How Long Does the ‘SEO Magic’ Take to Work?

by Marketing Strategy Tips

The single most important question for a business or brand which is about to spend money on search engine optimization is how long it takes before results start coming in. Like if it was a such thing like SEO magic.

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 magic’ 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.

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.

Where does the SEO magic come from?

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 magical 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 this confuses or scares you.

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. Earlier, we said 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

It also often receives the name of “link building,” and it obeys a good reason. Off-page SEO describes the process of creating a reputable inbound link profile for a website, using high-authority, relevant, and trustworthy links from other websites.

The reason why it receives the name “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, i.e., 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.

SEO Magic: Final Words

As you see, doing ‘SEO magic’ is a lot more complicated than most people think, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Instead of probing into how long it’ll take for it to show results, 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.

SEO Practices: Why Only A Great Website Won’t Give You Any ROI

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

If you want to get ROI from your website, keep this in mind: Your website’s SEO Practices is more important than design. There’s no dispute that a website should have the best website design, with a creative branding structure that really sells your business to web visitors. Right? No-one wants an ugly website.

However, you must complete that sexy design with a well-planned marketing strategy. And it includes your SEO and other important aspect of your business plan.

The online marketing industry has fallen into somewhat of a dangerous trap of creating websites that are gorgeous, yes. But at the expense of fundamental SEO Practices that actually bring visitors to your site from search engines.

In other words, we see a lot of websites with insane design that actually never get seen on the SERP. Then, all you do in terms of web design gets lost and you’re stuck with a website that can’t be found. And with websites being perhaps the most important online marketing tool under your belt, that doesn’t really help.

The SEO Of Your Website Is #1 Priority

The list of fundamental SEO practices for websites doesn’t actually run that long. But you’d be surprised at just how many of them business owners miss when they built their new website.

Really, it’s a blend of sacrificing these fundamentals for design elements- or billable hours being allocated towards the design rather than the skeletal framework of the site. Fundamental SEO includes factors like:

  • Keyword optimization
  • Title tags
  • Meta Descriptions
  • Alt tags
  • Site maps
  • Crawl accessibility
  • Snippers/schema markups
  • URL

These are all pretty non-negotiable when it comes to being seen on the SERP and taking a leading spot on page 1- but they seem to be common factors not quite hitting the mark on a lot of developed websites out there.

A Websites Design Doesn’t Boost Your SERP Ranking

But it does affect other analytics like bounce rate, page session and even conversion rate.

Which is why a harmonious blend of strong SEO Practices and visual design makes for the perfect website. It just seems that it’s one or the other out there with many web agencies.

It’s not an industry trend that we are happy to see.

Is SEO Practices More Important Than Design?

Short answer- yes.

Detailed answer? It’s not really that simple. Is getting seen online more important than how you are seen?

It’s a hard question to answer. One on hand, if no-one ever finds your website due to poor SERP ranking, that means no business for you. On the other hand, though, there are chances people find very easily on the SERP. But then, people bounce out of your site really quickly if your website isn’t visually appealing and user-friendly.

The most fair way to analyze these questions is to assess the goal of your website development in general. If you don’t feel the need to be seen on the SERP and execute alternative online strategies, design away. But most businesses want to be seen on search engines:

  • 62.9% of online users conduct searches for products and services on Google
  • 67% of online users only use Google to search for products and services
  • 51% of people convert after using Google to search for products and services

In that case, building a site that is perfectly optimized for search engines is crucial- and so yes, SEO triumphs web design to ultimately satisfy business goals. Building a skeletal framework that is strong, strategic and well executed will put you in a good spot for maximum exposure, and design elements can be created around the core of the site.

Don’t Forget- Website Design Still Matters!

We’ve truly noticed it’s one or the other, because we sometimes see sites that are beautifully optimized- but are downright ugly.

One of the hardest parts about online marketing is that you are creating content and elements that have to both appease search engine crawlers and real live humans. And that is difficult. Really difficult.

That’s why the design elements of your site still really matter, and why great website developers are hard to find- one with a perfect balance of technical and visual development. The design of your website speaks to your branding and the quality of your services, and remains the last step between a potential customer and confirmed lead generation.

It draws users in, and keeps them engaged with your brand. It’s like sticking a billboard up in the most high traffic area, but the billboard is comprised of cardboard and sharpie markers. People will see you, but they’ll drive right on by (or to another competitor in this case.)

Website Design & SEO Go (Almost) Hand In Hand

Like we said, great website design is difficult because it demands both a technical understanding of search engines and visual creativity. The two can very easily exist together (and should for that matter) but it takes finding a developer that builds with both in mind. Be sure to discuss your visual goals, but also inquire about the SEO framework these design elements are being built around. You’d be surprised at what may be missing.

SSL Certificates & Website Safety

by SEO Tips

SSL Certificates & Website Safety (What You Might Not Know)

Following the release of Google Chrome, it became a dangerously common misconception that websites without an SSL certificate are unsafe, and should likely be avoided. Let’s read out below the importance of SSL Certificates & Website Safety.

And while this is true, we often struggle to communicate to our clients that even websites with an SSL certificate alone aren’t actually all that safe either.

SSL certificates fail to come in as a last line of defense for more complex security breaches. While your site certainly needs an SSL certificate- e-commerce or not- there are other safety protocols you have to consider if web safety is a top priority for you.

What is an SSL Certificate?

Secure sockets layer.

That’s what it stands for- a secure sockets layer.

Not a glamorous sounding addition to your website by any means, but these certificates play an important role in data encryption. They quickly became a best practice in website security, for good reason as well. SSL certificates establish an encrypted link between a web server and a browser.

If you don’t want the entire world knowing what you’re sending across the net, you sure do need an SSL certificate.

Where Did The “Not Secure” Warning Come From?

Google and Mozilla are pushing hard for webmasters and the like to adopt HTTPS.

(Don’t worry- we’ll cover HTTPS too.)

At the end of the day, the only way for these Internet mammoths to push HTTPS adoption is by flagging sites that don’t have SSL certificates.

Wait, Wait- HTTPS?

You’ll see the https extension in front of most websites these days.

The web can be a very unsafe place without proper safety protocols, and HTTPS offers the most robust combination of safety certifications to keep your website as secure as possible.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure was built off it’s older counterpart HTTP- Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

The difference between the two? HTTPS uses SSL certificates for data encryption. HTTPS makes online shopping and mobile banking possible- information passed over an HTTPS network is generally not compromised by outsiders.

HTTP speaks more to the way data is communicated between two parties over the Internet. It doesn’t necessarily address the safety of how that is done, just how it’s done in general.

HTTPS is the perfect combo of data communication and data encryption.

Google Will Flag Websites Without SSL Certificates

Rightfully so. Websites without SSL certificates aren’t secure.

Like we said, the world wide web isn’t a safe place these days and website security isn’t really optional anymore.

The proof is in the pudding. The cyber security industry is worth over 241 billion dollars and shows no sign of slowing down.

The “not secure warning” is totally legit.

But don’t assume that https websites are automatically safe- above SSL certificates, there are other security protocols your site really, really should have.

SSL certificates can’t protect a website from malware infections, viruses or the website than spreading that malware. Even the padlock in the address bar doesn’t necessarily indicate secure- it simply indicates that the info shared between that websites server and the browser is secure.

PSA- infected websites over an HTTPS network will actually continue to ensure the integrity of the malware or virus, all the way until it reaches the final victim- the websites visitors.

SSL Certificates and HTTPS Certificates STILL Don’t Equal Maximum Website Security

As easy as we would like to make this, there really is no “one size fits all” solution for website security.

Even if a website has had SSL & HTTPS forced upon it, it doesn’t actually mean the website is secure.

Without additional security measures, such as WAF (Website Application Firewall) or access controls, an HHTPS site can still be hacked and be dangerous to visitors. Data encryption is vital, yes, but it’s only piece of the web security puzzle.

You need to look at website security as a strategic, well planned conjunction of protection, detection, response and backups.

Our number one tip to get going, however?

Make sure you choose the right SSL certificate.

Domain Validated SSL Certificates

These SSL certificates show that a domain is registered, and that a site admin is running the URL.

It’s quite easy to obtain- this certificate authority can typically validate through email, DNS or HTTP.

It includes the owner proving they own and run the domain, and saving a text file in the public web root of their domain.

Organization Validated SSL Certificates

Building off domain validated SSL certificates, organization validated certificates not only prove ownership of a domain, but also proves the existence of an organization or company that stand behind the domain.

Your organization or company’s details are shown online, just like individual ownership ins domain validated SSL certificates.

Extended Validation SSL Certificates

Again, building on the above, extended certificates demand even more information and proof of ownership than domain or organization validation.

It signifies an even higher level of security and ownership, those these take longer to obtain.

Take a look at the domain bar when you look at PayPal; there is no doubt of the organization, ownership and their authenticity.

At the validation level, extended validation SSL Certificates are the most secure. If applicable, look to extended validation certificates as part of your end security game.

Single Name & Wildcard SSL Certificates

Single-name SSL certificates protect one subdomain.

Great for forgotten subdomains, or site evolution, there is always a place for single name SSl certificates.

Just be aware, however, that a certificate for one subdomain will only apply to that exact, specific domain- not even the branches of it.

A certificate for www.website.com won’t apply to mail.website.com.

On the other hand, wildcard SSL certificates secure a number of subdomains for just one single domain.

Again, we would love to make this easy for you, but wildcard SSL certificates only protect the subdomains of one single domain.

They don’t protect multiple domains, even if they are all related.

That’s where multidomain SSL certificates come into play.

Multidomain SSL Certificates

These giants provide security for several different domains, through one extension.

This extension is the SAN extension. (As if you wanted anymore acronyms thrown your way, we know.)

SAN extension= subject alternative name.

With multi domain SSL certificates, you can combine multiple hostnames even if they’re not from the same domain.

Complex? Yes. Many sites don’t need to go as far as multidomain SSL certificates, but they are there- and for those that need them, you NEED them.

So, I hope you understand everything about SSL Certificates & Website Safety. feel free to Contact us for any Consultation about web design, SEO, Marketing.

Rad Website: What Does Rad Stand For?

by SEO Tips

What Does RAD Stand For?

You might be wondering why we chose RAD websites as our name. While we do think of ourselves as pretty awesome, that isn’t the reason why. We believe that to succeed in the online world today, you need to think radically different than your competition. Like in a Steve Job-ish kind of way.

According to Urban Dictionary (and of course we believe everything the Urban Dictionary has to say), RAD means totally cool. It is an abbreviation of ‘radical’–a term made popular by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television show. RAD is primarily used on the West Coast by people who find words like ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ to be tired and overused. RAD is generally considered to be much higher praise.

While RAD has a couple of different meanings, to us, it stands for Really Awesome Design. We are passionate about how the website looks and we don’t just take any project that comes away. We believe in this overhyped, oversaturated world, success comes by being unique. A website should showcase your personality, your abilities, and who you are as a company.

Why is being RAD important?

You might believe calling yourself RAD is silly (and childish), but we boldly disagree. Having a RAD website is more than just the look and feel of a website. It is also how the website operates and how you navigate through it. Without a good user experience, your customers will quickly bounce off and go to another website – most likely your competition.

When we take on a project, what do we do ensures that your design sense comes through. For starters, we know all the latest design trends and we couple that with the latest WordPress technology which is like a Mike Tyson one-two punch.

For every client, we assign a project manager who will outline with you the exact process and ensures deadlines and expectations are met. Your project manager will communicate with our various team members, ensuring that your vision is reached. The project manager has a critical job of being the go-between between you, the client, and the men and women who specialize in their area of expertise.

While design is what we are passionate about, equally as important is the backend stuff. This is the programming of the actual website and what happens after all the design elements have been created.

Your website is sometimes the only thing your customers see before they decide on a purchasing decision. You want that sucker to be so eye-poppingly RAD Website that it attracts customers up the wazoo.

And you’re in luck. Because when you hire us, that’s what you get. Now we’re going to dive into a couple of elements that you need in order to get a RAD website.

Visual Website Design (AKA “RAD-icalness Stuff”)

Many people come to us, wondering how we can start. How do you make your site look great? The answer is both simple and hard at the same time: start with your brand. Ask yourself, “What do I want to accomplish with this page?” If a page doesn’t have a clear purpose, consider getting rid of it.

