koleary

M Posted 7 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Optimizing a page as you develop it can present a challenge: a number of different strategies and factors fight for your attention, and it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. When trying to retroactively optimize an existing site, the job can feel even more strenuous. To be successful, it is critical to know which SEO strategies will have the greatest impact on your site.

Your optimization process and strategy depends on multiple factors such as:

• Types of content, such as blog or product page
• How are your existing top-ranking pages structured (what strategies did you use to make them successful?
• For each keyword, what is the intent of the keyword in search, and how is that mapped to your customer journey (is this keyword tied to information seeking or purchasing driven)

BrightEdge Recommendations simplifies the most impactful actions to take to optimize your pages. It provides a prioritized list of steps to take to increase the visibility of your site. Below is our breakdown of what BrightEdge Recommendations is, why they matter, and how to put them to work for your organization.

What is BrightEdge Recommendations

The BrightEdge platform will bring in a variety of different data points to help it better understand the unique needs of your content. It looks at the keywords you want to rank for, the content of the page, and your competitors on the SERP to better understand what this specific page needs to improve rankings and visibility for searchers. Therefore, the recommendations you receive are completely customized to meet the needs of your page and your site.

The recommendations offered by the platform can also adapt if the SEO rules that you establish for the site change. If you decide that you want to target new keywords or reach new goals, your recommendations will adjust to help you meet those goals.

As SEOs and digital marketers, you have to balance many different roles and tasks throughout the day. You do not have time to complete every optimization opportunity, particularly if a step will have a minimum impact on your actual site performance. The prioritized list from BrightEdge Recommendations, however, will let you know which steps will have the greatest impact on a particular page, helping you capture the largest possible wins as quickly as possible.

Why does BrightEdge Recommendations matter

Competition becomes increasingly fierce across the web with each passing year. More than a billion pages live online, and more than 40,000 exabytes of data will pass through the digital ecosystem by 2020. As marketers, you must remain keenly aware of your competition and what you can do to succeed in this environment.

You should also note that about 52% of clicks will go to the sites that achieve the top three organic spots on the SERP with over 90% going to the results on the first page. Getting your content to rank on the first page, and even in the top three, therefore, will have a tremendous impact in your visibility and the amount of traffic and leads you can harness for this particular piece of content.

BrightEdge Recommendations help you remain competitive within your sector and grow your business. These actionable insights provide you with a better understanding of SEO. Customers like Alison Tyler of CION Investments and Jeff Selig of OverDrive Interactive appreciates "the ability of BrightEdge to interpret the number of data points that come into the platform and convert them into specific actions that brands can take to improve their rankings."

How to implement BrightEdge Recommendations

Recommendations make it easy for you to share tasks with other members of your team, track progress, and see results. Right from the platform, you can assign recommendation tasks to subject matter experts on your team. This straightforward process makes it simple to verify that each important task has an owner and a timeline.

When the tasks get completed, the platform will then generate an automatic event tag. This will allow you to monitor the success of the page before and after the recommendation was used in reporting, quickly highlighting your progress and your success.

To keep team members focused on completing the tasks of the recommendations and achieving the goals, educate them about the importance of SEO and how the BrightEdge Recommendations are generated. Keep track of past successes you have seen after taking action based on the BrightEdge Recommendations. You can let your team members see the before and after story so they better understand how these optimization strategies impact the business. This will help you achieve buy-in from other members of the team and maximize your return.

Some people also find BrightEdge Recommendations useful before they even start writing a piece of content. In addition to the prioritized lists of tasks for existing content, brands can also look at the recommendations for keywords. This can help you plan a new piece of content.

Natalie Starzynski of Astute Solutions, for example, said her and her team "like to go into the Recommendations for a particular keyword and look at insight such as the top 10 pages for that keyword on the SERP." They can then use this insight to better plan their content development and create material that they feel confident will outrank their competition.

