How Long Does SEO Take to Work?

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

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

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

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

How Long Does SEO Take to Work?

The Truth About SEO

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

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

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

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

What is SEO?

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

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

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

On-Page SEO

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

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

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

Off-Page SEO

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

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

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

When Will You See Results from Your Campaign?

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

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

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

Age

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

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

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

History

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

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

Penalties

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

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

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

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

Final Words

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

Best Free SEO Tools

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

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

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

1) Small SEO Tools (Free)

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

How To Use This Tool

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

2) Google Analytics (Free)

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

How to Use This Tool

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

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

3) Google PageSpeed Insights (Free)

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

How to Use This Tool

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

4) Google Search Console (Free)

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

How To Use This Tool

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

5) Mobile-Friendly Test (Free)

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

How to Use This Tool

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

6) Ahrefs Backlink Checker (Freemium)

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

How to Use This Tool

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

7) Keyword.io (Free)

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

How to Use This Tool

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

8) Moz Local (Free)

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

How to Use This Tool

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

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

4 SEO Myths Hurting Your Business

by Marketing Strategy TipsSEO Tips

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

How To Build Quality Backlinks with Infographs

by SEO Tips

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

Tips on How to Create an SEO Friendly FAQ Page

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creating an SEO-friendly-FAQ Page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 – Add structured data to the page

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

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

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

3 – Don’t settle for text alone

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

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

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

4 – Mind the navigation

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

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

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

5 – Don’t forget about analytics

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

What is the Best Word Count for SEO in Canada?

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO TipsWordPress Tips

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

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

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

SEO and Word Count

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

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

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

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

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

Where did this idea come from? 

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

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

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

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

The Evolution of Word Count for SEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is BERT? 

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

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

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

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

BERT, SEO and Word Count

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key takeaway:

1) “Word count is not indicative of quality”

2) Quality is what Google is looking for

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

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

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

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

What do the SEO experts have to say about this? 

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

1. Hubspot: 

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

2. Yoast: 

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

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

3. Semrush: 

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

4. Backlinko: 

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

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

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

Correlation & Causation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first factor we will look at is Relevance:

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

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

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

The second factor is the length of the keyword:

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

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

A word of caution concerning keywords:

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

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

Another factor we’ll look at is: User Intent

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

Having said that,

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notwithstanding all of the above, 

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

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Signs You Need To Invest In Your SEO

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

As a business owner, you’re juggling a hundred different balls in the air. You’re managing suppliers, customers, staff – the last thing you want to think about is your search engine optimization. After all, it’s difficult, time-consuming, and technical. However, there are probably some signs in your business that you may want to invest some money into search engine optimization.

How To Perform an SEO Audit: Complete Guide

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

How to Perform an SEO Audit

An SEO audit may not ring a bell for someone who does not consider himself a web design expert, but it is a task that anyone with basic SEO knowledge can perform. Ask anyone who knows a thing or two about how business websites should perform to succeed, and you will realize how critical a regular audit is.

A business or brand that is trying to achieve relevance through digital marketing must learn to embrace the competition. The only way to keep up is to create and run a website that brings in traffic and conversions. This is where the concept of search engine optimization comes in.

You may be able to build a website and apply an SEO strategy for it, but you do not expect your site to run on autopilot. In other words, you must have a clear understanding of how your website is performing based on the SEO strategies you are using. Hence, the sole purpose of an SEO audit is to figure out how well is your business website performing.

The audit will check the health of your website with an emphasis on the presence of spam. Doing SEO audits regularly makes sense because Google has this habit of altering its algorithms in ranking websites. Simply put, you are doing it to keep up with what is new.

SEO Audit Coverage

An SEO audit is likened to that of multiple-point car inspection. It examines your website to see how it functions and performs compared to the rest of the market. The audit essentially covers the following:

  1. Keyword Use – You must know if the way you are using your keywords is on point. The keywords must bee optimized for them to help in directing traffic to your site.
  2. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) – LSI defined as the context of a search. It still has something to do with keywords, specifically long tail and secondary keywords.
  3. Competition – You also would want to know how you perform against the competition, especially in the aspects of links, meta tags, keywords, and overall SEO ranking.
  4. Organic Search Rank – Companies that need to keep the costs down may have to reconsider their PPC strategy. If you decide to focus on your website’s organic search rankings, you need to perform an SEO audit to see your chances.

Enough of the introduction, here are the components of a comprehensive SEO audit:

1 – Site Crawl

A site crawl is the most efficient method of assessing the state of your website in its current form. It also gives you a preview of the issues that may need to be resolved sooner than later. Site crawling essentially creates an outline for the entire SEO audit.

