Category

Search Engine Optimizaion

Website Hacking

11 Reasons Why Hackers Want To Hack Your Website

By | Search Engine Optimizaion, Website

A hacker is a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data. And the process of gaining unauthorized access is called hacking. There are several reasons why hackers hack websites. Knowing these reasons can help you improve your website security. Therefore, in this blog post, we are going to list the top reasons why hackers want to hack your website. Keep these points in mind while securing your website.

1. To steal data

You might have already guessed this one. One of the most important reasons for hackers hacking your website is your data. They want to gain the data on your website. The data may be of your customers, employees or business. In most of the cases, hackers target big businesses to get more attention. Here are the two popular examples.

Ashley Madison and the Starbucks app hack had rocked the Internet. Especially, the former one. In Ashley Madison hack, hackers were able to breach the web security and get access to all the private data including private photos of world-famous celebrities. So, if you have sensitive data on your website, you need to be extra careful.

Most of the time, hackers also steal information to study your personal identity and then use the same thing to transfer money, get a loan, etc. These hacking incidents have increased, especially after the inception of Internet banking and mobile banking. Some of the businesses that were hacked in the past are Yahoo, eBay, Sony, Adobe, etc.

Although many hacks have shocked the Internet world, people still believe that this cannot happen to them. This ignorance further makes an easy way for hackers to steal your sensitive information.

2. To steal money

The next big reason for hacking a website is money. Most of the hackers prefer money over the data. With the increase in online banking, it has become easy for hackers to hack your website and steal your money. Most of the time they just look for the security vulnerability in the website of fairly big businesses.

The day they get any security vulnerability they will exploit it to make your balance nil. So, if your website deals money, hire a web security expert to maximize the security, so that you have 360° protection.

3. To disrupt services

Hackers usually like to take websites down. And when they do, they leave a statement on the website. They do this by manufacturing bots that overwhelm a server with traffic, which leads to a crash. This is popularly known as Denial of Service attack (DoS) and is capable of putting a company’s website out of service.

In the last couple of years, DDoS attacks have become popular. DDoS stands for Disturbed Denial of Service. This type of attack is carried out by using multiple infected systems so that the single major system leads to denial of service. These two are not the only methods to disrupt services. A hacker can use one among many other methods.

Infecting a large network with malicious software installed onto one computer is also a common method used by hackers. This is usually done via email. This leads to a chain reaction affecting the whole network. As a result, the server is disrupted.

4. To make a point

 If you think hacking is done only for the sake of money and information, then you are wrong. There are some interesting hackers out there. They do hacking to make a point. They do not care about money or data. In fact, they have some other purposes. Let us give you an example.

In the first point, we have already mentioned about Ashley Madison hack and explained how it rocked the digital world. In this particular website hack, the hackers had account details of 32 million users. After hacking they left a message on the website to inform everyone about what they thought about the website. The message was clear that the service like this one was immoral.

So, here, in this case, the hackers were not looking to make money. They were trying to make a point, which they did.

5. To get attention

This might surprise you. A lot of hackers are young. And they sometimes do hacking for surprising reasons. Here are some surprising reasons that motivate a hacker to hack a website:

  • To kill boredom
  • To compete with other hackers
  • To gain name and fame
  • To have fun

When the hacking is done for these purposes, no money is asked. It eventually exposes certain vulnerabilities. In the end, you can improve the overall security efforts.

6. To leak the sensitive information

This is also one of the common reasons why hackers hack a website. In most of the cases, the hacker hacks personal and private data and leaks them. The main motive behind leaking sensitive information is to take revenge.

Leaking sensitive information will kill the credibility of the business. As a result, the company loses its online reputation. For this reason, website security is one of the most important aspects of online reputation management. In addition to that, when your website is hacked, it takes your website ranking to the lowest. Therefore, even SEO experts emphasize website security.

So, if you collect user information, you must never overlook site security. It is always a good option to contact a web security expert.

7. To vandalize a website

This type of harm is usually caused when the website runs an ideology that is completely opposite to the hacker’s ideology. Therefore, most of the time political and religious websites are targeted and vandalized. However, this can also be done to deface a certain popular figure and cause severe damage to his public image.

Here the main aim is to hurt religious and political sentiments. Sometimes this type of hacking is done for fun without any political intention. The other categories of websites that suffer vandalism are school, college, institution and organization websites. In most of the cases, the students of an institution hack its website.

If you own a school, college, institution or organization websites, then encourage your students or employees to embrace ethical hacking. Use their knowledge to strengthen your security system.

8. To spread viruses

A virus is a code which is capable of copying itself and has a severe effect such as corrupting the system and harming the data. Sometimes hackers hack a website to spread these viruses so that they hack several other websites.

Hackers achieve this by writing malicious code into the backend or with files they have uploaded for download on the front end. When the site visitors interact with such content, it gives hackers an opportunity to steal visitors information.

9. To steal server bandwidth

This is another common reason why hackers try to hack your website. Hackers use this bandwidth to host their own activities, for example, bitcoin mining and brute force attacks on other websites.

It is easy to prevent bandwidth theft. A simple Google search will give you all the necessary information including causes, prevention, and solution. Here is the guide to prevent bandwidth theft or hotlinking.

10. To host legitimate pages on your web server

It is not common these days, but one cannot guarantee that this is not going to happen. Hackers try to host legitimate pages on your web server to improve their own search engine optimization (SEO). These pages talk about them and link back to their websites. In other words, they try to build links illegally.

