Know matter what type of business you run – whether it’s online or offline – you should know what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is and why it’s important to increase traffic to your website which will ultimately bring you sales. First, we’re going to start with the basics.
Good SEO Practices Vs. Bad SEO Practices: A Simple Guide
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Make sure that your content is relevant. Quality over quantity. While the length of your content may be important in certain contexts, at the end of the day, it must be relevant to your searchers’ queries. Btw, this not only applies to blog posts, but also to other types of content on your website.
N/B: Publishing new content on a regular basis is a good SEO practice, but it is also important to keep a balance between content produced by the website and content offered to the website by an author, in exchange for a link in the author bio. In this case, it is better not to publish, than to break this rule.
● Relevant internal links:
Internal links are those from one page on your website to another. Adding internal links from other relevant pages is a very good SEO practice. This is one of the foundations of Google’s ranking algorithm and remains important even today.
Internal links also help Google understand what a page is about. Look for suitable places to add internal links on pages that fit the bill.
Unfortunately, Google discontinued public PageRank scores in 2016, so there’s no way to check them anymore. But in general, the more links a page has—from both external and internal sources—the higher its PageRank.
Which brings us to last, but not least:
● Get more backlinks:
Backlinks are another foundation of Google’s algorithm and remain one of the most important page ranking factors.
Google confirms this on their “how search works” page, where they state: “If other prominent websites on the subject link to the page, that’s a good sign that the information is of high quality”.
Finally, you should aim to build backlinks from authoritative and relevant pages and websites.
Bad SEO Practices
On the other hand, persons who wish to take the shortcut to ranking high on Google’s pages employ bad SEO practices referred to as “Black Hat” techniques. These include:
● Duplicate content:
Duplicate content is a very common practice, as some webmasters will publish content that has already been published elsewhere. In and of itself, that is not a bad thing; there are many sites with information you may think is useful for your visitors.
If your intent is not to try to rank for a certain keyword or “stealing” someone else’s work, then you should “no index and no follow” those pages so that you are not penalised by Google for bad SEO practice. Non-unique content is not good for SEO. Think about it: If search engines already have the same content in their index, why would they index your web page since it has nothing new to offer?
● Invisible text and keyword stuffing:
It is not as common today, but there was a time when “black hat” strategists used to include many keywords at the bottom of a webpage, but make them the same colour as the background so they weren’t very noticeable to the human eye.
Google has been known to penalise such practices. The same goes for “stuffing” keywords where they are irrelevant. Have you landed on a page with a keyword search and that page was filled with the keyword, and barely anything else?
That is an extreme example of what we’re stating. This is a very bad SEO practice. Not only will it discourage visitors to your site who are looking to read relevant information on their search term, but it is also a red flag for search engines such as Google that you are trying to manipulate their algorithms.
N/B: It is enough to mention your keywords in the title, description, opening paragraph and a few other places in the body of the text.
● Cloaking and redirecting:
“Cloaking”, a very common practice of old, is when webmasters hide the real destination of a link, while “redirecting” is sending multiple “keyword-rich” domains to a single website.
Now, there may be times when redirecting is necessary for your business. However, there is a thin line between redirecting to a subdomain or domain and buying several domains just for the purpose of redirecting their traffic to a single website.
Showing different versions of a page to web crawlers and visitors to a website was a common practice in the past, but due to Google’s best practices thankfully this has been discontinued.
However, in case you just arrived on the planet and do not know Google’s best practices, please be advised that using such “black hat” techniques now is considered a very bad SEO practice.
● Poor linking practices:
Going out and purchasing a Fiverr package promising you 5,000 links in 24 hours is not the right way to build links. You need to get links from relevant content and sites in your niche that have their own traffic.
There are many other bad SEO practices one can employ including guest posting for links and accepting low quality guest posts. However, we will continue that discussion in a later article.
Conclusion
Google’s best practices reward good SEO practices such as Security Certificates, applying keywords to title tags, headings and URLs, having unique and relevant content, using appropriate internal and backlinks, while penalise bad SEO practices, which we call “black hat” techniques such as keyword stuffing, excessive link building and cloaking.
If you wish to have a successful website that ranks high on Google’s pages, then it behooves you to master good SEO practices.
AJ Frey can help you to develop and maintain a successful website that sees you ranking on Google’s first page with no fear of penalty due to bad SEO practices.
He offers a comprehensive range of SEO services dedicated to driving traffic that meets your lead, acquisition, or sales objectives. You should start seeing results–qualified leads, sales and traffic–in approximately 3 months.
That’s it. A list of Good SEO practices vs. Bad SEO practices, which we hope will help you to stay in Google’s good books, and any other search engine you wish to rank on. We know there are others. Why not share them in the comments section below? Ready to let an SEO expert help you maintain good SEO practices on your website? Give us a call or send us an email.
How Do I Build Domain Authority with a New Site?
Working on a new site for it to rank on the first page of Google is no easy feat even for experienced developers who’ve done it countless times before. The scenario is the same, but newly-built business websites have unique needs and challenges to address. Then, the question remains for everybody: How Do I Build Domain Authority with a New Site?
Superb design, fail-proof content strategy, and a handful of marketing campaign ideas – you think you’ve got it all. But no, you haven’t touched the surface just yet.
The objective of every new site is to rank high on search engine results pages for high-volume and high competition keywords. If you watch some videos that explain how this works, you probably think it’s doable. Yes, it is, but it will take some time. Don’t expect to achieve something overnight. It simply doesn’t work that way.
A relatively new site comes with inherent disadvantages, including the lack of content history and backlink profile. Having a low domain authority is expected, and every other site out there has gone through this process, too.
The lack of domain authority makes it quite a challenge to keep up with the more established websites in the same niche or industry. But don’t lose hope. The reason why you’re here is that you intend to learn about building domain authority for your new site, and that’s what we’ll talk about for the rest of this blog.
The Value of Domain Authority
Google does its job by deciding which pages to show first when someone types a search term, say for instance, “how to replace a roofing shingle.” This search returns hundreds of thousands of relevant pages that contain or target the keyword phrase.
Since Google and other search engines genuinely care about convenient user experience, they will rank websites based on content relevance and a cluster of other parameters. This is where the concept of domain authority creeps in.
You won’t see your new site about roofing products/services on the first page of Google because there are older and more established competitors that rank for the same keywords. But since you are on the bottom, there’s no other way but up.
Domain authority is never about the metrics. It is not something that the search engines use to rank websites for their SERP. Instead, it is more of a barometer that determines how well your new website is expected to perform against everyone else.
Increasing your site’s domain authority doesn’t affect whatever your competing sites are doing, but it increases your chances of ranking high in the SERPs.
Ways to Build Domain Authority
Building domain authority with a new site is an indirect route of increasing its potential of finding its way on the first page of Google. Before you commit to doing the things that we’re about to discuss, you must acknowledge that this will only work with time. In others, there’s a waiting game in place. Be patient, and your website get rewarded eventually.
1 – Link Building
Google loves link building, and so you must embrace it, too. The rule is simple – have high quality and authority sites link to your website. If you’re successful at that, it creates an impression that those authority sites trust your brand or company.
It may sound cliché, but that is because it works since the search engines notice it right away. If you already did some link building before, be sure to perform a backlink audit. It gives you a clear picture of your backlink profile, including the existence of harmful backlinks.
Don’t get too excited about link building; we’ve seen a lot of people overdo it. The last thing you want is to damage your website’s reputation by linking to shady sites.
Back in the day, private blogging networks were considered an authority, but that’s no longer the case. Google is quite strict when it comes to the practice of spamming your links. Adding harmful backlinks to your website will do more harm than good on your domain authority score.
Focus on high authority sites and publications instead. You want to fill up your link building profile with wholesome and relevant links.
2 – Content Remains King
Content marketing is and will always be the foundation of a website. It’s an indispensable component of building your domain authority. The role of content is to keep the landing page in order while you simultaneously inject new stuff.
Google loves it when you regularly incorporate fresh content that is not only relevant to your niche but something that attracts prospective customers. Furthermore, adding new content provides new opportunities for backlinks and added keywords.
Don’t fall for automated or spun content to fill some pages of your new site. Everything must be new, original, and unique. Come up with something that Google sees as something that bears no resemblance of published content on the web.
3 – Social Media Boost
We’re not just talking about creating social media profiles and linking them to your new site.
