6 Cannabis SEO Tips to Boost Rankings & Increase Website Traffic By James Tredwell on October 30, 2019 The cannabis business is booming, thanks to the increasing legalization in different states. Due to the popularity of Cannabis, many people are now venturing into this field because of its promising future. But to succeed in this digital world, establishing a presence online is vital. If you don’t have a website or blog, then the chances are high that you are missing out on several potential customers. Once your website is live, now its time to optimize it for the search engines, this practice is crucial because it allows your site to rank high, attracting lots of traffic and thus high conversion rates. To help you rank your site better, here are some of the best cannabis SEO ranking techniques that you should you use: Analyze Your Existing Search Traffic Starting with analyzing what you have is a great way of identifying the best SEO strategies that work for your potential visitors. Your existing search traffic to your blog or website has important user behavior metrics that can tell a lot about your visitors. For instance, you get to find out which pages are top-performing, what cannabis keywords rank better, how many new users visited your site from organic search, and more. These SEO data are available on your site’s Google Analytics account. However, you need to integrate Google Analytics with your website to track data. Once you have the data, try to compare them with your performing pages and pick the similarities. User Search Behaviour It is crucial to know how users look for cannabis products online to succeed in your cannabis SEO strategy. For this, you need to understand the keywords that cannabis users feed in the search engines when looking for something. You can use various keyword search tools available online to check the performance of different cannabis keywords. These tools will enable you to understand the kind of keywords that you should include in your content. Make sure that you always use relevant keywords. For instance, if your company sells cannabis seeds, target keywords that define your products as closely as possible. Your competitors’ site can also provide valuable information about the keyword usage. Research on the top-ranking cannabis sites and try to check the keywords they use. Mobile Optimization In 2016, the number of mobile search users in the US was 177.8 million, and projections indicate that the figure will hit 211 million by 2020. These statistics show that there are lots of mobile phone users, which is why you should not ignore them in your marketing. When crafting your cannabis SEO strategy, it’s essential to ensure that your platform is smartphone friendly. Most marijuana enthusiasts use their phones when searching for anything about marijuana online. Therefore, if you are building or already have a cannabis website, it is important to ensure that it is mobile-friendly too. Social Media SEO If you have noticed, most websites that rank high on Google usually have strong social signals. Social media is important for your sites ranking in many ways. One of the key benefits is that it gives your site more exposure that can result in improved traffic. Sharing links on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is a great way to build your brand. Although social media doesn’t directly help your site to rank, there is a correlation between the number of social signals and your site’s ranking on SERP, which means social media indirectly has a positive impact on the site’s ranking. Therefore, investing in social media marketing has to be part of your cannabis SEO strategy. They improve your chances of ranking better on Google and other search engines. Link Building Link building implies the process of connecting other websites to your website using links. Cannabis link building is vital because it allows you to drive referral traffic and thus improve your site’s authority. You can improve the ranking of your site on Google by getting reputable sites to link to your pages. Being one of the factors considered by Google, it means you should make it one of your cannabis SEO strategies. How it works is that Google uses backlinks to tell how useful your site is to users. Google wants to give its users the best results that are relevant. Therefore, getting traffic from links means your site will rank higher. However, building links takes time, and you should be careful to avoid using shortcuts like buying links since it’s against Google’s guidelines. Using the shortcuts can negatively affect your SEO. But there are several link building strategies that you can use to get links ethically. Optimize Website Speed Does the speed of your site affect your traffic? Yes, it does. A website that takes more than 5 seconds to load has a high bounce rate. In short, users will stop visiting your site. In today’s busy world, no one wants to waste their time waiting for a website that takes long to load. Optimizing the speed of your website means breaking the barrier that drives away your visitors. Google also knows that web users need quick access to products, services, and information online. As a result, it rewards sites that load faster. If your site load within 3 seconds and the competitor’s site takes about 9 seconds, then Google will consider your site first. Optimizing your website can help you perform better than your competitors and thus improve your ranking. This is why you should consider resolving the issues for improved ranking and allow your visitors to enjoy a better experience. Conclusion When it comes to online business, the performance of your website will build or destroy your business. Highlighted above are some of the top Cannabis SEO tops that you can use to improve your rankings. However, as much as you use these tips, always ensure that you feed users with quality content. Without offering value, your site won’t rank because search engines like Google give priority to websites that contain relevant content.
