SEO Services Guide
In the following guide, you’ll get a overview of how you should apply SEO in a modern context and what the future holds for your SEO Cape Town needs. Spare 10-minutes out of your day to read up on the latest techniques and why you should start implementing them this year and beyond.
Consumers have changed the way they purchase. With so much information laid at their fingertips, they are more likely to do their own research before choosing a product and or brand. But how can companies clarify their message,so that it communicates value and converts?
Google has been operating under many updates that have specifically targeted content marketing. SEO. services that are worth their weight in salt, will have adapted their techniques to incorporate the new, best in practice standards
Panda and Fred are the two algorithms you should be adept in their understanding. Let’s explore the former and why it is so important.
Prior to its implementation, the web was amassed with spammy content. It was seen as ‘empty page’ content, with either not a lot of informational or educational value. Companies adopting this approach may have taken blogging a little too literally, as business blogs were frequently creating articles that read too much like diaries and opinions. This is all changed now because of Panda.
Fred adjusted Google search ranking algorithms, and was released on March 7, 2017. Its main function was to decrease the negative impact on users, due to aggressive advertising and monetization strategies, employed by websites and many an SEO company. The intention was to increase the quality of the user’s experience. Poor-quality backlinks were also targeted by the update.
Use SEO Services That Write High-quality Content
Content farms like eHow and WikiHow were pumping out a lot of hollow content but did quite well during the Caffeine update. However as Panda launched, many of the websites that were bombarding visitors with intrusive ads, had more basic and rigid designs, filibuster-type word counts, bad editorial standards, spamming of phrases, and just plain wrong information was hit the hardest.
This means you must write content that is quality first, quantity second. It must educate the reader, allow them to learn something new, and thus, keep them on the page for longer. If they would like to navigate to more of your content, it must be easily available to them with a few clicks and as less scrolling as possible.
Trustworthiness is currently the top strategy when it comes to content. This way, you will be getting more inbound links from ‘credible’ news or industry sources. In other words, if your content is linked to in an MSNBC article, it's more likely to be boosted higher up the search results.
Knowing user search intent is crucial to devise the best content strategy, which caters to developing needs. Delve into Google Analytics to spot trends and patterns in what users want. Keyword research is still, monumentally important, but the most popular form of search is quickly becoming voice search.
Top SEO Services Cater For Mobile Users
As of 2016, internet usage on tablets and mobile phones has become the majority among users. This means you should invest a lot more in your mobile site and mobile SEO. It's not as difficult as you might think because there are some fundamental design aspects you can make, without much trouble.
Google’s mobile-first index will make sure to boost pages that have been optimized for users’ screens. Although this won’t affect rankings on desktops, it will rank mobile-friendly content higher for users searching on mobile devices. Creating a responsive website utilizing the same HTML codes for all devices, will be to your favor.
Pages that don’t load as quickly are pretty much doomed. You must optimize and speed up your page so anyone on a smartphone of any brand, can view and use your website. Google does say you should make your site more responsive in this regard.
Make sure you’re making any part of your mobile website, social media-friendly. Allow users to share content, product pages, your contact details, and social media feed, via the app you have created.
Make The Entire Experience Better
One needs to worry about their user experience on all platforms. Site architecture in particular is becoming an issue that is coming to ahead. The frustration is, websites are piling too many buttons into one page instead of making drop-down portals.
When users hover over your categories, they should not have to click to see the options. They should pop out and pop back to their hiding place, quickly. Website navigation is thus, sped up and made more fluid while not cluttering the screen.
By creating a secure website that uses HTTPS, you will give confidence to your visitors. Google has a ‘secure’ padlock icon in the top left corner of Chrome, indicating that visitors can trust the website to not steal undue information. This is absolutely critical as users want to know their credit card information, email address, location and phone number won’t be abused.
Dwell time is a major point of interest for businesses. This is the study of how much time it takes for users to click ‘back’ or off your page. They will more than likely re-enter the search results page and continue looking for the right kind of website.
Snippet SEO Services
A new snippet has been designed for multi-intent searches. This has been done so more than one question or option can be featured in the snippet. The way some searches are done, don’t make it clear whether the user was looking for the cause of something or simply the solution for it.
Snippets are the first thing a user might see upon a SERP loading, as they sit above organic results. It usually provides an increase in traffic because it's in a position of higher visibility and looks to be more trusted.
This would give customers a brief ‘snippet’ of what you offer and thus, stay on your page for longer because they know they are getting warmer to their desires. However, it's vital that you give users ‘quick’ access to services options.
