5 Reasons People Prefer Hiring Experts For Their SEO Audits

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

Let me ask you something. If you’re Usain Bolt, would you buy a pair of running shoes at a $10 store? Probably not. You’ve heard the admonition, don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. This lesson could not be more true than when it comes to doing SEO audits. The last thing you want is to be that guy who constantly goes to the plastic surgeon to fix his nose. If you need something done right, let the experts do it–in this case, the SEO experts.

And millions of people around the world hire experts like AJ Frey for their SEO audits. Still not convinced? Let me ask you? Do you think it is a coincidence that you are here? No, it’s not! You are here because our SEO experts have spent hours auditing our website to ensure that we make it on Google’s page one–which is where you found us. 

And that’s just one reason people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. We’re the good guys. We believe in sharing information so we’re going to share some more reasons with you. Are you ready? Here then are 5 reasons people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. But for the newbie who is just starting out in SEO and has no idea what we are talking about, let’s first define an SEO audit.

What Is an SEO Site Audit?

Well, we are going to presume that you already know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. According to Yakkety Yak (a Chicago-based marketing agency) “an SEO site audit is an analysis of the factors that impact your website ranking in organic search. 

This often includes technical back-end factors as well as on-page, content-focused elements that make a website both easier for search engine robots to crawl and easier for people to navigate”. The objective being to understand the ranking of your site and to discover how to increase traffic to your site.

Why is this Important? 

A 2020 study (Search Engine Journal) found that the clickthrough rate for websites in the first position on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is 25%. For websites in the second position, this number drops drastically to 15%, and 2.5% for websites in the 10th position. And this is all on the first page!!! 

Can you imagine what happens when you get to Google’s page 2? This means if your website is not on page 1, the odds are pretty slim for consumers to find you. Why spend money to build a website if not to generate revenue. However, if no one is visiting your site, then it means no leads and ultimately no revenue. 

So now you see the purpose of SEO, you can also understand why it’s important to do an SEO audit of your website to ensure it is properly optimized for the search engines. 

 

Why can’t I do it for free?

Good question. Let’s look at free: 

We all know that time is money, therefore it is unreasonable to expect an SEO Expert to spend the time to do an audit for free, right? So what’s left? DIY or have a team member who’s not an expert do it. Anyone else who promises free has an ulterior motive, whereby you are going to end up being penny wise and pound foolish. 

Note that a free SEO audit will generate incomplete and misleading information, which if acted upon could harm the quality, visibility and profitability of your website. If using a third-party, he/she could provide sales-oriented recommendations to steer you towards engaging with the third-party providing the audit. I.e. “Hire us” and we will fix the problem for you. This we call the foot-in-the-door tactic.   

What you will not get for free is valuable insights, historical contexts (past and present performance) and meaningful recommendations for what to do next. The danger of missing these three necessary ingredients is that you can end up making harmful decisions due to a lack of information, the wrong information, or information designed to lead you in a predetermined direction. 

Not only will you now have to deal with the financial fallout of an uninformed decision, but you will also have to bear the additional cost of fixing it–penny wise and pound foolish.

 

Why it is Worth Paying for an SEO Audit

A free SEO audit, as a giveaway, only provides limited useful information in its purpose, scope and strategic value. A paid SEO audit delves deep into your marketing data to analyse the meaning and implications of the site’s SEO performance.

Not only that, but it also presents a “comprehensive picture of how SEO affects overall marketing and business goals, so the audit delivers many times the value of your investment in revenue-driving conclusions”.

Having established that you are now left with a paid SEO audit, let’s now look at the 5 reasons people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. Also, let’s give a look how SEO Expert AJ Frey, the best SEO in Canada, can audit your site and ensure your audiences discover you on Google’s first page. 

You’re hiring a team of experts

Usually, SEO experts do not work in a vacuum. So what most people don’t know is that when you hire an SEO expert, you are actually getting a team of experts working together to do a comprehensive audit on your website. 

You’re getting value for your money

When you hire an SEO expert, you’re actually getting value for your money because he/she is going to evaluate your website based on your unique needs, foci and desired conversions. There is no one-size fits all in SEO, therefore, you cannot use a template to do an SEo audit. Even if you start with a template, it must be customized to meet the needs of that particular website. 

You’re getting thoughtful, Informed Insights

You could decide to purchase the SEO tool–which is good, and even the SEO experts use them sometimes. The only problem is, you may not be able to read and understand the outcome. What does “manual actions” and “tracking/analytics” really mean, for example? An SEO expert will give you thoughtful, informed insights based on the outcome after he/she has audited your website. 

You can expect to receive quantitative and qualitative information because well-trained experts like AJ Frey are looking through every single anomaly revealed through their SEO audit of your website. 

Issues like duplicate contents, excessive redirects, low word count, unlinked pages, etc. are recorded and categorized into subheadings. The SEO audit report will not read like a fill-in-the-blank generic report used by everybody. No, every section of the report will contain thoughtful insights about your website–information that has been obtained from the data collected.  

You’re Getting Honest and Forthright Recommendations

After a thorough evaluation, you can expect an SEO expert to provide a prescriptive list of categorize recommendations fit to your budget. And one that is easily implemented by you and your team. 

Many third-party auditors will give you a description of what’s “wrong” with your website–Usually in the form of a pdf file, and that’s where they stop. However, they will not prescribe the “medicine” needed for your “broken” site. 

With an SEO expert, an SEO audit report is not just a pdf file (though you will get that too), but also includes meaningful recommendations that go beyond “check your sitemap” and “improve content”. 

The SEO expert will have a conference call or face-to-face meeting with you to discuss the findings of the SEO audit. After giving you honest and forthright recommendations, he/she will answer all the  questions you may have concerning the audit and your website. You can expect to get honest feedback.

By the time you finish, there will be no doubt as to what your next move will be. This is another reason people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. If you do not have an SEO team, we will gladly assist. We have the best SEO packages in Canada, so you don’t have to worry about your bottomline. 

You will avoid Issues with Google

And the fifth reason people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits is to avoid any issue with Google. If you know anything about SEO you know that Google has a Best Practice manual of the things one can and cannot do in order to rank on their pages. 

You’re an upstanding citizen, but unknown to you, when you decided to place your favourite keyword 20 times in your underperforming page Google sees that as a “black-hat” technique and penalises you. 

Google no longer accepts keyword stuffing (that’s what they call using a keyword too many times in one article) and so Google’s crawlers notice this on your web pages. What will happen is, you will see your page rank go down instead of rising, which means fewer people will find your page, and subsequently fewer leads and conversions.

As you can see, it’s bad enough If you make a mistake with your SEO campaign–if that’s all you had to worry about: wasted resources. However, your real problem starts when you get entangled with Google. If you’re not experienced with SEO-and most DIY web owners aren’t–you could accidentally conduct black-hat SEO techniques without fully understanding the consequences of your actions.

SEO Experts know all the rules. That’s why they are experts. A part of their job is to understand the ins and outs of the industry, to ensure they never run into legal issues. If they were to conduct “black hat” SEO, they could find themselves in trouble with Google, and you could take legal actions against them. 

Final thoughts

When It comes to SEO Audit, you could download a free SEO tool and DIY. However, if you did, and if you’re not an SEO expert, you coud not only hurt your bottomline: you could get into trouble with Google and your website could get penalised for inadvertently practicing black hat techniques.

Or, you could hire an SEO expert who will not only conduct a thorough audit of your site, but will also present the results in a timely, well-thought out manner, whether face-to-face or virtually. He/She will go through the results with you in a thoughtful way. 

Once through, you will receive a honest and forthright recommendations. So you can make informed decisions. The value you get from hiring experts for your SEO audit will be proportionally more than what it costs, if managed correctly and nurture your business to scale.

If you do not have an SEO team, we can provide SEO services to you, at a fraction of the cost seen on the Internet. Or, if you want to learn more about how search engine optimization can help your business grow, give us a call, or send us an email. AJ Frey is ready to help you!  

So there you have it. The 5 Reasons People Prefer Hiring Experts for Their SEO Audits. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the Comments box below.

What is eCommerce?

by Ecommerce TipsSEO Tips

What is e-commerce?

E-commerce stands for ‘electronic commerce’ or ‘internet commerce’ which occurs when people buy or sell things through online services/the internet. E-commerce can be done through a variety of technologies and ways such as simply buying a pair of brand new shoes from your smartphone, selling your services to customers online, downloading a paid for song and more. E-commerce is broken down into four main categories including:

Business to business (B2B)
Business to consumer (B2C)
Consumer to consumer (C2C)
Consumer to business (C2B)

When looking at electronic commerce, it’s easy to believe that it just entails simple transactions such as a business selling their product online to a consumer. For instance, Amazon is selling you your favourite cookbook. While this is an example of ‘business to consumer’, e-commerce spans over many more types of transactions as long as the web is being utilized for at least part of it. A simple way to look at the lifespan of an e-commerce transaction is the transfer of services and/or goods, the transfer of funds and then finally the exchange. Whether this occurs only between consumers, businesses or both depends on what type of model the transaction is. E-commerce has become one of the biggest and fastest growing industries across the world especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when people resorted to shopping online even more.

Business to business e-commerce

B2B e-commerce occurs when businesses carry out transactions with one another without involving consumers. This can happen when a manufacturer sells their products to a retailer or wholesaler. This is a very popular e-commerce model as many businesses order their goods online and have left traditional in-person transactions behind. The reason for this all comes down to convenience and what saves a business time and money. B2B e-commerce takes away stress and time by providing a business with a safe and reliable way to restock merchandise, access services and get quotes on items. This means a B2B wholesaler will sell their products online in bulk to other businesses and retailers. And in recent years many wholesalers have invested in creating online platforms to sell their products and services, widening their reach and utilizing the positive effects of B2B e-commerce. Other ways a business can involve themselves in B2B commerce is selling their online services to companies in need, just like what we do here at RAD Websites! The variety of B2B commerce models is large and the opportunities are endless. Other examples of B2B include websites like AliExpress, Rakuten, HubSpot, Amazon Business and Salesforce.

Business to consumer e-commerce

This type of e-commerce is the most popular model as the average person has purchased items or services online through e-commerce giants like Amazon, Knix, Spotify, Walmart, Adidas and even Netflix! Let’s say you are an average consumer looking to purchase an item such as a new blender or a service such as movie streaming online. You carry out an online transaction to achieve this good or service and then you finally receive your goods or services. Boom, you’ve just participated in a B2C e-commerce transaction! Having access to business to consumer e-commerce alleviates the need to physically go somewhere in order to purchase goods. This has allowed for convenient spending while turning many consumers away from traditional shopping at brick-and-mortar locations. Because of this, many brick-and-mortars have invested in creating online websites for their customers to use while also vastly increasing their brand awareness. B2C e-commerce gained even more popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were told to stay home and limit their in-person contacts. Now that lockdowns and mandates are no longer affecting people, consumers have more of a choice on how they get their goods and services although many have realized how easy it is to shop online.