BrightEdge Recommendations offers brands a valuable source of insight and understanding. You will grasp how your content calendar measures up to your competition and receive an itemized list of tasks you can take to improve your standings. You will be able to complete your tasks more effectively and efficiently, delivering performance from organic search. 

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 8 years ago

t 9 min read

If you want to successfully use digital marketing in China, you must become intimately familiar with Baidu: the leading Chinese international search engine. Baidu commands 68.5% of the search market in China, with its next largest competitor, known as ‘360 Search,’ falling far behind at 14.2%.

Baidu itself is a tech company that moved in on search early. It adopted many of its initial ideas from Google, but quickly began to differentiate itself. It focuses solely on the Chinese language, which has given it space to nurture its understanding of Simplified Chinese. It grew in popularity because of its superior ability to understand Chinese text and thus deliver quality results for Chinese users.

Baidu has several web properties outside of the search engine. It offers services, such as travel sites, music platforms, translation services, and much more to its users, with these web properties often prominently featured on the search results pages. Baidu is investing heavily in AI and autonomous cars.

If you want to learn more about how to succeed with SEO for Baidu and expand your business into China, here is what you might find similar and different when venturing onto the Chinese search engine.

What will look familiar with SEO for Baidu

When you first started learning about SEO in the West, you likely explored features, such as the site meta data, the architecture of the site, and understanding canonical URLs. These features should also be used for content and SEO for Baidu.

Keep in mind, however, that while they might look similar, the search engine likely weighs them differently. For example, although Google only uses meta descriptions on the SERP and they do not directly impact rankings, SEO for Baidu does consider the content in the meta description.

Mobile should also play a prominent role in your SEO for Baidu. Google, and the other major western search engines, have placed a larger emphasis on mobile devices in recent years, particularly with the introduction of the mobile-first algorithm. In China, however, mobile devices have dominated the scene for a while. This means mobile optimization has been built into the algorithm. The Chinese search giant even has its own version of AMP, known as MIP or mobile instant pages.

Similarly, Baidu also places a large emphasis on rooting out duplicate content and may punish it even more harshly than Google. Western SEOs should already know the importance of creating original, valuable content for users, but when performing SEO for Baidu it needs to take even a higher precedent.

Baidu also announced a few years ago that they would include HTTPS as a ranking signal, and professionals have noticed a greater security emphasis on SEO for Baidu results since about 2016. Setting up any Chinese sites as HTTPS should therefore be a priority.

Finally, SEO for Baidu used to have a reputation for not being as good as Google in its ability to understand links, but this has changed over the past few years. They have improved their ability to understand the links pointing to your site, so do not neglect your link-cultivation strategies you use elsewhere.

Differences with SEO for Baidu

Once you get deeper into the idea of SEO for Baidu, you will find that the Chinese search engine differentiates itself in many ways. In addition to these similarities, there are also a number of differences that SEOs must consider.

Censorship

At the forefront, you need to keep the Chinese state-censorship in mind. Anyone running a business out of China, including running a Chinese site, needs to make sure they familiarize themselves with the laws and regulations pertaining to their business and content they distribute. Verify that your website does not contain anything that might trigger the communication regulations.

Chinese emphasis

Remember also that this search engine has been built specifically for people in China. This means that they deal only with content written in Chinese. You want to work with a native speaker whenever possible for translation. Baidu’s webmasters tools are not available in English and Baidu places a big emphasis on the quality of the content. Poor translations of material will receive a flag as poor-quality content. Note that Baidu also prefers Simplified Chinese script over Traditional.

When you implement SEO for Baidu, remember that Baidu will have a strong bias towards anything Chinese. This means that site owners need to pay attention to all elements of their site and opt for a Chinese version when possible. This includes:

• The site domain
• The business address on the site
• The server location
• The citations
• The links for the site

Baidu does have good reasons for this preference. Although Baidu dominates within China itself, that is also the main source of its traffic. The search engine knows that the vast majority of its customers come from mainland China. Focusing SEO for Baidu on businesses that invest in serving the Chinese population will provide its users with a better experience.