Your brand is your image. Everything from the colours you use to the fonts you choose affects people’s perception of who you are. What do you want people to think when they see your site? Edgy, modern, satirical, professional?

You can convey those things through your design. Just take a look at the psychology of colour – different colours convey different emotions. Red and orange are bold colours. Green is eco-friendly. Blue emphasizes trustworthiness. Beyond colour, you also have font choice. And yes, there is a psychology behind font choice as well. In fact, almost everything you choose as a secret psychological effect.

Regardless of the font, you choose for your logo and branding efforts, you should always choose readability over emotional feel for your main body font. Typically, that means sans serif fonts, as they read the best on the web.

Lastly, we’ll talk about photographs and images. They, of course, are a major part of website design and yet so many people do it wrong. Great photographs and images add that extra wow factor to your website. They help explain a key point and give the eyes a break. And they definitely help sell your products and services. For example, if you’re an eCommerce site, you want your product photos to be high-quality and show tons of different angles.

Technical side of a Website (AKA “Geeky Stuff”)

The Geeky Stuff can be a whole blog post by itself but we’re just going to talk about one important aspect: mobile friendly designs. Why? Because over the last couple of years this is the one aspect of the Geeky Stuff that has changed drastically.

Mobile First Design

Every year people spend more and more time on their mobile devices, but many (if not most) websites still aren’t fully optimized to account for different screen sizes and load times. In fact, smartphones now account for over 51% of all online traffic, and tablets came in at just over 12%. And that number is growing.
Mobile optimization takes a look at site design, site structure, page speed, and more to make sure you’re not inadvertently turning mobile visitors away.

Here are some other things to look out for when designing a website that are supercritical.

• Site Speed
• SSL encryption
• Google Analytics
• Google Business

So What’s A Non-Designer To Do?

Call us at RAD websites of course. We’ll do a free consultation, giving you suggestions on how to build a new website or overhaul your existing one. We are here to lend a helping hand, not pressure you into buying something you don’t need. So give us a call and let’s talk.

How to Use Free Keyword planners for SEO and PPC Strategies

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

I know. I know. You’re freaking out at my headline because you know I hate pay-per-click (PPC), but don’t. I know what I’m doing. Let me explain How to Use Free Keyword planners.

So the reality is, no SEO strategy is going to get your website at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) in a short period of time. As discussed in other posts, SEO takes at least a couple months before you start seeing results. That being said, some new businesses do not have that luxury of time.

For them, PPC offers a few advantages SEO don’t, such as: position on the page (paid search dominates above-the-fold content. A user will always see the paid search Ads, even if they choose to scroll past them), improved Ads (PPC Ads are just that: advertisements.

Free Keyword Planners and PPC

As you can see, with PPC you have far more space for delivering your marketing messages), visual product Ads (Google provides the option of visual shopping Ads [Product Listing Ads, or PLAs] that can help a user see what they will be clicking on.

This kind of Ad can really improve the click-through rate by offering a feature not available in organic search). Other advantages include targeting (PPC provides a laser-targeted way to get in front of potential customers based on time of day, day of the week, geography, language, device, etc.) speed (PPC campaigns can be created in days and ramped up in weeks) and agility.

Speed provides agility. Want to test a new product? A new marketing message? You can get rapid feedback on a new product launch (or minimum viable product) by running a short PPC Ad campaign.

But whether you’re running an SEO or PPC campaign, one thing that is pertinent to both is keyword research. What Is Keyword Research?

SEO keyword research is the process of identifying what words and phrases people type in when they are trying to find information about a specific topic online” (DemandJump). It can give you insight into the demand for certain keywords, and what it takes to compete for the top position in SERP.

Why Do You Need A Keyword Research Tool?

In order to do keyword research, you need to use a keyword planner that will ***? And because I love my clients so much, I would never deprive them of any opportunity that could work in their favour. So that’s why I am going to show you how to use free keyword planners for SEO and PPC strategies. No client gets left behind.

First, you must understand that there are many keyword planners for SEO and PPC out there on the market. However, for the purpose of this article I will discuss the one most people are familiar with, i.e, Google Keyword Planner (an SEO keyword planner tool for PPC campaigns), along with a few others including Answer the Public and Google Keyword Planner.

Google Keyword Planner

According to Google, its Keyword Planner “helps you research keywords for your Search campaigns”. It provides another way to create search campaigns that are centred around in depth keyword research.

You can use this free tool to discover new keywords related to your business and see estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them. Not only is it free, but it is not difficult to use, especially as Google has an easy to read Guide.

You can use Keyword Planner to discover new keywords related to your brand. It will show you estimates of the searches those keywords receive along with the cost to target them. However, when creating an online campaign, you must know how to effectively use this free resource for successful outcomes. So how do you do that?

Find Relevant Keywords

Google Keyword Planner can help you discover new keywords that your target audience uses when searching for brands like yours. You can find quality, relevant keywords you never thought of with GKP:

By filter: If your brand has a physical storefront and you want to target people searching around your area, you can use GKP’s filter that lets you see a keyword’s popularity based on location. While a specific keyword might have a high search volume in a wide area in general, this filter allows you to see if that same keyword is widely used in your targeted area by:

  • Keyword: If you already have a keyword that you know is solid, type in the keyword and GKP will generate several long-tail keywords from which to choose.
  • Landing page: if you type in the URL for any page on your website, the GKP will scan that page and create relevant keywords based on the content on that page.
  • Product category: If you pick a product category that best describes your brand, the GKP will help you discover keywords that are frequently searched for by users of similar brands.

Refine Your Keyword Search

As mentioned, Google Keyword Planner gives you options to filter for relevant keywords. You can also refine your budget and audience. Here are the choices for filtering when you are setting up your keyword plan:

  • Discover new keywords – lets you generate new keyword ideas by typing in a phrase or website.
  • Using multiple keywords lists lets you combine two individual lists to create new keyword combinations.
  • Get search volume and forecast – know trends by seeing the historical and trending data for keywords.
  • Review performance forecasts for clicks and costs to understand performance projections for a keyword list based on average bids and your budget.

After completing your filter and running the report, you still have another option to further filter based on data range, reach, monthly searches, keywords competitors looked at, etc.

See What Your Competitors Are Paying

Not only can Google Keyword Planner show you what keywords your competitors are looking at, but it can show you what they’re paying for these keywords. It can also assist you with finding effective keywords that fit your budget.

Keyword costs are often dependent on how competitive they are. I.e. depending on how many people are bidding on them, the competition level will be ranked low, medium or high. As you can imagine, the higher the rank the more costly the keyword. As such, it can be quite costly to rank at the top of SERP. That’s why the Google Keyword Planner is a handy tool to provide insights into keyword targeting.

However, although the GKP is a great free tool for PPC campaigns or getting started in SEO, in many ways it is still limited. For example, the GKP can only be used for specific purposes, so it requires SEO experts like myself switching between tools to meet all the needs of my clients.

AnswerThePublic

Another free keyword planner for SEO and PPC strategies is: AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is a search listening tool that “listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword”.

It’s a treasure trove of useful information that can help you plan your SEO and PPC strategies. With AnswerThePublic you:

  • Meet your customers exactly where they are
  • Keep your finger firmly on the pulse
  • Uncover hidden treasures
  • Stop wasting time on gut-feel and guesswork
  • Make solid business decisions: take fewer risks
  • Streamline your content production

AnswerThePublic provides FREE searches (over 500k a month!). If unlimited searches is what you need, then you can upgrade to one of their pro or education plans. How else can you use AnswerThePublic for SEO and PPC strategies?

  • By tracking shifts in brand perceptions and spotting seasonal trends.
  • By easily comparing search behaviour changes over time in your research. Btw, did you know 20% of daily Google searches have never been seen before?
  • By creating folders to organise your search, i.e. Collections.
  • By exporting your results to CSV.
  • By producing high resolution images.

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the beginning, there are many free keyword planners for SEO and PPC strategies. Some are not totally free–you have to upgrade at some point. I didn’t even get to:

  • DemandJump’s SEO keyword research tool,
  • Keyword Magic tool,
  • Amazon Keyword tool,
  • Reddit’s KeyworddIt,
  • Ahrefs Keyword Generator, among others.

Instead, I showed you how to use Google’s Keyword Planner and AnswerThePublic as great starting points for your SEO and PPC strategies. Want us to go through some of the others? Let us know in the comments below. Know a few free keyword planners that have produced favourable results? Why not share with our audience?

Hi! I’m AJ… the Best SEO in Canada. Are you still unsure after reading How to Use Free Keyword Planners for SEO and PPC Strategies? Don’t worry. I’m here to help. My team and I have over 10 years of experience doing SEO. We can work with you to use any keyword planner to generate the most relevant keywords for your SEO and PPC strategy. Give us a call or send us an email. You’ll be glad you did.

Good SEO Practices Vs. Bad SEO Practices: A Simple Guide

by Ecommerce TipsSEO Tips

Twenty-first century websites are usually built and maintained following the standard set by the search engine giant, Google. These standards include Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. As such, webmasters such as the Best SEO in Canada strive to follow good SEO practices that are ethical and up to date with the latest developments of ranking algorithms.

In the past, webmasters employed bad SEO practices such as keyword and banner stuffing, link building and cloaking in order to rank on Google’s first page.

However, Google’s latest algorithms make those practices almost impossible. Nevertheless, there are always unscrupulous webmasters who try to get around Google’s best practices.

Whether you are new to website development or a seasoned veteran at building websites, here is a simple guide to Good SEO Practices vs. Bad SEO Practices, so you can beware when making SEO decisions while building or maintaining your websites.

 

Good SEO Practices

Good SEO practices consist of what is called “white hat” techniques. These include:

● Security Certificate:

Up to recently, most people did not know what the ‘https’ at the beginning  of a domain stood for. However, they understood that if a site had this “lock”, it meant the site could be trusted.

Today, Google has added security certificates as a requirement in their list of best practices for SEO. So websites with the https automatically rank higher in their search results.

HTTPS stands for hypertext transfer Protocol Secure, and enables websites to be more secure by encrypting the information sent between the visitor to the site and the server. It has been a Google ranking factor since 2014.

You can tell if your site is already using HTTPS by checking the loading bar in your browser. If there’s a lock icon before the URL, then it means your site is secure. If there is no lock, then you need to ‘buy’ one by installing an SSL certificate.

Due to Google’s standards, most web hosts offer these in their packages. If yours does not, you can depend on AJ Frey, owner of Best SEO in Canada, to pickup one for you.

This is a one-time installment, and once done, you can expect security on all your pages, including those you may add in the future.

● Placement of your target keyword / phrase:

Google’s best practices suggest that your target keyword / phrase should be in at least these three places. These are your title tag, heading and URL. Let’s take a closer look at each:

a) Title tag

According to Google, title tags should be written that accurately describe the page’s content. If you’re targeting a specific keyword or phrase, then this should do precisely that. However, search engine optimization isn’t just about improving rankings, but also enticing clicks. This is why your title tags must also be compelling.

N/B: Readability always comes first. Your title tag must make sense to the searcher. For example, if your target keyword/phrase is “saskatoon berry pie cheap,” then that doesn’t make sense as a title tag. Rearrange the words so it makes sense, even if you have to add stop words—Google is smart enough to understand what you mean. At Best SEO in Canada, AJ Frey knows just how to do this for you.

Finally, keep your title tags under 60 characters and use only “title case” for titles.

b) Heading (H1)

In addition to your title tag, your target keyword / phrase should also be in your heading. N/B: Every page should have a visible H1 heading on the page, and it should include your target keyword/phrase where it makes sense.

c) URL

The third place according to Google, where you target keyword / phrase should be is in your URL. According to Mozilla, “URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.

A URL is nothing more than the address of a given unique resource on the Web. In theory, each valid URL points to a unique resource. Such resources can be an HTML page, a CSS document, an image, etc.”

Your URL should be short and descriptive, according to Google, as long URLs may intimidate web searchers. As such, it is not always best SEO practice to use the exact target query as your URL.

