fitness “guest post.”

Since ‘guest post’ is in quotations, Google will display exact matches for it, and you’ll get to see a list of fitness websites that accept guest posts. 

The Advantages of Guest Posts 

Why should you target guest posts instead of link insertions?

Well, there are a few benefits you’ll enjoy that you won’t if you only use link insertions. 

Here’s a look at the top perks of using guest posts to acquire backlinks. 

They help establish you as a thought leader 

Acquiring thought leadership status is a big part of the SEO/content marketing game, especially if you want to build a loyal following. 

An edge guest posts have over link insertions is the content you create will build your authority and reputation with your target audience. 

Guest posts can generate referral traffic 

If you produce high-quality content for your guest post, you’ll likely see referral traffic. That’s where avid readers of the other blog discover your website and start reading your blogs. 

That doesn’t really happen with older articles that only receive one of your links and not much else. 

The Downsides of Guest Posting 

While guest posting can be beneficial, it takes countless hours of outreach. 

In fact, you may go back and forth with several web admins and not even land a single guest spot. 

Besides that, writing guest posts takes a lot of time and money. 

That’s especially true when you consider that most guest posts need to be long-form, requiring even more effort than a standard blog post. 

Lastly, it takes a long time for new guest posts to appear in Google’s index. That means you’ll have to wait quite a while to see the impact of the backlink on your link profile. 

The Final Verdict: Link Insertions vs. Guest Posts 

By now, you’ve seen the advantages and disadvantages of both link insertions and guest posts. 

Which link-building technique won the battle?

For us, the best option is always to use a combination of link-building techniques, and there’s no rule that says you can’t use link insertions and guest posting in tandem. 

Do you need help developing a successful link-building strategy for your business?

Then don’t wait to check out our insanely effective link outreach services from The HOTH. Our link-building gurus will generate real results for your business, so don’t wait to get in touch now.     

The post Link Insertions vs. Guest Posts: Which Works Better for SEO? appeared first on The HOTH.

However, to achieve such impressive numbers, your content must be flawlessly optimized for maximum online visibility. 

That means conducting regular SEO audits to catch & resolve issues that could threaten your SERP rankings. 

You need to look out for indexing errors, outdated keywords, poor loading times, and duplicate content during your audits – as they can negatively affect your SEO. 

As a rule of thumb, it’s wise to conduct SEO audits two to four times a year to catch issues before they arise. 

Links rot over time, keywords trend down, and search engines like Google are constantly updating their algorithm, which is why you need to keep a keen eye trained on the health of your SEO profile. 

Another reason to conduct an audit is if you see sudden changes to your rankings. If you wake up one day and check Google Analytics to see that your organic traffic saw a steep drop off almost overnight, conducting a flash SEO audit should be your next step. 

Quite a bit should go into an SEO audit, and it can be pretty overwhelming if you don’t have a detailed checklist to follow. 

That’s why we’ve put together this extensive SEO audit checklist to help you ensure you’ve covered all the bases – so stay tuned to learn how to conduct a thorough SEO audit. 

What’s an SEO Audit, Anyway?

Even if you put together the perfect SEO strategy, time will always take its toll on your website’s content. 

It’s inevitable that technical, on-page, and link-related issues will arise over time, and they can wreak havoc on the strategy you worked so hard to put in place. 

The only way to fight back against this is to conduct thorough SEO audits several times a year. That will help you catch indexing errors and broken links before they have a chance to affect your search engine rankings. 

SEO audits involve making tweaks to your website (and off-page content) to improve your performance on search engines, most notably Google. 

Not only that, but the search habits of your target audience are subject to change over time. 

In other words, the keywords they were searching for when you did your keyword research 6 months ago probably aren’t the same ones they’re searching for now. 

Accordingly, you may need to update your target keywords to maintain your online visibility. If the keywords you optimized your content for are trending down, it’s worth conducting updated keyword research to find which queries are trending up. 

Besides keywords, you also need to keep an eye out for indexing errors that could potentially remove your website from the SERPs entirely. 

Broken links will also affect your SEO, as do backlinks from websites that took a hit to their domain authority. 

Given the wide variety of issues you need to watch out for, there are several different types of SEO audits. 

Types of SEO audits 

Sometimes you may only need to audit a particular aspect of your SEO strategy instead of auditing everything as a whole. 

For instance, if you’re only out to fix a few technical issues (such as switching from HTTP to HTTPS or improving page speed), you won’t need to engage in a complete SEO audit. 