Differences in the SERP appearance

The Baidu SERP also contains some differences that separate it from Google. One of the first things new users will notice is the prominence of images. Nearly every search will contain some images and most organic results will have thumbnails with them. Brands need to therefore pay close attention to the images they include on their sites.

Baidu also prominently features its own properties on the snippets and ads on the SERP to a degree that would seem excessive to most in the West. It can also be even harder to distinguish between paid and organic results on Baidu compared to Google.

SEO success on a global scale requires understanding local search engines and needs. Although many countries also use Google to a large degree, China differentiates itself through its popular and prominent Baidu. Brands that want to build their Chinese audience will need to understand how to optimize their material for this platform. Consider how you can start to employ some of these strategies and tips moving forward to prepare your site for Chinese SEO.

A BrightEdger

M Posted 8 years ago

t 9 min read

To help you better understand and communicate more effectively with your SEO team, we’ve composed a 3-part series of basic SEO concepts and their related definitions. While there are many SEO terms, we’re focusing on those that are the most discussed and most basic SEO.

In this first segment of our SEO instructional, we’ll go over the fundamentals of on-page SEO concepts and definitions to help you become an SEO expert.

An overview of page content for basic SEO best practices and concepts

On-page text refers to the actual written content of a web page, and should be substantive in offering visitors valuable information. As search engine crawlers crave written content, a best practices checklist for evaluating your website’s pages should include:

Word count: While there is no universal “ideal” word count for all web pages, a generally accepted practice is to have at least 500 and preferably 2250 words per page, but this will vary by topic and the purpose of the page. Your most important content and SEO pages should trend towards longer length.

That said, Google does not value pages that are considered “thin,” so it’s important to make your web pages as robust as possible without “fluffing” the content with extraneous text to achieve a set word count.

Above-the-Fold Text: Since search engine crawlers “read” Web content from top to bottom, it is best to keep some text near the top of your pages. This is referred to as “above the fold” (think newspapers), meaning that the on-page text is visible on the screen immediately, without the reader having to scroll down past a huge image or multiple ads (the latter of which can invite a Google penalty) to get to the actual content.

Keywords are the words that searchers are likely to use when entering a query for your industry vertical’s products and/or services in a search engine, such as Google or Bing. A search string that includes several words is a keyword phrase.

Integrating keywords into your on-page text (and strategically within your page's meta information, described below) is a basic SEO technique that enhances your site’s search visibility, both by increasing the likelihood that your pages surface in the search engine results pages (SERPs) in response to a specific query and by boosting their overall search rankings for those keywords.

An informed keyword strategy for content optimization will build in keywords so they are seamlessly woven throughout the on-page text, and the content flows naturally for the reader.

Keyword stuffing is when the target keyword appears more than 10% of the text proportionally. We recommend 3-5% keyword density.

Long-tail keywords: Long-tail queries – those searches that contain more than 3 words – present excellent opportunities to capture traffic. Long-tail keyword phrases tend to be far more precise in user intent and can render more relevant results than generic keywords consisting of one or two words. Page content crafted to answer long-tail search queries can result in higher conversions and a greater overall share of organic search traffic than single, highly competitive keywords used by most in your industry’s vertical.

Duplicate content means precisely that: your site has content that is duplicated elsewhere, whether within its own Web pages or on another website altogether.

Duplicate content may result from inadvertently repeating the same information throughout your site, like having duplicate meta information (discussed below) on your Web pages. Other accidental sources of duplicate content can stem from print-only versions (PDFs) of Web pages, e-commerce items that are shown on or linked to other pages, or mobile-friendly replications of your website.

If you find that your site requires pages with duplicate content, there are several ways you can let search engines know the preferred Web page to be displayed in its SERPs (called “canonicalization”). At best, Web pages containing duplicate content will be filtered out from search results. At worst, if it’s a result of scraping content from another site, or if it’s perceived to be an attempt to “game” search results with multiple listings of the same content, then you may face a penalty.