Consumer to consumer e-commerce

C2C e-commerce is simply a model which sees two consumers engaging in online business with one another. If one person decides they want to sell a used coffee machine and they decide to list it for sale on a third party website for $20 and you buy it, you and the seller have engaged in C2C e-commerce. Some third party sites will charge sellers a small fee in order for them to sell their items but others are free. Depending on the quantity and frequency of the items you sell, you may find paid-for sites are the way to go. Some great examples of C2C e-commerce websites include eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and Esty. Lots of people love this form of e-commerce because it’s less costly than buying new products, it’s easier to sell things because of the lower price expectations, it’s extremely convenient and it’s good for the environment. However, there are some things to be aware of when engaging in C2C e-commerce. You cannot guarantee the quality of products which means people can misrepresent the product they are selling. It’s also important to note that scammers will sometimes use C2C e-commerce to take advantage of buyers. Never make an online payment before receiving your item and always exercise caution when it comes to providing payment.

Consumer to business e-commerce

Last but not least, C2B e-commerce flips the script when it comes to the ‘business and consumer’ relationship. This happens when the consumer offers a business a service or product. The exchange involves payment to the consumer through funds or other benefits. A freelance writer who writes copy for a business in turn for payment is a perfect example of C2B e-commerce. These individuals are considered consumers and not businesses because they create their own terms and they negotiate their own transactions when offering a service and/or product to a business. This model is great for individuals who want to provide products to businesses without making a business of their own. It allows consumers to pick and choose who they want to provide their services to for whatever benefits they decide and it offers great flexibility to both the consumer and the business. This idea has grown exponentially through social media and social media influencers who promote and showcase a company’s products on their platforms in turn for free products, money and or experiences.

Conclusion

E-commerce can be a tedious subject but once you familiarize yourself with the different categories, it won’t take long for you to understand the processes and benefits it can have for your business. RAD Websites is a great starting point for you to grow or start your own online presence. After being awarded the Best E-Commerce Website Agency in Western Canada and the Best E-Commerce Design Agency Canada-wide, it’s obvious that we have all the tools you need to achieve your goals.

Why WordPress Is Still The Best

by Ecommerce TipsMarketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO TipsWordPress Tips

WordPress is by far the most popular open source CMS (content management system) – around 60% of all websites use WordPress and for good reason. In fact, over 10 million websites use WordPress, with 500 new ones added each day, according to the latest statistics.
In this blog article, we’ll go through the reasons why you should choose Wordpress over other CMS systems such as Shopify, Wix, Joomla or Drupal.

How Long Does SEO Take to Work?

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

The single most important question for a business or brand which is about to spend money on search engine optimization (SEO) is how long does SEO take to work before results start coming in. We’ve been asked that question countless times over, and frankly, there’s no direct answer. 

The leading issue in trying to answer that question is that there are plenty of things that factor in – including but not limited to, the type of business, industry, marketing strategies, and web design. Simply put, figuring out how long it takes for SEO to work is relative to how it is done in the first place. 

We’ve dealt with several businesses in the past who already had impractical expectations before coming in; they ask head-on if we can help them produce results in a couple of months because that is the ideal time frame they hear from their peers.

How Long Does SEO Take to Work?

The Truth About SEO

Sadly, for them and any future client, we tell them that SEO doesn’t walk on a straight line. In other words, there’s no uniform system or set of rules that govern how strategies should work and what methods should be avoided. 

Key in the term “SEO tips” in Google, and you are bombarded with thousands of opinions from everyone claiming to be experts. While there is nothing wrong with the overabundance of information, we take issue on those who cash in on misinformation, particularly about SEO campaigns that produce results in no time. 

You’re here because you want to know the truth. Don’t get me wrong – We’re not dissuading you from investing in SEO. You’re here for a reality check, and that is what we’re giving you.

Don’t worry if you are confused or scared. Everyone feels the same way when they ponder how long it’ll take for SEO to work. But before we delve on to the factors that affect the timeline and results, let’s make sure you know the basics of SEO. 

What is SEO?

SEO deals with the optimization of the pages of a website in a way that achieves favorable rank in the search engine results pages (SERPS). It stands out from all other strategies with the same objective because it involves the use of free or “organic” methods. 

SERPs contain links to pages, listings, videos, and other stuff that are relevant to a specific keyword phrase or search term. The results are ranked using an algorithm designed based on the search intent of the user. 

SEO has the most impact on a website’s ranking, but it is a broad concept that is better understood by two attributes – on-page SEO and off-page SEO. 

On-Page SEO

The only way to understand on-page SEO is by learning how a search engine like Google operates. It was mentioned earlier that search engines embrace an algorithm to examine content and rank pages through them. Google gathers content by using spiders or crawlers.

Search engines use a database (indexes) to save pertinent website info, including URLs. So, when someone searches “signs of a roof replacement,” Google displays results based on its indexes. 

On-page SEO deals with optimizing a page on a website. The search engines take multiple factors into account when ranking pages. These factors include keyword use and stemming, internal links and anchor texts, mobile responsiveness, and distribution of page authority, to name a few. 

Off-Page SEO

This is often called “link building,” for a good reason. Off-page SEO describes the process of creating a reputable inbound link profile for a website by using:

  • high-authority
  • relevant
  • trustworthy links from other websites.

The reason why it is called “off-page” is that the work done is outside of the website. An excellent example is when you ask an authority site in the roofing industry to link to your blog post about the signs that a roof needs replacement.

When Will You See Results from Your Campaign?

Irrespective of the chosen SEO strategy, it takes time to see the results after the implementation. If you’re desperate to know how long you should wait, then the most sensible projection is four to seven months.

This is the period when you begin to see results. In other words, we’re not saying you achieve utter success in less than a year. 

The reason why we’d always come up with this modest projection is that there is a bevy of factors that affect the development of your campaign. We discuss these factors below:

Age

Being a newbie is the biggest challenge for every website trying to climb up to the search engine results pages. It’s like when you’re vying a job straight out of college, and everyone looks at you as an inexperienced prospect with a lot of risks and a few upsides.

For the most part, it takes Google a couple of months to index a newly published site. In other words, age plays a crucial factor in figuring out how long you have to wait for your website to appear on the first page of SERPs.

There are ways to help speed up your progress, i.e., obtaining links from authority sites (off-page SEO). Doing so means convincing high-ranking and relevant sites to link to you. If you’re successful in getting these links to your pages, you’re telling Google to index your site quicker. 

History

Age and history are two different things SEO’s perspective. The former refers to the time that your site has been published on the web. While the latter talks about your site’s interaction history with the search engines.

Google hands out a score on every page of a website based on factors such as trustworthiness and reputability. This score or rating exemplifies your site’s propensity to climb in the search engine rankings. Hence, the higher score your page gets, the more likely faster the climb to the first page of Google will be.

Penalties

We said earlier that there is no set of strict guidelines or rules in SEO. But don’t think Google and other search engines won’t penalize black hat strategies.

Google hates websites that break its rules, although there’s no existing document that details these rules. Any decent individual with minimal background in SEO knows what it means to break the rules.

For example, procuring backlinks from shady and spammy sources, posting duplicate content, and keyword stuffing.

If you’ve engaged in any of those black hat techniques before, it means your site has a tainted reputation online. Google and other search engines won’t forget previous penalties when they rank pages. But like everything in life, there’s always a second chance to redeem yourself. 

Final Words

SEO is a lot more complicated than most people think, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Instead of probing into how long does SEO take to work, the best approach is to set realistic goals. And then establish an effective plan based on them. Instead of focusing on the time frame, you should weigh on the factors that affect your campaign. 

Search Engine Marketing: What’s the Cost to Be Seen Online?

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

How Much Should I Pay to be Seen First Online?

At Rad Websites, we get a lot of the same questions when it comes to creating search engine marketing strategies are profitable, sustainable and all around RAD.

How much does it cost to jump to the first place on the search engine results page?

Can’t I just pay to be seen first?

If I’m running paid ads, I’ll be seen at the top anyway right? I’m paying to be there!

Isn’t SEO included when you build my website? How can we possibly need monthly updates?

And guys, honestly- we get it. If you don’t live and breathe the Internet like we do, it’s actually quite overwhelming to understand and build marketing strategies for search engines that make sense to both us (the nerds) and you (the much cooler customers.)

It’s because online marketing has crafted it’s own set of rules over time. While we can apply a lot of off-page marketing principles to online marketing, there’s entire concepts we must keep in mind to get you seen among the noise.

The Internet is a really weird place. But it’s not going anywhere, anytime soon at least- and to be consistently seen online requires a whole lot of work on the back end.

The general theme of this particular blog? You can’t buy search engine ads and expect to triumph your competition with those alone. You just can’t. Let’s find out here How Search Engine Marketing will help you.

It’s Not All About Cost with PPC Ads

Consider the Online User Experience

At the end of the day, people often forget that Google/Bing/Yahoo are businesses. Yes, they get a tonne of revenue from paid ads- but, they rely on people coming back to their online space to make money.

Search engines get people to come back by being a quick, consistent and accurate source of answers for online users with pressing, immediate concerns.

(There is a slight hint of sarcasm in there. We get to see the stuff people search on Google on a daily basis. Entertaining doesn’t quite sum it up.)
But really though; search engine strive everyday to present the best solutions to those who continually use them. It places onus on the search engines to audit, categorize and filter websites to make sure each search gives you what you were looking for. They care about the user experience, because a positive user experience makes them return.

Google Decides First Place on the SERP by Their Everchanging Algorithm

In order to audit, categorize and rank websites to see just how well it will answer a particular search query, Google has an internal algorithm that they stick on their crawler bots who scan millions of websites a day.

Does anyone know the entire in’s and out’s of the Google algorithm? Of course not. They would never make it that easy.
Does it stay consistent so you can figure it out?

An even harder NO- they make minor changes to the algorithm up to 100 times a day.

However; there are many principles that leading Kelowna web development and SEO agencies know to be true, tried and tested. Of course, they all lead back to the user experience.

Now, we don’t want to overwhelm you (or quite frankly, bore you) by spilling the entire scope of our understanding of the algorithm.
(Trust us- we’ve tried at least ten ways to make alt tags sound cool and hip. They just don’t.)

Okay, so stick with us. In order to understand why paying your way to the top just isn’t going to work, you need to understand the mechanisms of paid advertisements and how your organic website plays a vital role in anything you do online.

The Quality Score of Pay-Per-Click Advertisements

A lot of times, we see businesses who throw a large chunk of money at paid ads and think “hey, that’ll do. I’m paying a good chunk of money, I’ll be seen.”

Unfortunately, no.

When you type in a search term- lets say web developers Kelowna- Google brings you two set of results. The first is a few paid ads at the top and the rest are organic search results (not paid.)

Paid or not, Google has crawled through your website and ad to see if you are a relevant and high quality candidate to show for that search query.
With organic results, Google scans hundreds of different items to decide your “worthiness.” With paid ads, it really boils down to three things which make up your online campaigns quality score:

Ad Relevance + Landing Page Experience + Expected CTR
Shooting back to “web developers Kelowna”:

  • Does your ad talk directly about web development in Kelowna?
  • Does your website or landing page talk directly about web development in Kelowna?
  • Are people clicking on your ad when they search web development in Kelowna?

It circles back to two main concepts.

Your ad campaigns must be designed, written and executed flawlessly to show up amongst millions of advertisers.

Your website has also has to be designed, written, built and executed flawlessly to show up amongst millions of advertisers. Google puts a hefty weight on how relevant your website is- 60% of your quality score will depend on your website.

We are sorry to say- if your website isn’t rad, it will struggle to show up in both paid and organic search results no matter how much you pay. If your website isn’t clean, relevant, up to date and built properly- even paid ads won’t show very much.