11. To host phishing pages

Phishing refers to a malicious individual or group of individuals who scam the people on the Internet. This is commonly done by two methods. That is either by sending an email or by creating webpages. Since our blog post is on the topic “11 reasons why hackers what to hack your website”, we will discuss how hackers achieve this by creating web pages.

By creating fake web pages on your website, they attempt to collect information from your website visitors who are willing to give it. They usually do this by embedding a contact form on one of your web pages and asking the visitors to enter their information.

What do all the hacked websites have in common?

Lack of website security is common among all the hacked websites. A recent study tells us that online hacks cost medium and small sized businesses nearly 200 thousand dollars every single year. The study also revealed that more than 60% of these businesses normally shut down their businesses, as they cannot survive the damages caused. All this can be easily avoided if you have a proper security system.

How can you protect your website?

There is a lot that you can do to protect your website. For now, we are giving some top tips that will help you to protect your business site, here we go.

  • Backup your site frequently
  • Secure your site at all levels
  • Make use of security plugins
  • Use SSL certificates
  • Use unique and strong passwords
  • Hire a professional

 

 

Marketing Influence

7 Reasons To Work With An Influencer

By | Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimizaion, Social Media Marketing

In the last couple of years, the role of influencer marketing has significantly grown in digital marketing. So, what exactly is influencer marketing? It is a type of marketing where the focus is on influential people rather than the target market on social media. Here the individuals who have influence over potential customers are identified, and the marketing activities are carried out. Since influencer marketing can positively impact your business, there are many reasons to work with an influencer. In the blog post, we are covering the top seven reasons. Let us begin.

1. Influencers create fresh content

One of the biggest advantages of working with an online influencer is that you get to have fresh high-quality content. And superior content is important for both ranking higher on search engine results page and attracting new customers.

An average online influencer is in this business for many years, he knows how to create a content that people like to consume and move towards sales. Very few people understand the importance of this fact. Many business owners fail to discover all the topics that someone from the outside world would be eager to read. And if at all, the business owners are successful in writing the need of potential customers, the content may not get the visibility and credibility it should.

2. Influencers can bring new followers

One of the main reasons to work with influencers is that they can attract new visitors. Here micro-influencers play a major role. A micro influencer is an influencer whose number of social media followers fall between 2000 to 50000. The number may look less, but the good part is that these micro-influencers have dedicated following. In other words, their followers are active. They believe the expertise of the online influencer.

Some brands try to reach their potential customers via having active social media presence or email marketing. Although these are the best practices in both search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing (SMM), an influencer can do the same thing on a wider scale and bring other benefits such as higher brand awareness and brand visibility. So, it makes sense to run social media marketing and email marketing campaign, along with taking help of online influencers.

3. Online influencers improve SEO

Business owners usually take the help of online influencers to gain certain business goals. Some of those are higher visibility, more reach, improved engagement, solid online reputation, and lead generation. However, a very small number of people know that online influencers do improve search engine ranking. As a result, only fewer people attempt to enhance SEO.

Whenever an online influencer creates content and links it to your website, it works like a magic. It simply takes your incoming traffic to another level. If done correctly with right quality and quantity, it elevates search engine ranking of your website. So, share the content created by the influencers on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., and link it to your website.

4. Influencers are conversation starters

Influencers are good at creating content as well as conversations. With years of experience, they know how to speak to your audience. No matter what type of audience you have, they know how to engage and interact with them.

Moreover, you cannot be the only one to praise your products and services. Doing so can do no good. Self-praise never works in marketing. So, when the words from an influencer come out people tend to believe it. In the end, credibility matters the most. If you are able to reach thousands of people, but if no one is believing you, then it is waste of time, money and efforts.

So, if someone, who is not related to your business, is expressing a good opinion about you, then that is considered a credible signal. As a result, emotion and interest of the people shoot up. In the end, they prefer to choose you over your competitors.

5. Influencers generate sales

No matter what digital marketing strategy, method or type you opt, the ultimate goal is to generate sales. It is the sole purpose of your both marketing and business. In the past couple of years, influencer marketing has become one of the leading methods to generate sales. However, that does not mean you need to depend solely on this method. It makes sense to run SEO, SMM, and other digital marketing strategies parallelly.

So, it makes sense to go for influencer marketing. The main question you need to ask here is how many influencers are required. There is no simple answer to this question. The answer depends on various factors such as a size of business, type of business, business goals, type of audience, budget, and type of services and products you sell. Considering all these points, you can judge yourself. SEO experts usually do not recommend settling with one influencer.

6. Influencers establish customer relationships

It is an obvious fact that influencers have a strong relationship with their followers. Over the years, they have gained the trust of the people. Their followers trust their opinion and expertise. So, partnering with the influencers gives access to a solid relationship. It is a kind of shortcut. The good thing is that one influencer can open the door to a lot of connections. This positive wave can spread like a wildfire.

The other positive aspect of a good customer relationship is that it builds a strong online reputation. This is the reason why working with influencers is one of the most-used techniques to establish a solid online reputation within a short period of time.

7. Influencer marketing is a solution for ad blockers

The hard truth is that nobody likes Internet ads. Internet users are using tools to avoid online ads. Today, it is quite easy to install the ad blocker extension in all the popular browsers. In fact, It hardly takes one or two minutes. Many studies have revealed that one out of nine mobile Internet users uses an ad blocker. It simply means more than half a billion people across the world. Furthermore, the usage of ad blockers is growing at an annual rate of 30%. So this issue has become a big headache to digital marketers.