SEO tips for leveraging meta information

Meta information, also referred to as meta data, is the overarching information a search engine uses to determine what your site’s Web pages are about, and what it displays when indexing individual pages in its SERPs. The most critical Meta data for SEO  are titles and descriptions. 

Meta Title or title tag is the one-sentence line of text that serves to denote the subject of a Web page. Meta Titles do heavy lifting in the search space as they correspond to the individual, “clickable” search results listed in the SERPs. As such, each needs to be carefully honed with attention to keywords, length, and uniqueness.

When optimizing your Web page Meta Titles, best practices include: Incorporating one or two of your primary Web page keywords, while keeping them within 55 characters, including spaces.

Longer Meta Titles may be shortened (truncated) with ellipsis (a series of period marks, as in …) or Google may use machine logic to rewrite it. It’s important to note that using large font sizes and capitalized words may further abbreviate the length of Meta Titles. It is essential to craft a Meta title that is unique to the Web page to avoid duplicate content issues, and that accurately reflects the page’s content.

Read our guide to writing effective and optimized SEO title tags.

Meta Description is text that follows your Meta Title in the SERPs, conveying further details about the Web page content. Meta descriptions claim more SERP “real estate,” with up to 156 characters (including spaces) allowed before being truncated with ellipsis.

As with Meta Titles, it is important the Meta Description is unique to each Web page and represents the content accurately. Meta descriptions should also be compelling to encourage click through as they present a great opportunity for keyword optimization (within reason, avoid “keyword stuffing”) and a call to action.

Read our 5 tips for SEO meta description success in 2018.

Meta Keywords is simply a list of the Web page’s keywords separated by commas (,). Google has said they do not use them, but international sites still do, so there can be value in populating the meta keywords.

Optimizing on-page content with these SEO best practices tips

Structuring your on-page content with a visual hierarchy helps readers navigate it more easily (think “scanning”) and search engines “understand” it better. The basic SEO tools for organizing on-page text are heading tags:

Heading tags indicate the structure of Web page content, cuing both the search engines and readers as to the hierarchy of importance of the on-page text.

H1 tag denotes the most important “headline” of a Web page, much like the main headline of a newspaper. The H1 heading tag will render the largest text on a Web page, and a best practice is to have only one H1 tag per page. The H1 tag serves as an “umbrella” under which H2 tags (sub-headings) are placed, indicating content of secondary importance. In turn, H3 tags and accompanying page content would be placed under the H2 tags and content.

The hierarchy of heading tags ranges from the H1 to H6, with H6 representing the least important content of a Web page. Most Web page content calls for only H1 through H3 heading tags. Note that it’s important to keep heading tag character count (including spaces to 70) and to not over-use them as it disrupts the flow of content and may be visually overwhelming to readers.

Rich media, meaning images and video, are rapidly gaining momentum as a preferred user medium and search visibility best practice. As rich media is an overall Web trend, it is a smart practice to incorporate image and video content to complement text in your overall on-page optimization strategy.

Search engine crawlers can “read” and "watch" rich media content, but it consumes a lot of resources or crawl budget. What follows are best practices for allowing them to do so with the use of written titles, descriptions and tags, much like you would do with on-page text optimization. This will enhance Web page visibility in Google’s Image Search and Google Videos, as well as YouTube (if you use YouTube as an independent channel or link it to your on-page video content).

An essential point to remember is to tie your rich media content to the correlating on-page page text in using the same brand keywords and other relevant keywords used, including those incorporated in your Meta information.

Check out our guide to how to succeed with YouTube SEO and the art of SEO image optimization.

Image optimization: While there are several factors to consider when optimizing images, the most important are image titles (referred to as “filenames”), and “alt attribute” or “alt text” (meaning “alternative text” describing the image):

Filename, or the title assigned to an image, should be a brief, unique and accurate line of text of what the image portrays. Brevity is key, and a best practice is use hyphens ( - ) for spaces and all lowercase letters. For example, red-shoe is preferable to Red_Shoe.