Do People Still Click Paid Ads?

Absolutely! Paid ads are a great addition to your online search engine marketing strategy. Around 40% of people will go directly to an ad over an organic search listing.

But it’s important to remember they are an addition, not a solution. Without putting a good amount of effort into your website- or picking a web development company that does- you will simply be wasting your money paying for ads that Google still won’t show much.

PSA: This is a really, really good measure for search engines to put into place. Giants, like Amazon and Coca-Cola have billions to throw around online and it wouldn’t really be fair if only the biggest and richest got seen online whenever they wanted.

Plus, how annoying would it be to search for a web development company in Kelowna and you get ads for Vanilla Coke?

(Because cherry Coke is better. That’s what we meant.)

So, i hope you understand how much search engine marketing is important for your business/website.

What You Should Look For In A Website

by SEO TipsWordPress Tips

What You Should Look For In A Website

You may wonder why you should spend money updating your current company website? You
might even think it’s a waste of money. Maybe your existing website looks outdated compared to
the competition but does a newly designed website design really matter that much?

Despite a lot of businesses owners reluctance to spend money, a ton of studies show well-built, modern-
looking website will generate better customer traffic and will increase conversion which means
higher sales.

There are many reasons why a well-designed website will attract more customers and give you
dominance in your industry. The following highlights four key components that a web designer
should keep in mind when designing a website. This will help you ask the right questions and
hire the perfect web designer for your project.

Brand Consistency

Whenever creating a new website the designer should understand your brand. This goes further
than just the look and feel of your brand and website, but should also include messaging, core
values, and mission statement. You don’t have to put it all on your website, but a good website
designer understands that everything they create and do should come from a brand-first
perspective. It is important for your customers to be able to recognize your brand in all forms of
communication so they associate your brand position and promise with your business. Often
when the visual communication changes with a brand, it can cause customers to feel
uncomfortable, which can cause them to create a negative association with your company. When
designing a new website, you might want to look at a brand overhaul or a brand refresh,
depending on what has changed internally within your company.

Website Navigation

One of the most important parts of a website is the navigation. If your customer becomes
frustrated and can’t easily find what they are looking for they will go somewhere else. It’s that
simple. The navigation of a website can often make or break a website, which is especially true if
you’re selling products online. Website navigation typically includes a navigation bar that divides
the pages of the website into categories. For example, you might have a category with service or
products, or you might have one with all the company information. Good navigation should
make things easy to find and comprehend. When designing navigation, web designers sometimes
get carried away with designs and fancy typefaces because they look pretty but oftentimes they
just confuse the customer and slow the process down. In most cases, over-simplified navigation
maximizes ease of use for a wider range of customers, no matter what your target demographic
is.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is an important area of expertise. If you want to know more about
Search Engine Optimization SEO (AJ insert link) click here to learn more. When hiring a
website designer, you should always ask what he or she knows about SEO. Please keep in mind,
just because they are a web designer, it doesn’t mean that they are experienced in SEO and they
might miss a few steps and you’ll have to go back to fix them which will likely cost you extra
money. Ask how the web designer plans to implement SEO setup in the design and see what
they say.
Some things to watch out for:
– Title Tags
– Meta Description
– Linking
– Keyword optimization

Website Content

The content of your site is important for reasons besides the fact that it communicates your
company’s brand position and promise (which we’ve already mentioned). There are other very
important elements that are considered when a copywriter creates the content and the graphic
designer creates the visual assets. Making the message short and to the point, yet warm and
welcoming helps the reader to remember the message easier. Also, when there is too much text
on a page, the page becomes visually cluttered making it more difficult for a reader to physically
read the page, let alone remain interested in reading the page. By streamlining the content, the
designer is then able to insert the text into their design, which typically includes plenty of blank
space. This empty space lets the readers’ eyes rest so they do not tire of reading.

Conclusion

In today’s day and age, most people look online to make purchasing decisions and most
businesses have already developed their respective websites to become more accessible for their
customers. With the help of website design, business owners are able to create a user-friendly
and welcoming online environment where users can get useful information any time of the day.
When you have a well-managed website, people can rely on you. It builds trust, and when
visitors trust you, they won’t have doubts about purchasing your products and services.

Best Free SEO Tools

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

There are hundreds if not thousands of Search Engine Optimization (Best Free SEO Tools) you can use. And they can get pretty pricey if you’re not careful so you need to be picky which ones you pay for and which ones you use a free version instead.

Thankfully there are tons of free ways you can check different SEO attributes and rankings which can save you both time and money. Here are some of our favourites at Rad websites.

1) Small SEO Tools (Free)

This site is one of the best Free SEO Tools out there because it has all types of free tools you can use in order to do keyword research, site analysis and even check your competition. A part from Google’s own tools, this is probably the best you can get without entering in your credit card information. While you can’t go as deep as some of the paid tools, Small SEO Tools is great for people who want to be able to fix some of the more common SEO issues without spending a ton of time and effort.

How To Use This Tool

Enter your website into any of the offered tools but I would recommend start with the SEO website checker, especially if you’re looking for some quick SEO wins. This tool will give you an idea of how you score and how you stack up against your competition. You can then dive deeper using some of the other tools.

2) Google Analytics (Free)

This is the tool you must definitely use on a weekly basis, even if you don’t really care about SEO. Google Analytics tracks all your traffic to your website and you can analysis which marketing channels are working and which aren’t. You can see what pages your clients are most gravitating towards and which ones need improvements.

How to Use This Tool

You need to sign in to your Analytics account to start using this tool. Once you have added your website, navigate to the Tracking code under the property column and copy the code. Paste the tracking code in your SEO plugin. We recommend either Yoast or All In One SEO.

You should get verification that you’ve done this correctly. It will take a little time to get used to navigating Google Analytics as there are so many different options and customizable features but once you do, you’ll see the power of it.

3) Google PageSpeed Insights (Free)

Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that checks the speed of your site and provides suggestions to how to improve it. Page loading speed is one of the most important elements of a website. Better site speed leads to increased user satisfaction and higher rankings.

How to Use This Tool

Enter your website URL, click the “analyze” button, and the tool will automatically check the speed and overall user experience of your site and provide a score – for both desktop and mobile. You need to opt for a score above 90 to offer your users a better site experience and to increase your chances of ranking higher in the search results.

4) Google Search Console (Free)

Formally Google Webmaster, this is yet another Google tool that allows you to search for errors on your website that could potentially harm your SEO score. Primarily it allows you to check and submit a sitemap which is the overall architecture that Google views your site in.

How To Use This Tool

You’ll have to sign into your Google Search Console or create a new account if you don’t have one already. Once you are in you’re account you’ll have to attach it to your website. You can do this in a variety of ways including through domain access, your website code or a website plugin. Once you have hooked your website up, you’ll able to navigate with the bar on the left-hand site which will give you a variety of options.

5) Mobile-Friendly Test (Free)

Mobile-Friendly Test is a free tool that lets you check the responsiveness of your website on a mobile device. With Google’s emphasis on mobile-first search queries on mobile devices are at least 50% in your industry — and in many cases more. Therefore it’s important to optimize your site for mobile devices.

How to Use This Tool

Enter the URL of the site that you wish to test and then click the “run test” button. In just a few seconds, you will know if your website is mobile-friendly or not.

6) Ahrefs Backlink Checker (Freemium)

Ahrefs offers a free back-link checker that allows you to check the top 100 links pointing to any website. Back-links are important because they are one of the ways Google checks to see how popular your website is and whether the website provides useful information.

How to Use This Tool

Enter the URL that you want to analyze and the tool will not only show you your domain rating score.

7) Keyword.io (Free)

Keyword research is undoubtedly one of the most fundamental tasks that every SEO specialist needs to perform, but researching is a time-consuming process without access to the best tools. Keyword.io is an easy and free alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner and it offers lots of relevant keyword suggestions for every type of research.

How to Use This Tool

Enter your main keyword in the search box, click on the desired search engine or platform, and then select the targeted country from the drop-down list. Once you press search, a variety of options will appear.

8) Moz Local (Free)

Moz has a free tool called Moz Local which is great for local businesses that want to be found within a particular neighborhood. Moz Local offers a comprehensive view of a website’s profile and web presence. By analyzing the most popular online directory’s, it gives a score on how well you rank and where you can improve. A great thing about this tool is that you don’t need a paid Moz account in order to use it.

How to Use This Tool

Enter the company’s name and street address and click search. It will take up to 30 seconds to analyze and will display where that company is indexed and where you could add it for improved search results. It is particularly useful to create links from sites like Yelp, Facebook, and Foursquare which will increase your domain authority.

So, these are the best free SEO Tools, that you can use and get better website ranking on Search Engines. If you need our SEO Experts Help, Feel free to Contact Us.

5 Expert SEO Tips to Push Your Traffic – How We Nail it Every Time!

by SEO Tips

Today we share with you 5 expert SEO tips to push your traffic, that has allow us to nail it every time!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is like a car race, except the race is to make it to Page One on search engines like Google and Bing. In this race, you have several different types of cars, such as Car #1 (Content), Car #2 (Link building), Car #3 (Technical SEO), Car #4 (Social Media) and Car #5 (Keyword Research).

In this race, the cars are not racing against each other. They are racing with each other, each attempting to fit in simultaneously on your website. Once you gain momentum with one “car”, it can help boost your rankings and traffic.

According to Brian Harnish, lead SEO at iLoveSEO, “When you have both elements – rankings and traffic – performing well, you can expect higher conversions as a result”.

In a previous post I talked about maintaining a high ranking by practicing white hat SEO, something we, here at Best SEO in Canada, are very good at. Btw, if by some miracle you don’t know what SEO is, let me just say it is a term used to describe the process webmasters’ use to make a website rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing.

In today’s article, I will share with you five expert SEO tips to push your traffic–and how we nail it every time, because I am the best SEO in Canada: Someone RAD who makes Rad Websites, equipped with all the latest best practices and  technology, and the creator of high-functioning, complex e-commerce stores that perform. Which brings me to:

Number 1 – A well-designed website

It doesn’t matter how many Ads you purchase (and we hope you don’t because we hate PPC), if you don’t have a well-designed website, the traffic you worked so hard to gain will “bounce”. That’s right! They’ll say, “See yah later”, and you can bet they will not be sharing your link with anyone either.

A well-designed website is a RAD website. If you’re reading this article then it means you’ve seen our website. And since ya’all know I love to brag, you won’t be surprised if I say it is one of the best websites on this superhighway. A well-designed website has a sitemap-whether created by you or generated by Google or Bing.

However, it is vital, as it provides search engines like Google with the necessary information to swiftly crawl and index site pages, audio and video. As a matter of fact, in order to appear in Google News, your website must have a sitemap.

On the front page of your website should be several or one main image that has been optimized for search images. See Number #3 below. Your blog (and I am presuming you have one. If you don’t, then you really need to stop reading this post and contact me NOW!) must be discoverable on your front page.

Do I have to say that the link should lead to your latest post? A well-designed website has a well-chosen name, and on the backend, uses relevant keywords. More on this later (see Number #4 below).

Last, but not least, a well-designed website looks just that: well-designed. It is pleasing to the eye. Believe it or not, visitors are turned off by unattractive websites. What will happen is that they will visit your site because you’ve implemented all these expert SEO tips I’ve shared with you, but they will not stay, and they will not return.