The site crawl will cover areas like the structure of your URL, content, meta descriptions, images, links, and the structure of your website. You ask questions like how well your content is formatted and if it is fresh. Do you have a unique meta description per page? Does your website have enough links per page and do all of them work?

Furthermore, site crawling should also include the analysis of your landing page and its relationship with the inner pages. The landing page is where your site builds an initial impression, so it needs to be user-friendly and intuitive.

2 – Page Speed Analysis

Page load speed plays a critical role in keeping your site visitors motivated in browsing your site further. 60% of users will find their way out of a website when it takes more than three seconds to load. So, if your website takes too long to load pages, it will have a negative impact on conversions and will increase bounce rates. In performing an SEO audit with an emphasis on page speed, you can use a handful of free tools, including Google’s Page Speed Insights and YSlow. It is crucial to learn about your page load speed since that is the only way to figure out if there is a need to fix some elements in the design.

3 – Site Architecture Assessment

Your website needs a solid structure for it to rank high in Google. It is merely about using the right keywords and relevant content. One aspect that you should focus on is user experience, and for you to ensure that prospective clients end up liking your site, you must improve its architecture.

So, how do you improve site architecture? As you have guessed it already, you must perform an SEO audit. The audit examines things like the sitemap and URL structure. The result of the audit will also tell you if your main webpages are listed and positioned correctly and if site visitors will not have a hard time navigating through the inner pages and links.

4 – Content

Content plays an indispensable role in the effectiveness and success of your website. The failure to refresh or update content will hurt your site’s rank, so it is not merely about inserting unique and relevant information. Even if on-page content is unique and relevant, it still needs to be updated regularly since Google looks at it with a critical eye. Hence, your SEO audit should include an examination of your content.

See to it that you are using the keywords in your content naturally. It also must be consistent since the objective is to prevent being labeled as spam.

Part of examining your content is taking a closer look at the tags. Check if title tags have two salient qualities – concise and descriptive. Be reminded that extra-long titles are never a good thing for search engines.

5 – Checking the Backlinks

You probably know by now that backlinks are a crucial element of SEO. Google will grade the quality of your website based on the quality of the sites that link to it. It was prevalent back in the day to exchange reciprocal links with other websites to improve SEO. It is no longer an effective practice today, but backlinks are still relevant. This time, backlinks are more about quality instead of quantity. Therefore, you should verify in your SEO audit if the websites that links to your site come from reputable domains.

Tools for SEO Audit

Like I said at the beginning of this post, SEO audit does not have to be an overwhelming task. You can do it with the help of a tool that is readily available online. All you must do is pick the right one based on your budget and specific needs.

The first and most sensible option is Google Analytics. As someone tasked to market your brand and optimize a website, this tool is a must-have. It does not only help you by providing critical indicators of SEO metrics but will also hand out a user-friendly guide in performing SEO.

Another option is Google Webmaster Tools. It is a platform that offers a handful of reasonably priced tools needed for an SEO audit. Its most notable advantage is that you can check your website’s SEO performance based on how Google sees it. Since you are hoping to have your site ranked on top of Google, then it makes sense to use this tool.

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.

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.

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!

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.

COVID-19 Pandemic and The Internet

by Marketing Strategy TipsOnline Marketing TipsSEO Tips

What the COVID-19 Pandemic Means for Online Businesses (And Tips to Adapt)

There is no shortage on fear, panic and anxiety surrounding COVID-19 and the halting affects this pandemic has had on our everyday communities. As the world dwindles down to ordered self isolation and essential services only, many business owners are left wondering how they can start planning ahead to survive post COVID-19.

The virus has either slowed or shut down almost every industry out there, leaving local businesses unsure of how to proceed in these times of major uncertainty. For many, the online space can provide relief by providing a platform in which they can continue operations.

See how this webmaster built a platform that allowed food truck owners to keep making money during COVID-19 Pandemic.
Many businesses are turning to the net- scrambling up advertising campaigns, websites, online stores etc. To help continue driving sales within communities that are practically in hiding. With critical emphasis on no human contact, the online space has become the only way to safely shop, communicate and keep up to date with the world.
And while we live in times where the Internet seems to rule the world, it isn’t until it’s our only option that things begin to change. In the case of COVID-19 Pandemic, the Internet is certainly not immune- and the digital space has shifted massively in the last few weeks.

The team here at RAD shares the five biggest impacts that COVID-19 Pandemic has had on the online space. And some suggestions on how to cope.

How COVID-19 Has Shifted the Digital Marketing Space

COVID-19 Has Dominated Google Search

Not surprisingly, the virus is a leading search term on Google. In fact, Google is calling it the biggest search term trend in searching history- and that’s a pretty big title to have.
Direct searches about the virus have increased an average of 4000% each day. But the influx of searches related to the virus has presented our team with a different set of data than we’re used to seeing.
Our PPC Queen, Alex, has seen a massive increase in searches not common to our everyday lives. The term “national emergency” has spiked 1950% in less than six hours, while there have been similar increases in terms like:
“what fast food restaurants are open ?”
“will grocery stores be open tomorrow?”
“is the housing market going to crash?”
“when are taxes due Canada 2020?”
What does this mean for businesses?