9 Alternative Ways to Level Up Your SEO Skills By James Tredwell on October 30, 2019 Competition in digital marketing is growing day by day, so you must keep yourself updated with the right skill set. In this article, I am going to discuss the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and what are the skills that are needed to become an SEO expert. It doesn’t matter whether you are a beginner or profession list; you can become an expert in SEO if you follow and practically implement the given tips. Many of the people don’t get the desired results because they don’t have the right skill set, or they have those skills, but they don’t use or are unfamiliar with those skills. It takes lots of practice and hard work to become an SEO expert. Before diving into the SEO, you should have the proper knowledge and right skills; otherwise, you don’t get the desired results. What is SEO skills? SEO skills are the knowledge of many basics elements that are required to do the SEO of a website. The main role of an SEO expert is to improve the ranking of a website by proper strategies and to use proper tools. The SEO is subdivided into two categories; these are Off-page and On-page. On-page includes optimizing the tags like title tag, Meta tag, Meta descriptions, using user-friendly URLs, etc. Off-page includes link building, social media marketing, directory submission, etc. Let us discuss the skills set that you need to master to level up your SEO Ability to think strategically Accurately analyze the condition of a website and find the bugs and issues on the websites. An SEO specialist should be a critical thinker and he/she should have the ability to examine the problems from the different angles and to suggest creative and unique solutions to overcome those problems. He/she should critically examine their competitors and their strategies. Ability to critically think and research Critical analyses and research mind is essential. Research is very important when it comes to an SEO campaign. An SEO professional should be research-minded, especially when it comes to keyword selection. He/she should suggest the keywords that are relevant and good for the website and avoiding embedding irrelevant keywords. Many people use black hat SEO techniques to impress their colleague’s but remember black hat SEO is not suitable for the long term, and Google can penalize your website. An SEO expert should have a good knowledge of SEO tools and should constantly perform research and analysis to find new methods to optimize the website better. One should have knowledge of the latest Google algorithm. Ability to think technically An SEO expert should have major technical knowledge of SEO. He/she should be familiar with the coding, especially HTML because all the tags are embedded in the HTML language. It is a very important part of on-page SEO. Ability to prioritize things One should have strong knowledge prioritization and should be familiar with the steps that are to be taken to improve the visibility of a website. A properly prioritize, and well-planned SEO campaign can provide better results. One should analyze the weak aspects first like faulty tags, weak content, etc. and then move on the things that are time-consuming like backlinking. Ability to analyze An SEO expert has good analytical skills; he/she should analyze the weak points of a website quickly and also suggest the decision. They should not only analyze the result but also make necessary changes and avoiding the strategies that are not working. If you don’t have good analytical skills, then you cannot go very far in SEO. Ability to write quality content Apart from the research and analytical skills, an SEO expert should have strong writing skills because SEO is a content-driven strategy. He/she should have good knowledge of SEO writing. SEO writing includes avoiding irrelevant keywords embedding the keywords relevant keywords at the proper position and should have good knowledge of blog and article writing. An SEO expert should have a good knowledge of content types like which type of content can drive more sales and conversions. He/she should have a good knowledge of links like which sites are more relevant for linking. An SEO expert should be excellent in writing web pages, writing relevant Metadata and descriptions, and should make creative titles. Ability to analyze and use SEO tools One should have the proper knowledge of SEO tools and plugins. Not every tool gives the desired result so, an SEO expert should have the ability to analyze which tool is the best for the website. Apart from the tools, they should have a good knowledge of WordPress plugins is the site is made by WordPress. Ability to think from the user perspective The SEO specialist should have the ability to think from the user perspective. He should analyze the keywords that are more relevant and more searched by the users. By looking at the most searched keywords they should try to use those keywords in the website content. Ability to be patience Since SEO is not a speedy process it takes time to rank the website. So, an SEO expert should have patience when they apply the strategies and should monitor their progress. Author’s Bio Hitesh Khurana is a Digital marketing executive at Quantum IT innovation, a reputed Seo company Indianapolis in the USA. Along with writing for the company he is an admirer of classic literature, drama, and a true cinephile. You can find him writing meaningful poetry when he is not busy with his dog.