Those are potential clients. Solid leads. Lost revenue. So my number one expert SEO tip is that you build a well-designed website to attract people and spiders. At Best SEO in Canada, we make sure people enjoy being on our client’s RAD website, want to come back, and tell all their friends.

Number 2 – A Fast Website

So you have a well-designed website, but because you chose our competitors it’s not a RAD website. Chances are it is not fast. Are visitors waiting up to 30 seconds for your site to load? Guess what? You’re losing revenue.

If your website takes longer to load than the time it takes for you to say Search Engine Optimization, your bounce rate will be high. Check to make sure your third-party plugins are not bogging down your website. If so, either optimize them or lose them.

Do you really need them though? Check also the size of your image files. I am not saying a fast website will drive traffic to your website. However, it certainly won’t convert that traffic.

Remember my analogy of the race at the beginning of this article? Well, think of a fast website as Car #3, and in this race, the cars work together–not compete against each other.

Number 3 – Optimized Images

Well, I’ve been talking so much about images that I might as well tell you about them now. Let me ask you a question. Are you making the most of the image “alt text” option? Here’s the thing.

Search engines cannot really see the bright, colourful images you upload to your website. They depend on alternate text, what they call “alt attributes” that helps them categorise your lovely images. As the name suggests, it is a description of the image.

You might think it is too much bother and so may choose not to add images. That would be to your detriment. Images are very important to a website as they not only highlight your product(s) or service(s), but also break up large text blocks to keep readers engaged with your page.

Images are important, so you should take time to optimize them. In addition to describing your image for the search engines and persons with devices that cannot load images, you should shrink your images to manageable sizes. And what I mean by that is to ensure your website can manage the size of the image.

Search engines hate sites that are slow in loading, and one of the major causes is large image files. And while we’re on the subject: Ensure to save your images as either JPG or WEBP.

Number 4 – Use relevant keywords

As mentioned earlier, a well-designed website uses relevant keywords. And this will push traffic to your website. The fact you’re reading this article is proof that our relevant long-tail keyword worked. I hear you asking: What are keywords? I like PCMagazine’s simple answer: “They’re the main words that lead people to your site”.

See our previous article here, there we explained long-tail keywords. Keywords must be strategically placed throughout your website in articles, images, videos, etc. You should also place them in your website’s URL, header tags, meta descriptions, and alt attributes.

Number 5 – Write descriptive meta files

The final SEO tip to push your traffic that we nail every time that I’m going to share with you is meta descriptions. Visitors to a website usually read the first few lines in a search result to see if the information matches what they are looking for.

This “snippet” of information below the page title or mini paragraph is what we call meta description. So we don’t need to convince you of its importance. Search engines allow you approximately 150 characters, so you are at liberty to say all that you wanted to that couldn’t fit in your page title. It is here you would want to also place your long-tail keyword.

Your meta description should explain the purpose of your website. As it is the second thing searchers see (after the title), you want to ensure it provides enough information to induce that coveted click to your website–wat we SEO experts call a “click through”.

Subsequently, you may be tempted to put all your keywords in your meta description. Don’t! That’s what Google describes as keyword stuffing, and they will penalize you for it. See our article on worst SEO practices.

That’s it! That’s my 5 expert SEO tips to push your traffic. Have a well-designed website; have a fast website, optimize your images, use relevant keywords and write an informative meta description that tells the purpose of your website. These 5  SEO tips are just the tip of the SEO iceberg. I didn’t even mention mastering internal links, which is another potent one.

However, I believe if you implement these five SEO tips you will see more traffic coming your way. Can AJ Frey push traffic to your website? You found me on page one, didn’t you? The fact you’re here is proof we nailed it! If I can do that for myself, just imagine for a moment what I can do for you!

Did you find value in this article? Why not share it with your friends and family? Perhaps you have your own SEO tips to push traffic to your website. Why not share them in the comments section below.

Need to push traffic to your website but don’t have the time or expertise to apply these 5 expert SEO tips? Give us a call or send us an email. We believe we have the best and most affordable SEO packages in Canada.

4 SEO Myths Hurting Your Business

by Marketing Strategy TipsSEO Tips

Search Engine Optimization is a fast-changing field that is constantly moving and shifting as Google keeps changing the rules about how they operate. Part of the problem is that Google doesn’t tell us exactly what those changes are as they protect their algorithms are top secret.
Because of this, there is a lot of misinformation surrounding SEO and how to best make it on the first page of Google. Here are a 4 of the most common myths that we’d like to dispel.

How To Easily Do An SEO Audit

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

In this blog post, we’re going to show you how to do an SEO audit.

If you’re like a lot of businesses out there, you’re probably not getting the traction to your website that you want. You have a great-looking website, you have a great product or service yet you aren’t getting enough sales. What went wrong?

Well the first thing you need to do perform an SEO audit to see where you stand and what improvements need to be made.

What Is An SEO Audit?

As a business owner, you should know what a SEO Audit is, and why it is crucial for your online presence. You need to identify issues that could and would prevent your website from being ranked on any search engines.

SEO Audits gives you a precise and detailed perception that gives you an overview of your site’s online presence. Ignoring these identifying issues, and your efforts will be in vain.

In other words,  your hard work will be paid off once you regularly audit your site. Also, this will make sure it’s properly crawled and indexed.

Pro tip: To make your content stand out, discerning content-related issues, indexing, proper use of backlink analysis, learning site architecture, and social media engagement are important factors to use in your internet marketing.

These components when understood and practiced will be important in helping you to identify strengths, weaknesses, and your website’s potential in gaining traction online.

Keep in mind that when you lose out all on the traffic, your possible sales will go down the drain. Quite the opposite when you regularly audit your website.

SEO Tool List

So how does SEO Audit procedure go? Here are tools you need to know:

  1. Moz Site Audit Tool
  2. Google Analytics
  3. Google Search Console
  4. Google Page Speed Insight

Starting The SEO Audit

The Crawl: This procedure is so important that you need to run it first before you do the other steps. Why is this important? Because this is where you identify your website’s problems, i.e., duplicate contents, low word count, unlinked pagination pages, excess redirects.

Moz Site Audit Tool

  1. Go to the tool and open application.
  2. On the top right of the screen, click new site audit.
  3. Create new project.
  4. Then enter your domain name followed by your project name.

With the exception of the limited checked pages, there is no need to edit any settings. However, if the need arises, remove URL parameters, bypass restrictions, or allow or disallow some URLs.

  1. On Page SEO Score.
  2. Organic Monthly Traffic.
  3. Organic Keywords.
  4. Backlinks.

As you scroll down the page, ‘Top SEO Issues’ will appear. Click on any of the URL for more information on your website’s issues. This way, you can review the pages; decide whether you need additional content. It’s crucial that you’ll have an insight on how Googlebot is crawling your site. You’ll know when your site is ranking well by manually searching your site.

Other Aspects To Check

When looking for relevant search results, how many of your pages pop up after? Do they come up first in the list when searching your site? Do you see your site in the list of end results when giving assessments?

Keep in mind though that despite your page’s not being at the top rank, it doesn’t mean that your page is uncrawlable, it only suggests that you need to realize the problem and what needs to be done.

You need to do this procedure in order to know if your page’s variation is in the right arrangement, in combination with duplicates. How do you do this? Go to Google and run a “site:domain.com.”

This will list indexed URLs for your domain. If you have mix site versions, then you potentially need to addressed to it. It’s important to run site search in order to have a preview of any used subdomains.

Checking your site’s indexed URLs is another procedure, it’s like running the same procedure as the above. You’ll be surprised to see a few pages Google has indexed after doing this.

Are these the results that you expect after a search? Then if not, there’s an issue that needs to be fixed. (The main culprit is usually the faceted navigation needs to be indexed). However, if it’s less than what you expected, your site then is being crawled or indexed.

How To Use Search Console

Seeing a drop in your site’s ranking or failing to rank high as it should be is anticipated once your site has violated Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines; this is where Manual Penalty comes in. If your brand does not rank then your site will be deindexed.

You can avoid this by checking in to see whether a manual action has been issued against your site by using the Search Console; look for:

  1. “Security and Manual Actions” tab down the left-hand side of the menu;
  2. Look for the manual actions link.
  3. Click, then you will be directed to your status.

You can relax if you see the result with a green check. On the other hand, if an issue appears in a list, then you need a Manual Actions Report.

It has been an important factor for Mobile Ranking for a long time. Remember that User Experience is prevalent in SEO success so site speed is important.

In fact, data shows that if there’s a significant bouncing from a user, this increases a slower page load. The faster the page loads, the better result from SEO and UX perspectives. Use SEMrush Site Audit report to see load time statistics and list of highlighted errors.

SEO Audits and SSL Certificates

Implementing an SSL certificate is important if your site runs on HTTP. Once you run https://www.domain.com in your browser and see that your site remains on the HTTP protocol you can relax and head on to the next step. On the other hand, you need to address this issue if you are redirected to an HTTP version.

Make sure to keep up with the trend of having a mobile-friendly site. UX is a must if you expect to reach the top. You can check this on Search Console, look for Enhancements tab in the Mobile Usability section for any issues.

SEO Audits and Indexation Issues

How to analyze and resolve indexation issues? You will see valid pages or ones that have warning, plus, excluded pages as well as coverage errors, if you go to the index tab of the Coverage page in Google Search Console.

Prevention of site from being crawled and indexed is expected if there are underlying issues. Address this ASAP! Underlying common errors include:

  1. Pages that have a noindex attribute and that are submitted in a sitemap.
  2. Pages blocked from being crawled in your robots.txt file but that are included in a sitemap.
  3. 404 pages submitted in a sitemap.

Excluded URLs are pages that are not currently in Google’s index. This includes:

  1. Pages excluded with a noindex attribute
  2. Pages that redirect
  3. Crawl anomalies
  4. Canonicalization issues
  5. Pages that are crawled but not indexed
  6. Not found (404) errors
  7. Pages blocked by your robots.txt file

Deeply analyze the report and only clean the areas of concern. Of course, these reports don’t need to always be cleaned up. Usually, there are specific reasons these exclusions happen, i.e., due to site migrations. Those are the best moment to clean those reports.

Page user experience is the main goal in Google’s future objectives. A combination of Core Web Vitals signals with Google’s for a better Search ranking which gives better metrics for page user experience is a feat.

Other Tips to Improve your SEO Audits

Be a social media butterfly. Use social media as your tool for your SEO efforts. Let the dynamics of this platform be a conduit for consistent backlinks and engagement. It has the power to increase the number of your backlinks.

Those who follow your content might be more likely to link to it. This increases your brand awareness through queries about your brand. Also, let us not forget the “mentions” and “tags” that social media can offer to your brand.

As we take everything into account, we have touched on some techniques on how to do SEO Audit. We have given tools and procedures on how to fix issues and deal with it to keep your site up to its rank.

Final Thoughts

Always bear in mind that search engine algorithms, best practices, market trends, and most especially your competitors are always keeping track. So make it a habit to keep your site up to date; address issues immediately after audit. Eliminate duplicates. Monitor your site analytics, and make sure you’re engaging in any social media platforms.

The more your presence you have in social media, the further you’ll push your relevant search terms. Be consistent, and your SEO ranking will soon reach the peak of success.