To successfully build domain authority with a new website, you must up the ante by keeping those social platforms active. Google is on the lookout for social signals, i.e. shares, likes, and retweets of your content. These are invaluable things that Google uses in evaluating both page and domain authorities of new sites.
Come up with a strategy that will increase social proof of your content. It drives traffic to your pages and will eventually boost your authority score. We don’t have to tell you how crucial social media presence is in terms of driving online traffic.
Wrapping It Up
The pain of seeing your new website make slow progress must serve as a motivation. Don’t feel bad if your site isn’t on top of Google at the moment; we’ve all been there. As mentioned earlier, it takes time for results to come in, but don’t remain idle. Some people don’t see progress because they lack consistency. Put in the effort and time in building domain authority because it gives you proven results.
2021 SEO Changes
In this comprehensive Local SEO guide, we’re going to show you how you can win at search ranking in 2021.
Small and medium-sized businesses rely on local search more than ever. Seven out of 10 consumers search Google to obtain local information. So, if your business website isn’t optimized for local search, you’re likely missing out on more than half of your prospective clients.
With so many changes every year, you feel a ton of pressure to update your SEO strategy. But it won’t matter if you’re not into local SEO.
You lost some ground last year, but this year is your chance for redemption. Build upon local SEO to keep your brand relevant, and this article serves as your comprehensive SEO guide.
Good Local SEO Practices
Start with Google My Business listing – If you haven’t done so, set up a Google My Business listing. It’s the digital equivalent of the Yellow Pages. If you intend to rank in the local search, a GMB listing makes perfect sense.
There’s no reason to skip this step – it carries weight in local SEO, plus setting it up takes minutes. See to it that you put all the details about your business.
This must include your products/services, the main business category, and the secondary business category. Filling out the subcategory is critical in your Google Maps rank.
List your business in online directories – GMB isn’t the only listing out there. List your business in other relevant online directories, but don’t overdo it.
The key term is “relevant” since all the others are trash and won’t do your business any good concerning local SEO. Focus your effort and time on these directories:
Review your NAP information – Be consistent with the business information you put on your listings, especially the name and place. Google wants the information to be accurate for it to trust your business.
Even an honest mistake on inputting the wrong phone number could become a red flag for Google, giving it a reason to stop displaying your listing. Even the smallest details must be consistent, like how you write abbreviations and company suffixes. If you prefer “inc.” instead of “incorporated,” do it in all your listings.
Focus on local keywords – Shift your attention to local keywords this year, but don’t ignore the value of long-tail keywords for your business, too. If you didn’t climb up to the SERPs last year, you might have undermined keyword research value.
This time see to it that you compare search volumes for a couple of almost similar search terms. You may feel like there’s no point in it, but there’s a significant difference in impact for “roof repair, Vancouver” versus “roof repair, VBC.”
Rethink your SEO strategy by using local keywords – Once you’ve figured out a new set of local keywords, the next step is to optimize your business website with them.
This isn’t a newfound strategy, yet it’s still as useful and indispensable this year as it was a decade ago. Optimizing your site is no cakewalk as it involves several components that are worthy of a separate discussion.
Anyhow, the fundamental rule is for your homepage and the product/service pages to showcase the local keywords, specifically in the following:
- Heading
- Meta description
- Title tags
- Body
- Footer
Gone were the days when you can insert keywords while ignoring the natural flow of content. Google hates keyword stuffing and unnatural placements, so see that you’re putting value to your content by flawlessly incorporating the local keywords.
Create local content – It only makes sense to fill your pages with local content since you’re shifting to local SEO this year. Unfortunately, your current content marketing strategy is all but local.
You’ve learned a while back that non-local content reaches a broader audience (and supposedly more web traffic), but you can’t take full advantage of it since you’re a local business. Maximizing your efforts in content marketing for an improved lead generation means creating local content.
Create a mobile-friendly website – You may skip this part if you’ve done this already, and we’d be surprised if you haven’t. You know how impactful a mobile-friendly website is for SEO in general, and it’s essential for local SEO, too.
Almost 40% of mobile searches are location focused. It means that almost half of consumers who stumble upon your site via a local search are using their mobile devices. Imagine the number of opportunities you’re missing out if your site isn’t mobile responsive. That’s scary.
Place value on inbound links – Inbound links boost local SEO when you know how to do it right. Put some effort in building those links this year but focus on the proven strategies.
Come up with a list of acquaintances who are in some way related to your business, i.e., wholesalers, contractors, business partners, and suppliers. Search for relevant pages on their respective websites where you’re allowed to place contextual links.
You’ll use this link to contact those businesses and then recommend the link placements. Aside from this strategy, you can also generate inbound links via guest posting. Offer to write content for related businesses with the condition that you place a link to your site.
Create location pages – If you happen to have branches of your business, then you must rank in local searches in those areas, too. The most convenient way to do this is by creating location pages.
Come up with a service page for each city instead of having just one service page for all your branches. You may optimize these pages for local search terms. But be sure that you use unique content for each page. The last thing you want is for Google to see it as duplicate content.
Final Thoughts
Though you’re setting your sights on local SEO for 2021, don’t turn your back on traditional SEO. Remember that Google factors in your website’s ranking in organic SERPs in local SEO.
The lack of implementation of some of the components of traditional SEO may even adversely affect local SEO.
Take this SEO guide and make the best of simple practices to make a profit of your website… but if you don´t have time, experience or any other related, then call us. Best SEO in Canada is here to help you out.
What Does Rad Mean? The Importance of a Rad Website
What Does Rad Mean? The Importance of a Rad Website
Rad Websites has been providing clients in Medicine Hat, Calgary and surrounding areas with award-winning ecommerce website design services since 2004. We are passionate about helping businesses succeed online through the right combination of stunning design, user friendly functionality and sound strategy. Founded on the idea that websites should be both effective and beautiful, we believe that our definition of rad can help your business to prosper in today’s digital marketplace. Here are some reasons why you need a rad website, built by Rad Websites!
What does rad mean?
Rad is a term that is said when something is so cool there isn’t a word to describe it. Rad is an adjective that means excellent or awesome and it can also mean powerful or intense. AJ Frey say’s rad means cooler than cool, and we think this is the best way to describe what a rad website is.
A rad website has all the latest SEO tools, so you can rank high on Google search results. It also has modern ecommerce with an interactive experience for your customers. Rad Websites builds rad websites for businesses like yours!
Our team is Canada’s Award Winning Ecommerce Website Design Agency located in Medicine Hat, AB. Get your company seen by more people by having a rad website built by us!
When it comes to web design and SEO, less is more
Website Design and SEO are two highly important aspects of every business. We take pride in building websites that are not only functional, but also beautifully designed with search engine optimization in mind.
Businesses in Medicine Hat have a unique opportunity with its proximity to Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge. With our help, you can be found on the web by customers from all over the province. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important factors when it comes to getting new customers for your business. The importance of a website is evident for anyone who’s looking for new or better opportunities for their business. If you’re looking for an award winning company to design your website and manage your SEO, look no further than us!
Rad Architect and SEO Director of Growth Aj Frey says less is more. “It is important to focus on using the right keywords and phrases that will not only help your search ranking but also provide value to your visitors” he says.
Originality and copywriting can make or break your brand
Every day, you’re competing with new businesses popping up and the ever-changing SEO landscape. This makes it more important than ever to have an online presence that’s original and relevant. To do this, you need good content and copywriting. Publish consistently on your website or blog to keep people coming back for more. If you want your site to be among the best SEO in Canada, then you should use words that are fun, short and memorable. Keywords like: ‘rad’, ‘sick’, ‘awesome’.
When you are in business, it’s important to stay on the cutting edge and be creative. Which is why we recommend and work with Ghost Writers and Co. We have been working with them for years, and their copywriting is top-notch.
Is creativity worth paying for
At Rad Websites, you can expect to know what things cost. Our website designs are priced based on how complicated they are. We want to make sure you know what you’re getting for your money and that you’re not overpaying for something that’s too simple or paying for something way too advanced for your needs.
No matter what kind of design you’re looking for, we’ll create a package that’s perfect for you at the best price possible!
Rad also has some of the most affordable SEO in Canada, with packages starting as low as $699/month! But we don’t stop there: our company specializes in internet marketing and digital advertising strategies, PPC, Social Media Management and award winning Ecommerce so if you want more than just SEO services, Rad is the right place for you, we’ve got it all!
At Rad Websites, you will find creativity worth paying for – whether it be through retainer hours, blocks of development time or even by individual hourly service. That’s why people come to us time and time again for their project requirements because we set ourselves apart from other agencies.