What You Should Know About Google’s New Link Building Guidelines By James Tredwell on October 30, 2019 In the early days of Google search, many marketers engaged in brute force tactics like comment spamming to build up their link profiles. Essentially, these marketers would visit other websites and look for discussions in which they would post many links to their websites, sometimes to multiple posts within the same site in rapid succession. This practice enabled low value sites to accumulate very strong link profiles very quickly, spurring Google to take action. In 2005, Google introduced the “nofollow” attribute to fight content spam, enabling users to flag comments as sponsored or otherwise inorganic. This quickly became the preferred method of flagging advertising-related links and sponsored links. Recently, Google unveiled more link attributes and altered their link building guidelines, and everyone working in search engine optimization (SEO) must understand these changes and implement them into their SEO strategies. Current Link Building Best Practices Along with nofollow links, Google has also allowed dofollow links for quite some time. Generally, the more dofollow links your site earns, the better your search engine rankings will be. Dofollow links are essentially organically generated links, and Google strongly encourages domain owners to flag guest post links and sponsored links as nofollow, because leveraging these tactics equates to manipulating your rankings. Never pay for dofollow links or agree to pay another site for a dofollow link. Google can easily detect paid links and urges domain owners to flag any links obtained through financial transaction as nofollow. However, even if an SEO decides to leave a paid link tagged as a dofollow link, the Google algorithm is incredibly smart, and Google will likely detect the discrepancy and flag it appropriately on their end anyway. Search behaviors have changed dramatically in the past 15 years, and the Google link attributes have changed with them. In addition to nofollow and dofollow attributes, Google recently launched two more attributes considering the new digital marketing atmosphere: sponsored and UGC, for links earned through user-generated content. How Do the New Link Attributes Work? Sponsored links are an undeniable reality of modern internet marketers, whether those who participate in the practice admit to it and flag their links appropriately or not. The new sponsored link attribute will allow the Google Search algorithm to more quickly identify paid links, links created as advertisements, and links obtained through paid sponsorships. User-generated content like forum posts, comments, and guest posts can certainly offer value to the average user, but since they can originate from random users it is very difficult to assign authority to this content. In the days of comment spamming, links embedded in forum posts and message boards would artificially inflate a domain’s link profile and hinder the overall user experience of searching for information related to that domain’s industry or niche. Modern marketing has changed significantly over the past 15 years, and Google seems to be encouraging digital marketers and SEO professionals to be more transparent in their link building strategies. Obtaining links may be difficult in some cases but earning them organically and tagging them appropriately with the correct attributes enables the Search algorithm to learn faster, apply the appropriate context to more content, and provide users with better overall experiences. Brands that take this to heart and start generating content with user experience in mind are going to see the best results when the new link attributes come into effect in 2020. New Link Building Attributes and When to Use Them The addition of the new UGC and sponsored attributes for link building aim to encourage webmasters to mark their links more clearly for the Search algorithm. All of these attributes essentially function as hints for the Search algorithm, which will refer to these attributes as well as many other additional factors to determine search result rankings. These new attributes will go into effect in March of 2020. Ultimately, it is unclear how exactly Google will use these new attributes, as it should be. It is already difficult to attempt to game the system when it comes to link building through Google, and these new attributes will allow the Search algorithm to learn more about these types of links and understand them in the appropriate context. Google may decide to allow UGC links to carry some weight when it comes to search result rankings. After all, user-generated content like guest posts can potentially be valuable to users. How Google will weigh these and other links remains to be seen. All digital marketers and SEO professionals must remember that Google’s number one priority is their users’ experience on the search engine. When a user enters a search query, Google strives to provide the most relevant and authoritative results related to the search terms. When these new attributes take effect, it should encourage modern digital marketers to craft their SEO strategies around creating great user experiences for the best results. Best Practices Going Forward If you are wondering how to prepare your SEO strategy for this impending change, keep a few simple best practices in mind: You are very likely already using the nofollow attribute appropriately to block sponsored links and indicate you do not vouch for a site you link to within your content, and you will not need to change your typical nofollow attribute usage with the coming attribute change. You will have the ability to combine different attributes as necessary. For example, you