How To Build Quality Backlinks with Infographs

by SEO Tips

It’s no secret that in the age of social media infographics are popular. Chances are you see at least a dozen a week, more if you’re spending significant time on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.
Many popular websites use infographics to quickly get information across to their readers and they often go viral on social media. More importantly, a good infographic can help you build quality backlinks and enhance your website’s SEO.

Why Is AJ Frey So Sure About Your Website’s Success? 

by Ecommerce TipsMarketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO TipsWordPress Tips

Why Is AJ Frey So Sure About Your Website’s Success? 

On his website he’s described as handsome, debonair, suave, charming and a technology-lover who also loves Ghostbusters, StarWars and cheesy 80’s TV. You may disagree with all of the above–after all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or the buyer, according to AJ Frey.

However, one truth that is undeniable is that AJ Frey is an incredibly brilliant Search Engine Optimization specialist aka SEO expert, who hates pay per click. Thought that would get your attention! It is no secret that AJ Frey has a sense of humour.

But when it comes to his clients and helping them to achieve website’s success, he will do whatever it takes to position your product or service on page one. AJ Frey is the owner of Best SEO in Canada.

He Offers a comprehensive range of SEO services, dedicated to driving traffic that meets your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives.

But why Is AJ Frey So Sure About Your Website’s Success? Because success leaves clues. What he has done for others he will do for you. Let’s look at some of what he’s done for others and for himself to make it to page one on Google’s search engine: 

1. Experience and Process for SEO Delivery

When it comes to SEO these days, anyone with a laptop, access to the Internet and a WordPress-installed blog can boast of being an SEO expert After all, YOAST plug-in is the #1 WordPress SEO plugin, and is available on all WordPress sites.  

What you won’t see behind those claims, however, is the experience and process they take to deliver results. This is fundamental, and something you should watch out for. When a so-called SEO expert is offering his or her service, the first thing you should do is visit his/her website.

Next, do a simple search in Google to see if they show up on the search engine’s organic positions. If they don’t, it means they have little to no experience, nor have they implemented whatever SEO strategy they are claiming to deliver. How can you give what you don’t have?

Therefore, a fundamental characteristic of great SEO experts is that they have experience implementing SEO for themselves first. In addition, they should have a process, showing you how they intend to make your website a success:

2. Thought Leadership 

SEO is always evolving, as you no doubt have seen with the genesis of BERT–Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), which is another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing in order to better understand the search queries of their end users.

And if you’re just returning to the planet and have no idea what I’m talking about, check out this article (link to: What is the Best Word Count for SEO in Canada?). 

This is Google’s last major update. However, in one year alone, Google made upwards of 3,200 updates to its search engine algorithms. How can you be expected to keep tabs of all these updates while focusing on managing your business?

You need thought-leadership, and that’s another characteristic of great SEO experts. They must know what is happening in the industry and are able to adjust accordingly. Ensure they’re keeping up with these ever evolving SEO best practices and are sharing tips to help your business adjust for maximum impact.

3. An Outstanding Portfolio

Experts aren’t born, they’re created. Becoming an SEO expert overnight is impossible.

In order to be an SEO expert, you have to put in a lot of work and dedication. Experts study a lot and practice a lot. This gives them impressive portfolios which every SEO expert wants to show off.

Who wouldn’t toot his own horn? In the world of SEO the louder the horn the better. When an SEO expert works with a client to put his/her website on Google’s page one, this gives him/her a feeling of great pride and accomplishment.

And they should feel proud of their accomplishments. Getting on Google’s page one is hard work! Naturally, they are going to publicise this great feat by posting it on their websites. 

This is good for you. This is your opportunity to scroll through their portfolio to see the kind of work they have done and are doing. You will also get to see the calibre clients with whom they work to determine if you, too, would want to be in that “club”. 

As an SEO expert, AJ Frey is no exception in wanting to highlight his outstanding portfolio. Here you can peruse some of the work he has done for clients just like you. 

4. Real Life Testimonials

Naturally, if an SEO expert has a portfolio, it means he/she has clients. What do satisfied clients do? They give testimonials. So not only do SEO experts toot their own horns, but their clients toot louder.

Developing winning SEO strategies, managing their implementation, and guiding teams on their execution to generate results is not easy. When an SEO Expert does all this hard work and gets those fantastic results, their clients reward them with testimonials, having gotten value for their money. 

Thus, sharing real-life testimonials is a characteristic you’ll find with most great SEO experts like AJ Frey. 

5. We’re a Team of Creatives

When you hire AJ Frey you’re not just getting the most brilliant SEO expert on the planet, you’re getting his team — an eclectic group of creatives with various backgrounds, who manage to work together with our clients to plan out and implement an extensive strategy to boost your website in the Google rankings.

10 years ago a crack squad SEO unit was sent to prison by a Google court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped a maximum security stockade, changed their SEO strategy, and went underground.

Today still wanted by the search engines they survive as web designers and SEO specialists. By bringing together a team of the very best SEO experts in Canada with specialties in site optimization, mobile UX, link building, analytics and SEO content, AJ Frey is sure about your website’s success. 

AJ Frey doesn’t only talk the talk, but he walks the walk. He specialises in helping anyone (small businesses, large enterprise businesses and everything in between)boost their online presence and get found on not only Google, but all major search engines across the world – not only in Canada.That’s a recipe for success–your success!

6. Only SEO-optimised Content Marketing

And that’s not all!

AJ Frey, through his evolving proven whitehat secret recipe generates millions of organic SEO traffic to his clients’ blogs and websites–all done organically. I.e. no Instagram and Facebook Ads.

Only SEO-optimised content marketing. It is for this reason that many small and large businesses trust AJ Frey to deliver SEO strategies that put them on Google’s page one. 

7. 5-star Ratings 

Still don’t see why AJ Frey is so sure about your website’s success? How about this: Across several review sites, including this one, this SEO expert’s team of creatives’ expertise and penchant for perfection have seen them receive 5-star ratings from happy customers. 

8. King of Backlinks 

At the beginning of  the article we mentioned BERT–Google’s AI that interprets data on a page and delivers meaningful search results for your keyword search.

One of the algorithms BERT interprets is the number of backlinks pointing to web pages and websites on a whole.  The more backlinks, the more BERT sees your site as authoritative.

However, due to its “intelligence”, Google’s search engine cannot be fooled by many backlinks that are from dummy sites, or sites with irrelevant information–though many have tried.

When it comes to acquiring backlinks, AJ Frey comes highly recommended as the king of backlinks.

He will help you to generate high-value backlinks, ensuring search engines interpret your website as important and rank it above those of your competitors for keyword searches. This is another reason AJ Frey is so sure about your website’s success. 

When you sign up for one of AJ Frey’s SEO packages you receive expert consultations, market and keyword research, search engine webmaster tools setup, and a myriad of other tools that will aid in the success of your website. 

Whether or not you own an ecommerce website, or maybe you just have a simple landing page, but you want it to be on Google’s page one for your keyword search, you need a team of creatives who are passionate about organic traffic and SEO white hat best practices.

You need AJ Frey–who is sure about your website’s success. 

What to Expect from The Best SEO in Canada

1. Onboarding and Project Management

We value your business. We understand how important your website is to you. In order to assist you to reach your goal(s), we will assign a project manager to handle your account. He/She will need access to some of your assets. 

Depending on the scope of work, this could mean anything from access to your website/blog, your Google Analytics login info, your in-house staff, etc. This is why an onboarding process is important.

From this exercise, the project manager will be able to advise concerning the management of your project. I.e. how long the process will take, what is the full scope of the project, etc. 

2. Strategy session 

Of course, before your project manager proceeds with the onboarding process, a strategy session is organised. Your decision to work with AJ Frey, an SEO expert, came from the desire to rank high on Google’s search engine.

Or, it may be that you are seeking to generate more traffic to your site. Whatever the reason, you’re here for results. You have heard that AJ Frey can make your business successful, and trial and error is costly. 

We know that no two businesses are alike, therefore, the SEO strategies that work for one may not work for the other. Great SEO experts like AJ Frey, from experience working with different businesses, know this.

Thus, we do not simply take your information and send you proposals. Instead, and in order to help you, we allow you to share your unique needs and business case during our strategy session.

3. Research and Recommendations

After sharing your needs and business case with our SEO expert during our strategy session, your information is then used to conduct in-depth research. This is done in order to gain insights into your industry and your target audience. 

Once done, our SEO expert will share the results of the research, and offer recommendations based on the findings, in order for your website to be successful.

We use all the available digital channels available to you, including telephone, email and video conferencing. 

4. A Contract Detailing the Deliverables

So far, you’ve had several “meetings” with our SEO expert, and no mention yet of a contract. We believe in value for money and putting our money where our mouth is.

So, we will only offer a contract for your acceptance, after our strategy sessions, which includes a digital project kickoff meeting with your team (onboarding) and platform specific optmsation consultations (See numbers 2 & 3 above).

If our strategy session and follow-up discussions with our SEO expert looks like a good fit for the exchange of mutual value, then and only then you’ll receive our contract for your business.

Not only that, but our brilliant SEO expert won’t just send you a contract, but you’ll receive the contract detailing our deliverables–what we’ll deliver, how we’ll deliver and when you should start expecting results.

AJ and SEO  

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not a one-size fits all, fly-by-night strategy implemented by black hat SEO “experts”. SEO takes time before its results become apparent.

Any SEO “expert” who tells you he/she can produce overnight success is clueless about SEO strategies, or is practising black hat techniques–which will find your website being penalised by Google for illegal practices.

The minimum time on average for any signs of improvement is approximately 3 months. It could be sooner, but we do not make wild promises. We prefer to be conservative, and work hard at fulfilling our obligations. 

AJ Frey is an incredibly brilliant Search Engine Optimisation specialist aka SEO expert, who hates pay per click. His strategy, which he calls his secret sauce, is a white hat, Google-friendly strategy that is guaranteed to get you positive search results, regardless of the search engine. 

He offers a comprehensive range of SEO services, dedicated to driving traffic that meets your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives. If you give it approximately 3 months, you’ll start seeing results—qualified traffic, leads and sales. 

AJ Frey can do all that was mentioned above and then some. As you have seen from the testimonials, many clients have testified to the success of their websites. If he is able to help make their websites successful, he is sure about your website’s success.

A few words From AJ to You

Hi! I’m AJ Frey, and I would love to hear from you.

If you enjoyed this article and are in need of digital marketing, a cool website, or improving your ranking on the search engines, contact me at 1 250 801 6588, or just leave me a comment in the box below by way of introduction. Your website’s success means business for me!

My team and I will help you build a RAD website that will attract customers through good design, cool integrations and SEO. 

So why is AJ Frey so sure about your website’s success? Because you found him on page one.  If he can do that for himself, imagine, just for a moment, what he can do for you! 

He hates PPC! That’s someone you want in your corner. 

Tips on How to Create an SEO Friendly FAQ Page

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

The FAQ page offers more than just information. For the consumer’s perspective, it answers common questions related to the brand, product, or service. When a FAQ Page is optimized, this page becomes a useful sales tool and a source of SEO content. That’s what we know as SEO friendly FAQ.

Although this page isn’t designed as an aggressive marketing ploy, it helps in motivating a prospective consumer to buy a product or avail of service by answering his/her query. So, if the FAQ page is about delivering information in a “question and answer” format, why is there a need to customize it?