We believe that good design should be accessible to everyone, regardless of budget. With rad pricing plans, high quality and affordable services – Rad Websites is definitely the best choice for any project requirement.
Brand consistency through web design
Brand consistency is an essential part of any successful online business. Your website should be aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate and have the same feel as your other marketing materials. You need to look professional and trustworthy to win over new customers.
Good web design is essential for winning over new customers. Your website needs to look professional and have a trustworthy feel if you’re going to win clients online. Customers aren’t going to pick your site over another just because it has brighter colours or more interesting fonts. That being said, you need to think about how your website looks as well as how it works. People shop with their eyes first, so make sure that whatever you put on your site makes your business look good.
How we use technology to stand out from our competitors
We use technology to stand out from our competitors in the web design industry. In addition, we offer rad pricing that is more affordable than other similar agencies. We are one of Canada’s most trusted and successful companies offering rad website services with award winning Ecommerce.
Rad Websites provide clients with top notch solutions and leading edge features by constantly staying on top of the latest trends and always striving to make our clients business lives easier.
Why Every Business Needs a Rad Website Built By Rad Websites
A rad website is a necessity for any business that wants to stand out and maintain strong online position. Having a rad website built by Rad Websites will give you the tools and skills to keep up with the latest marketing techniques and keep your brand top-of-mind with customers.
Rad Websites is Canada’s Award winning Ecommere Website Design Agency, Located in Medicine Hat, AB. We Build Rad Websites! Why you need a rad website built by Rad Websites: A rad website is a necessity for any business that wants to maintain online visability.
A rad website will give you the tools and skills to keep up with the latest marketing techniques and keep your brand top-of-mind with customers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a family owned or operated small business or multinational corporation, everyone needs some help these days when it comes to keeping their site fresh, engaging and updated regularly.
For years, Rad Websites has been helping businesses like yours create stunning websites using the latest web design technologies, while staying within your budget. With so many different types of web designs available today (responsive/mobile-ready/Ecommerce) we can help you find a solution that fits your specific needs best. No matter what kind of site you’re looking for – whether it’s informational only or integrated with advanced ecommerce features – our team is always happy to help get things started from scratch or build on an existing framework.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or just don’t know where to start, reach out to us and let us do what we are good at, so you can do what your good at. Your rad website should be more than just something pretty. It should also be functional, innovative and easy-to-navigate as well as load quickly no matter the device being used.
Rad Websites offers responsive templates that automatically adjust to fit whatever screen they’re displayed on, meaning users will never have to worry about viewing content across multiple platforms again – it all looks great no matter what device they use. Whether you are considering building an Ecommerce store or blog and require a robust CMS system or not – call now or book an appointment for your free consultation.
Why It’s Important To Keep SEO Momentum Going
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
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)
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
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!
Why Is Shopify’s SEO Bad?
Shopify, not to be confused with Spotify– the world’s largest music streaming service provider, is an eCommerce platform “for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools,” (Wikipedia).
In other words, the Shopify platform “helps people achieve independence by making it easier to start, run, and grow a business”. Over 1,700,000 businesses in more than 175 countries are powered by Shopify. Same, it “creates the best commerce tools for anyone, anywhere, to start and grow a business”, (Shopify.com). The platform is simple, sleek and integrates well with many different apps at just the click of a button.
Plus, you don’t have to take out your wallet to start. This means, they allow you to set up your store for free, and try their service for 14 days before you’re asked for your credit card. Did I tell you that they are also headquartered in Ottawa, Canada? Nice! However, not everything shines when it comes to Shopify. So, the next question is, what’s not to love? Their SEO.
Obviously, if SEO is critical to your business, you need to read this article as I try to answer the question: Why is Shopify’s SEO bad?
Can you do SEO with Shopify?
First of all, let’s be clear, you can do SEO with Shopify. But it’s limiting. Here are many quick, technical wins.
If you are new to eCommerce and just looking for a place to start, then Shopify is the perfect place for your online store. However, once your business starts to take off that’s when you start to see how Shopify actually holds you back.
Look at it this way:
You can become 80% competitive on Google’s search engine using Shopify, but that’s it. It won’t get better. If you know what you’re doing and put in the effort, you may even rank on less-competitive searches. However, profitable rankings are extremely competitive, so trying to make up for that last 20% of lost performance will over time become frustrating.
Now that I’ve got your attention, let Best SEO in Canada show you five problems with Shopify’s SEO that might make you think twice about choosing their platform. You might even become motivated to migrate to BigCommerce–our go-to eCommerce plugin for all things WordPress.
1. Canonical URLs
The first problem is Shopify’s Canonical URLs. Canonical issues are all about copies of the same content getting spat into Google.
If you asked them, Shopify would say that they solved the problem using the rel=”canonical” HTML tag, but they would be wrong. It’s not that they’re using the code wrong (I actually love that they make it so easy). Rather, they’re simply expecting this HTML tag to do something that it was not meant to do.
For example, Northcutt, based out of Chicago, had a Shopify client with the following URLs all visible in Google when they searched for site:theirdomain.com:
searched for site:theirdomain.com; proving that all four copies were indeed in Google’s index:
/products/Batteries
/products/batteries
/products/batteries/
/products/BATTERIES/
>Their “batteries“>” product page contained the rel=”canonical” tag. So what happened?
By Google’s own definition, the rel=”canonical” tag is a suggestion. In my experience, they’ve only occasionally followed their own suggestion.
And if you tried patching things together using Shopify’s redirect tool, you would find that this doesn’t work either. At least not if the page to which you are redirecting technically exists.
We still recommend rel=”canonical” HTML tags, but it is unreliable in this situation. The role of this tag is entirely different — perhaps we’ll do another article on that at a later date. Note that in this case, too, JavaScript redirects cannot be relied upon.
These problems can only be solved by using .htaccess or vhost files. Period. And you cannot access these files on Shopify. They know this. Shopify Plus support confirmed this problem, but were unwilling or unable to fix it.
2. Breadcrumb URLs
The second problem is a variant of problem #1: Shopify creates breadcrumb URLs of products beneath categories. What that means is that you will often find two copies of the same page in Google’s index:
/collections/collection-title/products/product-name
/products/product-name
So using MinistryofSupply.com (a clothing store) as an example, Shopify’s default canonical behaviour will state that only the second URL should get indexed. I.e. /products/product-name:
However, a search on Google proves this suggestion often just doesn’t work:
This, right here, is just foolish behaviour. What is the purpose of creating so many conflicting URLs with the same content? None. There is no benefit. Worst of all, like problem #1, Shopify will not provide access for you to solve this problem.
3. No Plusses, Please!
The third problem with Shopify’s SEO is the inability to modify the indexing file, which contains the + sign that must be deleted in order for search engines to crawl the site. Let me explain. There is a file named robots.txt that sends signals to Google about how to index your site, and all other sites. On Shopify, you cannot edit this file. Here’s what’s inside by default:
# we use Shopify as our ecommerce platform
//User-agent: *
//Disallow: /admin
//Disallow: /cart
//Disallow: /orders
//Disallow: /checkout
//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts
//Disallow: /carts
//Disallow: /account
//Disallow: /collections/*+*
//Disallow: /collections/*%2B*
//Disallow: /collections/*%2b*
//Disallow: /blogs/*+*
//Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*
//Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*
//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*
//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*
/Disallow: /*preview_script_id*
//Disallow: /discount/*
//Disallow: /apple-app-site-association
//Sitemap: https://ministryofsupply.com/sitemap.xml
//# Google adsbot ignores robots.txt unless specifically named!
//User-agent: adsbot-google
//Disallow: /checkout
//Disallow: /carts
//Disallow: /orders
//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts
//Disallow: /discount/*
//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*
//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*
//Disallow: /*preview_script_id*
//User-agent: Nutch
//Disallow: /
//User-agent: MJ12bot
//Crawl-Delay: 10
//User-agent: Pinterest
//Crawl-delay: 1
Most of these instructions are useful. However, these default instructions also cause problems. Not least of which is that products and vendors that contain a plus (+) or a space character will be blocked from crawling. Take a look again at the instructions. Do you see those lines that contain a “+”, “2B”, or “2b“? Those “instructions” keep those pages from being added to Google’s index. They also disrupt Google’s crawl pattern, which can lead to other indexing problems.