Here’s a look at the most common types of SEO audits digital marketers conduct. 

Content audit

An in-depth content audit involves finding opportunities to improve the accuracy, relevancy, recency, and quality of your website’s content – including blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts, and more. 

For your content pieces that aren’t evergreen (content that doesn’t age and continues to generate traffic), you’ll need to periodically update them to stay relevant. 

That includes all your blogs that have years in the title (i.e., the best SEO strategy for 2022 needs to be updated to 2023) and that cover topics that may have become outdated (Google E-A-T blogs need to include the extra E now). 

Speaking of E-E-A-T, it’ll be your guide for optimizing your existing content. 

The acronym stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. 

Experience is the extra E that you need to update your content for if you haven’t already. Google now favors content that shows first-hand experience on topics, so be sure to share any real-world experience you have in your articles. 

For instance, if you’re writing a review about a product you’ve actually used before, mention that in the article – and do your best to include proof like pictures, videos, and experiences you had when using the product. 

Content audits also involve optimizing your content for SERP features like image carousels and featured snippets. 

A great tool to help out with this is Google’s Rich Results Testing Tool (more on this in a bit), as it will confirm that your content is able to generate rich results (SERP features) based on your structured data. 

On-page SEO audit 

An on-page SEO audit differs from a content audit in that your primary focus is on your keyword usage & metadata instead of the content itself. 

Keyword placement is the name of the game here, and you need to ensure that your keywords are in all the optimal spots, including the following:

• In your H1 and H2 tags 
• In the first 100 words of the article
• Organically throughout the body text 
• In the conclusion
• In the title tag and meta description
• In your image alt text & file names 

Besides checking your keyword placement, you also need to check the relevancy of your keywords. 

It could be that a keyword you targeted 6 months ago has fallen off in popularity, bringing any blogs you have optimized for it down with the ship. 

For these articles, you need to decide if it’s worth doing keyword research to target a new set of keywords or if you should simply create fresh content. 

Bear in mind that when you change target keywords, you’ll negatively affect your SEO for the original keyword while boosting it for your new one. As such, you need to make sure that your original keyword isn’t about to see a resurgence in popularity, as you’ll no longer be ranking for it. 

One of the best tools to uncover which keywords you should target is Google Trends. 

Not only will it show you the current search volume for each keyword, but you’ll also see a graph representing its trend (user interest in it). 

Technical SEO audit 

Technical SEO refers to tweaking all the technical aspects of your website that affect your SEO profile. 

In particular, the goal is to make your website as easy to crawl & index for search engines as possible. 

Google’s web bots can easily get confused if your site isn’t up to their standards, such as sites that have duplicate content, broken links, and 404 errors. 

These issues can affect your SEO in a big way, such as disappearing from the SERPs altogether due to an indexing error. 

Technical SEO audits, then, are how you gauge the effectiveness of the technical aspects of your website. 

Core components include your website’s loading speed, XML sitemap, site architecture, internal linking structure, and Schema markup. 

If you wake up one day and find that your website has vanished from Google’s result pages, your technical SEO is likely the culprit, and an audit should be your very next step. 

Mobile-friendliness is also key for technical SEO, primarily because Google practices mobile-first indexing. That means your website needs to either incorporate a responsive design or create a mobile version for your website if you want to appear in the SERPs. 

Security is another core aspect of technical SEO, as HTTPS & SSL certificates are preferred by search engines, especially for eCommerce stores & sites that contain user medical information. So if you haven’t made the switch for your website, a technical audit is the perfect time to do so. 

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you with this, you can check out HOTH Technical SEO. 

Local SEO audit 

Do you run a local business?

If so, then local SEO will comprise the majority of your efforts, hence the need for a local SEO audit several times a year. 

Local SEO is a tad different from traditional SEO, as your Google My Business profile plays a large role in how successful you are with it. The more you can optimize your GMB profile, the more visibility you’ll enjoy on Google’s local results, such as the map pack & local pack. 

These are SERP features that highlight local businesses whenever users search for key local SEO phrases like ‘near me’ or ‘in the neighborhood.’ 

Whenever you’re conducting a local SEO audit, you need to ensure that you’re using a local keyword strategy that contains your location or phrases like ‘in my town.’ 

However, keyword usage and placement remain the same as any other SEO strategy. You want to make sure that your keywords appear in strategic locations, like your meta title and H1 tag. 