The advantage of working with online influencers is that you bypass ad blockers. In other words, you can reach the target audience without facing any obstacles.

quality content

7 Ways To Create Quality Content

By | Content Creation, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimizaion, SEO & PPC

All the major types of digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) pay per click (PPC), social media marketing (SMM) and email marketing largely depend upon quality content. In fact, you simply can’t run any of these digital marketing campaigns without content. Therefore, high-quality content is absolutely fundamental in digital marketing.

This gives rise to one important question – what is high-quality content? In simple words, quality content is an original content that adds value to the visitors, improves SEO, and converts visitors into customers. Defining quality content is an easier task than developing the same. However, if you focus more on visitors than on your search engine ranking, your job becomes easy. In this blog post, you will learn the top seven ways to create high-quality content.

1. Develop original content

You cannot rank your web page with the help of copied content. Google detects duplicate content within in seconds and penalizes your site. As a result, your search engine ranking may hit rock bottom. You may have to go for penalty recovery services.

Original content refers to a content that is a product of your thinking, and nothing else. Some people try to spin the article and cheat the search engine. Yes, there are many free article spinning tools available on the Internet. All you need to do is copy the content from a site, and paste it into an article spinner tool, and click on spin. Within a couple of seconds, you will get fresh content. However, the quality of such content is always very low. Since article spinners just rephrase a paragraph, most of the time the sentences do not even make sense.

So, if you want to develop quality content, then you have to forget these two things and focus on the uniqueness of the content. Google likes the content which is liked by the people. So, focus more on providing answers to the questions of the visitors.

2. Create compelling headlines

How do you decide to read a news article? By reading the headline, right? The same thing works here also. Your headlines act like a door for your content. They will decide whether the visitors are going to read your content or not. Here are the two statistics to back our claim:
80% of the people read headlines.
Only 20% of those people read the full content.
Make sure your headlines create curiosity in the minds of readers. Let us take an example. If you are creating content on types of business owners, then your headline should raise a question in the minds of them. ” Seven Types of Business Owners – Which Group Is You In?” creates more curiosity than “Seven Types of Business owners.”

Take time to write headlines. Prefer to write the content first and headline last. While writing you may get some good headline ideas, which you can note down. In the end, you can select the best one. This will save your time.

3. Create actionable content

What was the last article you wrote? Did it give advice on how your readers can apply the given information straight away? If no, you must focus on this aspect.

Content created by you should give the readers a sense of how to utilize the information. Users tend to like the content that guides them to apply the knowledge. For instance, “10 ways to create quality content” looks better than “10 aspects of good-quality content.” The former helps the users to create quality content, whereas the latter just describes the ingredients. So, write all your future blog posts keeping this thing in mind.

4. Try to add images and videos

Visual content enhances your overall content. There is a reason why kids like books which have more pictures. That is because they are engaging, and they also help them to understand quicker and better. The same things apply to blog and website content.

Paragraphs of texts are boring. Hardly anyone likes to read them. So, make sure you add high-quality pictures and videos. Also, make sure they are original. Do not add any images just for the sake of adding. If you put any image or video, make sure it has a role to play in your content. Adding unnecessary visual content can distract the readers and dilute the value of your content.

5. Keep to the point

Yes, Google likes lengthy content. That does not mean you should simply increase the length of the content. Doing so can reduce the quality of the content and spoil the readability.

Users usually want to know more in less time. So it makes sense to say things using fewer sentences. Who does not like to the point articles or blog posts? Increase the length of the content only if there is a scope. In most of the cases, lengthy text increases the bounce rate, as they are time-consuming and less interesting. As a result, your search engine optimization efforts will get spoiled. So, say no to fluff that dilutes your content.

6. Do proper research

This is one of the most important steps you need to take before writing the blog? Select a topic. Once you select the topic, do research and find out what is already written about it. Try to figure out what is missing in those blogs and make a note. Think what new you can add to the topic.

The other thing you should do is find what are the most shared contents in the topic selected by you. This will help you to opt the topics. There are several tools available on the Internet to do this job. You can try BuzzSumo. It helps you to find the most shared content for a particular topic under all social media platforms.

7. Aim to engage the audience

Audience engagement is one of the main goals you should try to achieve. That is because engaged audience hangs on to your every single word and grabs all of it. The only way to obtain engaged audience is to create engaging content. Here are the best practices to improve audience engagement:
End with the questions: Now this does not mean you have to write an incomplete post. We mean you should end the blog with a question that encourages them to utilize the information given by you.
Have a solid beginning: People will not read your full content and make a judgment. Rather they read a headline and first paragraph and decide whether to read or not. So it makes sense to tell why they should care to read and what will they learn from it, at the beginning, itself.
Tell a story: You might already know that people love stories. A story can help you to tell a point clearly. Furthermore, you can easily gain uninterrupted audience attention for a long period of time.
Try to gain user interaction: If you write a content that attracts a lot of user comments, the search engine will believe that you have good content and rank it higher. So, try to obtain people’s interaction.

SEO Consultants

10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Consultant

By | Black Hat SEO, Google, Search Engine Optimizaion

Search engine optimization is a never-ending process. Therefore, before hiring an SEO agency one needs to go through its various aspects thoroughly and ask some important questions. Asking these simple yet vital questions will reveal a lot about your potential digital marketing partner. Furthermore, gathering extra information about a probable SEO partner will allow you to make a well-informed decision. Below are the top 10 questions to ask when hiring an SEO consultant. Make sure you don’t forget to ask these questions to your SEO agency.