N/B: Earlier we noted that it was okay to add stop words to your title tags. However, it is good SEO practice to remove stop words from your URL. What are stop words? Words such as The, Is/Are, At and On. There are others, and different search engines have different criteria for stop words.

Finally, your keywords/phrases in URLs should be relevant to your page’s content.

● Match search intent:

Another good SEO practice is to match search intent. This means to align your title and the description of your page with search intent. Nobody wants to see product pages in the search results for “how to make blueberry grunt.” Clearly, these people are in learning mode, not buying mode.

Google understands this, which is why all of the top results will be blog posts—not pages selling blueberries, lemon and sugar.

The opposite is true for a query like “where can I buy blueberries.”

People aren’t looking for a blueberry grunt recipe; they’re looking to buy some blueberries. This is why most of the top 10 results are going to get ecommerce category pages, not blog posts.

Matching search intent goes beyond creating a certain type of content. It’s also about creating the content from a particular angle and in a specific format. Which brings us to the next good SEO practice.

● Write thorough and relevant content on a regular basis:

How do you rank for more queries? By making your content more thorough and relevant. But how do you do that? Here are a few tips:

  1. Complete sentences with good spelling and grammar. There are a few reputable software programmes that offer spelling and grammar corrections, so there is no excuse for poor grammar and typographical errors on your website. This would not be a good SEO practice.
  2. Make sure that your content is unique and original. There is nothing wrong with publishing content that is written by others, however, it must be unique and original.
  3. Well-labelled images: If you use images in your content, ensure that each is properly labelled. If in case the images cannot load, at least the searcher can know what the image is about by reading the label.
  4. Make sure that your content is relevant. Quality over quantity. While the length of your content may be important in certain contexts, at the end of the day, it must be relevant to your searchers’ queries. Btw, this not only applies to blog posts, but also to other types of content on your website.

N/B: Publishing new content on a regular basis is a good SEO practice, but it is also important to keep a balance between content produced by the website and content offered to the website by an author, in exchange for a link in the author bio. In this case, it is better not to publish, than to break this rule.

●  Relevant internal links:

Internal links are those from one page on your website to another. Adding internal links from other relevant pages is a very good SEO practice. This is one of the foundations of Google’s ranking algorithm and remains important even today.

Internal links also help Google understand what a page is about. Look for suitable places to add internal links on pages that fit the bill.

Unfortunately, Google discontinued public PageRank scores in 2016, so there’s no way to check them anymore. But in general, the more links a page has—from both external and internal sources—the higher its PageRank.

Which brings us to last, but not least:

● Get more backlinks:

Backlinks are another foundation of Google’s algorithm and remain one of the most important page ranking factors.

Google confirms this on their “how search works” page, where they state: “If other prominent websites on the subject link to the page, that’s a good sign that the information is of high quality”.

Finally, you should aim to build backlinks from authoritative and relevant pages and websites.

Bad SEO Practices

On the other hand, persons who wish to take the shortcut to ranking high on Google’s pages employ bad SEO practices referred to as “Black Hat” techniques. These include:

● Duplicate content:

Duplicate content is a very common practice, as some webmasters will publish content that has already been published elsewhere. In and of itself, that is not a bad thing; there are many sites with information you may think is useful for your visitors.

If your intent is not to try to rank for a certain keyword or “stealing” someone else’s work, then you should “no index and no follow” those pages so that you are not penalised by Google for bad SEO practice. Non-unique content is not good for SEO. Think about it: If search engines already have the same content in their index, why would they index your web page since it has nothing new to offer?

● Invisible text and keyword stuffing:

It is not as common today, but there was a time when “black hat” strategists used to include many keywords at the bottom of a webpage, but make them the same colour as the background so they weren’t very noticeable to the human eye.

Google has been known to penalise such practices. The same goes for “stuffing” keywords where they are irrelevant. Have you landed on a page with a keyword search and that page was filled with the keyword, and barely anything else?

That is an extreme example of what we’re stating. This is a very bad SEO practice. Not only will it discourage visitors to your site who are looking to read relevant information on their search term, but it is also a red flag for search engines such as Google that you are trying to manipulate their algorithms.

N/B: It is enough to mention your keywords in the title, description, opening paragraph and a few other places in the body of the text.

● Cloaking and redirecting:

“Cloaking”, a very common practice of old, is when webmasters hide the real destination of a link, while “redirecting” is sending multiple “keyword-rich” domains to a single website.

Now, there may be times when redirecting is necessary for your business. However, there is a thin line between redirecting to a subdomain or domain and buying several domains just for the purpose of redirecting their traffic to a single website.

Showing different versions of a page to web crawlers and visitors to a website was a common practice in the past, but due to Google’s best practices thankfully this has been discontinued.

However, in case you just arrived on the planet and do not know Google’s best practices, please be advised that using such “black hat” techniques now is considered a very bad SEO practice.

● Poor linking practices:

Going out and purchasing a Fiverr package promising you 5,000 links in 24 hours is not the right way to build links. You need to get links from relevant content and sites in your niche that have their own traffic.

There are many other bad SEO practices one can employ including guest posting for links and accepting low quality guest posts. However, we will continue that discussion in a later article.

Conclusion

Google’s best practices reward good SEO practices such as Security Certificates, applying keywords to title tags, headings and URLs, having unique and relevant content, using appropriate internal and backlinks, while penalise bad SEO practices, which we call “black hat” techniques such as keyword stuffing, excessive link building and cloaking.

If you wish to have a successful website that ranks high on Google’s pages, then it behooves you to master good SEO practices.

AJ Frey can help you to develop and maintain a successful website that sees you ranking on Google’s first page with no fear of penalty due to bad SEO practices.

He offers a comprehensive range of SEO services dedicated to driving traffic that meets your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives.  You should start seeing results–qualified leads, sales and traffic–in approximately 3 months.

That’s it. A list of Good SEO practices vs. Bad SEO practices, which we hope will help you to stay in Google’s good books, and any other search engine you wish to rank on. We know there are others. Why not share them in the comments section below? Ready to let an SEO expert help you maintain good SEO practices on your website? Give us a call or send us an email.

How Do I Build Domain Authority with a New Site?

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

Working on a new site for it to rank on the first page of Google is no easy feat even for experienced developers who’ve done it countless times before. The scenario is the same, but newly-built business websites have unique needs and challenges to address. Then, the question remains for everybody: How Do I Build Domain Authority with a New Site?

Superb design, fail-proof content strategy, and a handful of marketing campaign ideas – you think you’ve got it all. But no, you haven’t touched the surface just yet. 

The objective of every new site is to rank high on search engine results pages for high-volume and high competition keywords. If you watch some videos that explain how this works, you probably think it’s doable. Yes, it is, but it will take some time. Don’t expect to achieve something overnight. It simply doesn’t work that way. 

A relatively new site comes with inherent disadvantages, including the lack of content history and backlink profile. Having a low domain authority is expected, and every other site out there has gone through this process, too.

The lack of domain authority makes it quite a challenge to keep up with the more established websites in the same niche or industry. But don’t lose hope. The reason why you’re here is that you intend to learn about building domain authority for your new site, and that’s what we’ll talk about for the rest of this blog. 

The Value of Domain Authority

Google does its job by deciding which pages to show first when someone types a search term, say for instance, “how to replace a roofing shingle.” This search returns hundreds of thousands of relevant pages that contain or target the keyword phrase.

Since Google and other search engines genuinely care about convenient user experience, they will rank websites based on content relevance and a cluster of other parameters. This is where the concept of domain authority creeps in. 

You won’t see your new site about roofing products/services on the first page of Google because there are older and more established competitors that rank for the same keywords. But since you are on the bottom, there’s no other way but up. 

Domain authority is never about the metrics. It is not something that the search engines use to rank websites for their SERP. Instead, it is more of a barometer that determines how well your new website is expected to perform against everyone else.

Increasing your site’s domain authority doesn’t affect whatever your competing sites are doing, but it increases your chances of ranking high in the SERPs. 

Ways to Build Domain Authority 

Building domain authority with a new site is an indirect route of increasing its potential of finding its way on the first page of Google. Before you commit to doing the things that we’re about to discuss, you must acknowledge that this will only work with time. In others, there’s a waiting game in place. Be patient, and your website get rewarded eventually. 

1 – Link Building

Google loves link building, and so you must embrace it, too. The rule is simple – have high quality and authority sites link to your website. If you’re successful at that, it creates an impression that those authority sites trust your brand or company.

It may sound cliché, but that is because it works since the search engines notice it right away. If you already did some link building before, be sure to perform a backlink audit. It gives you a clear picture of your backlink profile, including the existence of harmful backlinks. 

Don’t get too excited about link building; we’ve seen a lot of people overdo it. The last thing you want is to damage your website’s reputation by linking to shady sites.

Back in the day, private blogging networks were considered an authority, but that’s no longer the case. Google is quite strict when it comes to the practice of spamming your links. Adding harmful backlinks to your website will do more harm than good on your domain authority score. 

Focus on high authority sites and publications instead. You want to fill up your link building profile with wholesome and relevant links. 

2 – Content Remains King

Content marketing is and will always be the foundation of a website. It’s an indispensable component of building your domain authority. The role of content is to keep the landing page in order while you simultaneously inject new stuff.

Google loves it when you regularly incorporate fresh content that is not only relevant to your niche but something that attracts prospective customers. Furthermore, adding new content provides new opportunities for backlinks and added keywords. 

Don’t fall for automated or spun content to fill some pages of your new site. Everything must be new, original, and unique. Come up with something that Google sees as something that bears no resemblance of published content on the web. 

3 – Social Media Boost

We’re not just talking about creating social media profiles and linking them to your new site.

To successfully build domain authority with a new website, you must up the ante by keeping those social platforms active. Google is on the lookout for social signals, i.e. shares, likes, and retweets of your content. These are invaluable things that Google uses in evaluating both page and domain authorities of new sites. 

Come up with a strategy that will increase social proof of your content. It drives traffic to your pages and will eventually boost your authority score. We don’t have to tell you how crucial social media presence is in terms of driving online traffic. 

Wrapping It Up

The pain of seeing your new website make slow progress must serve as a motivation. Don’t feel bad if your site isn’t on top of Google at the moment; we’ve all been there. As mentioned earlier, it takes time for results to come in, but don’t remain idle. Some people don’t see progress because they lack consistency. Put in the effort and time in building domain authority because it gives you proven results. 

2021 SEO Changes

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

In this comprehensive Local SEO guide, we’re going to show you how you can win at search ranking in 2021.

Small and medium-sized businesses rely on local search more than ever. Seven out of 10 consumers search Google to obtain local information. So, if your business website isn’t optimized for local search, you’re likely missing out on more than half of your prospective clients.

With so many changes every year, you feel a ton of pressure to update your SEO strategy. But it won’t matter if you’re not into local SEO.

You lost some ground last year, but this year is your chance for redemption. Build upon local SEO to keep your brand relevant, and this article serves as your comprehensive SEO guide.

Good Local SEO Practices

Start with Google My Business listing – If you haven’t done so, set up a Google My Business listing. It’s the digital equivalent of the Yellow Pages. If you intend to rank in the local search, a GMB listing makes perfect sense.

There’s no reason to skip this step – it carries weight in local SEO, plus setting it up takes minutes. See to it that you put all the details about your business.

This must include your products/services, the main business category, and the secondary business category. Filling out the subcategory is critical in your Google Maps rank.

List your business in online directories – GMB isn’t the only listing out there. List your business in other relevant online directories, but don’t overdo it.

The key term is “relevant” since all the others are trash and won’t do your business any good concerning local SEO. Focus your effort and time on these directories:

  1. Angie’s List
  2. Yelp
  3. Bing Places
  4. Foursquare
  5. Super Pages
  6. Yellow Pages

Review your NAP information – Be consistent with the business information you put on your listings, especially the name and place. Google wants the information to be accurate for it to trust your business.

Even an honest mistake on inputting the wrong phone number could become a red flag for Google, giving it a reason to stop displaying your listing. Even the smallest details must be consistent, like how you write abbreviations and company suffixes. If you prefer “inc.” instead of “incorporated,” do it in all your listings.

Focus on local keywords – Shift your attention to local keywords this year, but don’t ignore the value of long-tail keywords for your business, too. If you didn’t climb up to the SERPs last year, you might have undermined keyword research value.