Directories also play a big role in local SEO, as you’ll want to ensure you’re still listed on sites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Yahoo Places, and Manta.

Additionally, local SEO audits still require technical tweaks like improving site speed, using HTTPS & SSL certificates, and utilizing a flat site architecture. 

It’s crucial not to forget to optimize these technical factors when conducting a local SEO audit; otherwise, indexing errors & page speed issues could hold your SEO back in a big way. 

Essential SEO Audit Tools 

It’s practically impossible to conduct SEO audits without using at least a few tools to help you. That’s because there’s no way to manually view crucial SEO metrics like dwell time, bounce rate, keyword rankings, and page load times. 

You’ll want to leverage as many free tools as you can, like all the fantastic offerings from Google. 

Other tools, like our SEO Audit Tool from The HOTH, will provide detailed reports that’ll provide detailed insights into the strength of your SEO profile. 

Then there are web crawlers like Screaming Frog that will help you uncover essential technical SEO issues like broken links, duplicate content, and 404 errors. 

Here’s a look at some of the most effective tools you can use for your SEO audits. 

Google Search Console (GSC)

First, let’s take a look at arguably the most important SEO tool for marketers, Google Search Console. 

It’s a free offering from Google that allows you to view how Google sees your website, which is invaluable for SEOs. 

For instance, you’ll get to view your organic traffic numbers, SERP rankings, referring domains (backlinks), and if there are any indexing errors. 

If Google isn’t able to successfully crawl & index your website, you won’t appear in the SERPs, rendering all your SEO efforts useless. 

That’s why adding your site to GSC is such a necessity, as you’ll be able to see if Google is able to index all your pages. If there are any errors, the Page Indexing Report will let you know exactly what went wrong (and provide suggestions for how to fix them). 

Another essential step is to create an XML sitemap and upload it to Google Search Console to ensure its bots have full visibility of all your web pages. Without a sitemap, Google’s crawlers may miss certain pages on your site that you want to be indexed, such as blog posts or videos. 

You’ll need a Google account to access GSC, so you’ll need to create one if you don’t have one already. From there, go to the GSC website and select your property type. You can choose from a domain or a URL prefix. If you have a domain, you’ll need to include all URLs across your subdomains. 

Also, if your website supports both HTTP & HTTPS, you’ll have to enter each separately. 

Google PageSpeed Insights 

Your website’s loading speed is a huge deal for your SEO profile, especially because of Google’s Core Web Vitals Test.

Google wants to provide the best experience it can for its users, and it doesn’t want to frustrate them by ranking websites that take forever to load in top spots. 

That’s why every web page Google crawls is subject to the Core Web Vitals Test, which runs a series of tests on your site’s loading speed. Besides loading the page in the blink of an eye, the test also checks how quickly users can begin interacting with the site.

If the thought of the test has you sweating bullets, fear not – as Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is your ticket to a passing grade. 

It’ll grade your overall website speed on a scale of 1 – 100, and it provides detailed breakdowns of essential speed metrics such as:

• First Input Delay (FID)
• First Contentful Paint (FCP)
• Time to Interactive (TTI)
• First Meaningful Paint (FMP)
• Speed index 

Another perk of the tool is that it provides a complete breakdown of all the issues holding back your speed, as well as recommendations for how to fix them. 

Its suggestions for improving speed include the following:

• Minify Javascript & CSS
• Encode images efficiently 
• Enabling text compression

Yet, one significant drawback is that Google PageSpeed Insights only uses approximated data, not your actual speeds. It’s for this reason that it’s best to use more than one tool to check your website’s loading speed, such as GTMetrix. 

Google Rich Results Testing Tool 

If you want your content to appear in featured snippets, the knowledge bar, and the ‘People Also Ask’ sections on Google, you must have properly formatted structured data markup. 

Otherwise, Google won’t be able to generate rich results from your content, nullifying all your efforts. 

The Google Rich Results Testing Tool is perfect for ensuring that your Schema markup is capable of generating rich results. All you have to do is enter your URL and hit the Test URL button for the tool to work its magic. 

If you see a large green check mark, your structured data is well-optimized, and Google will be able to generate rich results. In fact, the tool lets you know which rich results you qualify for, and you have the ability to preview what they’d look like. 

Rich results (also called SERP features) allow you to obtain position zero on Google, which appears above both paid ads and organic search results. It’s a powerful position to have, as it’s basically a guarantee that you’ll see a ton of traffic from it. 

If there are any errors with your Schema markup, you’ll see a red exclamation point along with explanations of what went wrong. 