1. May I know your former and current clients?

Experienced SEO companies usually have a wide range of clients. Normally, these companies encourage you to contact their former and current clients. Actually, this is one of the best practices that search engine optimization agencies follow. If you are not encouraged to contact former clients, you can ask your potential SEO partner to give a list of their clients. If the agency agrees, then that is a good sign.

Go through the list and select the businesses that are relevant to you. Try to contact at least two clients and know their experience. Yes, reading reviews is also a good method. However, a client tends to write a short review. He might miss some important points. So, it is good to talk to former clients to know the pros and cons of a search engine optimization company in detail.

2. How will you improve my visibility?

This is the most important question to ask an SEO consultant before hiring. It is fundamental to know how your potential digital marketing partner is going to improve your search engine ranking. Knowing the work process will make it easy to judge the cost of the service. You can do the same thing for a couple of SEO agencies and judge them on the basis of both cost and SEO service.

Make sure the proposal includes an initial technical review of your site. This can avoid the issues that lower your search engine ranking. Furthermore, ask the details of both on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Go through the process carefully. Search engine optimization is huge. Each and every company follows its own process. Therefore, it makes sense to know the SEO process before joining the hands.

3. Read online reviews.

In the first point, we have discussed that asking questions to the former clients will help you know the subtle details of a company. However, it is not a good idea to depend solely on a couple of ex-clients. Furthermore, it is not viable to contact all the former clients. So it is good to read several reviews, along with contacting a couple of former clients.

Reading online reviews is one of the best and most favorite methods of people to do research on a company. You can know both positive and negative points of an SEO company in one place. Do not form an opinion just by a reading couple of reviews. Make sure you read enough reviews before making an opinion.

Furthermore, read the response of the SEO company to the online reviews. Rude, duplicate or no reply shows the unprofessional side of a company. In addition to that, do not expect an SEO company to have a clean online image. No matter how good a company is, it tends to have a couple of negative reviews at least. So, read both positive and bad reviews and make a well-informed decision.

4. Do you follow search engine guidelines?

There are two types of search engine optimization. They are black hat SEO and White hat SEO. Blackhat SEO involves aggressive SEO strategies, that usually violate search engine guidelines. Such techniques normally give quick results initially, but later become a cause for Google penalty. So it is a good idea to ask whether an SEO company follows search engine guidelines.

Never opt an SEO agency that does a black hat SEO. Normally, online reviews will let you know whether a company follows Google guidelines or not. Furthermore, a company which promises guaranteed results within a short period of time is more likely to use black hat tactics. Search engine optimization takes time. Do not expect a company to deliver the result in a week.

5. How will you improve local search results?

Having a top place in the local search engine results page is critical for small-business owners. So, if you own a small or local business, you should not forget to ask this question. Contact your SEO consultant and try to know who holds the expertise in the local search engine optimization, and how he or she is going to enhance local search results.

If you are going for local search engine optimization, you should expect your business to appear when someone nearby is searching for the products and services you sell. This is done by adding your town, and state to your site’s meta description and title tags. This is just one among several steps that an SEO firm takes to place you in the top position for a specific geographical area.

6. How does pricing work?

Normally, SEO is not a low-cost digital marketing method. The amount you spend on SEO will get multiplied and come back to you in form of sales. In order to get good results, you have to spend some money. However, it does not make sense to pay the amount for the SEO service without knowing its pricing structure.

Since the pricing of SEO is unpredictable, you may end up with a surprise bill. To avoid this ask the below questions regarding pricing:

  • How much do you charge?
  • Do you charge hourly, monthly, or do you have a package?
  • When should we have to pay?
  • Can you provide the details of work done and its cost?
  • Do I need to pay the amount in advance?
  • Can I pay at the end of every month?

7. How will you optimize content?

You might already know content is the most important ranking factor. It has two important jobs to do. Those are engaging visitors and impressing search engines. Rightfully, optimizing the content is the top-most aspect of the search engine optimization process. Below are the five important questions you need to ask.

  • Will you create new content?
  • How will you optimize our content?
  • Why content optimization is important?
  • Is it possible to use the existing content?
  • Will you create new landing pages and add content to it?
    The above-mentioned five questions will give all the details that you need to know about content optimization.

8. Can I meet the SEO, team?

Before choosing an SEO agency, one must make sure that his or her online presence is going in the safe hands. Usually, SEO companies send their top team to win new clients. This is done to make a good impression.

Ask if you can talk to the SEO team that is going to handle your project. You can establish a relationship with them so that you know what work is being done, and who is doing it. The other advantage of knowing the team is that you will not be in the dark. In some cases, projects are handled by not so good SEO team of an excellent SEO agency. So, make sure you are getting the best team. You can judge the team by the previous projects and work experience of the team members.

9. Are you working for our competitors?

It is not unusual for an SEO company to handle the project of the two competitors. This can be good news or bad news based on the orientation of the SEO agency. If the agency is inclined towards you, then you are going to beat your competitors. And if the agency is inclined towards your competitor, then you are going to lose the battle at the beginning itself.

This is because an SEO agency knows what works for you and your competitors? In most of the cases, the SEO firm will take the side of the party which pays more. So, it is better to not to opt an SEO agency which is already running an SEO campaign for your competitors.