Alt text, or the written text describing the image, provides details about what the image depicts. This is important for those with visual impairment and who use screen-reading functionality to explain what’s on the page. Keep it brief (within 100 characters, including spaces), and strive for uniqueness and accuracy.

Video optimization: The most essential principles for optimizing videos are titles, descriptions and tags: Titles for your on-page videos, like your Web page Meta titles themselves, should distinctly, precisely and briefly describe the video content, as well as reflect the relevant keywords used in the Web page’s content and Meta information (while avoiding excessive use).

Descriptions for your on-page videos, like your Web page Meta Descriptions, allow more room in terms of character count for providing details as to what the video is about. As with video titles, video descriptions should include the keywords incorporated in the corresponding on-page text and Meta information when applicable.

Tags are single or two-word Website page “categories” that serve to highlight and leverage brand and other significant keywords associated with the on-page text and Meta information.

This concludes Part 1 of our guide to basic SEO concepts – we hope you found it helpful! Stay tuned for Part 2 on linking concepts and search engine directives, and finally, Part 3, which delves into more techie/geek-speak of SEO lingo.

Track your SEO reporting with customizable dashboards and easily report them to the CEO.

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 8 years ago

t 9 min read

By 2021, digital advertising spend in the United States is expected to exceed $300 billion. The popularity of online marketing has also gained a strong foothold overseas: a 2019 marketing trends survey of UK marketers found:

• 88 percent believe that SEO has importance for marketing -- with 60% saying it is extremely important
• 77 percent report that using SEO has increased their number of leads and decreased the cost of customer acquisition
• Yet over 30% still report struggling to get the funds they need for their desired projects

With the incredible heights that SEO and digital marketing have risen to, it can be valuable to look back at the trends that have really taken off over the second half of the year and what will likely dominate the conversation and practice next year. It provides ideas for building strategies and where marketing plans need to mature to meet the needs of the modern consumer.

Here is what we believe are the biggest 2019 marketing trends and strategies that will likely dominate the first half of 2019.

Six 2019 marketing trends to watch for the first half

1. Resurgence in storytelling

A few years ago, there was a lot of conversation about the importance of creating a story for your prospects and the idea has experienced a resurgence. The idea of storytelling now extends far beyond just creating textual content. With the growing popularity of visual platforms, such as Instagram, brands now have the opportunity to create entirely new storytelling opportunities for their customers.

On social media and on websites brands need to carefully consider the story that they want to tell their customers. Communicate the story of the brand to people, rather than just the services and products that the brand provides. You want to create a brand image and narrative that engages people, connects with them, and lets them know more about the brand on a personal level. Companies might use this narrative to connect with people based on their buyer persona or to build a relationship based on shared values with the customers.

2. Necessity of high-functioning mobile

Thanks to the mobile-first algorithm, brands have to adjust their site development away from being simply compatible with mobile devices, and instead design for those on-the-go users. Our own research at BrightEdge reflects that well over half the visitors to most sites -- 62 percent -- come from mobile devices and still growing each month.  

To rank well and properly engage your users, you will need to make sure your site has been developed with mobile users in mind.

Consider first the type of content you develop. Mobile users tend to have particular contexts in mind, such as contacting businesses while they are on the go. Think about the types of intent that people likely have when they search for your targeted keywords. If they want to find your address or other contact information, make sure your information is featured prominently.

When they do elect to read articles and longer types of content, mobile users are on smaller screens, which should influence how you construct your material.

Your content should have:

• Font and text size that can be easily digested on mobile devices
• Organize your interface in a way that mobile users can easily navigate. For example, buttons that allow people to skip easily to particular sections of content or return to the top of the page can be helpful

As part of 2019 marketing trends, make sure you also pay attention to the visuals on your page. Images and videos, for example, might not always be compatible with the screen dimensions or browser capabilities of certain mobile devices. Make sure that any you include have been carefully formatted to play on mobile devices. If possible you should try to QA your pages on multiple devices to try and catch any issues with your responsive design.