This time see to it that you compare search volumes for a couple of almost similar search terms. You may feel like there’s no point in it, but there’s a significant difference in impact for “roof repair, Vancouver” versus “roof repair, VBC.”

Rethink your SEO strategy by using local keywords – Once you’ve figured out a new set of local keywords, the next step is to optimize your business website with them.

This isn’t a newfound strategy, yet it’s still as useful and indispensable this year as it was a decade ago. Optimizing your site is no cakewalk as it involves several components that are worthy of a separate discussion.

Anyhow, the fundamental rule is for your homepage and the product/service pages to showcase the local keywords, specifically in the following:

    1. Heading
    2. Meta description
    3. Title tags
    4. Body
    5. Footer

Gone were the days when you can insert keywords while ignoring the natural flow of content. Google hates keyword stuffing and unnatural placements, so see that you’re putting value to your content by flawlessly incorporating the local keywords.

Create local content – It only makes sense to fill your pages with local content since you’re shifting to local SEO this year. Unfortunately, your current content marketing strategy is all but local.

You’ve learned a while back that non-local content reaches a broader audience (and supposedly more web traffic), but you can’t take full advantage of it since you’re a local business. Maximizing your efforts in content marketing for an improved lead generation means creating local content.

Create a mobile-friendly website – You may skip this part if you’ve done this already, and we’d be surprised if you haven’t. You know how impactful a mobile-friendly website is for SEO in general, and it’s essential for local SEO, too.

Almost 40% of mobile searches are location focused. It means that almost half of consumers who stumble upon your site via a local search are using their mobile devices. Imagine the number of opportunities you’re missing out if your site isn’t mobile responsive. That’s scary.

Place value on inbound links – Inbound links boost local SEO when you know how to do it right. Put some effort in building those links this year but focus on the proven strategies.

Come up with a list of acquaintances who are in some way related to your business, i.e., wholesalers, contractors, business partners, and suppliers. Search for relevant pages on their respective websites where you’re allowed to place contextual links.

You’ll use this link to contact those businesses and then recommend the link placements. Aside from this strategy, you can also generate inbound links via guest posting. Offer to write content for related businesses with the condition that you place a link to your site.

Create location pages – If you happen to have branches of your business, then you must rank in local searches in those areas, too. The most convenient way to do this is by creating location pages.

Come up with a service page for each city instead of having just one service page for all your branches. You may optimize these pages for local search terms. But be sure that you use unique content for each page. The last thing you want is for Google to see it as duplicate content.

Final Thoughts

Though you’re setting your sights on local SEO for 2021, don’t turn your back on traditional SEO. Remember that Google factors in your website’s ranking in organic SERPs in local SEO.

The lack of implementation of some of the components of traditional SEO may even adversely affect local SEO.

Take this SEO guide and make the best of simple practices to make a profit of your website… but if you don´t have time, experience or any other related, then call us. Best SEO in Canada is here to help you out.

 

What Does Rad Mean? The Importance of a Rad Website

by SEO Tips

What Does Rad Mean? The Importance of a Rad Website

Rad Websites has been providing clients in Medicine Hat, Calgary and surrounding areas with award-winning ecommerce website design services since 2004. We are passionate about helping businesses succeed online through the right combination of stunning design, user friendly functionality and sound strategy. Founded on the idea that websites should be both effective and beautiful, we believe that our definition of rad can help your business to prosper in today’s digital marketplace. Here are some reasons why you need a rad website, built by Rad Websites!

What does rad mean?

Rad is a term that is said when something is so cool there isn’t a word to describe it. Rad is an adjective that means excellent or awesome and it can also mean powerful or intense. AJ Frey say’s rad means cooler than cool, and we think this is the best way to describe what a rad website is.

A rad website has all the latest SEO tools, so you can rank high on Google search results. It also has modern ecommerce with an interactive experience for your customers. Rad Websites builds rad websites for businesses like yours!

Our team is Canada’s Award Winning Ecommerce Website Design Agency located in Medicine Hat, AB. Get your company seen by more people by having a rad website built by us!

When it comes to web design and SEO, less is more

Website Design and SEO are two highly important aspects of every business. We take pride in building websites that are not only functional, but also beautifully designed with search engine optimization in mind.

Businesses in Medicine Hat have a unique opportunity with its proximity to Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge. With our help, you can be found on the web by customers from all over the province. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important factors when it comes to getting new customers for your business. The importance of a website is evident for anyone who’s looking for new or better opportunities for their business. If you’re looking for an award winning company to design your website and manage your SEO, look no further than us!

Rad Architect and SEO Director of Growth Aj Frey says less is more. “It is important to focus on using the right keywords and phrases that will not only help your search ranking but also provide value to your visitors” he says.

Originality and copywriting can make or break your brand

Every day, you’re competing with new businesses popping up and the ever-changing SEO landscape. This makes it more important than ever to have an online presence that’s original and relevant. To do this, you need good content and copywriting. Publish consistently on your website or blog to keep people coming back for more. If you want your site to be among the best SEO in Canada, then you should use words that are fun, short and memorable. Keywords like: ‘rad’, ‘sick’, ‘awesome’.

When you are in business, it’s important to stay on the cutting edge and be creative. Which is why we recommend and work with Ghost Writers and Co. We have been working with them for years, and their copywriting is top-notch.

Is creativity worth paying for

At Rad Websites, you can expect to know what things cost. Our website designs are priced based on how complicated they are. We want to make sure you know what you’re getting for your money and that you’re not overpaying for something that’s too simple or paying for something way too advanced for your needs.
No matter what kind of design you’re looking for, we’ll create a package that’s perfect for you at the best price possible!

Rad also has some of the most affordable SEO in Canada, with packages starting as low as $699/month! But we don’t stop there: our company specializes in internet marketing and digital advertising strategies, PPC, Social Media Management and award winning Ecommerce so if you want more than just SEO services, Rad is the right place for you, we’ve got it all!

At Rad Websites, you will find creativity worth paying for – whether it be through retainer hours, blocks of development time or even by individual hourly service. That’s why people come to us time and time again for their project requirements because we set ourselves apart from other agencies.

We believe that good design should be accessible to everyone, regardless of budget. With rad pricing plans, high quality and affordable services – Rad Websites is definitely the best choice for any project requirement.

Brand consistency through web design

Brand consistency is an essential part of any successful online business. Your website should be aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate and have the same feel as your other marketing materials. You need to look professional and trustworthy to win over new customers.
Good web design is essential for winning over new customers. Your website needs to look professional and have a trustworthy feel if you’re going to win clients online. Customers aren’t going to pick your site over another just because it has brighter colours or more interesting fonts. That being said, you need to think about how your website looks as well as how it works. People shop with their eyes first, so make sure that whatever you put on your site makes your business look good.

How we use technology to stand out from our competitors

We use technology to stand out from our competitors in the web design industry. In addition, we offer rad pricing that is more affordable than other similar agencies. We are one of Canada’s most trusted and successful companies offering rad website services with award winning Ecommerce.
Rad Websites provide clients with top notch solutions and leading edge features by constantly staying on top of the latest trends and always striving to make our clients business lives easier.

Why Every Business Needs a Rad Website Built By Rad Websites

A rad website is a necessity for any business that wants to stand out and maintain strong online position. Having a rad website built by Rad Websites will give you the tools and skills to keep up with the latest marketing techniques and keep your brand top-of-mind with customers.

Rad Websites is Canada’s Award winning Ecommere Website Design Agency, Located in Medicine Hat, AB. We Build Rad Websites! Why you need a rad website built by Rad Websites: A rad website is a necessity for any business that wants to maintain online visability.

A rad website will give you the tools and skills to keep up with the latest marketing techniques and keep your brand top-of-mind with customers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a family owned or operated small business or multinational corporation, everyone needs some help these days when it comes to keeping their site fresh, engaging and updated regularly.

For years, Rad Websites has been helping businesses like yours create stunning websites using the latest web design technologies, while staying within your budget. With so many different types of web designs available today (responsive/mobile-ready/Ecommerce) we can help you find a solution that fits your specific needs best. No matter what kind of site you’re looking for – whether it’s informational only or integrated with advanced ecommerce features – our team is always happy to help get things started from scratch or build on an existing framework.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or just don’t know where to start, reach out to us and let us do what we are good at, so you can do what your good at. Your rad website should be more than just something pretty. It should also be functional, innovative and easy-to-navigate as well as load quickly no matter the device being used.

Rad Websites offers responsive templates that automatically adjust to fit whatever screen they’re displayed on, meaning users will never have to worry about viewing content across multiple platforms again – it all looks great no matter what device they use. Whether you are considering building an Ecommerce store or blog and require a robust CMS system or not – call now or book an appointment for your free consultation.

Why It’s Important To Keep SEO Momentum Going

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

It’s a great accomplishment when you reach the first page of Google. You probably have an influx of clients and a boost in revenue. All those blogs, white papers, website links, and digital marketing efforts are finally paying off. You’re successful enough that you don’t have time, or perhaps the will, to market yourself. After all you’re a success so that means you can take your foot off the pedal, right?

WRONG!

Keyword Stuffing Is an SEO Killer

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

Keyword Stuffing Is an SEO Killer (And Here’s Why)

Guys- keyword stuffing kills your SEO.

SEO and keywords go hand in hand. Arguably one of the most important aspects of sound SEO, keywords play an insanely vital role in your search engine placement.

They are the link between what your potential clients are searching for, and when/how thy view your business online.

Singular words, or phrases- keywords help connect search engine users to your online content. Keywords are found everywhere within your online strategy- social media, your website, PPC and even Youtube!

Too little, or the wrong keywords? You may as well be sleeping on the Internet.

With that being said, it would make sense to choose a few top performing keywords and use them everywhere and as much as possible. The more the merrier, right?

And the more anchors you have to your line content from each search, the more you will be seen.

Well, no. Not at all actually. The intelligence of search engines far surpasses shoddy practices like keyword stuffing- among others, like backlink farming, spam ads and duplicate content.

What Is Keyword Stuffing?

Funnily enough, keyword stuffing used to be considered a leading SEO practice.

Loading the same keywords into every area of your online content- both the front and back end – used to gain an unfair rank advantage in search engines. The top SEO experts would stuff the same few keywords in their meta tags, content, backlink anchor text, alt images etc. for simply better SERP rankings.

But even back in the days where it was acceptable, it was still spammy and annoying- but Google and other search engines found it downright devious in a world where transparency and genuineness is heavily demanded online.

You will 100% be penalized for keyword stuffing, but it doesn’t mean that content curators out there don’t do still do it for rankings until they are caught.

Why Does Keyword Stuffing Kill Your SEO?

The minute Google noticed the amount of keyword stuffing going on out there, they were quick to crack down and implement strict guidelines on how repetitive you could actually get when curating content.

Seriously, they wrote an article about it.

And why goes Google care so much about keyword stuffing? The answer to that lies in the user experience. Google wants to uphold themselves as the search engine that delivers valid and helpful answers- if they can’t, people will just use other sources.

To increase the quality of each searchers experience, Google updated their algorithm to scan and point out keyword stuffing. If you’re manipulating your SERP rankings, rather than earning it, your content will be penalized.

And really, it’s not all about Google and SERP rankings. Don’t forget, actual humans read your content- and it’s them that will be the true qualified leads and sales. Keyword stuffing can never sound natural, and it will never sound genuine. To the average human, it will read as robotic and repetitive and that’s bad online marketing all around.

How Do I Know If I’m Keyword Stuffing?

Of course, there is no easy answer to this question. It’s a total grey area.

Keyword stuffing vs. keyword optimization is a tricky thing for even SEO experts to master. The execution of just the right amount of keywords and strategic placement is an art in itself.

At the end of the day, you’re satisfying the need for transparent and genuine content for the user with the demands of a robotic search engine.

And that’s tough. But what you’re aiming to achieve is health keyword optimization, working natural and true content around a few keywords that accurately describe your business.

Healthy keyword optimization does not force content based on leading searches- it will mirror what your business offers and what your specific market is searching for.

Your content should also provide helpful, relevant content specific to your business as a primary goal, with strategic placement of relevant keywords as a second goal.