10. How do you measure the success of an SEO campaign?

In the end, you want to know how successful a search engine optimization campaign was. However, it is not good to expect quick results. White hat SEO does not violate search engine rules. Hence it takes time to give fruitful results.

There are multiple ways to measure the success of a campaign. In most of the cases, an SEO firm uses search engine optimization metrics to measure the progress of an SEO campaign. Do not aim only for organic traffic. Aim for more conversions and sales too.

Google My Business

10 Tips To Rank Higher in Google My Business Listing

By | Link Building, Online reputation, Search Engine Optimizaion, Social Media

Did you know? If you search something on Google, no matter which browser you use, you are more likely to receive results based on your location. These local search results play an important role in building a bridge between you and your customers. As a result, your potential customer can easily find you and rate your business.

Google My Business, is a platform that helps you to achieve the aforementioned goals. In addition to that, it makes easy for the customers to find vital information such as address, business hours, close and open days, contact numbers, about the business, directions, and service information.

Hence, from a Local SEO point of view, it is critical to be listed in the GMB listing. However, just having a presence on Google My Business is not enough. You need to rank your page in the topmost position. Therefore, in this blog post, we are presenting top ten tricks to rank higher in Google My Business listing.

1. Create posts

Let us start with the most important tip. Very few people know that it is extremely vital to add a post in Google My Business. If you have not created any post yet, you can go to the “posts” section of the Google My Business app, and write a lengthy and informative post that is relevant to your business and audience. Furthermore, it is a good idea to provide the link to any page along with a photo and submit it. Once, the post is published, you can see them on your Google My Business listing.

2. Add labels

Labels feature help you to organize the location into the groups. You can search location by the labels you added, from the dashboard. In addition to that, you can use labels to filter location extensions in AdWords. Google My business gives you an opportunity to assign up to 10 unique labels for each location. Note that the length of the labels can be up to 50 characters, and invalid characters are not allowed to use. However, you can add commas. To add commas in the label, use the string “%2c.” For example, “5%2c000+ customers” would create the label “5,000+ customers.”

3. Write an in-depth description.

If you want to rank your local business high, you must write a detailed description. Now, that does not mean you have to write a bulky article of 2500 words. Keep the words of the description to a decent number, and try to cover almost all relevant information. Your description should contain all the information that your customers look for. Since local results are more driven towards the relevant information provided by the business owners, a detailed description can enhance Local SEO.

There is one more factor that is equally important. That is accuracy. Yes, Google expects you to add accurate information. When you do, you are rewarded. The Google My Business pages, which have accurate information, are prioritized over the others. This is because Google wants your customers to know you better.

4. Build a free Google My Business Website

Yes, Google can create a website for you for free. Google My Business comes with a website builder tool that helps you to create a website within a couple of minutes. All you have to do is sign in to your Google My Business page and click on the option of a website on your dashboard.

That is it. Google will automatically create a website by taking all the necessary information from your Google My Business account. Once the website is created, Google will ask you to choose a theme. SEO experts usually do not recommend business owners to use the websites like these. Google My Business websites are very basic and are only for the small-business owners who do not want to spend money on building a website.

5. Build backlinks

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), backlinks are the deciding factor. They are considered one of the most important pillars of white hat SEO. The same thing is important for local search engine optimization. Do not go for quantity, instead strive for quality. Stuffing the websites with backlinks can do more damage than any good.

Build links via natural methods that do not violate Google webmaster guidelines. Quality link building takes time. Google understands this fact very well. If you build numerous links within a couple of days, Google will get suspicious and penalize you. In the worst case, your website might get deleted from the index.

6. Use keywords in the business name

Keywords tell a search engine when to display your website. So, without keywords, there is no search engine optimization. One of the easiest ways to rank your business locally is to use the keywords in the business name. Developing content only for the sake of giving words to your voice is not a good idea. You also need to optimize your content with keywords.

Before optimizing your content, it is really important to figure out what are the keywords. Keywords differ even if the two websites run the same business. So, carry out a proper keyword research to select the search terms that are relevant to your business. SEO experts usually recommend business owners to pick the keywords that improve the conversion rate.

7. Gain Google reviews

Not many people know that Google reviews influence search engine ranking. Yes, Google trusts your customers more than you. Reviews and star rating are the best ways to know the ground realities of a business. So, it is good to gain as many reviews as possible. There are many methods to increase the review count. Here are the most popular methods.
Send the follow-up emails with the link to the review page.
Encourage happy customers to leave a review.
Offer discount code for leaving a review.
Distribute prizes for the lucky reviewers.
Add the link to the review page on the home page and service page.
Make the whole process of posting a review simple and effortless.
Be calm and professional while responding to the reviews.
Share the links to the review page on the social media platforms.

8. Keep contact number and working hours up to date

In a business, it is not uncommon to change phone numbers, working hours, address, and other important information. So, make sure that all the information in your Google My Business profile stays up to date. These things make the work of the customers easy. They will come to know when you are open without calling you. The whole point here is that Google wants to reduce the work for the customers. When you do the same, Google does reward you indirectly. After all, Google, business owners, and SEO experts want to provide a good user-friendly experience to the visitors.

9. Upload high-quality photos

Just filling your Google My Business account with all the necessary details is not enough. Your profile is incomplete without pictures. Think like an audience. If you own a school, people will like to see how the playground, kindergarten, and classrooms look. They might also be interested in knowing the staff, and achievements of your school.

