Knowing the best digital marketing strategy to blow up your business makes entrepreneurship sweeter and less frustrating.
Today’s business owners embrace digital marketing, and startups aren’t left out.
In this post, I’ll focus more on startup businesses because most startup entrepreneurs usually find themselves at their wits’ end trying to familiarize themselves with the marketing environment.
Several reports have concluded that about 90% of startups fail, which is not surprising as startups usually struggle to succeed.
According to CBInsights, poor marketing is the primary reason for a low success rate for startups.
This further proves that employing the best digital marketing strategy in your products and services promotion, advertisement, and distribution processes will save your startup from failing and bring massive growth.
Also, marketing gets you in front of your target audience and allows your business to grow in reach and sales. And digital marketing is the best marketing option for any business in this century; it more than quadruples your growth chances.
However, marketing, especially digital marketing, can go wrong quickly, especially if the digital marketing strategy you are using isn’t compatible with your business model.
Nevertheless, you can get your startup to be included in the 10% of startups that don’t experience failure.
At the initial stage of any business, strategic decisions and plans are executed to grow the business. The goal of every startup is to grow, and this can only happen by being deliberate and conscious of the methods you have made to grow your business.
One of the strategic decisions you need to make is the type of digital marketing strategy to promote your business. Deciding on this can be a hassle, especially if you do not know much about digital marketing and its benefits.
If you are unclear on why digital marketing has the power to blow up your business, you should keep reading.
WHY YOU NEED A DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
Being knowledgeable about the importance of digital marketing in your startup will undoubtedly change the outlook of your business and help you make sound business decisions in terms of marketing.
Here are five (5) reasons why you need a digital marketing strategy for your startup:
1. Cost-effectiveness
Many startups feel digital marketing is not affordable for business promotion, and as a result, money is not conserved.
Contrarily, digital marketing is actually less costly than other marketing types. Marketing online saves money while possessing the ability to reach your potential customers even outside of your geographic location. It’s a win-win situation for you. You are relieved of the financial stress, which makes you focus on other important things with money demands.
2. Direction
Knowing what to do next and how to go about it with a digital marketing strategy becomes easier. This is because your track records of progress can easily be accessed and used to plan further or re-strategize the marketing procedures.
3. Integrity
People look out for businesses with integrity and credibility before they can be committed to using their products and services. Startups find it challenging to establish integrity and credibility as no one can vouch for them because they know little or nothing about them.
Digital marketing provides a platform through which you can build integrity and credibility with your customers.
Most digital marketing strategies allow you to have better communication with your customers, which in the long run helps gain the customers’ trust and give them more reasons to use your products and services
4. Exposure without boundaries.
The world going digital has made it much easier to reach people staying miles away from you. Adopting a digital marketing strategy guarantees getting your startup from the hideout into the limelight when it comes to business. This exposure will draw your potential customers to you, which will bring in the sales you desire.
5. Uniqueness
Most businesses have a lot of competition attached to it. Your startup will always have competitors: those with products and services relatable to yours and those who have been there longer than you.
Using digital marketing for your business can help distinguish it from other businesses.
HOW TO GET THE DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY THAT WILL WORK FOR YOU
Knowing that digital marketing can genuinely take your startup from the hideout into the limelight doesn’t rule out the necessity of getting to know which of the various digital marketing strategies is best for your business.
This is as important as knowing the importance of digital marketing. Understanding the type of digital strategy that is perfect for your startup will require you to consider these three points:
1. YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Your products and services have a specific target audience. For instance, assume that your startup deals with children’s clothes. This means that your marketing strategy will focus on reaching the parents of these children because, of course, they are the ones with the credit card to pay for your product.
Also, because you deal with clothes, you will need to invest more in a digital marketing strategy that allows you to engage your audience with a lot of visual content and that also allows a variety of payment options.
Having clarity on your products and services leads to understanding your target audience, so it is essential to have a niche and not just sell different products and services.
2. AUDIENCE
Once you know who your target audience is, the next thing is to discover where to find them.
In a 2009 study on media, Nielsen reported that kids spent less time watching TV as they grew older and gravitated more toward the internet. This media report implies that marketing to teenagers through TV commercials won’t yield effective results.
You need to find where your target audience spends most of their time and use that as a tool to get the best strategy in marketing your products and services. It creates ease in planning and lets you know the exact digital marketing strategy that will be the most effective, whether email marketing, content marketing, or social media marketing.