4. That Blog… It’s No WordPress
The fourth problem with Shopify’s SEO is its blog. Indeed, every eCommerce site should have a blog for content marketing. Not doing content marketing? Why ever not? Don’t you know it is always better to own attention rather than rent? In order to thrive, mature brands must become natural link-earning machines.
But let’s be real: Shopify is an eCommerce platform, not a content-marketing platform.
I mentioned WordPress at the beginning of the article with good reason. WordPress is the number one content management platform on the planet. According to the latest statistics. as of March 11, 2021 some 455,000,000 websites are using “>WordPress right now! That means around 20% of all self-hosted websites use it, too.
Shopify has a default blogging engine, but there are too many issues and limitations that are beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, the solution would naturally be to install WordPress in a subfolder on the site for your blog. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Shopify does not allow you to install anything in a subfolder on their site. You will have to host the blog somewhere else and then point the subdomain there, like content.yoursite.com.
In SEO, a closer affiliation is implied when your content shares the same subdomain (such as “www”). This is why it is a part of our best SEO practice to host your blog, news, ebooks, infographics, etc, in a subfolder. However, on Shopify, you can’t do that.
5. The Rest
If by now you are not convinced Shopify’s SEO is bad, then it makes no sense to continue, so we’ll just lump all the other problems as “the rest”. Moreover, I’ve given you a taste of how limiting Shopify’s SEO capabilities can be. But it doesn’t get better. It gets worse; especially once you get into creative keyword architecture, segmentation for account-based marketing, performance tweaks, and other situational fixes (the rest).
Conclusion
Shopify is a great eCommerce platform–for beginners and nontechnical users of the Internet. However, if you are a developer, SEO expert, or a business person with a huge eCommerce store, be aware of what you’ll never be able to do with Shopify’s SEO:
- First, customize robots.txt
- Second, customize web server headers
- Third, customize URL handling and subfolders
- Four, install the world’s greatest content management system for your link-earning endeavours.
Those aren’t just unsolvable problems. They’re three categories of problems and then some. For these, there are no hacks or workarounds. So, if SEO is critical to your business, Shopify is not for you. Why is Shopify’s SEO bad? In a nutshell: There’s no room for growth–your growth!
At Best SEO in Canada, AJ Frey wants to see you grow. He wants to help your business to scale up. As an SEO expert, he knows how to get your business ranking on Google’s page one, using only organic search strategies, because he hates PPC.
“So whether you’re an enterprise company or a small independent business, your success online depends largely on ensuring your target audience finds you on Google” through SEO. AJ Frey offers an extensive range of SEO services, exclusively for driving traffic in order to meet your lead, acquisition or sales objectives. So are you ready to make that move? Give AJ Frey a call at 250-801-6588 or drop him a
So, did we answer the question, “Why is Shopify’s SEO bad”? We surely hope so. Let us know in the Comments box below.
It’s 2020: Is JavaScript Dead?
Whether or not JavaScript is dead has no clear, forward answer.
The world of web development is fast changing to say the least, with new languages and protocols seeming to pop up every couple of minutes.
Remember when HTML Flash was a thing?
But a strange debate we’ve been hearing about is whether or not JavaScript is “dead”- with some developers claiming Java has been six feet under for years and others claiming it’s still a highly valuable programming language.
And the answer? Well, there isn’t one. It’s a continuing battle of “yes” and “no” from opposing sides.
While we don’t want to say it’s the east side, west side battle of the web development world….
It kind of is. So, is JavaScript dead?
Let’s hash it out.
First Off, What Is JavaScript?
Put simply, JavaScript is a scripting/programming language that lets developers build complex features on a website.
If you visit a site and the page does more than stand still and present stagnant information for you to look at, you can almost guarantee that Javascript was used when developing that website. JavaScript is the function behind content updates, 3D graphics, scrolling videos and maps.
Basically, if web technologies were a cake, JavaScript would be the third layer- typically complementing HTML & CSS.
The web layer cake, for reference:
- HTML: this is the language that is used to form the basic structure of a site, and provide meaning to the content on our site. Example: paragraphs, headings and data tables or simply embedding images and videos in a page.
- CSS: the language of style. CSS is the font styles, the colors, backgrounds- basically the design- of the framework we have set in place with CSS.
- JavaScript: the bells and the whistles of our websites content. Any dynamic content, or anything that moves, can usually be attributed to JavaScript.
Alternatives To Java Script
The whole idea that JavaScript has died came from the emergence of similar alternatives. While Java is the rea OG of “fancy web stuff”, this constantly evolving industry has of course produced alternatives that web developers have put under their belt.
Much less known of course, these programming languages have found their way into many great websites across the globe:
- Dart
- TypeScript
- Kaffiene
- Elm
- CoffeeScript
The kicker, though? All these have to be transpiled through JavaScript before becoming deployed anyway.
So, is there an alternative to JavaScript? The best answer is- no, but kind of.
But Wait….Is JavaScript Dying Anyway?
Sigh.
There is no straight forward answer to that.
Statistically, no- JavaScript is not only alive and well, but prospering. 95% of websites worldwide utilize JavaScript, and JS is considered a standard language in the world of programming.
Most web development positions won’t even consider your application if you do not speak JS.
JavaScript Develops Web Content That Everybody Can Use
If you piled all the source code written in the last decade into piles, JavaScript would be the biggest pile.
Which may make you wonder where the idea that JavaScript is dead came from.
Admittedly, we are kind of Reddit addicts here at RAD– we often engage in communications with other developers about software, programming etc. So, it’s not a surprise that the best answer have found came from Reddit “zanfar”:
Nobody says “X is dead” when X is actually dead. The statement usually means something like “I found this really cool other thing that I think is better than X” or “I’ve been an internet/journalism troll for years and recently found some anecdotal evidence that finally supports my dubious claims.”
Learning a language–any language–is valuable. Yes, even Basic.
Even if JS somehow became the absolutely worst thing ever tomorrow, it would still be around and used for quite a while as nothing else is really supported as widely as JS–could be over a decade based on realistic browser upgrade cycles.
That’s not to say that there are components of JS that could be improved, or components of JS that aren’t open for competitors:
- Client-side Security Since the Java Script code is viewable to the user, others may use it for malicious purposes. These practices may include using the source code without authentication. Also, it is very easy to place some code into the site that compromises the security of data over the website.
- Browser Support The browser interprets J-S differently in different browsers. Thus, the code must be run on various platforms before publishing. The older browsers don’t support some new functions and we need to check them as well.
- Rendering Stopped A single code error can stop the rendering of the entire JavaScript code on the website. To the user, it looks as if JavaScript was not present. However, the browsers are extremely tolerant of these errors.
And yes, JavaScript can be ultra ultra slow
On the whole, Java Script is a widely accepted and used programming language that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.
Java Script isn’t dead, but it doesn’t mean that competitors aren’t slowly trying to take it’s place. It does seem that once there is a new entrance into the market- even if they’re not really comparable- people start to claim that components start to die off.
In this case, we can’t find evidence to support Java Script doing anything other than remaining strong in a very digital world.
The Top Pricing For SEO Audit Services In Canada Ranked
Updated: Nov 28, 2022
Originally Published: Sept 30, 2021
The Top Pricing For SEO Audit Services In Canada Ranked
An SEO >audit refers to a full analysis of all the factors that affect a website’s visibility in search engines. It determines the strengths, as well as the weaknesses of your website when it comes to SEO. Let’s find out below about top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada.
An SEO audit can give you insight into the challenges you’re facing, why you may not be achieving your SEO goals and also realise the strategies your competitors are using to be successful. Based on the results from the SEO audit, you receive a list of recommendations from an SEO expert like AJ Frey (Rad Websites – Best SEO in Canada), who further implements these recommendations on your behalf, if you do not have your own SEO team.
There are many articles on the Internet for DIY website owners on how to conduct an SEO audit. However, if you’re not tech savvy, or have the time to do a thorough audit, enlisting the services of an SEO expert is the best gift you could give yourself. But how much should you be doling out to an expert to audit your site?
In this article, we are going to list the top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada. Check No. 5.
SEO Audit Services In Canada
1. Arhefs
At the top of the list is Ahrefs –a well-known toolset for SEO analysis. Though based in Singapore, Ahrefs is worldwide, including in Canada. They make the top of the list because their prices range from US$99 – 999/month, with a wide array of services, including their SEO site audit tool for DIY web owners.