Google My Business gives you an opportunity to express more with the photos. Make sure that you add high-quality pictures that the potential customers are interested to see. Adding irrelevant pictures can put them off, and you might lose them at the beginning itself. So, if you have not added pics yet, get ready to tell your stories through the pictures.

10. Create multiple categories

Last but not least, it is very important to add categories. This helps both the audience and Google to know what kind of business you run. The main purpose of providing a feature to add multiple categories is to describe your business and establish a relationship with the customers. Let us take an example. If you are mutual funds, you can add categories such as mutual funds, finance, commerce, etc. Such categories impact local search engine ranking to a great extent.

Google Algorithm Update

Google’s August core search algorithm update

By | Google, Search Engine Optimizaion, Uncategorized

Danny Sullivan from Google has confirmed that Google has processed a significant algorithm update in the Google Search Results after many SEO people found a considerable difference in their keyword ranking.

Danny Sullivan on Twitter –  “When we have updates where there are specific things that may help, we do try to tell you that. With these, there is nothing specific to do — and we do think it’s actionable to understand that, in that hopefully people don’t try fixing things that aren’t really “broken.”

Danny also has confirmed that it was the one as similar to the board core algorithm update occurred on the March. He also retweeted the announcement he made during the March algorithm update when he tweeted the present August Core Search Algorithm update.

Google’s August core search algorithm updates

There are no such essential factors or changes made in this Google Algorithm update, some of them might have seen fluctuations in ranking due to some small elements like page speed or interstitials.

They can fix these easily by finding the reason for the change and bring back the ranking within a shorter period. With this core algorithm update, there are no ranking factors targeted except the content quality and pages quality in the Google Search results. The same has occurred in the last algorithm update made on March; Google stated that there was nothing wrong with many pages, they can focus on some specific factors to get their ranking back easily.

In this August Google Algorithm Update, Danny has confirmed the same, trying to provide more details to the website will get their rank back and there are no extra factors anyone needs to focus on this core google algorithm update.

Danny also has advised to focus on the content quality rather than thinking more broadly on the ranking factors, and he tweeted as

“Want to do better with a broad change? Have great content. Yeah, the same boring answer. However, if you want a better idea of what we consider great content, read our raters guidelines. That’s like almost 200 pages of things to consider: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf. “

Danny also commented on the tweet that Google can share many actionable pieces of stuff if they have made them, so you need not spend more time on fixing things. You can check out your quality of the content instead of changing things randomly.

Danny Tweeted like

“If we can share more actionable stuff with the large updates, we will. But, I hope telling people effectively that it is NOT X, Y or Z things is indeed helpful. And from last time, this is really key: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/973241542180614144 ”

Apart from these, Japanese Google Webmaster team has also tweeted regarding the role of the broad core algorithm update that they have updated the core algorithm; people can change their content if they found any drops in the ranking factors, they advised not to change other factors as it only targeted quality pages and content.

Japanese Google Webmaster Team Tweet –

“This week we have updated a wide range of core algorithms. This is done several times a year, what you can do for the impact received by this update is to make high-quality content that the search users are searching for as always. For details, please see the English post.”

The present ranking tools and other SEO tools are not showcasing broad changes rather than like few other broad core google algorithm updates, maybe the update was slower roll out, and we have to wait for few days to check out the desirable changes in the keyword rankings.

WordPress SEO Plugins

5 Free SEO plugins for WordPress Optimization

By | Search Engine Optimizaion, WordPress Website

WordPress is the most popular website management system used by over 60 million websites in the world. Owing to its efficiency in open-source content management, WordPress is opted by most organizations for better blog management. It is quite easy to set up a website on WordPress and has many different plugins for different website needs.
Search Engine Optimization is the major traffic attracter to your website. Hence it is very important to set up a WordPress website with the best SEO plugin.A WordPress plugin has various features that can be utilized in your website, some are:

  • Social Media Integration
  • XML Sitemaps
  • Page Analysis
  • Ecommerce sites integration
  • Theme compatibility

We will now look into the top 5 free SEO plugins for WordPress optimization.

  1. WordPress SEO by YOAST:

WordPress SEO by YOAST is the most famous SEO plugin used by over 6 million users.YOAST offers advanced features which can help get you the attention needed for your website.YOAST’s WordPress has many key features that enhance the quality of your website, some are:

  • YOAST provides a snippet preview which allows you to preview your page in the search engine. This helps you to create better quality content.
  • YOAST has ‘Page Analysis’ feature which checks on minute things like length of the post, meta description relatability, keyword focus etc.
  • YOAST WordPress SEO aids multi-site compatibility.
  • Breadcrumb is an important feature of YOAST which helps with easy navigation in search engines for the users.
  • YOAST has the most advanced XML sitemaps feature. With it, YOAST creates XML sitemaps automatically and informs Google and Bing of its existence.