may start tagging links as “rel= ugc nofollow,” or “rel= ugc sponsored” or other combinations as necessary, ensuring backwards compatibility with services that do not support the new link attributes once they take effect. Keep using your current nofollow tagging practices to prevent link scheme penalties and other strikes against your web content but switching over to the new sponsored attribute is probably a good idea going forward. It is not necessary to completely revamp your entire link attribution system. For example, you can continue using nofollow attributes for user-generated content but changing user-generated content links to the new UGC attribute will make things easier for the Search algorithm and could slightly boost your rankings. Ultimately, the implementation of these attributes does not require you to alter many of your existing practices. In fact, you can generally stick to your current attribution practices if you so choose. However, implementing these new attributes will make it easier for Google to crawl through your content and index it appropriately. This in turn increases your domain authority and could have a positive impact on your overall SEO and will organically improve UX. Although Google will not implement this new change for indexing purposes until March 1, 2020, you can start using these attributes right now and the Google Search algorithm will consider them hints for ranking purposes. Early adopters of these new attribution tags could potentially see significant SEO gains if they decide to do so, and it will make the transition to the new indexing process much easier in 2020. Link building can feel like a challenge, and earning valuable, authoritative, and legitimate links organically can take a long time. These new attributes may seem like an extra layer of complication on an already complex process, but in reality, they allow SEO professionals to have more control over their link profiles and make it easier for the Search algorithm to analyze web content. This is a net gain for digital marketers, so take time to consider this change with your SEO strategy in the coming months. This article is contributed by Stephen Moyers, Content Writer at SPINX Digital. Have an interesting article or blog to share with our readers? Let’s get it published
Top 12 Chrome Extensions for SEO By James Tredwell on October 22, 2019 Why extensions are important? Extensions are designed to perform a particular function or task within the browser. They are designed to customize and make the task easy during browsing. Many extensions are available online. Let us discuss the top 12 chrome extensions for SEO. Buzzsumo It is the most powerful extensions in terms of finding popular content and about the new trends of content. It tells the user the popularity of content on a particular topic. This tool helps in providing the best content idea about a particular topic and thus saves the time from the different websites and social sites. Features of Buzzsumo Modified interface Open API available Advanced Social Media Analytics Data exporting Alerts can be customized Alerts about your trending topics MozBar It is a free chrome extension and it makes it easy to get advanced metrics. MozBar also provides an SEO toolbar on your site and helps you to access important analytics through Moz. It tells website domain authority. Mozbar shows the various types of links on every particular page, links like do-follow and no-follow. Features of MozBar It shows under page elements and attributes Advanced link building research Provide technical support related to site audit and crawl It shows page information like meta keywords, like headings, and descriptions Tells about keyword difficulty On-page recommendations Competitor analysis Gives advanced online marketing guides Page analytics This extension provides information about how customers interact with your website. It provides valuable information related to your page including on what page customers click, and on which page they don’t click and from this information, you can optimize your website and its pages. It also tells how much time a customer spends on a particular page. Features of Page analytics Tells about page views Tells about time spend on a particular page Bounce rate Tells about where the customer clicks Keyword everywhere It is an SEO keyword research tool. It gives you information about valuable Google keyword search volume. This tool saves time from copying the data from other websites. Features of Keyword everywhere It’s free and there is no monthly and yearly charge · Once you marked a keyword as a favorite, the keyword everywhere automatically collects these keywords in a different list and you can see those keywords in the favorite keyword section. It provides you an Excel, CSV and in PDF format also· You can use this extension on multiple platforms like Ubbersuggest, Keyword Planner, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, Google Search Console Tag Assistant It is known as Google Tag Manager and is used to creating tags, this extension has simplified the process of making tags to send user interaction data to Google Analytics. It saves your time, easy to use, and yet also provides you plenty of creative space to create customized, complex tags. Features of Tag Assistant It indicates the minor and major mistakes in a tag It also indicates which tags have to be removed or need improvement The built-in tag can be easily customized You have the control on who can make updates to your websites It also has version control built-in, whenever a change is made to a container, it automatically creates a new version, which is kept archived, and if you want you can easily go to the old version You can make many tags, without