For starters, an SEO-friendly-FAQ page cuts the workload of your customer service/support team. They don’t have to answer as many questions as they should since the page provides everything. It saves your people some valuable time.

A well thought out Q&A page builds trust since it addresses the consumers’ need for information. A visitor to your website sees you as an authority when he/she is impressed, or at least satisfied with the information that your SEO-Friendly FAQ page provided.

You may not notice it, but an SEO-friendly FAQ page significantly improves user experience.

Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer who needs his/her questions answered. You want your questions to be answered in the FAQ page instead of having to call or chat with customer support and wait for hours to get a response.

Creating an SEO-friendly-FAQ Page

Your FAQ page plays a critical role in drawing traffic to your site. There’s no way to get a higher ranking in Google when you’re not driving enough traffic to your pages.

More notably, the page provides visitors with a comprehensive understanding of your brand, product, or service that no other section of the website can. Simply put, it improves your conversion rates.

Below are the ways to come up with an SEO-friendly-FAQ page:

1 – Come up with a list of RELEVANT frequently asked questions

You just don’t make up all sorts of questions for the sake of having an FAQ page. The key is figuring out the right questions that will enlighten a potential customer about your brand.

You know those questions are effective when they generate demand. Creating this list takes a lot of effort, patience, and common sense.

If your company employs customer service representatives, then that’s a great place to get suggestions. Those guys are the recipients of hundreds of questions from customers, which means they are a valuable source of information once you start creating the SEO-friendly-FAQ page.

Do some digging on your competitor’s FAQ page. This helps you understand if they’re doing things right. You don’t necessarily have to copy their Q&As, but you at least an insight on how you can improve your own.

2 – Add structured data to the page

Incorporating structured data to the FAQs will improve your page’s reputation with regards to the search engine results pages. Structured data is a staple in obtaining a better click-through-rate.

If your competitors aren’t using structured data in their FAQs, you have your best chance of getting ahead of them. Just so you acknowledge the value of this strategy, Google now has integrated support for FAQ structured data both in Google Assistant and Search.

If you implement the structured data system, it transforms your content into an SEO-friendly material since the questions and answers appear on Google Assistant and Search.

3 – Don’t settle for text alone

We know that an FAQ page is about posting the right questions and their corresponding answers. But one issue that you need to face is its bland aesthetics.

You don’t want the page to contain anything but text. Preferably, use images, illustrations, graphics, or even videos to your answers to improve the aesthetic value of the page.

The information delivered through the combination of text and graphics is conveyed more effectively compared to text alone.

4 – Mind the navigation

An ideally written SEO-friendly FAQ page is useless when visitors to your website can’t even find it.

Apart from the information and inclusion of images and graphics, you should build a straightforward navigational structure. Since you expect a ton of text, breaking it down to categories and subcategories makes sense.

The structure avoids confusion and customers find the right questions in seconds instead of minutes. You want the experience of reading through the page to be instantaneous.

5 – Don’t forget about analytics

The purpose of checking analytics is to see if the pages on your website are getting traffic, and if they are ranking for the relevant keywords. Without it, you can’t know for sure if visitors are taking their time to read your FAQ page or if they are merely skimming through it.

Furthermore, analytics tells you the path that the visitors to your website are taking. Web analytics essentially give you the data and numbers that you can use to determine if what you’re doing actually works.

There is a handful of advanced web analytics out there, so it shouldn’t be challenging to get things started. Remember that analytics provide actionable insights, so you must embrace it.

Conclusion

Some say that FAQ pages are nothing but a waste of time. Why optimize it when you already have a well laid-out website with a superb navigational structure to guide your visitors to the information they need? The truth is an FAQ page plays an indispensable role and is never an afterthought.

The content inside it provides direct answers to highly specific questions. You don’t leave it at the corner and forget about it. If that is what you are doing right now, then you might as well delete the page.

The SEO value of an FAQ page is underrated, but it brings traffic and improves conversions. It’s just a matter of you acknowledging its worth.

AJ Frey’s Best SEO in Canada

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO TipsWordPress Tips

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a one-size fits all, fly-by-night optimization strategy employed by SEO “experts” to place websites on Google’s page one. SEO takes time and effort and a little marketing know-how before any worthwhile results materialise. And then, you have AJ Frey and his Best SEO in Canada.

Any SEO expert who tells you otherwise, is either using blackhat techniques (which is frowned upon by Google), or is inexperienced at best. The minimum time for results to materialise is approximately 3 months. It could be sooner, but AJ Frey does not make wild promises.

AJ Frey is the owner of Best SEO in Canada and this is not a conjecture. Case in point, you found him because he is on Google’s page one. And that’s where you want to be. It’s why you’re here, right?

No surprises there. Given how being on page one of Google not only increases your visibility but can exponentially increase your clientele, i.e converting them from browsers to paying, revenue-generating clients; you would want the services of someone who has “been there and done that”.

But how did AJ Frey get to Google’s page one? Journey with me to understand why AJ Frey is on Google’s page one, and now offers the Best SEO in Canada. First let’s look at the man behind the plan. 

Who is AJ Frey?

AJ Frey is an incredibly brilliant Search Engine Optimization specialist aka SEO expert, who hates pay per click. Need we say more? Not really.

But since we like to go above and beyond, let’s tell you that his strategy, which he calls his secret sauce. It’s a white hat, Google-friendly strategy, guaranteed to get you positive search results on any search engine. 

AJ Frey is funny, but modest; charming and debonair, technologically savvy and did we say, handsome? Yes, he’s all that and more, but what he is above all that is experienced in what he does and determined enough to place you on Google’s page one, no matter the cost. 

It is no secret that AJ Frey is someone RAD, who makes Rad Websites, equipped with all the latest best practices and technology, and the creator of high-functioning, complex e-commerce stores that perform (you’ll find this on his RAD website–Canada’s Premier WordPress SEO Development Agency).

When you add the icing on the cake–some Rad Marketing–what you end up with is the Best SEO in Canada.  Some Characteristics of the Best SEO in Canada:

Experienced

A fundamental characteristic of great SEO experts is that they have experience implementing SEO for themselves first. In addition, they should have a process, showing you how they intend to make your website a success. AJ Frey has been effectively implementing SEO strategies to websites for over a decade. 

Thought leadership

Another characteristic of great SEO experts such as A J Frey is thought-leadership. They must know what is happening in the industry and are able to adjust accordingly.

When you visit Best Seo in Canada it is apparent AJ Frey is keeping up with SEO best practices–after all, you made it here and are reading this article. AJ Frey is also eager to share tips with you that will help your business adjust for maximum impact.

Modest and funny

While not a criterion for best SEO in Canada, being modest and funny does add a nice touch.

For instance, if you’ve not yet read it, we encourage you to keep scrolling until you come upon the “Fresh Prince of Page One”. Written by AJ Frey, it is coined and sang to to the tune of the Fresh Prince of BelAir– that 90’s sitcom starring Will Smith.

The last verse reads: “I showed up on page one about seven or eight, and I yelled to the client, “Yo’, Holmes, Optimizin”. Looked at my website, I was finally done, to sit on my throne as the prince of page one”.

Funny right? You want to be on page one? Then AJ Frey’s your man. 

What Makes A Company The Best SEO in Canada?

Visit any ranking page where the best SEO companies are being compared around the world and you will find the following common factors:

  • Client results: It is impossible for any SEO company to rank as the Best SEO in Canada or anywhere in the world without driving results for your clients. AJ Frey has demonstrated his expertise in SEO and client service, and his clients speak for themselves. 
  • Client satisfaction: It doesn’t matter how good you are as a SEO agency, if you cannot provide exceptional customer service, you might as well pack it in. A J Frey’s constant five-star reviews and testimonials is a testimony to his clients’ continued satisfaction. 
  • Deliverables: Does your SEO company offer a turnkey SEO solution? No. Then you’re being short-changed. The best SEO in Canada provides clients with everything they need to launch and manage a successful SEO strategy. This includes search engine webmaster tools setup, implementing HTML coding best practices, local market and keyword\phrase research and regular reporting. 
  • Success factors: According to the global digital marketing agency WebFX, another distinctive factor between SEO companies is how they measure client success. Do they only look at rankings, or do they also look at real-world business metrics, like leads and revenue? The best SEO companies look at both, with an emphasis on real-world impact. As mentioned earlier, AJ Frey will help your business adjust for maximum, real-world impact.

Conclusion

You’ve learned about the Best SEO in Canada, AJ Frey–an incredibly brilliant Search Engine Optimization specialist aka SEO expert, who hates pay per click. In addition, you’ve also learned what makes a company the Best SEO in Canada: Client results, client satisfaction, deliverables and success factors–all attributes of AJ Frey. 

You’ve also learned that AJ Frey is not only modest and funny, but he is an experienced SEO expert with thought leadership skills and a determination to help you succeed in search engine optimization. 

He and his team offers a comprehensive range of SEO services, that is dedicated to driving traffic that will meet your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives. AJ Frey makes no conjectures. You should expect to see results in approximately 3 months. 

What Happens Next? 

Now it’s time to let us put our money where our mouth is. Browse our SEO plans to get started with the Best SEO in Canada, and complement that with a Rad Website designed by Canada’s Premier WordPress Development Agency. If you do, then we know today is going to be the beginning of the best time of your life.   

Hi! I’m AJ Frey, and I would love to hear from you. If you enjoyed this article and are in need of:

  • Digital marketing
  • A cool website, or
  • Improving your ranking on the search engines,

Contact me at 1 250 801 6588, or just leave a comment in the box below by way of introduction.

My team and I will help you build a RAD website that will not only attract customers through good design and cool integrations, but also via the best SEO. We work together with our clients to plan out and implement an extensive strategy. That will boost your website in the Google rankings.

We specialize in helping clients (small businesses to large enterprises) boost their online presence and get found on not only Google, but all the major search engines across the world.

What is the Best Word Count for SEO in Canada?

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO TipsWordPress Tips

“Don’t worry about your word count; Worry about making your words count.”

You’ve more than likely heard the term SEO, and, like most people, can recite “search engine optimization”, but that’s where your knowledge ends, right? You’re still confused as to how to optimize the search engine, and which search engine are you optimising for that matter? Let’s find out below about Best Word Count for SEO.

These questions will naturally answer themselves during the course of this article as we try to fathom what is the best word count for SEO in Canada. But first, you need an actual definition for SEO. 

SEO and Word Count

According to New York Times bestselling author Neil Patel in his article SEO Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide For 2021, “SEO stands for search engine optimization. Which is the art of ranking high on a search engine in the unpaid section, also known as the organic listings”.

In other words, SEO is the process of getting your web page/ article / blog, etc, at the top of the search results of a search engine like Google, without purchasing Advertisements.

So for example, you entered your long tail keyword ‘What is the Best Word Count for SEO in Canada’ in the Google search engine and the results show THIS article on page one of the search results.

You would therefore conclude that this page has been successfully optimized for Google. Btw, a long-tail keyword is a keyphrase such as the title of this article, which is more specific than a short tail keyword, which is one or two words such as “SEO word count”. More on this later. 

SEO experts, and there are many, including Patel, will tell you that in order to rank on Google’s first page in the search results, you have to follow an SEO strategy involving backlinking, providing relevant content and writing long texts where you made sure to include the most important keywords at the right places. 

Where did this idea come from? 