 

  1. All in one SEO:

All in one WordPress SEO pack is the next popular SEO plugin used by over 1 million users. All in one plugin offers some special features that are not found in any other plugin. It was created by Micheal Torbert, a WordPress developer. Some of its vital features include:

  • Meta tag generation by All in one SEO gives you the power to determine the pages and content that will be shown in Google search results and to hide those that won’t be shown.
  • Duplicate content highlighter is another salient feature of this plugin. This feature simply indicates plagiarism or other similar content already available on the web.
  • All in one SEO plugin helps in the SEO integration of E-commerce websites.
  • Other features like Sitemap support, Google analytics support, Social media details and system status box are available in this plugin.
  1. SEO by SQUIRRLY:

SQUIRRLY eliminates majority of the main hazards put forth by the website during the optimization process.SQUIRRLY is a keyword based SEO plugin which concentrates on optimizing the content with keywords. Some salient features of SQUIRRLY are:

  • It gives importance to the presence of keywords in title, content and Url.
  • SQUIRRLY tracks every aspect of your content marketing strategy.
  • It suggests headlines in accordance with your keyword.
  • SQUIRRLY monitors of your weekly progress and constantly suggests updates.
  • Has a positive energy with green symbolization for the good work.
  1. High Performance SEO by Greg:

The high-performance SEO by Greg is the next major SEO plugin that helps you gain visibility in the Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Some of the salient features of this plugin are:

  • The high-performance SEO by Greg is equipped with a conflict analyzer that points out if there is a content conflicting your own.
  • The plugin provides a variety of secondary descriptions and titles that can be used in your webpage.
  • This plugin has the salient feature of 100 on-page SEO characteristics that will help your page be optimized.
  • The plugin also recognizes any duplicate content present in the website and removes it and alters it based on your content.
  1. W3 total Cache plugin:

W3 Total Cache plugin tends to the matter that is most important for every website, which is the speed of sustaining. This plugin helps a site to sustain a significant amount of traffic without crashing or hanging. This plugin also reduces time of download for the users and performs CDN integration.

  • Transparent CDN management with theme files, Media Library and WordPress itself
  • Compatible with dedicated servers, dedicated clusters and shared hosting
  • Accelerated Mobile Pages support which is an unavoidable vital factor nowadays.
  • SSL (Secure Socket Layer) support
  • Caching of feeds in memory on CDN or on disk.

there are many plugins available for free and payable on the web, the above mentioned are few of the best. The plugins can be used together for better quality and SEO content, but they may slow down the speed of your page.

Basic SEO Terms

25 Basic SEO Terms You Should Know

By | Backlinks, Link Building, PPC, Search Engine Optimizaion

New to the digital marketing world? Finding it hard to understand SEO and its fundamental terms? Don’t worry, we are presenting all the basic information that you are looking for. But before we begin let us understand what is SEO?

What Is SEO?
You might already know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. But what exactly is Search Engine Optimization? It is the process of optimizing your website so that Google prefers to show it as a top result for the certain search terms.

25 Fundamental SEO Terms

Understanding basic SEO terms is essential to grasp the basics of SEO. Here are the basic SEO terms and definition you are looking for.

1. Title tag: Title tag, also known as the page title, is a .html tag. It tells both Google and the net surfers what your web page is about. One can see title tag on the tab of his or her Internet browser or in the headline of search results.

2. Meta Description: Similar to the title tag, a meta description is also a .html tag but has a different purpose. As the name indicates, a meta description is a description of a web page which appears in the search results.

3. Backlink: Backlink, or simply link, is a hyperlink on somebody else’s website pointing to your website. These links play an important part in SEO.

4. SERP: The full form of SERP is Search Engine Results Page. Whenever you enter a query, the search engine comes up with a page loaded with search results, which is known as SERP.

5. PageRank: Named after Larry Page, is an algorithm which Google uses to rank a website for specific search terms. Today, there are more than 200 factors that Google uses to rank a website.

6. Keyword: Keyword is one of the most-used SEO terms. It is nothing but the set of words that searchers use to find particular information, product or service on the Internet. For example, “Restaurants in London” is a keyword which users use to find a restaurant in London.

7. Anchor Text: A clickable text on a web page is called as anchor text. Keyword rich anchor text is used to improve search engine ranking. It basically tells the search engines what your website does.

8. Indexing: Indexing is a process where search engines like Google, Bing, etc. collect and store your data through their bots. In other words, indexing is the process of saving a copy of your web page in the database of a search engine.

9. NoFollow: Basically, NoFollow is a link attribute. It is used by the webmasters to tell Google that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote.

10. Keyword Density: Keyword Density is nothing but the number of times a keyword used in a page divided by the total number of words. Keeping a healthy keyword density is one of the best practices in SEO.

11. Sandbox: Google adds the newly indexed web pages in the sandbox. These web pages are not displayed in Search Engine Results Page until the website is thoroughly verified.

12. Cloaking: Cloaking is a black hat technique. Here a webmaster shows different content to the Google and the Internet surfers, which is against webmaster guidelines. Therefore, Google penalizes for this activity aggressively.

13. Robot.txt: It is a file, which is located in the root of a domain. Robot.txt instructs the Google bots about the structure of the site. This file prevents a search spider from crawling any specific section of a site.

14. Keyword Stuffing: Keyword Stuffing is a practice of adding a large number of keywords into a content to gain higher search engine ranking. Obviously, this is a black hat practice. Google penalizes websites that do keyword stuffing.

15. 301 Redirect: Deleting pages or changing URL is a common practice in the digital world. As the name indicates, 301 redirects will redirect your users from an old URL to the new or active one.

16. SEM: SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, it is nothing but the marketing of products or services through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. SEM is further divided into SEO and PPC.

17. PPC: Stands for Pay Per Click, it is an online advertising model, where an advertiser needs to pay only when someone clicks on their ad. PPC is also known as Cost Per Click (CPC).

18. Indexed Pages: Indexed pages are basically the pages of your website that are stored by search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing in their database. The process of storing is called indexing.

19. Inbound Link: A link in one site pointing to another site is called in the bound link. An inbound link enhances the SEO of a website and plays a major role in improving search engine ranking. It is also referred to as external link or backlink.