There’s a Formula To Avoid Keyword Stuffing

As with a lot of content creation, there isn’t a black and white rule to avoid keyword stuffing. At RAD, we do use a benchmark that  helps us create natural, engaging content. Without the use of repeated keywords every two sentences.

We write with keyword density in mind.


Keyword Density =
(Number of words in copy) / (Number of times keyword appears in copy)
Best practice is to remain around the 2% mark. This indicates your copy is natural but contains enough keywords to help positively boost your SERP ranking.

There are some companies (and sadly, agencies) that will try and by-pass this by putting text on the page that is the same color as it’s background. Readers can’t see it, but search engine crawlers can.

PSA- Google knows, and you’ll be penalized.

Others repeat keywords in comments, reviews, in the sites code and more to again, trick the search engine crawlers but not interrupt the user experience.

Again, Google is smarter than most of us and will catch it.

The best way to avoid keyword stuffing is by curating raw, real and smart content. That engages readers on a natural level. Your website will rank higher on the SERP engine- and stay there- by appeasing Google AND your readers. Yes, it will take longer- great SEO is gradual and requires consistent work. If your work is wholesome and true, your place on the SERP will be as well.

SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You

by Ecommerce TipsSEO Tips

Updated: Dec 15, 2022 10:00am SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You
Originally Published: Dec 15, 2021 8:43am Top 10 of the Worst SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You

SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You

One of the worst things that could ever happen to an eCommerce website is a fall in ranks. Usually, bad SEO practices  are the usual suspect behind. And that is mild if you compare it to what can happen when you’re penalized by Google. But what could ever cause Google to penalize you?

A lot, actually. You’d be surprised by the number of black hat tricks or bad SEO practices employed by webmasters in order to appear on Google’s page one. However, for the purpose of this article, we are only going to list the top 10 of the worst SEO practices that make Google penalize you. 

1. Keyword Stuffing

There was a time when site owners actually got away with this bad SEO practice. But I am getting ahead of myself. You’re not sure what I’m talking about because this is such an old practice–perhaps before your time. What is keyword stuffing? Let me let Google tell you:

“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

In other words, Keyword stuffing is when you place your keywords too many times in your web content. You’ve probably seen it, because unfortunately, it is still being used today, but didn’t know what it was. Have you ever been to a website after your search term produced some favourable looking results, but when you try to read the article it doesn’t really make sense? I like WebFX’s example (The keyword, in this case, is “yellow rubber duckie.”):

“Get a yellow rubber duckie for your children”. A yellow rubber duckie is a charming toy, so buy a yellow rubber duckie today. With a yellow rubber duckie, you can have tons of yellow rubber duckie fun. It’s easy to make bath time great with a yellow rubber duckie, and a yellow rubber duckie from our company guarantees yellow rubber duckie enjoyment.

According to Google, don’t do that. Not only will it damage your brand, but you will lose credibility with your clients. Your website falling in Google rankings is also a negative outcome.

2. Duplicate Content (Whether Yours Or Others)

What is duplicate content? Let’s hear from Google: Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar.”

In other words, either you or someone working for you decided that the content on another website matches info you would like to share with your audience. However, instead of using the content as reference, you instead chose to copy word for word that content on your website.

If that is you, stop it! It’s not worth it. We know content is king. That’s why the Best SEO in Canada offers evergreen content at affordable prices. We guarantee that every article written will pass plagiarisma.

We know that by and large, people are honest, so sometimes mistakes happen. You didn’t deliberately set out to duplicate content, however you recently updated content on your website, accounting for the duplication. If this is you, don’t panic. All you have to do is use 301 redirectswhen you create new pages so that the old pages are no longer accessible.

You can also use the tag: rel=canonical for pages with similar content, in order that Google, or any other search engine for that matter, will know which content is the original; while the “no index” tagshould be used for those pages you do not want Google to search.

Let’s take this article  for example: You’re reading this article, Top 10 of the Worst SEO practices That make Google Penalize You, and we noticed that it was getting traction and moving up the ranks, we could not use this content on any other page or website that we own (even though we are the original owners of the content). We would be penalized by Google if we were to “duplicate” this content.

 

3. Scraped Content

Further to #2 is scraped content. What’s the difference, you ask? It’s like apples and oranges. They are both fruits, but not all fruits are apples or oranges. So scraping does result in duplicate content, however, the act of scraping is deliberately copying and pasting content and publishing it as your own.

While Google will overlook duplicate content if they recognise that identical content which (often unintentionally) appears in more than one place on your site, they will penalize websites with scraped content–and you can bet they know the difference.

 

4. You’re linking to low-quality sites

According to Google, “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

So, if you have links pointing to low quality websites, Google will penalize you.

 

5. You’re buying links

Further to #3 above, is the practice by link builders and some webmasters of purchasing links. Whether you choose to pay for a slot on a blog post so you can add links, or you are directly purchasing links in a directory, buying links is one of the fastest ways for you to get penalized by Google.

According to Google, exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links is considered a violation of their guidelines.

 

6. Coaking

“Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected”. (Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

It is a very bad SEO practice to show one content to the web crawlers in order to rank higher, while showing a different content to your site visitors. If you do this, you will be penalized by Google.

BTW, Google is aware that hackers use cloaking to hide their activities, so the only instance you will not be penalized by Google is if your website gets hacked.

7. Auto-generated content

Interestingly, this makes the top 10 list because Google does take action against websites where content is automatically generated (also called “auto-generated”—content). Believe it or not, filling pages with auto-generated contents  is a sign of  bad SEO practices.

If your content is “translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing”, “generated from scraping Atom/RSS feeds or search results” and “generated through automated processes”, among others, they are all considered auto-generated content and will be penalized by Google.

This is sometimes done to save time and money, but you could end up being penny wise and pound foolish. If you must have these types of content on your site, Google has some best practices you can implement to prevent them from showing up in Search.

 

8. Doorway Pages

This is an interesting one, because there was a time when doorway pages were considered good SEO practice. To use BrightEdge’s example, “…a nail salon with two branches that wants to bring in traffic for two cities may have pages targeted for each city that have the same or similar content and describe the same nail salon”.

Six years ago, this would have been an okay SEO practice. However, the good must now suffer for the bad, as search engines realize unscrupulous black hat technicians have manipulated the system to create doorway pages that lead searchers to intermediate pages (as final pages) that are not useful.

So have you guessed what are doorway pages? Indeed, it’s having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. But in the case of Bad SEO practice they are sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries.

According to Google, “They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination”.

 

9. Hidden Text

While hiding text in and of itself is no longer considered them as bad SEO practices, Google may consider it a violation of their webmaster guidelines and penalize you.

There is a saying, it’s not what you do, but how you do it. This would be one such time. For example, if your website includes technologies that search engines have difficulty accessing, like JavaScript. Or if there is sensitive information you do not want everyone to have access to.

What Google penalizes is the deliberate attempt to manipulate the system in order to trick search crawlers.

For example, making your keyword text the same colour as the background of your website or locating text being an image. Because search crawlers are robots, or bots, they don’t see the Internet the same way we do. They can see your “invisible” keywords.  And they are smart enough to know the difference, especially in cases where keyword stuffing is present.

10. Sneaky Redirects

According to Google,

“Redirecting is the act of sending a visitor to a different URL than the one they initially requested. There are many good reasons to redirect one URL to another, such as when moving your site to a new address, or consolidating several pages into one.

However, some redirects deceive search engines or display content to human users that is different than that made available to crawlers. It’s a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines to redirect a user to a different page with the intent to display content other than what was made available to the search engine crawler”

So there you have it: Straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth. Need we say more?

 

Final Thoughts

We at Best SEO in Canada know you would never wittingly use any of these top 10 worst SEO practises that make Google penalize you. But just in case you unwittingly did and now your website has lost its ranking. Don’t panic. It’s reversible. Let us help you.

AJ Frey and his team “have a constantly evolving proven whitehat secret recipe that can help you get on the first page of Google and start converting potential leads into actual, paying customers”.

If you have questions about avoiding bad SEO practices or can suggest a few more, send them to us in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

shopify SEO

Why Is Shopify’s SEO Bad?

by Ecommerce TipsMarketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO TipsWordPress Tips

Shopify, not to be confused with Spotify– the world’s largest music streaming service provider, is an eCommerce platform “for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools,” (Wikipedia). 

In other words, the Shopify platform  “helps people achieve independence by making it easier to start, run, and grow a business”. Over 1,700,000 businesses in more than 175 countries are powered by Shopify.  Same, it “creates the best commerce tools for anyone, anywhere, to start and grow a business”, (Shopify.com). The platform is simple, sleek and integrates well with many different apps at just the click of a button.

Plus, you don’t have to take out your wallet to start. This means, they allow you to set up your store for free, and try their service for 14 days before you’re asked for your credit card. Did I tell you that they are also headquartered in Ottawa, Canada? Nice! However, not everything shines when it comes to Shopify. So, the next question is, what’s not to love? Their SEO.

Obviously, if SEO is critical to your business, you need to read this article as I try to answer the question: Why is Shopify’s SEO bad?

Can you do SEO with Shopify?

First of all, let’s be clear, you can do SEO with Shopify. But it’s limiting. Here are many quick, technical wins.

If you are new to eCommerce and just looking for a place to start, then Shopify is the perfect place for your online store. However, once your business starts to take off that’s when you start to see how Shopify actually holds you back.

Look at it this way: 

You can become 80% competitive on Google’s search engine using Shopify, but that’s it. It won’t get better. If you know what you’re doing and put in the effort, you may even rank on less-competitive searches. However, profitable rankings are extremely competitive, so trying to make up for that last 20% of lost performance will over time become frustrating.

Now that I’ve got your attention, let Best SEO in Canada show you five problems with Shopify’s SEO that might make you think twice about choosing their platform. You might even become motivated to migrate to BigCommerce–our go-to eCommerce plugin for all things WordPress.

1. Canonical URLs

The first problem is Shopify’s Canonical URLs. Canonical issues are all about copies of the same content getting spat into Google.

If you asked them, Shopify would say that they solved the problem using the rel=”canonical” HTML tag, but they would be wrong. It’s not that they’re using the code wrong (I actually love that they make it so easy). Rather, they’re simply expecting this HTML tag to do something that it was not meant to do.

For example, Northcutt, based out of Chicago, had a Shopify client with the following URLs all visible in Google when they searched for site:theirdomain.com:

searched for site:theirdomain.com; proving that all four copies were indeed in Google’s index:

/products/Batteries

/products/batteries

/products/batteries/

/products/BATTERIES/

>Their “batteries“>” product page contained the rel=”canonical” tag. So what happened?

By Google’s own definition, the rel=”canonical” tag is a suggestion. In my experience, they’ve only occasionally followed their own suggestion.

And if you tried patching things together using Shopify’s redirect tool, you would find that this doesn’t work either. At least not if the page to which you are redirecting technically exists.

We still recommend rel=”canonical” HTML tags, but it is unreliable in this situation. The role of this tag is entirely different — perhaps we’ll do another article on that at a later date. Note that in this case, too, JavaScript redirects cannot be relied upon.

These problems can only be solved by using .htaccess or vhost files. Period. And you cannot access these files on Shopify. They know this. Shopify Plus support confirmed this problem, but were unwilling or unable to fix it.

2. Breadcrumb URLs

The second problem is a variant of problem #1: Shopify creates breadcrumb URLs of products beneath categories. What that means is that you will often find two copies of the same page in Google’s index:

/collections/collection-title/products/product-name

/products/product-name

So using MinistryofSupply.com (a clothing store) as an example, Shopify’s default canonical behaviour will state that only the second URL should get indexed. I.e. /products/product-name:

However, a search on Google proves this suggestion often just doesn’t work:

shopify SEO

This, right here, is just foolish behaviour. What is the purpose of creating so many conflicting URLs with the same content? None. There is no benefit. Worst of all, like problem #1, Shopify will not provide access for you to solve this problem.

