Building backlinks can be time consuming and a fair bit more complicated than some other aspects of SEO work. Local SEO is optimizing your local online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches. The snack pack contains the top three businesses at the top, this list can be expanded. So, it pays off to be featured in both of these as they both draw traffic from people with different surfing habits. If your business is situated in an area that may not garner enough actual searches for any information to be generated on them, it advisable to widen your location modifier to a larger nearby city, as that will likely garner your website more traffic.
If you need Local SEO help from the professionals, get in contact with the award winning team here at Lead Genera to find out how we can help your business build its online presence. SEO tools are used to assist website owners in ranking higher in search engine results. SEO tools are used to analyze content on the internet for keywords, backlinks and other measurable data. In fact for every item on this list Google will have their own alternative. Need a website designed and developed by professionals, bolstered with the SEO expertise of a company with a proven track record of success?
Then talk to the professionals! At Lead Genera we pride ourselves on delivery proven measurable results in days not months! For more articles visit the Lead Genera Knowledge Hub.
Weekly marketing wisdom you can read in 5 minutes, for free. Add remarkable ideas and insights to your inbox, once a week, by subscribing to our newsletter. If you're serious about generating online leads, then you're probably using google adverts already. Around 63, searches take place on Google every second, and most of the search results pages include Google ads. They're useful…. If you own a business and you'd like to increase new leads, then Instagram Stories can be a useful tool.
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Many boiler companies struggle to generate leads for their business. Leads are a huge part of any company's success and when you don't have enough leads,…. What is SEO? Search engine optimisation SEO is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
These questions and more will be answered in this essential guide. Table of contents:. Next Post ». Do you need Assistance With Marketing? Consult with us. Sign up to our newsletter. Our Recent Posts. View All Posts. Many freelance SEO professionals choose to opt for an hourly pay structure. An hourly pay scheme is used by freelancers as a way to bolster their cash flow in between jobs. Hourly pay holds no real benefits for someone looking to employ SEO services as SEO takes several hours to complete, therefore this would be the least cost effective way of hiring SEO services.
This is probably the most popular method of payment used by agencies across the UK. Avoiding duplicate content is one of the most important SEO best practices to keep in mind.
If you run a small blog with a homepage and a bunch of blog posts, this rule is pretty easy to follow. Or use the canonical tag. Well, search engines pay close attention to the terms that you use in your title tag. This is why you want your keyword in your page title. But what you may not know is that Google also puts more emphasis on words and phrases that show up early in your title tag.
Yes, search engine optimization is important. But your title tags need to be useful for users too. Just include your keyword as early on as you can. So I just used my keyword as early as I could. Instead, you want to use one main keyword in your title. And, according to SEMRush , this page also ranks for different keywords. Instead, I optimized my page and title around ONE important keyword.
And Google largely took care of the rest. Write Compelling, Shareable Titles: Your title tags should make people want to click on your page to learn more.
When lots of people click on your result in Google, you can find yourself with higher rankings for that term. This is why, once my SEO stuff is taken care of, I then start optimizing my title for clicks and shares.
For example, this list of content marketing tools has an eye-catching title. If you are using a third party's widget to enrich the experience of your site and engage users, check if it contains any links that you did not intend to place on your site along with the widget. Some widgets may add links to your site which are not your editorial choice and contain anchor text that you as a website owner may not control. If removing such unwanted links from the widget is not possible, you can always disable them with nofollow.
If you create a widget for functionality or content that you provide, make sure to include the nofollow on links in the default code snippet. You can find more details about robots meta tags in our documentation. To tell Google not to follow or pass your page's reputation to the pages linked, set the value of the rel attribute of a link to nofollow or ugc. When would this be useful? If your site has a blog with public commenting turned on, links within those comments could pass your reputation to pages that you may not be comfortable vouching for.
Blog comment areas on pages are highly susceptible to comment spam. Nofollowing these user-added links ensures that you're not giving your page's hard-earned reputation to a spammy site. Many blogging software packages automatically nofollow user comments, but those that don't can most likely be manually edited to do this.
This advice also goes for other areas of your site that may involve user-generated content, such as guest books, forums, shout-boards, referrer listings, etc.
If you're willing to vouch for links added by third parties for example, if a commenter is trusted on your site , then there's no need to use nofollow on links; however, linking to sites that Google considers spammy can affect the reputation of your own site.
Semantic HTML markup helps crawlers find and process images. Provide a descriptive filename and alt attribute description for images. The alt attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason. Why use this attribute? If a user is viewing your site using assistive technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.
Another reason is that if you're using an image as a link, the alt text for that image will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. However, we don't recommend using too many images for links in your site's navigation when text links could serve the same purpose.
Lastly, optimizing your image filenames and alt text makes it easier for image search projects like Google Images to better understand your images. Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt text are best when they're short, but descriptive.
If you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine that you're writing anchor text for a text link. An Image sitemap can provide Googlebot with more information about the images found on your site.
This increases the likelihood that your images can be found in Google Images results. The structure of this file is similar to the XML sitemap file for your web pages. It's also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the file type. The world is mobile today. Most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. The desktop version of a site might be difficult to view and use on a mobile device.
As a result, having a mobile ready site is critical to your online presence. In fact, starting in late , Google has begun experiments to primarily use the mobile version of a site's content for ranking, parsing structured data, and generating snippets. There are multiple ways of making your website mobile ready and Google supports different implementation methods :.
After you have created a mobile-ready site, you can use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to check if pages on your site meet the criteria for being labeled mobile-friendly on Google Search result pages. You can also check out the Search Console Mobile Usability report to fix mobile usability issues affecting your site. If your site serves lots of static content like blog posts or product landing pages across multiple pages, consider implementing it using AMP Accelerated Mobile Pages.