20. Internal Link: A link from one page of a site pointing to another page of the same site is called as an internal link. For instance, a link on your homepage pointing to your blog is an internal link.

21. Link Building: A process of gaining more inbound links to your site to obtain a higher position in Search Engine Results Page. From guest posting to blog commenting, Link Building can be done in many ways.

22. RSS Feed: Stands for Really Simple Syndication, it gives an option for your viewers to subscribe for getting notified whenever a new content is added.

23. Sitemap: A file that provides a map of all the pages on a site to the search engine for easy indexing. It can be created using various online tools available.

24. Traffic: In search engine optimization, traffic refers to the Internet surfers who visit your site. When someone says, “your site is getting a lot of traffic,” he or she actually means many people are visiting your site.

25. Ranking Factors: The factors that are used by search engine to determine the rank of a website for a particular keyword are called as ranking factors. Google uses more than 200 ranking factors to position a web page in SERP.

Tools For Checking Backlinks

6 Best Backlink Checker Tools For Your Website

By | Backlinks, Search Engine Optimizaion

We all know that backlinks are one of the most important ranking signals. That is the reason why a good SEO strategy emphasizes quality link building. One of the most important sources for the quality backlink is your competitor. You can spy on your competitors and find out from where they are getting their links. In this blog post, we are listing the top six backlink checker tools to analyze your site and your competitors site.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most helpful backlink checker tools we have. You can create a free account to determine various aspects of your backlinks such as:
● Total number of backlinks you currently have
● From where they are coming
● What anchor text is used
● And many others
If you are looking for further more detailed analysis, then go for the paid account and trace your progress over time.

SEMrush

This backlink checker tool can provide a lot of vital information. Just enter any URL, including backlinks, and get in-depth details. SEMrush gives you an option to track multiple competitor websites to get detailed data of the links. This tool gives a limited number of free searches, for more you need to go for a paid account.

Majestic

Majestic is another awesome backlink checker tool. If you want to explore your own site, you can do it with a free account. If you need further more detailed information on your site, you should opt for paid plans, which range from $49.99/month to $399.99/month.

Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is an important part of webmaster tools that Google offers. Open search console, and select “Search Traffic” section, and check out “Links to your site.” Using this tool you can know various things about the links, such as:
● Total links to your site
● The most linked account
● Sites that link your site the most
● Anchor text used, etc.
The only limitation of this tool is that you can only analyze links on your own site.

Backlink Watch

Do you want to keep an eye or spy on your competitors? Backlink Watch is the best tool to get your work done. It gives important information like:
● Total number of links
● Page rank
● The anchor text used
● And many others
The best part of this backlink checker tool is that it is completely free. You can use it as many times as you can.

Link Diagnosis

Link Diagnosis is another easy to use backlink checker tool. All you need to do is enter your URL and hit the start button to obtain the report for associated backlink details. The report will contain the below details:
● Unique backlinks
● Popular anchor text
● Page rank for all the backlinks, etc.

Google SEO Tools

8 Essential Free Google SEO Tools For Your Website in 2018

By | Google, Google Analytics, Search Engine Optimizaion

You might already know that Google is the most popular search engine worldwide. It provides plenty of tools that make search engine optimization (SEO) easy. You can use these SEO tools to enhance your optimization efforts and bring the desired results. Here are the Eight free Google SEO tools for your website.

1. Google Trends

With time, everything changes, including the search terms. Yes, the search terms or keywords which people use to find some information, product or service on the Internet changes with time. Google Trends is an amazing tool to cope with this change. It gives you relevant trending searches, rising terms and regional interest for specific keywords.

2. Google Consumer Survey

We make websites for the consumers. Therefore, understanding the audience is the key part of any business. This free Google tool lets you take a survey and measure site satisfaction. Although free version limits you for the four questions, but still you can obtain important data and analyze user experience.

3. Google Search Console

Google Search Console, formally known as webmaster tools, is one of the best SEO tools we have. This free SEO tool can be helpful in multiple ways. Here are the basic things which you can do:
● See whether your website has a manual penalty
● Discover broken links
● Detect crawling issues
● View indexed pages
● And many more

4. Google Places For Business
Google places for business is another great search engine optimization tool. It will help to control the information that is displayed in Google Maps, which local results utilize. Google+ Business pages may look similar to Google Places, but Google Places For Business has a better interface, and also it manages the listing that pops up in the maps.

5. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most useful SEO tools for website analysis. Although there are many alternatives to Google Analytics available, but still it continues to be the popular one. Here are the things Google Analytics can help you with:
● Content Analysis
● Analysis of user experience
● Campaign results and many more

6. Google Analytics Content Experiments

Google Analytics Content Experiments is the best tools for testing, measuring, and optimizing your website. In other words, you can test content, layout, headings and many more to meet the perfection. Therefore, this SEO tool plays a vital role in conversion rate optimization.

7. Google Keyword Planner

Keywords are the search terms that people are using to search for something on a search engine like Google. Google Keyword Planner is an amazing free SEO tool. It can be used to find suitable and relevant keywords for your website. You can use these keywords and optimize the content on your website and blog.

8. Google Correlate

Picking up the right keywords really matters, and that’s where this tool will help you. Google Correlate keeps you ahead of your competitors. Just like other SEO tools mentioned in this list, Google correlate is also a free tool. It provides detailed information on your keywords and greatly helps in keyword research.