An SEO site audit tool automatically audits a page on your website — all you have to do is enter your Url. The tool then “crawl” your site before generating a report, which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of a webpage. Other SEO audit tools on the market include Moz, Semrush, Alexa, Serpstat, to name a few.
Most SEO audits have two things in common: They’re too technical and they take DAYS (or even WEEKS) to complete! Ahrefs SEO audits take hours. They do have a caveat: If your website is HUGE, i.e. hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pages—it may take longer than a few hours. However, for most small to medium-sized sites, this should be doable in hours rather than days.
They also give you a breakdown of their SEO audit process:
- Steps 1–4: check for BIG issues (that may be holding your site back)
- Steps 5–9: uncover easy-to-fix on-site problems;
- Steps 10–12 analyze organic search traffic (and find low-hanging opportunities);
- Steps 13–14 backlink analysis (VERY important!);
- Steps 15–16 content audit AND “content gap” analysis.
As well as the “tools” they use during the audit process:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
- Ahrefs(7‑day trial)
- Copyscape
- SERP Simulator
- Web Page Word Counter
Ahrefs reports usually include recommendations for optimizing your webpage’s SEO.
2. Webfx
According to Webfx, whether you’re a small-to-midsize business (SMB) or established enterprise, you can expect to pay between $650 and $14,000 for an SEO audit. Granted, if you’re a larger company with a bigger website, you will have higher SEO audit costs than a startup with a small site.
Like the size of your website, several factors affect the price of your SEO audit. Their figures quoted are also one time prices–but again, depending on the size of the website and other factors. WebFX also provides SEO services to clients around the world! So whether you needSEO in Boston, orSEO in Charlotte, or Canada, they’ve got you covered.
3. Neil Patel
Well-known marketing expertNeil Patel comes in at #3 because his website generates millions of organic search traffic—about3.5 million 3.5 million. No ads, only through SEO-optimized content marketing. That qualifies him as an expert on SEO marketing.
He states that at a minimum, a technically sound website should be secure, quick to load, easy to crawl, have clear and actionable navigation actionable navigation, and not contain any duplicate links or content. It should also have systems in place to engage users even if they do hit a dead end, such as content created for 404 errors and 301 redirect pages
Finally, a site should have structured data to help search engines understand the content. This can come in the form of
schema graphs and XML sitemaps
His SEO Analysis doesn’t just point out errors, he says, but gives you step by step instructions on how you can fix each of them. Each SEO report contains video tutorials to step by step instructions.
His prices come with two options: a 30-day money back guarantee on a one-time lifetime payment ranging from $120 – $400 or a $12 – $40/month with a 7-day free trial.
4. Semrush
Semrush is a SaaS platform used for keyword research and online ranking data. It’s SEO audit tool can do a full website scan in minutes. If your website is under 100 pages you get your audit free. Their audit report includes Intuitive charts, instructions and directions for:
- Loading speed
- Crawlability
- Content issues
- Meta tags
- HTTPS security protocols
- Internal linking
- JS and CSS errors
- AMP implementation
With their SEO checker, you get a quick report card on how your site’s doing from an SEO perspective. That report can serve as a handy resource when discussing with decision makers why a professional SEO audit is necessary.
Their pricing ranges from $119.95/mo for marketing newbies, to $449.95/mo for large agencies and enterprises. Bear in mind, Semrush is a tool, not a person like No. 5.
Which brings us to:
5. Rad Websites / Best SEO in Canada / AJ Frey
SEO expert AJ Frey starts his audit with a web crawl. This procedure is so important that you need to run it first before you do the other steps, he says. Why is this important? Because this is where you identify your website’s problems for example:
- duplicate contents
- low word count
- unlinked pagination pages
- excess redirects
- Loading speed
- Crawlability
- Content issues
- Meta tags
- HTTPS security protocols
- Internal linking
- JS and CSS errors
- AMP implementation
AJ Frey’s professional SEO audit focuses on in-depth, customized assessment of your entire website by his experienced team of digital marketers. And AJ 100% agrees with Neil Patel on the many aspects he considers when performing a technical SEO audit. These include:
- mobile optimization
- page load speed
- link health
- duplicate content
- schemas
- crawl errors
- image issues
- site security
- URL structure
- 404 pages
- 301 redirects
- canonical tags
- XML sitemaps
- site architecture
For Audits they use Moz and Spyfu as their primary tools. Other tools to produce a comprehensive audit report include:
- Google Search Console
- Google Page Speed Insight
- Google Analytics
- SpyFu
- CrazyFrog
An SEO audit by the Best SEO in Canada delves deep into your marketing data to analyse the meaning and implications of the site’s SEO performance. What you will end up getting is valuable insights, historical contexts (past and present performance) and meaningful recommendations from AJ Frey for what to do next.
If you do not have your own SEO team, AJ Frey offers his at competitive packages to meet every budget. The Best SEO in Canada prices range from CA$699 (for those on a budget) to CA$2499–their best value is the local Rad package at CA$1499.
6. OuterBox
If you’re an online retailer, the team atOuterBox has extensive Ecommerce expertise and can deliver one of the most detailed and comprehensive Ecommerce SEO audits available. The audit will help you be more prepared and eliminate unknowns when heading into a full comprehensive SEO campaign. Outerbox also offer a free SEO audit quote.
Their SEO audit process begins with their team analyzing your website content, code, structure and more to determine the strengths and weaknesses. They’ll also review your competitors to see what they are doing well and reverse engineer their strategies.
Their SEO audit final report will include all findings along with recommendations and how to find the problems. Their SEO audit process typically takes between 4-6 weeks. However, throughout the process you will work with various team members at OuterBox.
7. SEO North
SEO North has been in the industry for close to a decade, which means they have the experience to create a unique service and withstand the new regulations set by major search engines that may hinder your site’s high ranking.
Also, they base their SEO audit on the developed algorithms, strategies, and links. The digital marketing services allow them to work remotely, and their clients have the option to contact them anytime.Their main tasks in the audit process involve:
We check and identify the highest performing content.
Check for any website errors and identify each comprehensively.
Develop solutions and seamlessly implement them on the site
Markedly, technical SEO Audits are designed to identify technical barriers in the way of your content ranking higher in search results is what their site states. However, what can one get for CA$100– their one-time fat rate?
8. Optimized Webmedia Marketing
And finally, Optimized Webmedia Marketing is also based in Canada. They offer a “Free” SEO Audit, but by their own admission, nothing is truly free and there’s no such thing as “cheap SEO”–you get what you pay for. They’re on the list because they do offer good SEO Audits based on their testimonials–but it costs $150 per hour, which is more realistic than SEO North’s one-time fee of $100.
We can only surmise though that if they\re offering “free audit”, then they are using the foot-in-the-door technique. If so, you can expect to pay anywhere between $650 (low end), $2000 (average) to $5000+ (high end) on a monthly basis, or $100 to $300+ on an hourly basis.
Don’t expect to spend less than $650 if you choose the monthly plan, for according to OWM, they don’t do “Cheap SEO”. Cheap SEO is considered to be anything less than $650 per month and provides the level of “skill, time, and customization that is unique for every single website”.
What An SEO Audit Services Means
It was tough putting this list together because of each’s uniqueness and the wide range of prices offered by each. In most instances it was not a case of which was “cheaper”. But which is more aligned with your goals for your website.
The top rank pricing for SEO Audit services in Canada tried to find the best SEO audit service whether by a team or a SaaS platform.
Unlike many of our competitors, we did not rank ourselves first
–as we so easily could.
We believe AJ Frey at Rad Websites is the Best SEO in Canada because he provides top notch SEO service that places you on page one for your search term. Not many agencies can say that based on their own placement on the search engines.
Important to realize, Ahrefs and Neil Patel offer the best organic results. Semrush will get you on page one with paid SEO, and Semrush is an SEO tool.
Final Thoughts
Optimized Webmedia Marketing gives more flexibility by offering both hourly and monthly rates, but there’s a grey area, as they offer a “free page audit”, while stating on their blog that the “cost for a manually created audit varies from $1,500 to $10,000, with the average cost in Canada being $2,500”. You decide if this is a foot-in-the-door technique. You decide also if we were fair in our assessment by ranking ourselves No. 5.
Notwithstanding, whether we’re Noi. 5 or No. 1, at Best SEO in Canada, we don’t depend on cheap sales tactics to lure our customers. Our work speaks for itself. The fact you are here means you found us on Google’s page one.