3. No Plusses, Please!

The third problem with Shopify’s SEO is the inability to modify the indexing file, which contains the + sign that must be deleted in order for search engines to crawl the site. Let me explain. There is a file named robots.txt that sends signals to Google about how to index your site, and all other sites. On Shopify, you cannot edit this file. Here’s what’s inside by default:

# we use Shopify as our ecommerce platform

//User-agent: *

//Disallow: /admin

//Disallow: /cart

//Disallow: /orders

//Disallow: /checkout

//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts

//Disallow: /carts

//Disallow: /account

//Disallow: /collections/*+*

//Disallow: /collections/*%2B*

//Disallow: /collections/*%2b*

//Disallow: /blogs/*+*

//Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*

//Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*

//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

/Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

//Disallow: /discount/*

//Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

//Sitemap: https://ministryofsupply.com/sitemap.xml

//# Google adsbot ignores robots.txt unless specifically named!

//User-agent: adsbot-google

//Disallow: /checkout

//Disallow: /carts

//Disallow: /orders

//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts

//Disallow: /discount/*

//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

//User-agent: Nutch

//Disallow: /

//User-agent: MJ12bot

//Crawl-Delay: 10

//User-agent: Pinterest

//Crawl-delay: 1

Most of these instructions are useful. However, these default instructions also cause problems. Not least of which is that products and vendors that contain a plus (+) or a space character will be blocked from crawling. Take a look again at the instructions. Do you see those lines that contain a “+”, “2B”, or “2b“? Those “instructions” keep those pages from being added to Google’s index. They also disrupt Google’s crawl pattern, which can lead to other indexing problems.

4. That Blog… It’s No WordPress

The fourth problem with Shopify’s SEO is its blog. Indeed, every eCommerce site should have a blog for content marketing. Not doing content marketing? Why ever not? Don’t you know it is always better to own attention rather than rent? In order to thrive, mature brands must become natural link-earning machines.

But let’s be real: Shopify is an eCommerce platform, not a content-marketing platform.

I mentioned WordPress at the beginning of the article with good reason. WordPress is the number one content management platform on the planet. According to the latest statistics. as of March 11, 2021 some 455,000,000 websites are using “>WordPress right now! That means around 20% of all self-hosted websites use it, too.

Shopify has a default blogging engine, but there are too many issues and limitations that are beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, the solution would naturally be to install WordPress in a subfolder on the site for your blog. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Shopify does not allow you to install anything in a subfolder on their site. You will have to host the blog somewhere else and then point the subdomain there, like content.yoursite.com.

In SEO, a closer affiliation is implied when your content shares the same subdomain (such as “www”). This is why it is a part of our best SEO practice to host your blog, news, ebooks, infographics, etc, in a subfolder. However, on Shopify, you can’t do that.

5. The Rest

If by now you are not convinced Shopify’s SEO is bad, then it makes no sense to continue, so we’ll just lump all the other problems as “the rest”. Moreover, I’ve given you a taste of how limiting Shopify’s SEO capabilities can be. But it doesn’t get better. It gets worse; especially once you get into creative keyword architecture, segmentation for account-based marketing, performance tweaks, and other situational fixes (the rest).

Conclusion

Shopify is a great eCommerce platform–for beginners and nontechnical users of the Internet. However, if you are a developer, SEO expert, or a business person with a huge eCommerce store, be aware of what you’ll never be able to do with Shopify’s SEO:

  • First, customize robots.txt
  • Second, customize web server headers
  • Third, customize URL handling and subfolders
  • Four, install the world’s greatest content management system for your link-earning endeavours.

Those aren’t just unsolvable problems. They’re three categories of problems and then some. For these, there are no hacks or workarounds. So, if SEO is critical to your business, Shopify is not for you. Why is Shopify’s SEO bad? In a nutshell: There’s no room for growth–your growth!

At Best SEO in Canada, AJ Frey wants to see you grow. He wants to help your business to scale up. As an SEO expert, he knows how to get your business ranking on Google’s page one, using only organic search strategies, because he hates PPC.

“So whether you’re an enterprise company or a small independent business, your success online depends largely on ensuring your target audience finds you on Google” through SEO. AJ Frey offers an extensive range of SEO services, exclusively for driving traffic in order to meet your lead, acquisition or sales objectives. So are you ready to make that move? Give AJ Frey a call at  250-801-6588 or drop him a

So, did we answer the question, “Why is Shopify’s SEO bad”? We surely hope so. Let us know in the Comments box below.

It’s 2020: Is JavaScript Dead?

by SEO Tips

Whether or not JavaScript is dead has no clear, forward answer.

The world of web development is fast changing to say the least, with new languages and protocols seeming to pop up every couple of minutes.

Remember when HTML Flash was a thing?

But a strange debate we’ve been hearing about is whether or not JavaScript is “dead”- with some developers claiming Java has been six feet under for years and others claiming it’s still a highly valuable programming language.

And the answer? Well, there isn’t one. It’s a continuing battle of “yes” and “no” from opposing sides.

While we don’t want to say it’s the east side, west side battle of the web development world….

It kind of is. So, is JavaScript dead?

Let’s hash it out.

First Off, What Is JavaScript?

Put simply, JavaScript is a scripting/programming language that lets developers build complex features on a website.

If you visit a site and the page does more than stand still and present stagnant information for you to look at, you can almost guarantee that Javascript was used when developing that website. JavaScript is the function behind content updates, 3D graphics, scrolling videos and maps.

Basically, if web technologies were a cake, JavaScript would be the third layer- typically complementing HTML & CSS.

The web layer cake, for reference:

  1. HTML: this is the language that is used to form the basic structure of a site, and provide meaning to the content on our site. Example: paragraphs, headings and data tables or simply embedding images and videos in a page.
  2. CSS: the language of style. CSS is the font styles, the colors, backgrounds- basically the design- of the framework we have set in place with CSS.
  3. JavaScript: the bells and the whistles of our websites content. Any dynamic content, or anything that moves, can usually be attributed to JavaScript.

Alternatives To Java Script

The whole idea that JavaScript has died came from the emergence of similar alternatives. While Java is the rea OG of “fancy web stuff”, this constantly evolving industry has of course produced alternatives that web developers have put under their belt.

Much less known of course, these programming languages have found their way into many great websites across the globe:

  • Dart
  • TypeScript
  • Kaffiene
  • Elm
  • CoffeeScript

The kicker, though? All these have to be transpiled through JavaScript before becoming deployed anyway.

So, is there an alternative to JavaScript? The best answer is- no, but kind of.

But Wait….Is JavaScript Dying Anyway?

Sigh.

There is no straight forward answer to that.

Statistically, no- JavaScript is not only alive and well, but prospering. 95% of websites worldwide utilize JavaScript, and JS is considered a standard language in the world of programming.

Most web development positions won’t even consider your application if you do not speak JS.

JavaScript Develops Web Content That Everybody Can Use

If you piled all the source code written in the last decade into piles, JavaScript would be the biggest pile.

Which may make you wonder where the idea that JavaScript is dead came from.

Admittedly, we are kind of Reddit addicts here at RAD– we often engage in communications with other developers about software, programming etc. So, it’s not a surprise that the best answer have found came from Reddit “zanfar”:

Nobody says “X is dead” when X is actually dead. The statement usually means something like “I found this really cool other thing that I think is better than X” or “I’ve been an internet/journalism troll for years and recently found some anecdotal evidence that finally supports my dubious claims.”

Learning a language–any language–is valuable. Yes, even Basic.

Even if JS somehow became the absolutely worst thing ever tomorrow, it would still be around and used for quite a while as nothing else is really supported as widely as JS–could be over a decade based on realistic browser upgrade cycles.

That’s not to say that there are components of JS that could be improved, or components of JS that aren’t open for competitors:

  • Client-side Security Since the Java Script code is viewable to the user, others may use it for malicious purposes. These practices may include using the source code without authentication. Also, it is very easy to place some code into the site that compromises the security of data over the website.
  • Browser Support The browser interprets J-S differently in different browsers. Thus, the code must be run on various platforms before publishing. The older browsers don’t support some new functions and we need to check them as well.
  • Rendering Stopped A single code error can stop the rendering of the entire JavaScript code on the website. To the user, it looks as if JavaScript was not present. However, the browsers are extremely tolerant of these errors.

And yes, JavaScript can be ultra ultra slow

On the whole, Java Script is a widely accepted and used programming language that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

Java Script isn’t dead, but it doesn’t mean that competitors aren’t slowly trying to take it’s place. It does seem that once there is a new entrance into the market- even if they’re not really comparable- people start to claim that components start to die off.

In this case, we can’t find evidence to support Java Script doing anything other than remaining strong in a very digital world.

The Top Pricing For SEO Audit Services In Canada Ranked

by Ecommerce TipsMarketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

Updated: Nov 28, 2022
Originally Published: Sept 30, 2021

The Top Pricing For SEO Audit Services In Canada Ranked

An SEO >audit refers to a full analysis of all the factors that affect a website’s visibility in search engines. It determines the strengths, as well as the weaknesses of your website when it comes to SEO. Let’s find out below about top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada.

An SEO audit can give you insight into the challenges you’re facing, why you may not be achieving your SEO goals and also realise the strategies your competitors are using to be successful. Based on the results from the SEO  audit, you receive a list of recommendations from an SEO expert like AJ Frey (Rad Websites – Best SEO in Canada), who further implements these recommendations on your behalf, if you do not have your own SEO team.

There are many articles on the Internet for DIY website owners on how to conduct an SEO audit. However, if you’re not tech savvy, or have the time to do a thorough audit, enlisting the services of an SEO expert is the best gift you could give yourself. But how much should you be doling out to an expert to audit your site?

In this article, we are going to list the top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada. Check No. 5.

SEO Audit Services In Canada

1. Arhefs

At the top of the list is Ahrefs –a well-known toolset for SEO analysis. Though based in Singapore, Ahrefs is worldwide, including in Canada. They make the top of the list because their prices range from US$99 – 999/month, with a wide array of services, including their SEO site audit tool for DIY web owners.

An SEO site audit tool automatically audits a page on your website — all you have to do is enter your Url. The tool then “crawl” your site before generating a report, which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of a webpage. Other SEO audit tools on the market include Moz,  Semrush, Alexa, Serpstat, to name a few.

Most SEO audits have two things in common: They’re too technical and they take DAYS (or even WEEKS) to complete! Ahrefs SEO audits take hours. They do have a caveat: If your website is HUGE, i.e. hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pages—it may take longer than a few hours. However, for most small to medium-sized sites, this should be doable in hours rather than days.

They also give you a breakdown of their SEO audit process:

  • Steps 1–4: check for BIG issues (that may be holding your site back)
  • Steps 5–9: uncover easy-to-fix on-site problems;
  • Steps 10–12 analyze organic search traffic (and find low-hanging opportunities);
  • Steps 13–14 backlink analysis (VERY important!);
  • Steps 15–16 content audit AND “content gap” analysis.

As well as the “tools” they use during the audit process:

Ahrefs reports usually include recommendations for optimizing your webpage’s SEO.

2.  Webfx

According to Webfx, whether you’re a small-to-midsize business (SMB) or established enterprise, you can expect to pay between $650 and $14,000 for an SEO audit. Granted, if you’re a larger company with a bigger website, you will have higher SEO audit costs than a startup with a small site.

Like the size of your website, several factors affect the price of your SEO audit. Their figures quoted are also one time prices–but again, depending on the size of the website and other factors. WebFX also provides SEO services to clients around the world! So whether you needSEO in Boston, orSEO in Charlotte, or Canada, they’ve got you covered.

3. Neil Patel

Well-known marketing expertNeil Patel comes in at #3 because his website generates millions of organic search traffic—about3.5 million 3.5 million. No ads, only through SEO-optimized content marketing. That qualifies him as an expert on SEO marketing. 

He states that at a minimum, a technically sound website should be secure, quick to load, easy to crawl, have clear and actionable navigation actionable navigation, and not contain any duplicate links or content. It should also have systems in place to engage users even if they do hit a dead end, such as content created for 404 errors and 301 redirect pages

Finally, a site should have structured data to help search engines understand the content. This can come in the form of
schema graphs and XML sitemaps
His SEO Analysis doesn’t just point out errors, he says, but gives you step by step instructions on how you can fix each of them. Each SEO report contains video tutorials to step by step instructions.