That’ll make troubleshooting structured data issues a breeze, as you won’t have to play a guessing game & will know exactly where the problems lie. 

You also have the option of selecting which user agent (a standard Googlebot vs. Googlebot for smartphones) to crawl your web page. That gives you the ability to preview how rich results will look on mobile devices like smartphones & tablets, which will help you reach a larger audience. 

Google Analytics 

Yet another essential free offering from Google is Google Analytics, a tool that helps you gain insights into your target audience & primary sources of organic traffic. 

Not only is it a must-have tool for monitoring the progress of your SEO strategy, but it’s also invaluable for SEO audits. 

The Acquisition and Channel Grouping Reports are excellent for determining your highest-performing web pages and pieces of content. You’ll be able to find out the following:

• Which keywords are driving the most traffic
• Your highest-performing landing pages
• Which channels drive the most traffic 

GA will also provide essential metrics like your bounce rate, dwell time, average session length, and more. 

That’s not to mention all the insights you can gain about your target audience from it. GA contains detailed information about your customer’s buying habits, online behaviors, and demographics. 

You can use this data to help create detailed customer avatars (if you haven’t already). Not only that, but accessing the Audience Dashboard will provide plenty of insights for your SEO audit. For instance, if you need to rethink your content strategy, the customer information on GA can help you rethink how you speak to your target audience. 

Last but not least, the Conversion Dashboard should be your go-to for finding out how effective your content is at generating sales. You also have the ability to set goals that the tool tracks for you, making it easier to improve your conversion rates and earn more revenue. 

Google Analytics also integrates with GSC, so it’s worth connecting the two to get the most value out of each tool for your SEO audits. 

Screaming Frog 

An integral part of any SEO audit is uncovering duplicate content and broken links, and Screaming Frog excels at both. 

It’s a website crawler that can perform tons of tasks to help your SEO audit & technical SEO, including:

• Checking response codes
• Checking your URL structures
• Examining your site architecture
• Optimizing images
• Testing SERP snippets
• Correcting page titles
• Analyzing meta descriptions
• Generating XML sitemaps

As you can see, Screaming Frog is a highly versatile tool for site audits. 

It’s particularly useful for learning more about your site architecture, which can help you improve it. To keep web bots happy, you need a logical structure for all your internal links. That’ll also help you avoid orphan pages (which you can also uncover using Screaming Frog). 

If you don’t have an XML sitemap for your website yet, you can use Screaming Frog to create one. From there, you can submit it to GSC for improved indexing of your web pages. 

Your URL structure also needs to remain consistent to help with indexing, and you can use Screaming Frog to get an overview of your URLs. That’ll make it easy to identify any URLs that deviate from your formula, which you can then correct.

Lastly, the tool makes it a breeze to optimize the images on your site for improved page speed. 

You should try to keep your images under 100kb for the sake of your loading times, and Screaming Frog makes it easy to get an overview of all images over 100kb, both with and without alt text. 

HOTH SEO Audit Tool 

Our free SEO Audit Tool from The HOTH will provide you with a comprehensive breakdown of your SEO profile. 

It’s your one-stop shop for gathering all the data you need to improve your website’s SEO. 

You receive an overall grade for the strength of your SEO, as well as individual scores for the following:

• On-page SEO 
• Links
• Usability 
• Performance 
• Social 

You’ll get to see our top recommendations for improving your SEO, such as removing duplicate H1 tags, shortening meta descriptions to the recommended length (between 70 and 160 characters), and adding alt text to images – just to name a few. 

Our tool also provides recommendations for keyword placement to boost your online SEO, and you’ll get to see a breakdown of your backlink profile. 

In addition, there’s a helpful technical SEO checklist to ensure everything is up to par behind the scenes, such as the presence of a robots.txt file and an SSL certificate. 

The Essential SEO Audit Checklist 

You’ve got your tools ready, and you know the basics of what an SEO audit entails, so now it’s time to get down to business. 

Here’s the definitive audit checklist you need to follow to improve your website’s SEO and keep your content up-to-date. 

Ensure your site is mobile friendly 

Google began rolling out its mobile-first algorithm in 2018, and mobile-friendliness has been a necessity for SEO ever since. 

What’s mobile-first indexing?

Essentially, it means that Google prioritizes indexing mobile sites before desktop sites. 

They made this decision because a whopping amount of searches come from mobile devices (60%), and desktop sites with no mobile version provide a poor user experience (stretched dimensions, disappearing menus, etc.). 