We have done the same for all of our clients. AJ Frey is the best SEO in Canada. If you want him to carry on SEO audit services and optimize it for the search engines, just drop us a line via email, or call us at 1 250 801 6588. You won’t regret it!
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How Much Does A Website Cost in Canada?
Updated: October 1, 2022
Updated: June 16, 2020
Originally Published on July 15 2019
How Much Does A Website Cost in Canada?
Here at Rad Websites one of the first questions people always ask us is how much does a Website cost? The truth is, the cost of building a website depends on your personal budget and goals. In this article, we’ll show you the ins and outs of building a website so not only you know the process but the entire process. Depending on the complexity of your website, for example, the number of pages, plugins you are using, the amount of custom coding you have, whether it’s an infomercial website or an ecommerce, your cost will fluctuate.
That isn’t why your here and that is not what you wanna here from the Rad Websites crew. Well here we take a rad stand. I will tell you what it costs. so you can plan and dream and then reach out when your ready.
A Rad developer can cost you anywhere between $150 and $180 USD per hour. While that may seem like a lot of money, is completely worth it because the end product will reflect you and your brand. We have all seen what a cheap website looks like and at Rad affordable and cheap are way different. Rad Websites thinks that anyone can have there dream site and we have a way to affordably get you there. Rad!
Having said that, Now I am going to tell you what you need (the ingredients) to build a website. this is all part and parcel to how much does a website cost in Canada, and at the end of this post, we’ll explain in detail our cost structure and even give you some tips on how you can save money and bring that cost down. (No Skipping To The End) So what do you need to build a website? Here is the ingredient list and the steps you should take.
Domain Name
At a very basic level, your domain name is your website’s address on the internet. It’s what your customers type into their browsers to access your website. Once you register a domain name with a company like CanHost, GoDaddy or Bluehost, you’ll get the right to use that name for your website for
however long your purchased it for. You are required to renew your domain every year that you have it. Domains unless you are purchasing premium are around $25 per year. you have to renew these after the term has expired.
*RadProtip Register your Domain for 10 Years. It the maximum allowed and it shows google you believe you are here to stay!
Web Hosting
Web hosting is like the home of your website. This is where you store the content and images of your website. When a visitor tries to access your website by typing in your web address, they’ll be directed to the website files stored on your web hosting server.
There are a lot of different types of web hosting services such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, cheap hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated server, just to name a few. When you’re starting out, we recommend you choose shared hosting or WordPress hosting because both are the best for most website owners in terms of affordability and needs. When your website becomes more popular, you might want to switch to dedicated hosting.
Cool (Basic) Hosting with Rad Websites is $185/yr
Awesome (Mid) Hosting with Rad Websites is $349/yr
Rad Hosting (Advanced) with Rad Websites is $549/yr
*RadProtip Host your website on Canadian soil. This protects your intellectual property and your clients from prying eyes
Website Builder or CMS
A website builder makes it easy to create a website the way you want it to look. There are many choices fisher price website builders (not made by fisher price)out there including – Shopify, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, read our blog on why to stay away from these companies or talk to AJ he will tell you.
Here at Rad Websites we always use and recommend WordPress. WordPress is the platform of choice for around 49% of all website owners. It gives you endless possibilities to create your website the way you want. It also gives you complete control over your website so you can customize it in both the front and back end. One of the key features of WordPress is it is free and open-source software so there are thousands of different tools to help you. Most Importantly and this is also the RadProTip, you own and control your website. No one else does, period.
*RadProtip Work With Rad Websites and WordPress and you always own and control your website.
Estimating the Cost Based on Your Goals
How to add it all together
Ok Now you know what the main ingredients are, but how do we get from that to a Rad Website,
Before I go on and to recap,
- Decide on a domain $20 – $200
- Choose your hosting package $185 – $549
- Speak to a digital advisor at Rad Websites to determine what you need or decide what you can affordHourly $150 USD/hr
5 hour block $140/hr
10 hour block $135/hr
25 hour block $125/hr
50 hour block $100/hr
Don’t worry if your Canadian everything is priced in Canadian dollars
With this info your basic site cost including domain and hosting is about $1500 for 10 hours of dev time, add in the hosting package and choose your domain and you pretty much have the cost of a simple one pager.
*RadProtip it is about 8 – 10 hours of work per page of your website
Alright I digress, you may also want to consider just hiring Rad Websites or someone to do it for you. If that is the case, the first thing you should consider is what is the website going to be used for. If it’s just a placeholder then you probably don’t want to spend a ton of money, but if you’re going to put through hundreds of transactions a month, then it’s worth it to spending the extra money to make sure it can handle what you and your clients throw at you. Anyways,
Do You Need A Custom-Built Website?
Installing a pre-built WordPress theme is the easiest way to roll out a new website. Especially if you are going to do it yourself. It also helps you save on costs and looks amazing. The downside, normally with these is of course, is that your website won’t be super original and might even look similar to your competition. What we like to do is have you choose a theme that you like and then we build that theme from scratch with a builder, like wp Bakery or Elementor you can work with.
However, if you want to give a unique look and feel to your website, then you’ll have to build a custom WordPress theme. With a custom site, the sky is the limit. You can do whatever you want and add any type of element you can dream of. Whether this is worth the extra cost, well…
you’ll have to decide. The answer is yes. Next to consider is?
What Features Will You Need?
When starting out, you won’t need all the extra bells and whistles. Even though it may seem like you do. Start small, it’s essential to write down the list of features that you think you will need now and the ones you’ll need down the line. This helps you streamline the entire development process and focus on features that are of high priority (the stuff that will make your life easier and those that are just nice to have. When you hire a developer, it’s critical that you communicate which features are absolutely must-haves. However, keep in mind that these might just be personal preferences and might not be the same must-haves for the people visiting your website – your customers.
*RadProtip Meet with a digital advisor at Rad Websites is the easiest way to determine what you will need to be successful.
Does Your Website Need To Take Transactions?
If your website needs a portal to take transactions, it will probably increase the cost as it’s harder to develop an ecommerce website than an infomercial website. However, as more people are buying products online, it might be worth it to spend a little extra money and give your
customers the convenience of buying in their underwear. Ecommerce Online Stores, Come with a base set of 10 simple products.
SO if you take a 50 hour block you will have a Rad Website with basic ecommerce if that’s what you need and then adding each additional product is easy, its $15/ simple product and $30/ for variable product. So 10 more variable products, would add $300 and 100 more would be $1500 – $3000 depending again if they are simple products or variable
*RadProtip Variable products are products that have different sizes or colors or Flavors for example. Simple products are just that simple for example brown coffee table.
The Rad Websites Deal
Now I told you that I would show you how to save money on your website, didn’t I? At Rad Websites, we have a unique way of pricing our services. We generally bill our time in blocks of hours. We do this because our clients love the transparency, flexibility and control it allows.
If you live in Medicine Hat here is where you can save a lot of money on your project.
40% to be exact if you are a chamber of commerce member here you already get this discount!!
if you are not sign up now and you will get this discount on your project. that is an unprecedented $85/hr on any block of hours. Tell them you joined for your Rad discount on a website or just tell them AJ sent you.
Most of our pricing is peppered throughout this resource for you. if you don’t live in medicine hat that’s ok you can still get your costs down.
Rad Websites Hourly Rate is $150/hour USD, for both development and marketing.
If you purchase:
a 5-hour block of time that number goes down to 140/hour
a 10-hour block of time, drops the hourly even further to 135/hour. Purchasing a 25-hour block it drops to 120/hour. Purchasing a 50+ hour block gets our best available rate of $100/hour. Rad Websites wants your business to be online and we want it to be affordable we also have a slew of payment plans available so its not something you have to pay for all at once.
Rad Right? Like I said we tell you. now you can do it on your own if you like you know what you need to be successful or you can contact a digital advisor at Rad Websites. One more way we are making the world rad one website at a time. We look forward to bringing your business online.
2020 SEO Trends – Why Backlinks Need To Comeback
Improve your SEO with Backlinks
As if there wasn’t enough to add to SEO best practices, we want to touch on backlinks.
Okay, no- we really want to dive into backlinks, because they are just that important.
As Kelowna’s leading premier WordPress marketing agency, we work around the clock to boost our clients search engine ranking. Our toolbox is full – website development, content creation, keyword research, social stacking- but backlink building is always directly on our radar.
We’re not going to lie to you; even as SEO professionals, backlink building is hard. Backlinks are a huge part of SEO best practices, but take time and knowledge to build.
What are backlinks?