Actually, indirectly  from Google–10 years ago! If you’re surprised that SEO has been around for so long and you are only now learning about it, be prepared to be shocked: SEO is actually over 20 years old.

To be more specific, the actual term ‘Search Engine Optimization’ was first used in 1997, though the practice of optimising web pages started from as early as the mid 90s. Back then, Yahoo was the Google of today. Interestingly, Google started in 1998 and has since become the go-to search engine not the least due to its simplicity and ease of use.

As such, website owners now optimize their sites to rank on Google’s search engine. 

While Google never discloses the algorithms used to rank pages, they have from time to time given clues and suggestions to enable website developers to produce high quality content to the end user.

The Evolution of Word Count for SEO

So ten years ago, in order for Google to retrieve the end users’ keywords, they relied on what is believed to be TF-IDF or term frequency inverse document frequency, along with the title tags and words in the heading.

It is believed that in order for Google to retrieve these keywords, they would somehow use this technique to find and extract the most relevant words in a series for the web page to rank them high.

Consequently, in order for Google to understand what your webpage was about, you would have to write long texts making sure to include the most important keywords, strategically place these keywords in the text, and have the right number of keywords in the texts.

Remember, Google never reveals their algorithms, so this was the outset for the emergence of SEO experts–men and women who would study Google to figure out their algorithms based on what they said, and mostly what was not said, and also experimenting on the websites’ optimization to see how they ranked. 

Due to the inevitable manipulation of the system by web developers to rank high on the search engine (keyword stuffing and cloaking are two common violations of Google’s algorithms), Google has had to over the years change its algorithms as these “experts” discovered their secrets.

Today, it employs related keyword techniques that are themed to interpret the intent of the content on a webpage. Enter BERT. 

What is BERT? 

According to Google Search, “BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), which is another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing in order to better understand the search queries of their end users”.

Introduced in 2018, the BERT models can “consider the full context of a word by looking at the words that come before and after it—particularly useful for understanding the intent behind search queries”.

In other words, BERT is basically a machine-learning algorithm that, based on large amounts of text, is trained to read text in order to find the best matching answer. Can you say almost human? Indeed, BERT is Artificial Intelligence (AI). And this is the direction that Google has taken in the past few years. 

However, Google did not get here overnight. According to Google’s CEO Sundar Pichal in a 2017 keynote speech at its annual I/O event “the company was shifting from a “mobile-first world to an AI-first world.

BERT, SEO and Word Count

Then a series of announcements followed involving AI in various ways: from the development of specialised chips for optimising machine learning, to the use of deep learning in new applications including cancer research, to putting Google’s AI-driven assistant on as many devices as possible.

Pichai claimed the company was transitioning from “searching and organizing the world’s information to AI and machine learning.” The end result: BERT.

The idea of BERT is best explained by their research director, Peter Norvig, “With information retrieval, anything over 80% recall and precision is pretty good—not every suggestion has to be perfect, since the user can ignore the bad suggestions. With assistance, there is a much higher barrier.

You wouldn’t use a service that booked the wrong reservation 20% of the time, or even 2% of the time. So an assistant needs to be much more accurate, and thus more intelligent, more aware of the situation. That’s what we call ‘AI-first.’”

But what does this have to do with the best word count for SEO in Canada? 

A lot, actually. In fact, SEO experts are at the best position one could be in terms of optimising web pages for search engines now more than ever–due to AI-first technology.

While it will be more difficult to manipulate the search engine with keyword stuffing, exaggerated length of texts and word counts, it will be easier to rank higher in the search engine when SEO experts help their clients to produce content that is relevant to the search of the end user. 

Which brings us to the age-old question, “What is the best word count for SEO in Canada” when producing relevant content? After all, clients want to know how many words to write to have the best chance of appearing on Google’s first page.

Surely there has got to be some guideline somewhere? And, indeed, there are. But before we delve into this, let’s hear from Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, on the subject of word count in 2021. 

This topic came up on Twitter in response to a user who asked whether or not it would be beneficial to de-index shorter articles. This is what John Mueller had to say, “I agree with you & Mihai :).

Word count is not indicative of quality. Some pages have a lot of words that say nothing. Some pages have very few words that are very important & relevant to queries. You know your content best (hopefully) and can decide whether it needs the details.” 

Key takeaway:

1) “Word count is not indicative of quality”

2) Quality is what Google is looking for

3) By the same token, pages with few words may be highly relevant to a user’s query

4) Ultimately it’s up to the site owner to use their best judgement.

In other words, Google will not necessarily rank pages based on word count alone. When it sees the quality content, it will rank shorter content just as well as longer content.

And in case you’re wondering why Google; aren’t there other search engines? Yes, there are. But as of 2021, Google is still the number one search engine and the go-to site for all things Internet. 

What do the SEO experts have to say about this? 

Notwithstanding what Mueller has said, four major players in the SEO industry have found clear correlations between word count and Google rankings:

1. Hubspot: 

In a recent study the marketing automation platform, Hubspot, gathered data from the 50 most read blog posts in 2019. They found that the articles were, on average, 2,300 words long.

2. Yoast: 

Yoast is a search engine optimization plugin in WordPress–but it is so much more than that, and personally one of my favourites. If your website is hosted by WordPress, chances are you are using Yoast. According to Yoast, the ideal blog post length is 300 to 1,000 words.

That is a huge gap. However, Yoast takes into account the fact that some topics do not require any research, but may just be an answer to a question. Yoast concluded that 1000 word count is the ideal number for higher rankings.

3. Semrush: 

According to a 2018 SEMrush study, the ideal length for better ranking is 1137 words.

4. Backlinko: 

According to backlinko in the 11.8 million Google search results they analysed, overall, the average word count of a Google first page result is 1,447 words. 

From the above one can infer that a webpage with an average word count of 1,471 (the avg of the four numbers) ranks higher than other pages.

So, is 1471 the best word count for SEO in Canada? Not necessarily.

Correlation & Causation

One of the challenges SEO experts usually have is understanding the difference between correlation and causation.

If you looked at the top 4 or 5 ranking pages for your keyword search and saw that they all had approximately 1471 words, it is understandable that you would think that is what is required to rank well for that keyword. However, this could be a correlation, not a causation. 

Another study (2015) by HubSpot suggested that longer posts may be “link-worthy” and more shareable. In turn, it could be the link profile of the page that causes it to rank well. It could also be that longer posts allow for more thorough answers required for some search queries, which then triggers Google’s AI technique to rank it higher. 

What is important to note is, correlation does not equal causation.

Google’s own SEO starter guide states, “Content should be factually accurate, clearly written, and comprehensive.”

Comprehensive is not a synonym for long. Comprehensive means “complete and including everything that is necessary.”

If you’ve been following this article you should have concluded by now that there is no definitive answer to the question, what is the best word count for SEO in Canada.

However it is not our desire to leave our readers more confused than when they started, so let’s see if we can help you to actually arrive at a “magic number as to the best word count for SEO in Canada by looking at some other factors. 

The first factor we will look at is Relevance:

Arguably the most important factor to rank content is its relevance. We cannot over emphasise the point that content should be relevant to the search of the users.

Ahrefs advice on content length: “Don’t shoot for a particular word count- just make sure you cover a topic in full. Whether that takes 500 words or 10,000, the key is that you are creating the best resource available for your target keyword.” (Search Engine Journal)

Ultimately you are writing for the users’ keywords. When a topic asks for more information then you should write as Google suggests–comprehensively.  

The second factor is the length of the keyword:

According to some SEO experts, your word count should be dependent on your keyword length. So for short-tail keywords (one or two words), you should shoot for approximately 4,500 words or more; mid-tail keywords between 2,000 and 4,500 words and long-tail keywords such as the title of this article, between 1,000-2,000 words. 

Long-tail keywords are considered to be the best in Digital Marketing SEO. They are a great opportunity for small blogs to rank higher and do well. The ideal blog length for long-tail keywords is 1,000-3,000 words. Although the market is competitive, it is less competitive due to its specificity. This article is 2490 words long. You be the judge as to who’s right. 

A word of caution concerning keywords:

Short-tail keywords are very competitive. You will notice in the search results, millions of answers–that’s due to the non-specificity of the query. This makes it hard for Google to show specific results and you will be “punished” for this.

The results: a low ranking of your webpage –especially if you’re a small site with low domain authority. So, this is a very important factor. You should select your keywords properly.

Another factor we’ll look at is: User Intent

The most important aspect when deciding on how long content should be is user intent. I.e. What does a user want when he/she lands on your page. If you understand what a user is looking for on your page, it will help you to write comprehensively enough to meet that need.

Having said that,

Content should be as long as it is needed to help convey the message of the page and allow users to complete their desired actions on that page.

Conclusion

You’ve seen that many studies by SEO experts have shown varying lengths for the best word count for SEO.

With machine learning, such as Google’s BERT, search engines can now better understand your content without you having to type thousands of words. Notwithstanding the length, web owners are encouraged to provide good content for the end users, which may mean a short article, or a long epistle. 

Can more words allow you to expand on a topic and offer your reader a view of the bigger picture? Absolutely. Could a shorter read be just what they’re looking for during coffee break? Quite likely.

The real takeaway from here is that your web content should give contextual meaning and value to your user, which is a shared conclusion among all SEO experts. 

Because in the end, only Google knows the answer to how they process texts and whether the word count is something to strive for.

I advise people not to focus too heavily on SEO recommendations when crafting content. Focus first on what your content is meant to do and go from there.

Notwithstanding all of the above, 

The final answer to the question of what is the best word count for SEO in Canada is 2000 to 3000 words. 

###

Why A Good Web Design On Your Page Is Your Best Bet To Grow

by SEO Tips

When building a website, having a Good Web Design that works is crucial for your website’s success. If you haven’t designed a website before, you probably don’t know what elements you need, but that’s totally okay!

Having a properly designed website that continues to grow with your business will ensure you succeed, online and in real life. Keep reading to learn about how what you need to ensure your website’s success. 

Setting a good first impression

Having an aesthetically pleasing and functional design on your website will ultimately mold how someone views your business. This happens in only seconds upon their visit which means making a good impression is vital for you, if you want them to remain on your webpage.

For example, if you haven’t updated your website with new features or content in a while, someone may find your website outdated and they might decide to check your competitor’s website because it looks more up to date.

Another common mistake that people make when designing their website is that their design is unappealing because they haven’t stuck to a concrete them or layout. You want to be sure your website is easy to understand and navigate or people will quickly lose interest. 

Web design and SEO

Your web design and how you create content for your website work hand in hand. Having the right search engine optimization fundamentals is one of the most important things for your website because this is what draws in your audience and the more people visiting your website means more people are taking an interest in your business.

You want to ensure your web design is functional with your content – this means your web page coding is SEO compatible. If you’re just familiarizing yourself with SEO and need help designing your website, Best SEO in Canada is a perfect company to turn to for help.

Customer service

When someone sees your website and thinks it is designed nicely, it could mean that they think you will treat them nicely when it comes to customer service. Having a good web design gives your audience insight into how much you will care about them as customers.

Simply put, if your design is lacking in effort, someone looking at your page might think you won’t put any effort into them if they were to become your customer. We’re living in 2021 and an online presence is just as important, if not more important than in-person impressions. Having a modern and appealing web design means your audience will feel welcomed and invited when they visit your page.