It means that people’s focus really isn’t on much else right now.
Rightfully so, the panic has shifted a huge chunk of daily searches to the virus and everything surrounding it. And the noise of the virus is drowning out a lot of businesses looking to thrive online.
Alex shares that there isn’t really a whole lot you can do in terms of redirecting focus. Rather, you should look at how you can direct your business into the line of focus. Monitor search term reports, actively add to your negative keyword list & adopt those long-tailed keywords in your campaigns!
Mobile Search Traffic Has Dropped 25% (h3)
It’s been a while since desktop searches have grown, but with everyone stuck at home, it seems the mobile phones have been put down.

Website Optimization:

For us, it means two things. Alex mentioned that the costs of PPC advertising may rise, as mobile traffic is generally cheaper than desktop.
However, the biggest concern lies in website optimization. And how a shift of what the user sees- will affect conversions during this time.
Because mobile has led the majority of web traffic for the past few years, mobile optimization has been a hot, hot topic. But websites have almost been over-optimized for mobile, leaving the desktop experience falling short in comparison.

AJ, our SEO & Web Development Boss, shares that a websites design and content should be reviewed and modified to ensure a positive desktop experience for the user.
Example? The CTA rich pop ups you banned from your site to improve mobile experience? Those could make a comeback as you revert back to different conversion paths.

What You’re Reading Everyday Has Changed

Centre content around leading search terms.
Sounds like the classic principle behind online content creation, right?
It is- but when the entire Internet has shifted their focus to something a little out of the ordinary. It can be difficult to align content with what’s popular at this moment.
But if you can, you should. Just as with more routine content marketing, don’t create completely irrelevant content in the hopes of joining the masses of similar content.

Our content expert, Joel, suggests incorporating the COVID-19 virus and it’s effects into your content if you can naturally do so, and

keeping the following in mind:

Use your content to keep people informed. The community expects a response from your business, during these times. They are seeking security and comfort, and that includes being kept in the loop by familiar faces- and brands. Use this time to try and instill well being into your customers, fostering and nurturing relationships with them as you remind them that you are beside them in these times as well. Provide relevant policy updates, proactive measures you’ve taken or hours of operation etc.

Don’t add to the panic! Be a credible, reliable and neutral source- even as a company. Avoid spreading anything but pure facts, and watch your language; it can be easy to talk in an alarmed or dramatic tone.
Convey empathy, compassion & humility. People will remember who and what helped them during these times- be a positive voice amongst the negativity when creating content at this time.
There is no level of tact that’s acceptable- at this time, anyway. “HOT COVID-19 Sales!” -Don’t do that.
Social Media Usage is Through the Roof Not surprising.
Scrolling the ‘gram really does help pass the time of quarantine boredom, but communities are also turning to social media for help, answers and- shopping?

Yep, that’s right- online shopping and particularly on social media, is up by 35%.
Call it impulse buying, boredom shopping or catching up on purchases they haven’t had time to make in store. Whatever it is, businesses are finding some relief in the increase in online shoppers.
With social media usage being sky high, it also gives you a great opportunity to keep your brand and business relevant. Use this platform to introduce reformed content (see Joel’s suggestions above) but to also stimulate conversions using organic or paid initiatives.

Remember though, content for social media differs. Having a sound social media strategy and lots of visuals will help drive engagement with an audience that’s listening more than ever.
Organic Web Traffic Has Decreased In Almost Every Industry (h3)
We’re talking like a decrease of 25% on average, over all industries- with only four seeing increases (healthcare, finance, food & media.)

The biggest? With a near 50% drop in organic traffic, the travel industry is suffering during this.
And let’s be real here- we can’t really counteract this. There’s going to be a drop in traffic, sales and business. These are scary times, and people rightfully are focusing on other certain things.
This won’t change for a while, but you can look at ways to drive as much traffic as you can during this time. Here’s what has worked for our clients lately:

Content!

Create content that supports people at this time. Create content that gently reminds users of your brand and your mission. Use this time to separate yourselves from the vultures of the net. Those that exploit and capitalize on the fear and panic of COVID-19.

Promotions and offers.

People are still shopping, just in a different format. To help drive conversions, consider promotions and offers to add. That further incentive shoppers may need- and to help generate a buzz.

Join in the Conversation.

Offer support, offer sympathies, share valid information and helpful content. Immerse yourself in the current conversation, instead of trying to create a new one.