It also means that the mobile version of your website will appear for both mobile AND desktop searches. 

So if you only have a desktop version of your website, your SEO profile will be in serious trouble. 

Mobile sites are cumbersome to maintain and outdated, as the main way to ensure mobile-friendliness is to use a responsive website design. That’s where your website is able to display correctly on both mobile devices and desktops, so you’ll still appear in the SERPs – even with mobile-first indexing. 

How do you determine whether your website is optimized for mobile devices or not?

You can use Google’s Mobile Friendly Testing Tool to find out in no time. Enter your URL into the tool, hit Run Test, and you’ll get to see if your site runs properly on mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, the tool will tell you what’s wrong and how to fix it. 

Conversely, you can also check the Mobile Usability Report found within Google Search Console, as it performs the same function. 

Audit your site architecture & URL structure 

What does your site architecture look like?

If you aren’t sure, you can use a web crawler like Screaming Frog to find out. 

Ideally, you want to use a flat site architecture, where each page is only a few clicks away from the homepage. 

If your site architecture is messy and unorganized, it could lead to orphan pages – which have no internal links pointing at them. That means it’s highly unlikely that they’ll be indexed by web bots, and it’ll be practically impossible for your users to find them. 

Let’s say that you spend quite a bit of time and money on producing a helpful video tutorial for your target audience. Well, if you have a poor site structure and the page gets orphaned, all your hard work is for nothing – and you won’t generate any organic traffic with your video. 

That’s why it’s imperative to get your site architecture in shape, as your SEO and user experience will both benefit as a result. 

Whenever you create a new web page, make sure that you have an internal link pointing to it. 

Also, Screaming Frog can help you get a basic understanding of your site architecture, but the tool isn’t very visual. A tool like PowerMapper will display your website’s architecture in a visual format that’s easy to digest, which can make it easier to fix. 

Your URL structure also matters, as it needs to remain consistent to avoid confusing web crawlers. Once you develop a desirable URL structure, stick to it like glue. Screaming Frog will help you quickly find any URLs that don’t follow your structure during your audit. 

Check for indexing errors

Next, you need to check Google Search Console to see if any of your web pages have run into indexing errors. 

The Page Index Report provides an overview of the indexing status of all your web pages. You’ll get to see how many pages are indexed vs. aren’t, and there’s a visual representation of how your pages have been indexed over time. 

Underneath this is the Why Pages Aren’t Indexed section, which is where you’ll address any and all indexing errors. 

It’s crucial to go through this list one by one, as all it takes is one indexing error to remove one of your highest-performing pages from the SERPs. 

Also, don’t panic if not all your web pages are indexed, as it’s perfectly normal not to index every page on your website. In fact, you shouldn’t try to index every page, as doing so will eat up your crawl budget. 

Pages that you shouldn’t bother indexing include:

• Product pages that have canonical tags (i.e., different colors & sizes of products) 
• Admin pages 
• Log-in pages
• Thank you pages
• Author archives

In short, any web page that you don’t need to generate organic traffic should receive a noindex tag. You’ll also be able to view all your non-indexed pages on GSC to ensure that none of your essential marketing content received a noindex tag by mistake. 

Common indexing errors include soft 404s, 404 errors, broken links, and unauthorized requests (401). In most cases, you can solve most 404 errors by using a 301 redirect to a different page with similar content. 

Look for duplicate versions of your website 

You need to ensure that Google is only indexing one version of your website, as duplicates can cause serious problems. 

There are various versions of a URL that your site could sit on, such as whether it uses HTTPS or a WWW or not. 

For example, these could all be versions of the same website:

• http://www.mysite.com
• http://mysite.com
• https:///www.mysite.com
• https://mysite.com

That makes four variations of the same URL that could lead to your website. 

Yet, you need to make sure that Google only indexes one of these; otherwise, it will cause all kinds of trouble in crawling, indexing, and ranking your web pages. That’s because Google will see each other version of your site as a duplicate, which it views as spam. 

In some cases, this can even dilute your link equity, negatively affecting your SERP rankings. That means your backlinks (and links from your site) will carry less clout in the eyes of Google, which isn’t good. 

How do you fix this problem?

It’s actually pretty simple. 

Enter each variation into the same web browser, and see which version it redirects to. If one of your URLs isn’t redirecting properly, use a 301 redirect to your preferred version. 

As long as all the variations redirect to your preferred version, you won’t run into any crawling, indexing, or ranking errors. 