His prices come with two options: a 30-day money back guarantee on a one-time lifetime payment ranging from $120 – $400 or a $12 – $40/month with a 7-day free trial. 

4. Semrush

Semrush is a SaaS platform used for keyword research and online ranking data. It’s SEO audit tool can do a full website scan in minutes. If your website is under 100 pages you get your audit free. Their audit report includes Intuitive charts, instructions and directions for:

  • Loading speed
  • Crawlability
  • Content issues
  • Meta tags
  • HTTPS security protocols
  • Internal linking
  • JS and CSS errors
  • AMP implementation

With their SEO checker, you get a quick report card on how your site’s doing from an SEO perspective. That report can serve as a handy resource when discussing with decision makers why a professional SEO audit is necessary.

Their pricing ranges from $119.95/mo for marketing newbies, to $449.95/mo for large agencies and enterprises. Bear in mind, Semrush is a tool, not a person like No. 5. 

Which brings us to:

5. Rad Websites / Best SEO in Canada / AJ Frey

SEO expert AJ Frey starts his audit with a web crawl. This procedure is so important that you need to run it first before you do the other steps, he says. Why is this important? Because this is where you identify your website’s problems for example:

  • duplicate contents
  • low word count
  • unlinked pagination pages
  • excess redirects
  • Loading speed
  • Crawlability
  • Content issues
  • Meta tags
  • HTTPS security protocols
  • Internal linking
  • JS and CSS errors
  • AMP implementation

AJ Frey’s professional SEO audit focuses on in-depth, customized assessment of your entire website by his experienced team of digital marketers. And AJ 100% agrees with Neil Patel on the many aspects he considers when performing a technical SEO audit. These include:

  • mobile optimization
  • page load speed
  • link health
  • duplicate content
  • schemas
  • crawl errors
  • image issues
  • site security
  • URL structure
  • 404 pages
  • 301 redirects
  • canonical tags
  • XML sitemaps
  • site architecture

    •  

For Audits they use Moz and Spyfu as their primary tools. Other tools to produce a comprehensive audit report include:

  • Google Search Console
  • Google Page Speed Insight
  • Google Analytics
  • SpyFu
  • CrazyFrog

An SEO audit by the Best SEO in Canada delves deep into your marketing data to analyse the meaning and implications of the site’s SEO performance. What you will end up getting is valuable insights, historical contexts (past and present performance) and meaningful recommendations from AJ Frey for what to do next.

If you do not have your own SEO team, AJ Frey offers his at competitive packages to meet every budget. The Best SEO in Canada prices range from CA$699 (for those on a budget)  to CA$2499–their best value is the local Rad package at CA$1499. 

6. OuterBox

If you’re an online retailer, the team atOuterBox has extensive Ecommerce expertise and can deliver one of the most detailed and comprehensive Ecommerce SEO audits available. The audit will help you be more prepared and eliminate unknowns when heading into a full comprehensive SEO campaign. Outerbox also offer a free SEO audit quote.  

Their SEO audit process begins with their team analyzing your website content, code, structure and more to determine the strengths and weaknesses. They’ll also review your competitors to see what they are doing well and reverse engineer their strategies.

Their SEO audit final report will include all findings along with recommendations and how to find the problems. Their SEO audit process typically takes between 4-6 weeks. However, throughout the process you will work with various team members at OuterBox. 

7. SEO North

SEO North has been in the industry for close to a decade, which means they have the experience to create a unique service and withstand the new regulations set by major search engines that may hinder your site’s high ranking.

Also, they base their SEO audit on the developed algorithms, strategies, and links. The digital marketing services allow them to work remotely, and their clients have the option to contact them anytime.Their main tasks in the audit process involve:

We check and identify the highest performing content.
Check for any website errors and identify each comprehensively.
Develop solutions and seamlessly implement them on the site

Markedly, technical SEO Audits are designed to identify technical barriers in the way of your content ranking higher in search results is what their site states. However, what can one get for CA$100– their one-time fat rate? 

8. Optimized Webmedia Marketing

And finally, Optimized Webmedia Marketing is also based in Canada. They offer a “Free” SEO Audit, but by their own admission, nothing is truly free and there’s no such thing as “cheap SEO”–you get what you pay for. They’re on the list because they do offer good SEO Audits based on their testimonials–but it costs $150 per hour, which is more realistic than SEO North’s one-time fee of $100.

We can only surmise though that if they\re offering “free audit”, then they are using the foot-in-the-door technique. If so, you can expect to pay anywhere between $650 (low end), $2000 (average) to $5000+ (high end) on a monthly basis, or $100 to $300+ on an hourly basis.

Don’t expect to spend less than $650 if you choose the monthly plan, for according to OWM, they don’t do “Cheap SEO”. Cheap SEO is considered to be anything less than $650 per month and provides the level of “skill, time, and customization that is unique for every single website”.

What An SEO Audit Services Means

It was tough putting this list together because of each’s uniqueness and the wide range of prices offered by each. In most instances it was not a case of which was “cheaper”. But which is more aligned with your goals for your website.

The top rank pricing for SEO Audit services in Canada tried to find the best SEO audit service whether by a team or a SaaS platform.

Unlike many of our competitors, we did not rank ourselves first

–as we so easily could.
We believe AJ Frey at Rad Websites is the Best SEO in Canada because he provides top notch SEO service that places you on page one for your search term. Not many agencies can say that based on their own placement on the search engines.

Important to realize, Ahrefs and Neil Patel offer the best organic results. Semrush will get you on page one with paid SEO, and Semrush is an SEO tool.

Final Thoughts

Optimized Webmedia Marketing gives more flexibility by offering both hourly and monthly rates, but there’s a grey area, as they offer a “free page audit”, while stating on their blog that the “cost for a manually created audit varies from $1,500 to $10,000, with the average cost in Canada being $2,500”. You decide if this is a foot-in-the-door technique. You decide also if we were fair in our assessment by ranking ourselves No. 5. 

Notwithstanding, whether we’re Noi. 5 or No. 1, at Best SEO in Canada, we don’t depend on cheap sales tactics to lure our customers. Our work speaks for itself. The fact you are here means you found us on Google’s page one.

We have done the same for all of our clients. AJ Frey is the best SEO in Canada. If you want him to  carry on SEO audit services  and optimize it for the search engines, just drop us a line via email, or call us at 1 250 801 6588. You won’t regret it!

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how much does a website cost

How Much Does A Website Cost in Canada?

by SEO TipsSEO Yearly Changes

Updated: October 1, 2022
Updated: June 16, 2020
Originally Published on July 15 2019

How Much Does A Website Cost in Canada?

Here at Rad Websites one of the first questions people always ask us is how much does a Website cost? The truth is, the cost of building a website depends on your personal budget and goals. In this article, we’ll show you the ins and outs of building a website so not only you know the process but the entire process. Depending on the complexity of your website, for example, the number of pages, plugins you are using, the amount of custom coding you have, whether it’s an infomercial website or an ecommerce, your cost will fluctuate.

That isn’t why your here and that is not what you wanna here from the Rad Websites crew. Well here we take a rad stand. I will tell you what it costs. so you can plan and dream and then reach out when your ready.

A Rad developer can cost you anywhere between $150 and $180 USD per hour. While that may seem like a lot of money, is completely worth it because the end product will reflect you and your brand. We have all seen what a cheap website looks like and at Rad affordable and cheap are way different. Rad Websites thinks that anyone can have there dream site and we have a way to affordably get you there. Rad!

Having said that, Now I am going to tell you what you need (the ingredients) to build a website. this is all part and parcel to how much does a website cost in Canada, and at the end of this post, we’ll explain in detail our cost structure and even give you some tips on how you can save money and bring that cost down. (No Skipping To The End) So what do you need to build a website? Here is the ingredient list and the steps you should take.

Domain Name

At a very basic level, your domain name is your website’s address on the internet. It’s what your customers type into their browsers to access your website. Once you register a domain name with a company like CanHost, GoDaddy or Bluehost, you’ll get the right to use that name for your website for
however long your purchased it for. You are required to renew your domain every year that you have it. Domains unless you are purchasing premium are around $25 per year. you have to renew these after the term has expired.

*RadProtip Register your Domain for 10 Years. It the maximum allowed and it shows google you believe you are here to stay!

Web Hosting

Web hosting is like the home of your website. This is where you store the content and images of your website. When a visitor tries to access your website by typing in your web address, they’ll be directed to the website files stored on your web hosting server.
There are a lot of different types of web hosting services such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, cheap hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated server, just to name a few. When you’re starting out, we recommend you choose shared hosting or WordPress hosting because both are the best for most website owners in terms of affordability and needs. When your website becomes more popular, you might want to switch to dedicated hosting.
Cool (Basic) Hosting with Rad Websites is $185/yr
Awesome (Mid) Hosting with Rad Websites is $349/yr
Rad Hosting (Advanced) with Rad Websites is $549/yr

*RadProtip Host your website on Canadian soil. This protects your intellectual property and your clients from prying eyes

Website Builder or CMS

A website builder makes it easy to create a website the way you want it to look. There are many choices fisher price website builders (not made by fisher price)out there including – Shopify, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, read our blog on why to stay away from these companies or talk to AJ he will tell you.
Here at Rad Websites we always use and recommend WordPress. WordPress is the platform of choice for around 49% of all website owners. It gives you endless possibilities to create your website the way you want. It also gives you complete control over your website so you can customize it in both the front and back end. One of the key features of WordPress is it is free and open-source software so there are thousands of different tools to help you. Most Importantly and this is also the RadProTip, you own and control your website. No one else does, period.

*RadProtip Work With Rad Websites and WordPress and you always own and control your website.

Estimating the Cost Based on Your Goals

How to add it all together

Ok Now you know what the main ingredients are, but how do we get from that to a Rad Website,
Before I go on and to recap,

    • Decide on a domain $20 – $200
    • Choose your hosting package $185 – $549
    • Speak to a digital advisor at Rad Websites to determine what you need or decide what you can affordHourly $150 USD/hr
      how much does a website cost

5 hour block $140/hr
10 hour block $135/hr
25 hour block $125/hr
50 hour block $100/hr

Don’t worry if your Canadian everything is priced in Canadian dollars

With this info your basic site cost including domain and hosting is about $1500 for 10 hours of dev time, add in the hosting package and choose your domain and you pretty much have the cost of a simple one pager.

*RadProtip it is about 8 – 10 hours of work per page of your website

Alright I digress, you may also want to consider just hiring Rad Websites or someone to do it for you. If that is the case, the first thing you should consider is what is the website going to be used for. If it’s just a placeholder then you probably don’t want to spend a ton of money, but if you’re going to put through hundreds of transactions a month, then it’s worth it to spending the extra money to make sure it can handle what you and your clients throw at you. Anyways,

Do You Need A Custom-Built Website?

Installing a pre-built WordPress theme is the easiest way to roll out a new website. Especially if you are going to do it yourself. It also helps you save on costs and looks amazing. The downside, normally with these is of course, is that your website won’t be super original and might even look similar to your competition. What we like to do is have you choose a theme that you like and then we build that theme from scratch with a builder, like wp Bakery or Elementor you can work with.

However, if you want to give a unique look and feel to your website, then you’ll have to build a custom WordPress theme. With a custom site, the sky is the limit. You can do whatever you want and add any type of element you can dream of. Whether this is worth the extra cost, well…
you’ll have to decide. The answer is yes. Next to consider is?

What Features Will You Need?

When starting out, you won’t need all the extra bells and whistles. Even though it may seem like you do. Start small, it’s essential to write down the list of features that you think you will need now and the ones you’ll need down the line. This helps you streamline the entire development process and focus on features that are of high priority (the stuff that will make your life easier and those that are just nice to have. When you hire a developer, it’s critical that you communicate which features are absolutely must-haves. However, keep in mind that these might just be personal preferences and might not be the same must-haves for the people visiting your website – your customers.

*RadProtip Meet with a digital advisor at Rad Websites is the easiest way to determine what you will need to be successful.

Does Your Website Need To Take Transactions?