3. CONSISTENCY
It is quite beautiful to see startups identify the target audience for their products or services. However, being consistent in marketing is crucial, and remember, consistency is the rule of the game.
Almost half of SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) spend less than two hours per week on marketing efforts. For these kinds of businesses, underinvesting in marketing can be fatal.
For startups and SMBs, marketing should be given priority.
Before you can conclude that a particular marketing strategy did not produce results like you thought it would, you need to verify that you gave it the proper attention and consistency it needed to grow and yield profit.
DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR STARTUPS
We will explore the top 4 digital marketing strategies you can employ to blow up your startup and become successful.
89% of small businesses believe that SEO is an effective digital marketing tactic. According to them, having a website (blog marketing) and utilizing SEO is critical for startups.
Note that for a startup business to utilize SEO fully, it needs to have a website and not just any kind of website but an SEO-optimized website.
A startup must have a website through which SEO marketing can function.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means optimizing your content for search engines.
With the proper use of keywords and creating high-quality content, you can inform search engines that your website is informative and trustworthy.
SEO ticks off the advantages of digital marketing, from cost-effectiveness to exposure.
I talked a lot about how a business owner in this century can utilize SEO effectively in my blogging for business owner course, including setting up a payment gateway on your website.
Underestimating the importance of blogging and SEO by businesses has contributed to startup failures that we see today.
Starting a business, getting capital, establishing a consistent customer base, and all the hurdles of most startups can easily be overcome using blog marketing and SEO.
SEO is a cheap way of attracting traffic to your website and increasing your leads, and it helps boost your presence and visibility on the internet.
Once a post on your website can rank high on a search engine’s algorithm, you will get traffic to your startup website. SEO marketing is a strategy, and you can hack this marketing strategy if you can grasp how it functions.
Additionally, having a website means exploring other ways to make money. So, not only is this a short-term marketing strategy, but it is also an investment with a very high ROI.
2. Content marketing:
Many business owners in emerging markets downplay why content marketing is important, not knowing it is vital for their business growth.
Retaining your customers as a startup or a large-scale business is crucial and definitely more important than getting them.
As soon as the doors open and you have an interaction with any of them, securing these customers should be your utmost priority at that moment. And one easy way of retaining customers is content marketing.
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that does not directly position your products or services out to be accessed, but this strategy flaunts the relevance, value, and benefits of your products and services to attract your customers.
So, while this marketing doesn’t scream the words, ‘Come and buy’ or ‘Use this product’, it lures you gradually into taking this same action but only through creating content relevant to your business.
I especially love content marketing because it caters to the needs of your audience at different stages of the sales funnel. Read more here.
Be assured that your startup can blow by employing this digital marketing strategy.
Another effective digital marketing strategy that will cause massive growth for your startup is the use of social media.
Entrepreneurs underinvest in their social media platforms when utilizing blog marketing, content marketing, and SEO, which is a big mistake.
With the need to socialize and get entertained, humans will always be found on social media platforms. So, your startup can easily influence its potential customers on social media.
And the majority of social media platforms, if not all, are built to engage with people. Your social media platforms should give your clients access to the behind-the-scenes of your business, get an insight into your personality, and share their thoughts and opinions with you.
The trick here is to come off as entertaining, sociable, and interactable.
Technology has even made it easier by creating options to share your content across several platforms. This is something that you should use as an entrepreneur.
Several social media platforms are available for business owners, such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Note that you have to know your target audience and where they are mostly found before deciding which platform to use. And if you can be consistent across several social media platforms, all the better!
There are also several social media plugins you can use on your website that will help you integrate your content for social media.
After your startup gets a handful of customers, you will not be able to keep track of them directly, which is where email marketing comes in.
Email marketing involves sending promotions, special offers, festival greetings, and discounts to your customer’s mailbox. You can also send congratulatory messages on special occasions like birthdays depending on which of your customers’ data you have in your database.
You create a mail list through several methods and start effective email marketing.
This strategy will help you build relationships and retain customers while maintaining your credibility and trust, which are vital for every startup.
These four digital marketing strategies are more than enough for your startup when effectively utilized.
When you use any digital marketing strategy, you must keep up to date with changes that are applied to them as technology keeps evolving.
As a startup entrepreneur, it is easy to get intimidated sometimes. You tend to see the competition and wonder if your products and services can ever gain visibility. Always remember that the big competitors you see out there were once startups like yours.