As you create your pages, keep an eye on page load times. Mobile users will click off a page in as few as 3 seconds if the page has not yet loaded.

3. Growth of vertical searches

Vertical searches have begun to reach across a number of different channels. Vertical searches allow users to access more specific information. A number of alternate search options have arisen in response and have gained considerable popularity. Consider Amazon, Yelp, SlideShare, or TripAdvisor.

Even Google’s SERPs reflect the growing importance of vertical search. BrightEdge Research finds that 95% of Google SERPs include a vertical element. Google’s understanding of user intent has resulted in the development of customized vertical SERPs that reflect these desires. Different types of searches will have different numbers of ads, visual content, textual answers, and Quick Answers depending upon the likely intention behind the search.

As a result, moving forward brands need to carefully consider the vertical search engines their searches and optimize accordingly. A hotel chain, for example, will want to verify and pay close attention to their appearance on TripAdvisor and Kayak. Ecommerce businesses need to consider Amazon as well as the new ad formats Google has put out to promote vertical searches and keep users in its ecosystem.

4. Machine automation and AI

Machine learning will also continue to emerge as a necessary technological investment. Brands will spend an estimated $60 billion on the technology by 2025 as organizations across sectors realize the value of using technology to create superior content.

The digital universe contains more data than the human brain alone can process. With machine learning, however, organizations can use the technology to interpret the data and better understand what their customers want to see. They can use this insight to improve their content production.

At BrightEdge, we have made these capabilities available to our partners through our products, such as BrightEdge Insights. Customers use this technology to better understand search data and identify content topics faster and more effectively. Brands will be able to identify market changes and 2019 marketing trends in real time, allowing them to produce the content needed to capitalize on these moments efficiency, reaping the benefits of getting content prepared and published at the forefront of the industry.

5. Greater personalized care

Customers also want to see more personalized attention and care moving forward. Consider the growing 2019 marketing trends of incorporating chatbots into websites. These bots enable organizations to answer customer needs in real time. They help customers complete purchases or find other information they need, keeping them engaged with the organization and moving forward rather than clicking off when they cannot find the answers they seek.

This emphasis on more personal relationships with customers can also be seen in the growth of video. By next year, it is estimated that 80% of online traffic will be video. Videos allow customers to digest information passively and create high engagement. They also allow brands to create more personalized connections with their audience. Videos allow the audience to feel as though the subjects on the screen speak directly to them.

6. Voice and image search

We also cannot discuss growing 2019 marketing trends without including voice and visual search. Voice search has become increasingly popular, with the growth of personalized assistants as well as voice search features on mobile devices. Google estimated that over 20% of queries performed on android devices are now done through voice search.

Similarly, Google has also recently drawn attention to the popularity of image search with their introduction of a new potential ad format. This new ad format would allow users to specifically target shoppers browsing image results to get ideas before deciding to shop.

Brands should focus on developing content that speaks to the needs of these users. Brands in highly visual sectors should take advantage of opportunities, such as Google’s image ads, while also creating a strong brand experience with their images.

For voice search, organizations should create content that aligns well with the verbal searches. Consider how voice search influences keywords and the type of information they likely want to find. With personal assistant devices offering a SERP of only one, for example, you also want to focus on earning key Quick Answer or top result positions for highly-relevant queries.

Search and digital marketing continues to grow and mature with each passing year. As we look towards the first 6 months of 2019, reviewing these 2019 marketing trends as well as other new strategies for the end of the year can be immensely helpful. Look at the 2019 marketing trends we discussed here to see which ones can have the greatest impact on your brand’s online strategy.

Using a comprehensive SEO platform will keep you on top of the changes and evolution in organic search.