any coding process Similar web This extension tells you about the website traffic like your keyword ranking, traffic source, and traffic rating. You can get information about what is the main source of the traffic to your website and about its popularity. Features of Similar web Shows the traffic details about last 6 months Location of traffic Shows the top inbound and outbound referral sites Shows the sites with similar content Industry analysis Link Redirect Trace This extension helps in identifying the problems in your website like problems in off-page/ off-page SEO. Features of Link Redirect Trace It checks your links after your site migrated It reviews links from affiliate and advertising networks It checks the load time of your website and also checks the redirect chain Identify and fix problems in off-page/on-page SEO. Grammarly It is widely used online grammar and is open-source software, also has paid versions. Grammarly is based on AI and automatically shows what are the grammatical mistakes you have in your article or blog. It has over 10 million users worldwide using this tool to fix their social media posts, emails, and articles. Features of Grammarly Grammarly can be integrated with almost every social media platform like Facebook, Gmail, Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, MS Office products and many more. It checks the mistakes like Comma usage, Missing articles, Weak adjectives, Repetitive words, Misspelled words, Outdated spelling, etc. It has also a feature that checks for plagiarism. Alexa traffic rank It reveals how a website is doing relative to all other sites, and hence is a great tool for benchmarking and competitive analysis. It measures the popularity of a website and it ranks millions of websites in order of popularity. It calculates the popularity of a website on the basis of the site’s estimated traffic and audience engagement of past three months. Features of Alexa Traffic Rank It counts real traffic of your websites for this you have to download Alexa’s Certify Code on your site It gives you a better analytics report It monitors your website traffic and it shows where your website is not performing well Seo quake It provides you organic search data and provides useful tools like Keyword Density report, Internal/External Link analysis, SEO Audit, and even social metrics. SEOquake helps you to look at metrics like Alexa Ranking data, SEMrush Ranking data, current pages indexed by Google of this URL. Features of SEO quake It shows how your competitor’s domains are being advertised, it shows the number of publishers and advertisers for that particular domain. It shows the keyword difficulty and keyword density Shows internal and external links It also gives you a diagnose report, and with that report, you can easily find problems related to the title tag, meta tag, meta descriptions and much more information about your website Link Miner It checks for the broken links and also helps in developing backlinks. It shows you backlink information and social data for any link on-page. Features of Link Miner It checks webpages for broken links Check for the total number of external links are on the page you are viewing Page load time Site speed plays an important role in SEO and your site ranking. Visitors leave the page that won’t load fast. Page Load Time measures and display the loading time of a webpage. Features of Page load time It shows the link links that are taking too much time load It gives you the report and on the basis of that report you can take actions to speed up your page load time Author’s Bio Hitesh Khurana is a Digital Marketing Executive at Quantum IT innovation, a reputed NJ SEO Company in the USA. Along with writing for the company he is an admirer of classic literature, drama, and a true cinephile. You can find him writing meaningful poetry when he is not busy with his dog.
Most Recent Guide to On-Page SEO for Ecommerce Websites By James Tredwell on October 20, 2019 If you want more traffic and sales, then ranking on the top is a must. Ranking on the top in the search engine is easy if you use proper strategies and techniques. It doesn’t matter if you have a new website or an existing one. In this article, I am going to cover proven and verified strategies that can help to increase your ranking. Many studies have proven that website that rank number one received an average CTR of 35% or more as compared to website ranking on number two and so on. The most recent on-page SEO techniques for an e-commerce website are- Keyword research and optimization Website structure Inside linking Mobile-friendliness Check site errors Social media optimization Reviews section Usability Product pages Blog section 1. Keyword research and optimization The first and foremost step is keyword research, you should be clear about the keyword. The majority of people’s e-commerce website doesn’t rank just because they use irrelevant keywords. Many online tools are available. Example- Aherfs keyword explorer, Ubbersuggest, keyword everywhere, keyword shitter, etc. You can use these tools to identify the keywords of your industry, and don’t forget to find relevant keywords. Did you get the keywords? Now what? Optimize those keywords. The meaning of keyword optimization is the technique of embedding those keywords in the correct and proper location. You should also use your keywords in the URL of your website or blog. You should adequately insert your keywords in the following. Headers and subheaders section Page title In your content or paragraph Image filename URL Alt tags Meta title and description Remember avoid keyword stuffing because it will decrease your ranking. 