The ability to learn the best digital marketing strategies for your startup from this blog post will set you on the path to having massive growth in a few years.
“There are two ways to look for someone in the dark; you either shine a light on the person and walk towards them or shine a light on yourself and let the person walk towards you.” Guess what? Performing blog marketing for business growth shines light on you so your audience can see you.
Interesting, right?
The world seems to be evolving daily, with literally everyone intending to become an entrepreneur, own a personal brand and bring in big bucks!
Owning a brand may come easy, but growing it takes a lot of intentionality and strategies. Gradually, blog marketing is becoming a breakthrough marketing strategy for every business owner in this century.
As a business owner, you must understand that businesses don’t grow accidentally, especially in their early stages. You as a business owner take intentional steps to ensure the growth of your brand.
It is safe to say that for a business to grow, deliberate growth strategies are implemented to ensure the company is moving in the right direction.
If you have a small business or want to scale up your startup, then this subject of business growth is relevant for you. Mind you; this post isn’t the usual craft of a story or a post on a blog piece you see on the internet; this blog post is a well-researched and thought-out piece.
You are probably at that stage where you understand that you need to count your steps and weigh your options.
This is where measuring brand growth comes into the picture. Measuring brand growth can include increased income, increased visibility, increased brand engagement, increased reach/awareness, among others. Still, the goal is to reach more people and bring in more money.
There are several growth strategies you can implement for your brand, including social media marketing, reputation management, video marketing, partnership, paid media, blog marketing, brand awareness, and so much more, but for today, we will be talking more about blog marketing and how it affects your brand growth.
What is blog marketing?
Blog marketing is simply a content marketing strategy that uses the blog channel to address potential customers’ needs directly and individually, thus achieving brand trust and customer loyalty.
Some also refer to blog marketing as business blogging, but they are two different words.
Business blogging is the use of a blog to promote a business. But, the goal of each is to market your product/service to your target audience and increase your income, brand awareness, and customer base in return.
In blog marketing, it is not about creating generic content; the goal is to create helpful content for your audience and gain their trust via blogging.
Safe to say, the contents that might work for brand A and its audience might not work for brand B and its audience.
Over the years, blogging has evolved from a pen scheme to a marketing and growth scheme, making business owners see reasons to add it to their business growth model. With blogging having grown over time, many people have made and created businesses from blogging all on their own. Examples are lifestyle bloggers, food bloggers, travel bloggers, blogging coaches, business bloggers, etc.
The more advanced a country is, the easier it becomes to earn from blogging as well. In some countries, bloggers face various limitations, as seen in our recent blog post, but some still find a way to move away from the disadvantages and focus on the advantages.
With the incorporation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, blogging is a powerful business marketing tool and not a waste of time as some see it.
In recent times, research shows that more brands are leaning towards the blog marketing strategy to grow.
Why is this?
Because they now understand where their audience is and how they search for what they need, aka SEO & Keyword search.
Gone are the days when brands rely on social media marketing to grow their brand; these days, blog marketing is topping the charts, especially for startups and even global brands.
However, note your brand goals and defined objectives before choosing blog marketing as your strategy.
At the initial stage of blog marketing, it is vital to draft your marketing plans before jumping straight to implementation. When you have your marketing plans; then you integrate your content into the marketing plans. By doing this, you’ve done a thorough research on what your audience needs, how to attend to their needs and you are sure to see RESULTS!
What then is a business growth model?
A business growth model is a strategic and practical action plan a company or business must develop to grow, remain profitable, or even survive.
At different stages of your business development, you need an action plan depending on the business needs.
For example, your business growth model could look like this
YEAR 1 – Build brand awareness + trust
YEAR 2 – Increase brand awareness + trust
YEAR 3 – Launch products/services
YEAR 4 – Business growth take-off
YEAR 5 – Keep building brand trust, influence, and income
There is usually a dependence on marketing strategies in most growth model strategies because the marketing sales funnel is activated during the process. You shouldn’t begin selling if your business can’t be trusted or you aren’t sure if it’s trusted.
For every step of your business growth model, you need blog marketing, With your blog, you create content that shows your audience how much of an expert you are and how much you care about their needs hence building trust and brand awareness.
Once you’ve built trust, you can then begin to SELL.
And, if you don’t market your product or services, people won’t even know about them, and the sales channels you have put in place won’t be activated.
