Are you ready to double your search traffic ? Understanding SEO is crucial to significantly increase your traffic and brand awareness. Right now, thousands of people are looking for content just like yours. You can help them find it by becoming an SEO expert. In fact, 40 percent of website traffic begins with a search query. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. Staying on top of SEO takes a lot of research and experimentation. Google’s algorithms are constantly updated, so it’s important to stay tuned into the latest news. With a bit of practice, you can become your own SEO expert. That’s what I did! Every day, people use Google to conduct over 3.5 billion searches . In the U.S., 78% of people use the web to research products and services before buying. Once your website begins to rank on the first pages of Google’s search results, …

The SEO community is always looking for new ranking factors and we have discovered over two hundred of them so far. But there may be hundreds more actually used by Google. Luckily, we don’t have to work on all of them. Most have very little weight in SEO and are often used as tie-breakers rather than ranking signals. Instead, here is the definitive list of Google ranking factors, each of which can make or break your search optimization strategy. 1. Backlinks Even though Google is planning to move away from backlinks in the future, they still remain the most important ranking factor for your pages. Except it is now too risky to use black hat SEO strategies — your links have to come from a variety of high authority websites that are similar to yours. Furthermore, some Google patents say that freshness and traffic may also be important backlink metrics. …

The SEO community is always looking for new ranking factors and we have discovered over two hundred of them so far. But there may be hundreds more actually used by Google. Luckily, we don’t have to work on all of them. Most have very little weight in SEO and are often used as tie-breakers rather than ranking signals. Instead, here is the definitive list of Google ranking factors, each of which can make or break your search optimization strategy. 1. Backlinks Even though Google is planning to move away from backlinks in the future, they still remain the most important ranking factor for your pages. Except it is now too risky to use black hat SEO strategies — your links have to come from a variety of high authority websites that are similar to yours. Furthermore, some Google patents say that freshness and traffic may also be important backlink metrics. …

Your SEO company could be hurting your business. I know a lot of small businesses who have placed their trust in an SEO agency, only to have their sites all but destroyed through black hat techniques. I’ve seen struggling online startups spend thousands of dollars trying to “skyrocket in the rankings,” and then realize they’ve been scammed. I don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want you to waste your money or ruin your site. I wrote this article to help you figure out if your SEO agency is doing good or doing harm. I’ve organized the article into three parts. First, I’ll explain how to know if they’re hurting you. Second, I’ll explain how to know if they’re truly helping you. Finally, I’ll explain a few things that will help you work with an SEO agency in a profitable way. Your SEO Agency Is Hurting You: Signs …

In SEO, you’ll hear plenty about keywords and how they affect your content rankings. But you don’t hear so much about Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and the influence it may have on SEO. If you’re not familiar with the term, Webopedia.com defines LSI as an “algorithm used by search engines to determine what a page is about outside of specifically matching a search query text.” More clarification on this is below. When used effectively, LSI can give your rankings a significant boost—and using it in your content may be easier than it sounds. Let’s get started by explaining what LSI keywords are and why they’re important. What are LSI Keywords? Put simply, LSI keywords are terms semantically related to your subject . Each LSI keyword, groups of words, or phrase you use is relevant to the main keyword you’re targeting. But, they’re not always synonyms—LSI also searches for ideas commonly …

A lot has changed in the world of search engine optimization – and there’s a lot of SEO tips out there. However, certain fundamental principles remain unchanged. For example, targeting keywords with the sole intent of improving organic rankings no longer works with search engines but choosing the right keywords is still an important piece to the puzzle. Beyond getting SEO juice, keywords reveal a lot more about users and what they’re struggling with. With so many SEO techniques , it’s become almost impossible to determine which ones to stick to and which you can safely ignore. Is link building a thing of the past? Should you devote your time and energy to on-page SEO ? How can you write a title tag to drive your rankings with search engines? Where do SEO and social media intersect? And, seriously, what are the truly best SEO tips that’ll lead to results? …

SEO is tough. It’s time-consuming and hard to implement. And, because of that, I have a free SEO training course and even an SEO tool to help you out. But what if you don’t have the time to go through a 21-part training series? Or what if my SEO tool doesn’t give you the step-by-step instructions you need? What other options do you have? Well, today I thought I would make your life easier by sharing 21 of my own SEO and content marketing worksheets and templates to help you get higher rankings in less time and, best of all, with less effort. Marketing definitions Let’s start off with the basics. In marketing, we all use terms that might be a bit confusing. Sure, you probably know what SEO is and what it means , but what about terms like CPC? Or more complicated ones like CAC, BANT, LTV, or …

When you think about Google cache, what comes to mind? That thing you clear out when our computer is running slow? Cache can actually be a useful SEO tool to catch a glimpse of what Google wants you to do. In this guide, we’ll go through some of the best ways to use Google cache to track competitors and help you potentially rise in the SERPs . What Is Google Cache? Google cached pages are HTML backups of the content on a page taken at a certain point in time. This information is stored on a server and can be retrieved later for various purposes. Periodically, Google crawls sites and takes snapshots of the site at that point. They’ll ind ex so they can refer back later to see what has changed since then. Google also provides the date and time of that snapshot. If you’re dealing with underperforming pages …

If you’ve ever done SEO, you know how good it feels to see your rankings go up. You put a ton of hard work into moving up in the SERPs and it finally pays off. But then the unexpected happens . Your rankings drop. Few things in SEO are more discouraging than a fall in the rankings. It makes you feel like everything you did was useless. You wonder what went wrong or if you made a mistake. You beat yourself up for not doing it right. You’re back to square one again, and you have to start all over. Or do you? In my experience, that’s not always the case. My rankings have dropped more times than I can count. At first, I panicked. As I learned more, I found out that it’s not the end of the world if you go down a position or two. It’s obviously …

There are few things Google likes more than updating its ranking signals. If you’ve heard about passage indexing, there’s a good chance you have questions. What is passage indexing? Is it a significant update that will tank your website traffic? Or is it just another small change in Google’s ever-evolving algorithm and ranking factors? Take a deep breath and ignore the doom and gloom. There’s good news: Passage indexing is not a huge Google update. It’s a small tweak to help the search engine understand content better and deliver the best results to searchers. There is no reason to stress about this update, go crazy trying to update your content, or spend thousands of dollars to get someone else to update it for you. (If you noticed a considerable drop in traffic recently, I recommend using this guide to diagnose traffic drops using Google Analytics , but most likely, passage …