2. Website architecture Many people start designing their website without a proper plan, and hence they don’t get the desired result. With a good architecture and with proper planning, you undoubtedly get the desired ranking. For a good architecture, you should follow these steps- Identify the customer need Perform a content audit- you should timely update and review the content Build a user-friendly website hierarchy 3. Internal linking It is the process of linking the pages to your website. Or we can say that providing a link to an older post of your website. It is the most essential part of Professional SEO. More internal links increase the chances of the ranking of your page. Importance of internal linking It improves the indexation of the website It increases the backlink earning capacity Improves the website architecture Now let’s understand how you can do effective internal linking Link the relevant articles- The best internal link are those which connects one article with another. You can follow a modest trick. Whenever you write a new article, try to embed the link to your old articles. You should add four or more links. Add logical and valuable links. Avoid adding no-follow links. Avoid the addition of irrelevant links. 4.Mobile-friendliness The majority of people make their queries on mobile; hence, the mobile-friendly website is important. According to a study- 60% of customers who visit a mobile unfriendly website are likely to go to a competitor’s site. Mobile optimized websites can increase the chances of your ranking. Many website design platforms like WordPress etc. have an inbuilt mobile-friendly system. Also, it provides the newest e-commerce website templates. 5. Check the website errors Errors on a website also affect the ranking. Many free online tools are available that perform a site audit and can easily figure out the errors on the website. Some of the common errors are- Broken links Mistakes in your content- Like grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, etc. Plagiarized or duplicate content Errors in codes like HTML, CSS, or JavaScript errors Irrelevant URLs Sluggish loading pages 6. Social media optimization If you want to increase your audience engagement then make sure your website is social media optimized. Social media optimization means the ease of sharing your website content on social media platforms, and Google also considers this as a ranking factor. So make sure your website is social media optimized. Some of the tips for SMO are- Make sure your content is unique, interesting, and shareable. Write relevant content, remember your audience interest, choice etc. Include images, videos that are relevant as it increases the interest and engagement of your audience Ensure that you have a social media toolbar on your website Check which hashtag is popular in your industry and embed in your post Don’t forget to optimize your social media account use an accurate user name, profile photo, bio, etc. Share your latest post on different social media accounts and insert your website link in those posts. 7. Review section In the world of e-commerce customer’s review plays an important role not only in the ranking of a website but also increases your audience trust. According to a study by an internet retailer, it is observed that the conversion rate increases by 13-70% by adding product reviews to your e-commerce website. Jupiter research found that 75% of consumers read reviews before purchasing online. You should send an email after your customer they have received your product and politely ask them for the reviews. 8. Usability Website usability means how easy your audience use and navigate the website. It refers to the simplicity, relevancy, and ease of accessibility of a site. Some of the common tips to improve the website appearance and accessibility are- Responsive website- Make sure your website is responsive. The majority of people makes their online purchase using mobile. Reduce the page loading time- Even a single second is valuable in the e-commerce website. A survey by Kissmetrics shows that 35% of shoppers abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Make a simple and easily accessible navigation bar. Also, make sure that the navigation bar is linked to the relevant pages. Use headings and subheadings as it will make it easy for your audience to understand. Try to highlight the key points. 9. Optimize Product Pages Optimize your product pages by making it more user-friendly because it is your audience that buys a product and not the search engine. Analyze your competitor’s website and note down every small mistake and their drawbacks and try to overcome those on your website. Add the relevant images of your product Add the brief details of your product Remove the products that are not available, or mention out of stock in its description. 10. Blog Last but not least, try to add a blog section. Google also considers this as a ranking factor. Try to write an SEO, friendly blog or content. Let me ask you a question- Which website has higher chances of ranking, a website that updates its content on a regular basis, or a website that doesn’t? Obviously, a website that updates its content on a regular basis. Now don’t think from where you will get the ideas of the blog. You have an e-commerce website that consists of different kinds of products, and each has its own uniqueness and benefits so, try to write those benefits and other additional details in your blog section. You can write a blog on the questions related to your product. If you still face problems in finding the content ideas; then, you should tools like Ubbersuggest, semrush, keyword everywhere for the relevant keyword of your products. Just like your website, your blog post also needs to be high quality and relevant. Avoid keyword stuffing and low-quality blogs.