The goal is to boost your business’s revenue with an excellent product launch, sales, and profitability achieved by maintaining costs hence the vitality of blog marketing.
I know you might be wondering what the huge deal is about blog marketing and why I am causing such a stir.
Take a look at these five shocking reasons why blog marketing is essential in your business growth model as a brand/business owner.
Importance of blog marketing in your business growth model.
It creates an avenue for increased revenue: With blog marketing, you can explore different avenues to generate extra revenue for your business or brand aside from your main products. This can be through promoting products from other business in your industry, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, etc.
In addition, you also increase your brand and product by promoting your products/services through your blog posts and SEO incorporated blog marketing. Either way, your blog is gaining visibility, which increases your revenue if appropriately managed.
It positions your business as an authority in your industry: When you incorporate blog marketing into your brand growth model, it sets your business as an authority, i.e., a thought leader in your industry. You gain client trust in the process, and soon, your business becomes the go-to brand for ideas in your industry for potential clients and existing clients. Anything you say or do becomes a model for others. Little secret: customers prefer experts who have proof of their expertise.
It drives traffic to your website: If your website is your major sales funnel, let’s say you operate an e-commerce store, then you need a blog marketing strategy ASAP. One good thing about this is that the traffic you get on your website is also felt on your social media pages if adequately structured. According to inbound marketing experts, Hubspot businesses that blog regularly tend to attract 55% more traffic than those that don’t. Other marketing channels are also activated through blog marketing, such as email, social media, influencer, and paid advertising.
It helps to build your brand voice: Another great thing blog marketing does for your business growth is that it enables you to discover your brand voice and develop it. Your brand voice is the defined personality your brand takes on in its communication. Simply put, it is the voice that makes your brand stand out in its unique way. It helps you stand out from the crowd and noise of social media. You discover the tone of your blog as you grow. You also identify your audience and their persona.
Lastly, it promotes long-term results: If you recall, at the beginning of the benefits of blog marketing, I talked about being placed as an authority in your industry; that happens if you consistently create valuable and educational content for your audience. You will also receive new traffic and leads from your audience for an extended period. Also, prospective clients following your content are indirectly propelled towards the sales funnel with sufficient knowledge of your product and services. This strategy promotes long-term results because your sales channels are activated as long as you remain an authority in your field.
One of the reasons marketers refer to blogging as a long-term game is that one doesn’t see blogging results immediately, but the longer you keep at it, the higher the stability and leads.
You can implement several blog marketing strategies to help grow your brand/business: from guest blogging to email marketing to virtual events. However, each strategy has its challenges but definite results!
To determine which of these blog marketing strategies is compatible with your blog niche and brand voice, you need to consider factors such as preferences, target audience, availability, commitment, and consistency.
You can book a session with Ruth Adeyemi for a more in-depth discussion on the blog marketing strategy that best fits your brand.
You will agree that there’s always a part of SEO that isn’t ‘techy’ but not basic.
SEO analysis was something I wasn’t too keen on, but I needed to learn because it is the key to every good SEO strategy.
I always include SEO analysis and reports when working with clients and for my brand. If not, how will you measure your growth? How do you keep track of changes in the algorithm?
You can do many things with a proper SEO analysis of your site and blog.
Are you looking for how to make SEO analysis simple? Read on!
What Is SEO Analysis?
SEO analysis is the process of evaluating your website to discover SEO issues and evaluate your SEO strategies’ effectiveness.
With SEO analysis, you can better understand how your website is faring and the specific corrections you need to make to your strategies. So, you are not making a wide guess; you know where your SEO is hurting and can diagnose it accurately.
You can discover issues that range from low-ranking content and spammy backlinks to site security and crawlability issues.
SEO analysis is like playing doctor with your website as the patient.
Some website owners outsource SEO analysis and reporting to SEO agencies. This idea is usually good if the SEO issues with your website are more technical than content-related or something you can fix easily.
There was a time when I had to contact a technical SEO expert to work on my website, and he did a fantastic job. He even worked on areas of SEO that I didn’t know were important.
However, you must understand SEO analysis to the extent that you do not need to contact an expert for all the issues you discover.
Why SEO Analysis Is Important
Knowing what SEO analysis is can give you an insight into its importance. But I am here to provide you with even more reasons why you need an SEO analysis for your website:
a. Measures the effectiveness of SEO strategies
Imagine you paid huge money to learn SEO from an expert; maybe you even signed up for one of our SEO services! How would you know if the actions you’ve taken on your site are effective?