If your website needs a portal to take transactions, it will probably increase the cost as it’s harder to develop an ecommerce website than an infomercial website. However, as more people are buying products online, it might be worth it to spend a little extra money and give your
customers the convenience of buying in their underwear. Ecommerce Online Stores, Come with a base set of 10 simple products.
SO if you take a 50 hour block you will have a Rad Website with basic ecommerce if that’s what you need and then adding each additional product is easy, its $15/ simple product and $30/ for variable product. So 10 more variable products, would add $300 and 100 more would be $1500 – $3000 depending again if they are simple products or variable

*RadProtip Variable products are products that have different sizes or colors or Flavors for example. Simple products are just that simple for example brown coffee table.

The Rad Websites Deal

Now I told you that I would show you how to save money on your website, didn’t I? At Rad Websites, we have a unique way of pricing our services. We generally bill our time in blocks of hours. We do this because our clients love the transparency, flexibility and control it allows.

If you live in Medicine Hat here is where you can save a lot of money on your project.
40% to be exact if you are a chamber of commerce member here you already get this discount!!
if you are not sign up now and you will get this discount on your project. that is an unprecedented $85/hr on any block of hours. Tell them you joined for your Rad discount on a website or just tell them AJ sent you.

Most of our pricing is peppered throughout this resource for you. if you don’t live in medicine hat that’s ok you can still get your costs down.
Rad Websites Hourly Rate is $150/hour USD, for both development and marketing.
If you purchase:
a 5-hour block of time that number goes down to 140/hour
a 10-hour block of time, drops the hourly even further to 135/hour. Purchasing a 25-hour block it drops to 120/hour. Purchasing a 50+ hour block gets our best available rate of $100/hour. Rad Websites wants your business to be online and we want it to be affordable we also have a slew of payment plans available so its not something you have to pay for all at once.

Rad Right? Like I said we tell you. now you can do it on your own if you like you know what you need to be successful or you can contact a digital advisor at Rad Websites. One more way we are making the world rad one website at a time. We look forward to bringing your business online.

2020 SEO Trends – Why Backlinks Need To Comeback

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Yearly ChangesWordPress Tips

Improve your SEO with Backlinks

As if there wasn’t enough to add to SEO best practices, we want to touch on backlinks.
Okay, no- we really want to dive into backlinks, because they are just that important.
As Kelowna’s leading premier WordPress marketing agency, we work around the clock to boost our clients search engine ranking. Our toolbox is full – website development, content creation, keyword research, social stacking- but backlink building is always directly on our radar.
We’re not going to lie to you; even as SEO professionals, backlink building is hard. Backlinks are a huge part of SEO best practices, but take time and knowledge to build.

What are backlinks?

Referred to as “online citations”, backlinks are simply links to your website, or web resource, from an external website, or web source. Web sources can mean articles, directories, online archives etc. They act as a vouch of confidence for your website and content, both to users and search engines.
Backlinks are typically the hyperlinks you see in articles (you know, the clickable text underlined in blue) but can also be image tags, social stacking or listings.
Rad- we’ve got the textbook definitions out the way.
Now let’s talk about how backlinks are super essential for your website- and why.

Do Backlinks Improve SEO?

Yes. 100% they do.
Good quality, reputable backlinks boost your SERP pretty aggressively and actively contribute to your overall online marketing.
That’s why prior to Google’s Penguin algorithm update, SEO professionals around the globe were doing anything they could to gain backlinks.
Take a wild guess how Google felt about that. Let’s back up a little.
The obsession with backlinks began in response to Larry Page’s algorithm contribution- PageRank. This particular algorithm basically determined the order of search results- so who would show up or not. PageRank was the first algorithm ever used by Google to index sites and use this index to determine websites rankings.
Guess what PageRank focused super, super heavily on?
Backlinks. Once the cat was out of the bag, the frenzy of every SEO professional around to get as many backlinks as possible to boost their SERP ranking began.
It was seriously like wildfire. Experts starting bypassing the natural requirements of the algorithm- clean, quality backlinks, and creating backlink farms (as we cover later.)

So, how do backlinks help your SEO?

They are a prime example of speaking both to the user and search engines.

Backlinks and Linkjuice

Backlinks indicate trust, relevancy and authority to search engine crawlers. By another reputable site linking to yours, they are vouching for your site and letting Google know that “hey, they’re great.” It accelerates your exposure to Google bots and get your site indexed faster. Good quality backlinks produce “linkjuice” which is credible equity from one site to another. The more juice you have given to you, the stronger your site will perform in search results.
Kind of like, Redbull giving you wings. Popeye and spinach. You get the idea.

Boost Referral Traffic with Backlinks

Backlinks provide you with referral traffic. And who doesn’t want extra traffic to their website? Better yet, the traffic coming from these high quality backlinks is going to be pretty targeted and relevant to you. Free traffic is pretty rad. Search engines think so too- the more quality traffic you drive to your site, the more they notice you and the more likely they are to index you with a little love.

Rank Higher for Keywords with Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks, our little blue text links (or anchor links) even help with your specific keyword ranking. Google crawlers go as far as to see how much “support’ you have for any given keyword on your website’s pages. If they find your keyword relevant to the rest of you, it will boost your exposure on that single key term as well.
Backlinks aren’t all for the search engine though. Remember- there’s a user on the other end of the computer.

Backlinks Help You Get Seen

Backlinks give you great brand recognition and exposure. They act as somewhat of a review- a link to your site from a credible site will not only promote your brand but also – again- vouch to the user that your website is A-Okay. Repeated mention of your website throughout credible sources just adds to brand recognition; people see your brand and begin to recognize it within their online experiences.

Don’t Resort to Backlink Farming

Backlink farming is the very reason Google’s Penguin update ever came into effect.
Like we mentioned earlier, SEO experts were desperate to get hundreds of backlinks for their site once the ball dropped on PageRank- Google’s first algorithm for ranking that focused lots on backlinks.
Of course, deceptions of this algorithm were pretty easy to brew up (likely why Google stays so hush-hush about their algorithms nowadays.) By creating networks of spam websites and directories with the sole purpose of all linking to each other, paying your way into hundreds of unearned backlinks became a widely used tactic in every level of SEO out there.
That’s where the ability for site crawlers to determine the quality of the links, not just the number of them, was born.
And it’s fair. Reputable backlinks are built on trust, relationship building and genuine online presence.
Backlink farming is still a grey area. While giant networks and rings are easy to define as backlink farms, there are operating businesses out there that offer backlinks in return for pay. Crowned “black hat SEO”, buying backlinks poses as “backlink strategy growth” and still remains…..questionable.
Buying backlinks might grab you some short term SERP rankings. You might even get away with it for a while and see a huge change in your website analytics and rankings. But once Google figures you out, you can kiss goodbye to your growth – buying backlinks is a direct violation of Google’s advertising code.
Listen, don’t shoot the messenger, ok? Buying backlinks is so much easier than organically building them and can seem like a great option for those wanting to really boost their site.
We get it, honestly we do. But it’s really not worth it.
Organically growing backlinks takes time and effort, but it will pay off.

How to Build Backlinks- Naturally

Now, we can’t let our own cat out of the bag and give away all the secrets.
But, here’s some practices you can undertake to start building an army of reputable backlinks:
Add links on all your social media profiles – (hey, social stacking!)
Monitor your best performing posts and pages, and expand them routinely.
Create content that is useful and exciting to a reader- content that helps them solve a problem and share it among their networks for the same reason
Off page, build relationships with influencers, industry leaders and bloggers to trade valuable backlinks. Believe it or not, you can also strategically work with your competitors to do the same thing!
Monitor your competitors backlinks, and look to see if you can also be placed within those sources as well.

Why WordPress Is The Best

by Ecommerce 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.

The Importance of E-A-T: Local SEO Guide

by Marketing Strategy TipsSEO Tips

Over the years, the internet has been under constant development to adapt to the current needs of the technological industry. One of the most important entities on the internet is the existence of search engines. Among the plenty of factors to rank on Page 1 in search engines, we find now E-A-T. Are you familiar with this concept, and why is E-A-T important for you?  Let’s find out below the Importance of E-A-T.

As you most probably know, it has gradually developed starting from 1993’s Archie search engine up to today’s dominance of Google.

The long history of search engines also comes with how search engine optimization (SEO) has evolved in these years. Today, Google is the major player in the search engine department, changing the game of optimization and introducing new SEO guidelines.

What is E-A-T?

Google introduced E-A-T (which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) as the three major factors in Google search’s algorithm. These principles are what Google uses to evaluate each piece of content that it crawls.

The three E-A-T factors are all similar concepts, but individually, they assess content.

Expertise

Expertise is evaluated from the content itself and not primarily at the website level, which means having a high level of knowledge or skill in a corresponding field is essential to crawl up to the first few pages of the Google search engine. Google is seeking content produced by subject matter experts.

Authority

Authority refers to the credentials of the content author. The reputation of the author is what makes it more reliable in the Google search engine pages and thus crawls up SEO rankings.

This can further be assessed not only with author credentials but also with the credibility derived from reviews and engagements.

Trustworthiness

The content should make the readers or searchers feel that they are consuming the right information on a website. Trustworthiness goes with showing Google the reliability of your content by showing users that they can have confidence in your content.

Trustworthy reference sources and a strong backlink profile are good indicators of a website’s Google trust.

Why is E-A-T Important?

The importance of E-A-T depends on the keywords being searched. The nature of the information that comes along with the search results matters in more crucial searches.

If the topic is about pictures of animals, E-A-T wouldn’t really matter that much but will still require reliability factors for Google to make it appear to search results.

If someone decides to search for a more comprehensive matter, say a piece of medical information or legal advice, E-A-T plays a big and critical role. Then, the importance of E-A-T becomes more evident: The search results should show reliable content backed by trusted sources.

Google decides what to bring up the search rankings with regards to the contents’ E-A-T factors.

The impacts of content released by Google search results can be potentially important or critical from a searcher’s point of view, so the way E-A-T works in SEO is complex and can take time to master.

What Gives a Website Good E-A-T?

Improving E-A-T is a process that is done carefully to make sure you are being trusted by Google to keep among its rankings.

Having a good and important E-A-T is evaluated not only on the quality of the content produced but also on the website it is crawled from. A good website reputation starts with the proper author or organization profile.

Here are some ways to help in improving your E-A-T factor:

1. Review content and keep them up-to-date

Whenever you produce content that you know will be relevant for a long time, never forget to review its resources and update information as needed. The world is ever-changing, and the information in the content can just abruptly change as well.

Keep your content up to date as more important information comes available. A simple review of the backlinks and references is enough to make sure your content is citing a reliable and working source.

2. Optimize the website profile tabs

More than the quality of your content, the other important tabs on your website are your ‘About’ and ‘Contact Us’ tabs. These are crucial in introducing the credibility of the information you are showing to users.

Optimizing the author’s pages also helps Google in understanding your authority and expertise over the subject matter in your content. Flashing your authors’ credentials is a good way in building up trust for the users to consume your content.

3. Build high-quality links

One of the best ways to increase traffic on your website and content is through backlinks. E-A-T is largely based on building up your reputation around links and mentions from more credible and authoritative sites.

Google is good at understanding which links count in searching factors, so it is better to consider prioritizing high-quality links to build up your link profile.

4. Develop an effective content strategy

Build up a working content strategy that you can maintain. Strategizing comes first before putting your content to work.

The essential parts of content strategy are defining your goals, identifying your audiences, and reviewing your metrics. For starters, it is a trial-and-error job and may take time to see the results if the strategy is effective.

Once you have defined your own personalized content strategy that works for your website, you only have to rinse and repeat the whole process in producing more content.

5. Make sure you are checking facts

One factual mistake in your content can have a grave effect on your website’s information. You have to keep checking if you are stating the right information through reliable sources.

Fact-checking is a must for content that provides crucial information to users. This would depend on the subject matter, but this mostly needs to be done for every content.

Wrapping Up

Simply put, the importance E-A-T remains on the principles in the SEO field. They are all about the reliability of the content produced by a website. Developing a good content strategy and building up a good website profile will strengthen your site’s reputation and will help you rank up Google’s algorithm.

Start building up a good reputation if you want your website to rank up. Keeping your credibility up is a thorough process that needs a whole lot of patience, but it needs to be!

Being a go-to content for user consumption is quite a big deal. But getting it to that point is a bigger challenge that requires work. Highlight the importance of E-A-T and make it better for you.