It's a special flavor of HTML that ensures your site stays fast and user friendly, and can be further accelerated by various platforms, including Google Search. Regardless of which configuration you choose to set up your mobile site, take note of these key points:. While most of the links to your site will be added gradually, as people discover your content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard work you've put into your content.
Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site.
A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or services. Other website owners who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well. Putting effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can also be rewarding.
For example, if you have a business site, make sure its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the company's website. If you run a local business, adding its information to Google My Business will help you reach customers on Google Maps and Google Search. Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Chances are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource. Major search engines, including Google, provide tools for website owners to analyze their performance in their search engine. For Google, that tool is Search Console. Search Console provides two important categories of information: Can Google find my content?
How am I performing in Google Search results? Using Search Console won't help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search results. Microsoft's Bing Webmaster Tools also offers tools for website owners.
If you've improved the crawling and indexing of your site using Google Search Console or other services, you're probably curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this.
You can use these to:. For advanced users, the information an analytics package provides, combined with data from your server log files, can provide even more comprehensive information about how visitors are interacting with your documents such as additional keywords that searchers might use to find your site. You can find information about updates to Google Search, new Search Console features, and much more. Google Search Central Help Forum Post questions about your site's issues and find tips to create high quality sites from the product forum for website owners.
There are many experienced contributors in the forum, including Product Experts and occasionally Googlers. Google Search Central Twitter Follow us for news and resources to help you make a great site. Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.
For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Documentation Not much time? Beginner SEO Get started. Establish your business details with Google. Advanced SEO Get started. Documentation updates. Go to Search Console. Getting started Are you on Google? If your site isn't in Google Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that some sites will be missed. When our crawlers miss a site, it's frequently for one of the following reasons: The site isn't well connected from other sites on the web You've just launched a new site and Google hasn't had time to crawl it yet The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to crawl its content effectively Google received an error when trying to crawl your site Your policy blocks Google from crawling the site How do I get my site on Google?
Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself about your website when you get started. Is my website showing up on Google? Do I serve high-quality content to users? Is my local business showing up on Google? Is my content fast and easy to access on all devices? Is my website secure? Help Google find your content The first step to getting your site on Google is to be sure that Google can find it.
Tell Google which pages you don't want crawled For non-sensitive information, block unwanted crawling by using robots. Avoid: Letting your internal search result pages be crawled by Google. Users dislike clicking a search engine result only to land on another search result page on your site. Allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled. For sensitive information, use more secure methods A robots.
Help Google and users understand your content Let Google see your page the same way a user does When Googlebot crawls a page, it should see the page the same way an average user does. We also offer daily baseball news and events. Accurately describe the page's content Choose title text that reads naturally and effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.
Using default or vague text like "Untitled" or "New Page 1". Use the meta description tag A page's meta description tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about. What are the merits of meta description tags? Accurately summarize the page content Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your meta description tag as a snippet in a search result.
Avoid: Writing a meta description tag that has no relation to the content on the page. Using generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards". Filling the description with only keywords. Copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the meta description tag. Use unique descriptions for each page Having a different meta description tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain for example, searches using the site: operator.
Avoid: Using a single meta description tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages. Use heading tags to emphasize important text Use meaningful headings to indicate important topics, and help create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document. Imagine you're writing an outline Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.
Avoid: Placing text in heading tags that wouldn't be helpful in defining the structure of the page. Erratically moving from one heading tag size to another. Use headings sparingly across the page Use heading tags where it makes sense. Avoid: Excessive use of heading tags on a page. Very long headings. Using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure.
Add structured data markup Structured data is code that you can add to your sites' pages to describe your content to search engines, so they can better understand what's on your pages. You can mark up many business-relevant entities: Products you're selling Business location Videos about your products or business Opening hours Events listings Recipes Your company logo, and many more See a full list of supported content types.
Check your markup using the Rich Results Test Once you've marked up your content, you can use the Google Rich Results test to make sure that there are no mistakes in the implementation. Avoid: Using invalid markup. Use Data Highlighter and Markup Helper If you want to give structured markup a try without changing the source code of your site, you can use Data Highlighter , which is a tool integrated in Search Console that supports a subset of content types.
Avoid: Changing the source code of your site when you are unsure about implementing markup. Keep track of how your marked up pages are doing The various Rich result reports in Search Console shows you how many pages on your site we've detected with a specific type of markup, how many times they appeared in search results, and how many times people clicked on them over the past 90 days. Avoid: Adding markup data which is not visible to users. Creating fake reviews or adding irrelevant markups.
Manage your appearance in Google Search results Correct structured data on your pages also makes your page eligible for many special features in Google Search results, including review stars, fancy decorated results, and more. Organize your site hierarchy Understand how search engines use URLs Search engines need a unique URL per piece of content to be able to crawl and index that content, and to refer users to it.
Navigation is important for search engines The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. Plan your navigation based on your homepage All sites have a home or root page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors. Using breadcrumb lists A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page.
Create a simple navigational page for users A navigational page is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site.
Create a naturally flowing hierarchy Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Avoid: Creating complex webs of navigation links, for example, linking every page on your site to every other page. Going overboard with slicing and dicing your content so that it takes twenty clicks to reach from the homepage. Use text for navigation Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site.
Avoid: Having a navigation based entirely on images, or animations. Requiring script or plugin-based event-handling for navigation. Create a navigational page for users, a sitemap for search engines Include a simple navigational page for your entire site or the most important pages, if you have hundreds or thousands for users.
Avoid: Letting your navigational page become out of date with broken links.
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