How much difference is your SEO strategy making on your website’s performance?
This is why you need to understand SEO analysis because it allows you to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategies.
b. Pinpoints holes in your strategy
Aside from knowing how effective your SEO strategies are, SEO analysis also shows you the optimization errors on your website. It shows you the exact problem with your website and content.
It doesn’t just tell you that you have a hole but also where it is.
c. Helps you rank higher
SEO analysis indirectly helps you rank higher organically because most tools will show you the problem and suggest how to improve it.
Showing you what to change allows you to correct essential issues that reduce your ranking potential.
d. Achieves your goals faster
Achieving your SEO goals is faster when you schedule time for site analysis. You don’t have to guess or skim around the main issues; you know precisely what is wrong and the action you must take to rectify it.
e. Increases your competitiveness
Website analysis allows you to spy into your competitor’s data and discover the keywords they are ranking for, where they get their backlinks, and the content gaps between your site and theirs.
This valuable insight allows you to match content strategy with competition and even outdo them.
f. Algorithm update alert
By carrying out analysis on your website, you can notice changes that are caused by Google algorithm updates. This helps you to know what part of your content needs to be updated to fit the algorithm changes.
g. Makes optimization easy
SEO analysis makes optimization easy by giving you actionable insight into your website’s code, content, and structure. It also helps you understand your keywords’ performance in real-time and search rankings.
There is no exact time to analyze your website; you can schedule site analysis based on how often you change your strategy.
You can also do an SEO analysis when you notice these things:
Declining traffic
If you notice a consistent decline in your site’s traffic and conversion, it might be due to the SEO issues with your content and site. It could be due to bad content, low page speed, or crawlability problems.
Content not being indexed
If you want to know which of your pages Google has indexed, you can search with this “site:domain.com.”
It shows you all the pages on your website Google has indexed. If the number of search results shown does not tally with the amount of content you have, you have indexing issues, and it is time for SEO analysis.
If the number of search results is smaller than expected, your pages are not being indexed. If it is more, it probably means you have several indexed duplicate pages.
High bounce rates
A high bounce rate is usually a result of low page speed and bad content structure. A detailed analysis will show you the pages with high bounce rates and what you can do to reduce these rates.
So, if you notice your site visits have a high bounce rate, you must analyze your site.
Types of SEO Analysis
To perform a site analysis, you have to understand that there are different types of SEO analysis.
Here are the different types of SEO analysis and issues you will often encounter under them:
1. Technical SEO analysis
This is an analysis of the technical health of your website.
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the part of SEO that directly or indirectly affects the ability of web crawlers to crawl and index your website and improve organic rankings.
It also involves certain aspects of your website that can affect user experience.
Technical SEO is also essential for your content to get to your audience. You don’t want all the investments in your content to go to waste.
Technical SEO analysis checklist
To do a technical SEO analysis of your website, these are the relevant things you need to check:
i. Crawlability and Indexing
This is the most crucial aspect of your analysis. If your website’s content isn’t crawlable, then whatever you do goes down the drain.
If your content is not being crawled, it simply means Google can’t rank them.
These are some of your site’s data that are relevant to the crawlability and indexing of your pages:
5xx error code:
5xx error codes are server-based error codes that prevent a user from accessing specific pages on your site.
If web crawlers come across pages with 5xx errors, they can remove them from the search index, meaning that your page will rank less, and you’ll lose traffic.
Robots.txt files are code files that tell web crawlers the URL of pages you want to crawl.
It does not mean that robots.txt files can keep a page out of Google. According to Google developers, if other pages use descriptive texts to point to a page with a robots.txt file, Google can still index that URL without visiting the page.
Instead, you use these files to manage the crawler traffic to your website to prevent the crawling of unimportant pages.
When performing SEO analysis, you will sometimes see issues affecting your robots.txt files, including missing robots.txt files, format errors, blocked internal resource issues, etc.
XML sitemaps list the important pages on your website and show them to Google crawlers. It is like a map for your web pages, allowing Google to find them quicker.
Sitemaps make it easier for web crawlers to understand your website’s structure and ensure all your important pages are crawled.
Add them to your Google Search Console account to ensure Google finds your sitemaps.
Whenever you need to check your sitemaps, you can go to the ‘sitemap’ section on the page and check if Google has indexed all the pages in your sitemap.