The design of your website is the face of your business in the digital world so make sure it gives viewers the best possible first impression.

Building trust

If you visit a poorly designed website, are you going to trust that company? Likely not. If the information is outdated and the design is difficult to follow, they might not think your website is real or it could come off shady all because of its poor design.

If someone is online shopping for a product and they are planning to put their banking information into a website, they aren’t going to do so on a webpage that is poorly designed or something that doesn’t look legit.

Instead, they will find a different website that comes off trustworthy and will place their order there, meaning you’ve lost out on a potential customer.

Having this trust with your online audience will keep them on your site for a longer period and will compel them to return. In turn, you will create more opportunities for your business to grow.

To keep up with your competition

To stay relevant and on top of your business, you must keep up with your competitors. This is huge when it comes to web design because your competitors are most likely producing proper websites if they are indeed your competitors.

Having a proper and unique web design will help you stand out from your competitors but if your website is old and outdated, your website might be the reason you’re falling behind them. 

The design of your website might be the only thing that makes you stand out if your prices and services are similar to other businesses. 

Consistency and Branding

Staying consistent with your website will help you build your brand. If you want more people to remember your business, stay on top of your website when it comes to things like colour, font, accessibility, style and layouts.

You want to make sure that each page on your website is consistent. Avoid having a different theme or design on each page because this will make it look unprofessional. If you’re starting from scratch, then you must decide on what colours to use for branding.

If you already have brand colours or a logo, you will want to align this to match with your website. Once you figure out your colours, you want to focus on keeping your layout clean and simple while drawing attention to important parts such as what you’re trying to sell or the services you’re trying to provide.

Stay simple when it comes to font as well. You want to choose something that is easy to read and easy to view if your webpage is coloured. But also be sure to focus these elements on your desired audience – whether that be young people or an older crowd and make sure it also reflects your brand as a whole. 

To conclude

Your website’s design is one of the most important factors when it comes to growing your business. A good design can be what draws people into your business, what makes them spend time on it and what makes them revisit it, time and time again.

If your website provides a positive user experience and sets itself apart from your competitors, you’re ultimately going to continue to succeed and grow.

5 Best WordPress Plugins for Your Website

by SEO TipsWordPress Tips

No other content management system offers versatility and manageability than WordPress, but do you know why? Although there are plenty of reasons, plugins count as one of the main reasons. Let’s checkout 5 Best WordPress Plugins for Your Website.

It affords a CMS solution unlike any other if you’re building a corporate website, personal blog, or digital magazine. One of the reasons why it’s irreplaceable is because of the abundance of plugins.

What Are WP Plugins? What Are the Best WordPress Plugins?

Essentially, these WordPress plugins give people with basic coding abilities more creative control over their site’s design.

They also provide ways users on different devices might interact better, i.e., creating separate mobile sites where smartphone users may access them respectively through apps.

With over 50,000 plugins in the platform, there’s one for every specific feature or functionality you need and want for your WordPress site. Nonetheless, not all plugins are practical or valuable.

If you’re like many people who just started to build an online presence, you only plugins that’ll keep your site running with as few hiccups as possible.

But you don’t have to scour through the thousands of choices to see which ones are best suited for your website. All you have to do is heed our advice on the five best WP plugins for your site:

1 – Yoast SEO

Why You Need It: Improve Your SEO and Content Readability

Yoast SEO is arguably one of the most popular WordPress plugins. As its name suggests, it helps websites rank better in search engine results pages (SERPS) and then some.

New web designers fail to realize how useful it is to have a readability analyzer for your content, and Yoast SEO does it with ease.

Yoast SEO is a user-friendly solution for design tasks like adding Meta tags, generating sitemaps, social media connections, to name a few. Using Yoast SEO, you get more visitors from Bing and Google while also boosting your social networking efforts.

There’s a free version of this plugin, but don’t expect to get all the bells and whistles. The premium version provides more features you’ll find useful later. You also avoid those annoying advertisements attached to the free version.

The premium version also corresponds to faster indexing and better results with Google, Pinterest, and Bing integrations.

2 – Migrate Guru

Why You Need It: Convenient and Quick Site Migration

Migrate Guru is the leading plugin that provides an automated way to migrate any WordPress site. Because it runs on a separate server, WordPress sites do not experience any downtime caused by transferring large files.

When migrating your data, you have the option to remove any unimportant files from the process and save that function for later use. It’ll allow you to repeat the migration, but this time, it’s faster.

The plugin’s highlights include a one-click migration procedure, capable even for large websites, no overloads, and no storage space needed.

Despite many other migration plugins for WordPress, Migrate Guru stands out because it makes the process easier, even for multi-site networks.

It uses BlogVault to handle serialized data, clone sites effectively, and rewrite URLs without working with annoying add-ons.

3 – WP Rocket

Why You Need It: Quicker Page Loading Time

WP Rocket is a caching plugin that speeds up your site’s loading times by generating cached copies of a dynamically generated page. It’s a nifty plugin that relieves your servers of doing all the work in page loading.

Creating a caching solution is a more effective way to speed up your website than just optimizing images. A standard caching plugin test reveals that WP Rocket can decrease page load times by up to 60%.

Aside from speeding up page loading times, this plugin improves user-end browser caching and allows for lazy loading sequences; plus, it can be integrated with your existing caching solution.

4 – Elementor

Why You Need It: Improve Your Page’s Visuals Even Without Coding Experience

Nothing could be more straightforward than Elementor. The fact that it has over 5 million active installations is proof enough that you’ll find it helpful, too.

It’s a page building plugin allowing you to customize your webpage even without coding skills. It gives users the power to design their own layouts for web pages.

Elementor currently has over 150 templates, enough to help you create a unique design for your WordPress site via a drag and drop operation.

Like most plugins in this list, it’s free to download and use, although there’s a premium version with added features and extended support.

5 – Akismet

Why You Need It: You’re Done with Spam

Akismet works by filtering out spam on the comment section of your WordPress blog. The plugin collects your website’s comments history to help you figure out which ones are considered “spammy.”

Aside from filtering spam, Akismet checks URLs in the comments in search of malicious links.

You won’t think twice about purchasing this premium plugin if you wish to secure your site from spam and suspicious links.

You get access to advanced spam statistics on your WordPress admin, plus the plugin guarantees the privacy and GDPR compliance of your website.

Website design and maintenance requires commitment and persistence, but you don’t have to be overwhelmed by it.

Your effort is focused on optimizing the site for the search engines and building the pages for a smooth and satisfying user experience – good thing to know WordPress plugins makes the task easier, even for a newbie.

Post COVID Marketing Strategy: A Complete Guide

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

Even for the strongest brands, COVID-19 has had a notable impact on businesses around the world. While some industries experienced a boom – (food delivery services have never been so rampant) – most saw a decline in revenue over the last few months. Unfortunately, we aren’t out of the woodwork yet. With a predicted second wave and the ultimate economic crash from a worldwide shut down, businesses are frantically looking for ways to just keep afloat at best. Then, thinking about marketing post COVID isn’t a farfetched idea.

The first thing business owners look at, usually to cut, is their online and offline marketing strategy. With less revenue running through monthly statements, it seems common sense to cut the expenses of marketing and advertising. That just might backfire, though.

In these uncertain times, there’s no argument that business owners need to adjust their post COVID marketing strategy. The key however, is adjustment- not exclusion- to help keep maximum dollars flowing through. Unsure of where to even start? Check in with us, and we can have a look.

Keep Your Customers (And Prospects) In The Loop

Consumers are looking for stability and timeliness right now. They are fearful and hesitant in many areas of life that are usually the norm, and they are looking to public figures and organizations for answers and consolidation. Open communication between businesses and their customers is not only important for customer relationship management and retention, but also to instill confidence within prospectives.

Keep your customer base informed of what your business is doing to keep safe and well during these times, how you are protecting your employees and any steps you are taking to help the community during COVID-19. Even when most people agree on how annoyed they feel about being constantly bombarded with COVID news, you should take advantage and creating momentum for your marketing post COVID.

Be sure to update your hours on your Google My Business listing if they are modified. Make ensure your online ads demonstrate the same correct information. Use social media and other avenues of communication to keep close with your customer base.

Get Your Business Online- And Thriving!

If your business isn’t online, or is barely on the SERP, you’re likely in trouble. With many retail locations still closed, hours reduced and many consumers still choosing to quarantine, online shopping has skyrocketed over the last few months. (To little surprise, Amazon saw a 26% growth rate in the first quarter alone!)

The people and demand are there. It’s just in a different place, and your marketing post COVID should show them the way to find you. People are still spending money, it’s just online. Consumers are still looking and browsing- in fact, more than usual, out of boredom – so the opportunity for brand awareness and sales is still prominent.

In short, if your business thrives on retail sales , it’s time to move online.

This could mean building an e-comm store from scratch to sell your products, or adjusting your online marketing strategy to get noticed and drive conversions as you would in your physical location.

Service based business? Yeah, those are tougher. Keep in mind though, when quarantine lifts, people are going to resume needing those services. Use this opportunity to generate brand awareness and (if you’re smart about it) offer incentives for pre-booking.

Don’t Stop Running Your PPC Ads

Admittedly, there will be companies that choose to eliminate their PPC ads for budgetary or process driven reasons. But, if you can continue to feasibly run PPC ads- do it! During these times, the fall out of some of your competitors will drive the CPC for your key terms down and shoot you higher on the SERP ranking. People are bored and online, so using your ads to offer sales and incentives can (and does) drive conversions and sales.

Even decreasing your budget, but staying within the Google Ads auction, helps you remain relevant on the algorithm and helps to keep establishing domain authority. Pausing your ads takes you off the map and when you re-enter the market, you start again as somewhat of a newbie.

On average, PPC accounts have seen their ROI go from 31% to 53% post COVID-19.

Re-Evaluate Your Communication Methods

The majority of businesses out there have transitioned at least a portion of their communication to online mediums like social media, blogs and timely website updates. Like we mentioned earlier, if your business has yet to come online- you need to. Like, yesterday. (Even as we are slowly emerging out of COVID-19, the way consumers shop won’t be going back to normal anytime soon.)

Buying is happening online, as is entertainment. Then, you need to communicate with people where they are- which is at home, on the computer.

  • Email marketing open rates soared from 2% to an average of 6% during COVID-19. That’s massive.
  • Social media engagement rates increased by 61%.
  • Messaging across Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp increased by over 50%
  • Twitter experienced 23% more new users during this period.
  • Engagement rates with business accounts increased by 17.5%
  • Users are thriving off one-on-one interaction with users and business accounts alike

If social media and email marketing wasn’t really “your thing”, it has to be now. Even for those who do their part online, you should ideally look at how you’re addressing your consumers.

  • Are you ramping up your posts and communications?
  • The noise is bigger now on social media- so you have to be louder.
  • Are you providing opportunity to converse directly with your consumers?
  • In your narrative, are you keeping consumers up to date regarding COVID-19?

These are questions worth looking at when re-evaluating your communication strategies.

Look Into Offering Payment Plans

It seems a little random, but offering online payment plans for goods and services has helped some of our clients boost conversion rates and direct sales. Money is uncertain for a lot of consumers still, but the demand to buy isn’t.

Teaming up with payment plan providers is a great way to offer your customers easier and less overwhelming purchases during these times. Including payment plans within your offerings has helped many businesses see an average of 12% increases in their conversions and sales.