Your UX must, therefore, incorporate web forms and service boxes. This gives customers a quick run-down of what you offer and the details they need, quickly. You can add a ‘more info’ button to each box or make the box itself a button link.
Creating A Google My Business Listing
A knowledge panel is a great strategy to build trust as users have a habit of searching for factual or fundamental information. As a business, you need to place your phone number, location, opening times and user rating in a knowledge panel. Doing this will make you part of Google’s knowledge graph and thus, look more trustworthy.
Accurate wording matters in SEO Services
The technical side of SEO really gets going on your website, when you seek to optimize it. Everything from content, product descriptions, titles, headings, and links. Your search engine results are most affected by a lack of optimization as Google really is looking for ‘the whole package’.
Users want to click on titles that have what they’re looking for, in the title. This could mean that clickbait ‘wait and see’ approaches are dying out.
Also, you should be creating brand spanking new content if you want to remain higher up the SERP. Recycling old content by simply changing the title, may not work as to the desired effect anymore. It’s quite embarrassing for Google to boost a page with the ‘2020’ in the title, but the publication date is ‘2018’.
Hence why the quality of your links will come under greater scrutiny. If your links are older, this could be bad for your content marketing. However, if that content is credible and trustworthy, it could negate its age.
Into The Internal Linking Rabbit Hole
With regard to your internal links, make sure they transport the user to relevant information. So it's best to place internal links in precisely the right place when you are referencing something a business is either knowledgeable about or offers in the way of products and or services.
Helping users should be your main focus with internal links. You should be creating high-quality content that they can use to help customers in their journey to achieve their goals.
Manage the flow of your links so you don’t have too many early off-site click-aways. Essentially, you need to keep visitors reading all the way to the end of your post. So, links that act as information and education should be the ‘starters’ and ‘side dishes’. The call-to-action links will need to be at the bottom which will act as ‘main courses’.
Build a content road map! This cannot be overstated. You must have a plan whereby you are releasing content that is both ‘of the times’ i.e. fitting current consumer trends, but also, knowledgeable about your industry.
Of course, driving consumers to specific areas with your links can be tied into your promotional marketing for new products.
Top SEO Services Encourage You To Earn Authority
In 2020, your blog cannot be just a place to write helpful content. It must also be a place whereby you post very detailed and trustworthy content.
Upload customer case studies to show the public, what you have learned and are learning about your own consumer base. Post content that cannot be found anywhere else such as expert interviews, exclusive behind-the-scenes information about new releases or future plans, and news of your business such as partnerships or sales figures, etc.
Make a report that is useful for B2B clients. SEO services can collaborate with you to undertake industry surveys. You can also collate different surveys and tag on your content that is relevant information.
Content that is frequently linked by other publishers, will boost your authority in marketing and thus, the industry. It’s recommended this be part of your thought-leader campaign, as making a business a big part of the conversation is huge in the way of credibility.
Give free content away. Create a free eBook which users can download for absolutely nothing. It shouldn’t be junk however, it should be very helpful content and supply them with knowledge about a particular subject. You can also have quizzes in your email marketing campaigns, and get users to interact with your brand that way.
SEO services and social media
The larger your audience the more options you have in terms of harnessing consumer trends. You will increase your engagement opportunities and interaction potential.
Although SEO and social media may and do often correlate in terms of rankings, this is for indirect reasons in most instances. Google does, however, index tweets from Tiwtter as microblogs, as an example, and Linkedin profiles and Facebook profiels are also displayed in the SERPS. Google is limited to what is publically facing, however, its crawler cannot guess passowrds to private accounts.
Good SEO servcies incorporate many channels and syndicate content across approproiate social media channels, to drive additonal engagement and an addtional traffic channel.
Social listening is an effective yet very simple strategy for improving the understanding of your customers. Spot patterns by logging complaint comments and highlighting words which repeat often. Google Mentions is a great tool
What SEO services should recommend
Consumers will also share your social media post if you add your relevancy to keywords. If you sell earphones, you should be writing your brand name next to the word ‘earphones’ in your post. These are called branded searches as consumers are searching for a specific brand and product.
SEO services will also advise you to make infographics that can be shared on social media platforms. There are lots of users that are scrolling through posts so a long vertical graphic with little bits of interesting data, will allow them to consume information fluidly.
Rolling with the times, also means you must roll with YouTube. It's the number one searched platform in the world. This is because consumers are more likely to watch an explanation about something than read it, nowadays. SEO services that incorporate YouTube searches will promote your brand to a much wider audience.