Referred to as “online citations”, backlinks are simply links to your website, or web resource, from an external website, or web source. Web sources can mean articles, directories, online archives etc. They act as a vouch of confidence for your website and content, both to users and search engines.
Backlinks are typically the hyperlinks you see in articles (you know, the clickable text underlined in blue) but can also be image tags, social stacking or listings.
Rad- we’ve got the textbook definitions out the way.
Now let’s talk about how backlinks are super essential for your website- and why.
Do Backlinks Improve SEO?
Yes. 100% they do.
Good quality, reputable backlinks boost your SERP pretty aggressively and actively contribute to your overall online marketing.
That’s why prior to Google’s Penguin algorithm update, SEO professionals around the globe were doing anything they could to gain backlinks.
Take a wild guess how Google felt about that. Let’s back up a little.
The obsession with backlinks began in response to Larry Page’s algorithm contribution- PageRank. This particular algorithm basically determined the order of search results- so who would show up or not. PageRank was the first algorithm ever used by Google to index sites and use this index to determine websites rankings.
Guess what PageRank focused super, super heavily on?
Backlinks. Once the cat was out of the bag, the frenzy of every SEO professional around to get as many backlinks as possible to boost their SERP ranking began.
It was seriously like wildfire. Experts starting bypassing the natural requirements of the algorithm- clean, quality backlinks, and creating backlink farms (as we cover later.)
So, how do backlinks help your SEO?
They are a prime example of speaking both to the user and search engines.
Backlinks and Linkjuice
Backlinks indicate trust, relevancy and authority to search engine crawlers. By another reputable site linking to yours, they are vouching for your site and letting Google know that “hey, they’re great.” It accelerates your exposure to Google bots and get your site indexed faster. Good quality backlinks produce “linkjuice” which is credible equity from one site to another. The more juice you have given to you, the stronger your site will perform in search results.
Kind of like, Redbull giving you wings. Popeye and spinach. You get the idea.
Boost Referral Traffic with Backlinks
Backlinks provide you with referral traffic. And who doesn’t want extra traffic to their website? Better yet, the traffic coming from these high quality backlinks is going to be pretty targeted and relevant to you. Free traffic is pretty rad. Search engines think so too- the more quality traffic you drive to your site, the more they notice you and the more likely they are to index you with a little love.
Rank Higher for Keywords with Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks, our little blue text links (or anchor links) even help with your specific keyword ranking. Google crawlers go as far as to see how much “support’ you have for any given keyword on your website’s pages. If they find your keyword relevant to the rest of you, it will boost your exposure on that single key term as well.
Backlinks aren’t all for the search engine though. Remember- there’s a user on the other end of the computer.
Backlinks Help You Get Seen
Backlinks give you great brand recognition and exposure. They act as somewhat of a review- a link to your site from a credible site will not only promote your brand but also – again- vouch to the user that your website is A-Okay. Repeated mention of your website throughout credible sources just adds to brand recognition; people see your brand and begin to recognize it within their online experiences.
Don’t Resort to Backlink Farming
Backlink farming is the very reason Google’s Penguin update ever came into effect.
Like we mentioned earlier, SEO experts were desperate to get hundreds of backlinks for their site once the ball dropped on PageRank- Google’s first algorithm for ranking that focused lots on backlinks.
Of course, deceptions of this algorithm were pretty easy to brew up (likely why Google stays so hush-hush about their algorithms nowadays.) By creating networks of spam websites and directories with the sole purpose of all linking to each other, paying your way into hundreds of unearned backlinks became a widely used tactic in every level of SEO out there.
That’s where the ability for site crawlers to determine the quality of the links, not just the number of them, was born.
And it’s fair. Reputable backlinks are built on trust, relationship building and genuine online presence.
Backlink farming is still a grey area. While giant networks and rings are easy to define as backlink farms, there are operating businesses out there that offer backlinks in return for pay. Crowned “black hat SEO”, buying backlinks poses as “backlink strategy growth” and still remains…..questionable.
Buying backlinks might grab you some short term SERP rankings. You might even get away with it for a while and see a huge change in your website analytics and rankings. But once Google figures you out, you can kiss goodbye to your growth – buying backlinks is a direct violation of Google’s advertising code.
Listen, don’t shoot the messenger, ok? Buying backlinks is so much easier than organically building them and can seem like a great option for those wanting to really boost their site.
We get it, honestly we do. But it’s really not worth it.
Organically growing backlinks takes time and effort, but it will pay off.
How to Build Backlinks- Naturally
Now, we can’t let our own cat out of the bag and give away all the secrets.
But, here’s some practices you can undertake to start building an army of reputable backlinks:
Add links on all your social media profiles – (hey, social stacking!)
Monitor your best performing posts and pages, and expand them routinely.
Create content that is useful and exciting to a reader- content that helps them solve a problem and share it among their networks for the same reason
Off page, build relationships with influencers, industry leaders and bloggers to trade valuable backlinks. Believe it or not, you can also strategically work with your competitors to do the same thing!
Monitor your competitors backlinks, and look to see if you can also be placed within those sources as well.
Why WordPress Is The Best
WordPress is by far the most popular open source CMS (content management system) – around 60% of all websites use WordPress and for good reason. In fact, over 10 million websites use WordPress, with 500 new ones added each day, according to the latest statistics.
In this blog article, we’ll go through the reasons why you should choose Wordpress over other CMS systems such as Shopify, Wix, Joomla or Drupal.
The Importance of E-A-T: Local SEO Guide
Over the years, the internet has been under constant development to adapt to the current needs of the technological industry. One of the most important entities on the internet is the existence of search engines. Among the plenty of factors to rank on Page 1 in search engines, we find now E-A-T. Are you familiar with this concept, and why is E-A-T important for you? Let’s find out below the Importance of E-A-T.
As you most probably know, it has gradually developed starting from 1993’s Archie search engine up to today’s dominance of Google.
The long history of search engines also comes with how search engine optimization (SEO) has evolved in these years. Today, Google is the major player in the search engine department, changing the game of optimization and introducing new SEO guidelines.
What is E-A-T?
Google introduced E-A-T (which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) as the three major factors in Google search’s algorithm. These principles are what Google uses to evaluate each piece of content that it crawls.
The three E-A-T factors are all similar concepts, but individually, they assess content.
Expertise
Expertise is evaluated from the content itself and not primarily at the website level, which means having a high level of knowledge or skill in a corresponding field is essential to crawl up to the first few pages of the Google search engine. Google is seeking content produced by subject matter experts.
Authority
Authority refers to the credentials of the content author. The reputation of the author is what makes it more reliable in the Google search engine pages and thus crawls up SEO rankings.
This can further be assessed not only with author credentials but also with the credibility derived from reviews and engagements.
Trustworthiness
The content should make the readers or searchers feel that they are consuming the right information on a website. Trustworthiness goes with showing Google the reliability of your content by showing users that they can have confidence in your content.
Trustworthy reference sources and a strong backlink profile are good indicators of a website’s Google trust.
Why is E-A-T Important?
The importance of E-A-T depends on the keywords being searched. The nature of the information that comes along with the search results matters in more crucial searches.
If the topic is about pictures of animals, E-A-T wouldn’t really matter that much but will still require reliability factors for Google to make it appear to search results.
If someone decides to search for a more comprehensive matter, say a piece of medical information or legal advice, E-A-T plays a big and critical role. Then, the importance of E-A-T becomes more evident: The search results should show reliable content backed by trusted sources.
Google decides what to bring up the search rankings with regards to the contents’ E-A-T factors.
The impacts of content released by Google search results can be potentially important or critical from a searcher’s point of view, so the way E-A-T works in SEO is complex and can take time to master.
What Gives a Website Good E-A-T?
Improving E-A-T is a process that is done carefully to make sure you are being trusted by Google to keep among its rankings.
Having a good and important E-A-T is evaluated not only on the quality of the content produced but also on the website it is crawled from. A good website reputation starts with the proper author or organization profile.
Here are some ways to help in improving your E-A-T factor:
1. Review content and keep them up-to-date
Whenever you produce content that you know will be relevant for a long time, never forget to review its resources and update information as needed. The world is ever-changing, and the information in the content can just abruptly change as well.
Keep your content up to date as more important information comes available. A simple review of the backlinks and references is enough to make sure your content is citing a reliable and working source.
2. Optimize the website profile tabs
More than the quality of your content, the other important tabs on your website are your ‘About’ and ‘Contact Us’ tabs. These are crucial in introducing the credibility of the information you are showing to users.