Find and get rid of duplicate content 

Besides duplicated versions of your website, you’ll also want to get rid of any duplicate content hanging around your website. 

Google penalizes duplicate content, so it’s definitely not something you want to do on purpose. 

In the past, black hat SEOs used to create duplicate pages (or pages that were nearly identical except for a few things) to artificially boost the amount of content they could generate in the hopes of generating more traffic. 

In today’s age, duplicate content is usually the result of a mistake or not using canonical tags. 

eCommerce stores run into issues with duplicate content all the time, as they usually have product pages that are almost identical except for one key detail (i.e., different product pages for the various colors & sizes of a product). 

If the only difference between two product pages is the color of a hat, Google will flag it as duplicate content. 

The solution?

Designating the vanilla version of the product as ‘canon’ via a canonical tag will solve this issue. All the variations of the canon page won’t get indexed by Google, and you won’t have to deal with duplicate content. 

Another cause for duplicate content is if your CMS system generates new pages that look similar but haven’t been properly canonicalized in GSC. WordPress has been known to do this with archive pages, so keep an eye on the content your CMS creates to avoid getting hit with a penalty for duplicate content. 

Uncover and fix thin content 

Google doesn’t like to see thin content just as much as it doesn’t want to see duplicate content. 

What’s thin content?

Content qualifies as ‘thin’ whenever it contains little to no value to the user. It also tends to see pages that have less than 700 words as thin, especially if they’re blog posts. 

Google has been on the lookout for thin content ever since the Panda update in 2011, so you’ll need to beef up any thin web pages you have on your site (or delete them). 

Non-original pages are also viewed as thin, so copying & pasting a ton of words from other websites won’t cut it. For content to be deemed valuable, it has to contain original insights and valuable information. Whenever beefing up thin content, remember Google’s E-E-A-T algorithm. 

Your content should exhibit first-hand experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness – and you won’t be able to do that with a 200-word blog post that contains no original thoughts. 

When looking for thin content, first look at your highest-performing pages, as they’ll matter most for your SERP rankings. Ensure that they all have a sufficient word count (at least 1,000 or 2,000 words) and contain original insights that are valuable to your target audience.

After that’s done, you can take a look at the rest of your website. 

If you have older blogs that are thin and aren’t very useful to your audience, it’s best to delete them instead of spending time trying to beef them up. 

Improve your on-page SEO 

Now it’s time to take a look at crucial on-page SEO elements for your web pages – the biggest of which is keyword placement. 

You need to place your target keywords in all the right spots, including in your metadata & HTML title tags. 

You also need to seek out missing meta tags, images with no alt text, missing internal links (at least 5 per page), and missing external links (at least 5 per page). 

You also need to closely analyze the keywords you’re currently ranking for to determine if there’s any room for improvement. 

Additionally, it’s not necessary to optimize every single page on your website. 

That process would take countless hours for larger websites, and thankfully, you only need to optimize a handful of your most important pages. 

Identify your top 5 pages that target crucial keywords, have fallen off in traffic, and have the potential to crack the top 10 Google results. 

Speed up your website 

The final item on the checklist is to check and improve (if necessary) your website’s loading speed. 

Loading times are a confirmed Google ranking factor, and internet users can’t stand websites that load slowly – so you have every incentive to improve your website’s speed. 

PageSpeed Insights is the tool to use here, and you should use it on more than just your homepage. You also need to test the loading times for your blogs, videos, and service pages. 

Large images (over 100kb) are notorious for slowing down websites, so you should compress all your images that exceed that size (remember, you can use Screaming Frog to find them). 

Other techniques for speeding up your site include minimizing Javascript, upgrading your web hosting, and reducing the number of plugins you have. 

Final Takeaways: SEO Audits 

SEO rankings aren’t permanent, and websites go through many unseen changes every day – hence the need for regular SEO audits. 

Following this checklist will ensure your website is fully optimized to perform as best as it can on search engines, leading to more traffic, leads, and sales. 

Do you need help developing a winning SEO strategy for your business?

Then you need to check out our fantastic managed SEO services at HOTH X. Our digital marketing gurus will revolutionize your SEO strategy – and we know how to conduct comprehensive SEO audits to keep you on the top of the mountain. 

We also provide in-depth technical SEO services, so don’t wait to check them out now.     

The post The Most Comprehensive SEO Audit Checklist for 2023 & Beyond appeared first on The HOTH.