Optimizing the author’s pages also helps Google in understanding your authority and expertise over the subject matter in your content. Flashing your authors’ credentials is a good way in building up trust for the users to consume your content.
3. Build high-quality links
One of the best ways to increase traffic on your website and content is through backlinks. E-A-T is largely based on building up your reputation around links and mentions from more credible and authoritative sites.
Google is good at understanding which links count in searching factors, so it is better to consider prioritizing high-quality links to build up your link profile.
4. Develop an effective content strategy
Build up a working content strategy that you can maintain. Strategizing comes first before putting your content to work.
The essential parts of content strategy are defining your goals, identifying your audiences, and reviewing your metrics. For starters, it is a trial-and-error job and may take time to see the results if the strategy is effective.
Once you have defined your own personalized content strategy that works for your website, you only have to rinse and repeat the whole process in producing more content.
5. Make sure you are checking facts
One factual mistake in your content can have a grave effect on your website’s information. You have to keep checking if you are stating the right information through reliable sources.
Fact-checking is a must for content that provides crucial information to users. This would depend on the subject matter, but this mostly needs to be done for every content.
Wrapping Up
Simply put, the importance E-A-T remains on the principles in the SEO field. They are all about the reliability of the content produced by a website. Developing a good content strategy and building up a good website profile will strengthen your site’s reputation and will help you rank up Google’s algorithm.
Start building up a good reputation if you want your website to rank up. Keeping your credibility up is a thorough process that needs a whole lot of patience, but it needs to be!
Being a go-to content for user consumption is quite a big deal. But getting it to that point is a bigger challenge that requires work. Highlight the importance of E-A-T and make it better for you.
Techniques to Reduce Facebook Ads Spend
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[/fusion_text][fusion_checklist hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” icon=”fusion-prefix-icon-mkb-plus” iconcolor=”var(–awb-color5)” circle=”no”][fusion_li_item icon=””]Proin ullamcorper eleifend ornare vel augue[/fusion_li_item][fusion_li_item icon=””]Fusce finibu tincidu fermentum blandit[/fusion_li_item][fusion_li_item icon=””]Vestibulum ante ipsum fames in faucibus[/fusion_li_item][/fusion_checklist][fusion_title title_type=”text” rotation_effect=”bounceIn” display_time=”1200″ highlight_effect=”circle” loop_animation=”off” highlight_width=”9″ highlight_top_margin=”0″ before_text=”” highlight_text=”” after_text=”” content_align_medium=”” content_align_small=”” content_align=”left” size=”4″ font_size=”” animated_font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_color=”” animated_text_color=”” highlight_color=”” style_type=”default” sep_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” fusion_font_variant_title_font=”” margin_bottom=”20px” margin_top=”30px”]Aenean eu metus at dolor sodales dictum quis rhoncus nisi.
[/fusion_title][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” font_size=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=””]Nulla consectetur maximus turpis a egestas. Mauris efficitur, ante non bibendum eleifend, diam massa varius ex, non vestibulum risus metus in eros. Proin eu urna vitae ex feugiat interdum. Nunc vel auctor nisi.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]WordPress Competitors: The Negatives Of Using Other CMS Systems
We’ve discussed why WordPress is so popular but now we’re going to look at other CMS systems and website builders and see how they stack up against WordPress. Although not an extensive list, here are a few of the most popular.
2019 SEO Changes
- The Biggest SEO Changes in 2019
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly changing and improving. Gone are the days where you could rank a website in a couple of weeks just by stuffing your content full of keywords and using spamy backlink practices. Google’s algorithm has gotten smarter and the nature of Google searches have begun to change, resulting in the need for SEO technicians to change with it. So we decided to highlight the top 5 Biggest SEO Changes in 2019 so far
Why SEO is constantly changing?
We need to think about SEO from Google’s perspective – not from business owners who want to rank on page one. At the end of the day, Google is a business and it’s in the business of connecting its users to information and products. Right now Google is dominating the market with more than 90% of all search engine traffic. The remaining ten percent is reserved for Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
Google has been able to dominate because it has been relentless in innovating to give the best possible search results for any given query. In laymen’s terms, they give the people what they want. In order to sustain Google’s dominance, it needs to continue to innovate. If it doesn’t, users will look to alternative search engines. While this may seem crazy – think about how Google seamlessly integrates with our lives – Google can lose market share.
Here are some of the important SEO areas to consider:
1. Voice search
This trend is going to be far the most disruptive. As more and more users switch from desktop to mobile, and the use of smart home devices such as Google Home, Alexa, and Apple Home Pod are increasing, more people are turning to voice search because it’s quicker and easier, especially for multitaskers.
Back in 2016, Google said about 20% of searches on mobile were carried out by voice. By 2020, Google forecasts around 50% of all over searches will be voice-based. This will give rise to a higher number of long-tail keywords and hyperlocal searches.
Typed searches and voice searches are different – you speak differently than you type – and so optimization strategies will also differ. for Voice search, you need to think about more conversational natural language and local searches as well as ensuring that websites are mobile-friendly.
2. User experience
Google’s algorithm has become more sophisticated in order to provide better, more relevant results to its users. Google now counts user experience and user engagement among its key metrics for SEO rankings. This is because user experience is a great indicator of the quality of a website or a piece of content.
While we don’t know exactly how Google measures user experience, one of the key metrics is a high bounce rate which indicates to Google that the result was not useful, or what the user was looking for. There are many other user experience metrics that signal poor or low quality such as dwell time, average session duration, page views, etc. All of these combined communicate to Google a picture of the quality of your website as a whole. Google’s aim is to provide better and quick, and more relevant results to users. As you build your website, keep this in mind. How can you provide serve your audience? It is a question you should be asking anyway, but I suggest putting it on a sticky note on your computer to always keep it top of mind.
3. Quality content
“Content is king” is a much-used phrase and nothing new, it is still relevant today as it ever was. You simply cannot let your content fall by the wayside. You need to create your content in line with how it will affect your user metrics, in other words, providing useful content that people will want to read. Moreover, you don’t need everybody to read it – just your ideal target market.
Ask yourself questions such as:
- Does it add something useful and new to other content on this topic?
- Does it answer important questions in your industry?
- Can you link this article to other pages or other websites to increase overall pageviews?
- Answering questions or adding incites in a way that provides most value to your readers?
If you can answer most or all of these questions, Google is happy because their users are happy.
4. Local SEO Content
If you’ve followed SEO practices, you know the importance of local SEO will increase in importance over the next few years. The importance of local search will continue to grow with 46% of searches on Google already having local intent – searches like restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores will become more competitive as more local businesses become SEO-savvy. Moreover, almost every local search converts into a sale, making it extremely important for small businesses.
Here are some things to consider:
Basic factors like the ‘RDP’ will remain the same.
(R) Relevance means how well your business listing matches with the user’s intent
(D) Distance measures how far the searcher is from the business when the search is made. Businesses nearest to the searcher will be ranked higher.
(P) Prominence measures the popularity of the business both in the offline and online world
5) Artificial intelligence (AI)
AI will give Google the power to improve their algorithms exponentially, customizing searches for the individual. The need to collect and analyze user data in order to obtain intelligent proposals for searches is and will remain extremely important for Google.
Since 2015, Google has been working on a self-learning algorithm called “Rankbrain”. Which takes care of search queries that have never been made before. Which allegedly accounts for 15 percent of all queries. In addition, Google also has come out with a feature called “Google Duplex” which actually makes calls for you and sets up appointments. This feature is not only great for consumers, but likely collects data on the user which will then customize searches for them.
It is important to familiarize yourself with AI as soon as possible. And to experiment with it in terms of SEO. In the near future, AI will help Google get even better at reading text, understanding testimonials and taking them into account when evaluating websites. So, AI is also included in the list of Biggest SEO Changes of 2019.
Takeaways
The nature of SEO is that it is constantly evolving. In order to stay on top of your search engine rankings and ensure you are driving as much traffic to your website as possible, you need to be aware of the trends. The key takeaway should always keep serving your customers or audience better than your competition. And you’ll always increase your ranking since Google will take notice. So, these are the Biggest SEO Changes of 2019, If you want our SEO expert services, feel free to Contact us.
COVID-19 Pandemic and The Internet
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.
2018 SEO Changes
Google is constantly changing their algorithms and it’s the job of SEO experts to stay on top of them so here are some of the major changes Google has made this year.