Most SEO analysis tools like Ubersuggest, AISEO, SEMrush, and others will clearly show you the crawlability issues with your websites.
They also give suggestions and additional information to help you understand each report, like this example from SEMrush SEO Analyzer:
ii. Site Security
The primary issue with a website’s security is usually the use of encrypted HTTPS protocol. However, there are other security issues aside from your SSL certificate.
You will see the SEO issues on your site, including your site’s security status.
SEMrush’s SEO Analyzer also does a good SEO analysis for websites, and you can use it to check your website’s security and HTTPS status.
Here are ways you can make your site’s security better:
Get an SSL certificate for your website.
Redirect all HTTP pages to HTTPS.
Make sure your security protocols are up to date.
All your subdomains should support SNI.
All your pages are secured.
All your plugins are updated.
Prevent SQL injections.
Back up your data.
Protect against DDoS attacks.
Download only secure plugins.
iii. Site Speed
If your website isn’t loading fast, chances are you are losing many visitors. Site speed is a crucial ranking factor because it directly affects user experience on your site.
Using your SEO analysis tool, you can check how fast the average page on your site loads.
The easiest way, however, is to use Google PageSpeed Insights. It will show you the most crucial issues relevant to your SEO strategy and what you are doing right!
This is an essential part of your on-page SEO analysis because mobile optimization is a key ranking factor on Google.
Most users surf the internet from their cell phones, making it crucial.
You can easily check if a page is usable on mobile devices using Google’s mobile-friendly test. However, to check and monitor the mobile optimization status for your entire site, you need to use the Google Search Console or your SEO analysis tool of choice.
How to optimize your site for mobile devices:
Use responsive designs.
Improve your page speed.
Use mobile-friendly themes.
Avoid intrusive interstitials.
Do mobile testing for your website.
Enable lazy loading.
Enable browser caching.
Use AMP markups.
Compress images.
Decrease HTTP requests.
v. Core Web Vitals
This technical SEO factor also affects the performance of your website to users, which means that these factors also directly affect user experience on your site.
It is a new ranking factor and a group of metrics that prioritizes user experience.
Using Google’s PageSpeed Insights shows your performance scores for these factors. You can also get your Core Web Vitals using the Google Search Console.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint is the loading performance of your website, which measures how fast your web page’s main content loads. Ideally, a good LCP should be within 2.5 seconds of loading.
In these 2.5 seconds, LCP should span 75% of all web pages on your site.
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay is the Core Web Vital that measures interactivity, i.e., how fast your site responds to a user’s interaction.
It captures the load responsiveness of each user on your site and is to be within 100 milliseconds of clicking.
It means the time it takes for a user to click on an icon on your page and the browser’s response to loading the destination page is crucial to SEO.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift measures the visual stability of your web pages. When elements shift during viewpoint, it is referred to as layout shifts.
CLS measures how much of the visual elements shifted on your page and the distance they were shifted.
All layout shifts are expected to occur within 500 milliseconds of a user’s input.
2. On-page SEO analysis
This is an analysis of your content; it evaluates the performance of your content both to search engines and users.
What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to the processes involved in optimizing your web pages. Unlike technical SEO, which deals with the website in general, on-page SEO has to do with the content of a web page.
According to Search Engine Journal, on-page SEO includes headlines, HTML tags, links, keywords, and images.
You need to check some relevant data to conduct an on-page SEO analysis of your website. You can get an in-depth insight into your content’s health using a good SEO analyzer.
However, if your SEO analyzer allows you to manually check specific SEO attributes of your site, look out for the following:
i. Cannibalization
Cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on your website have the same or similar keywords. This means that two or more pages are competing for traffic within the same site.
Google will get confused about which pages to rank for a search query, and rather than selecting just one of them, it shares ranking across all the pages with similar keywords.
When you discover cannibalization from pages on your site, you can redirect weaker pages to a main one or combine all the pages and create a single source page for that topic.
Meta Description is a summarized version of your blog post on the search engine result page for a searcher’s query. They are essential for organic traffic because they can be the deciding factor for a user to click your post leading to high CTR.
You can use SEO analyzers to determine if your meta description is optimized for engines and users.
Crawling my website on AIOSEO Analyzer shows me all the critical SEO issues I have on my website, including a lengthy meta description, alt attribute issues, and even header tag issues.
iv. Formatting
Formatting relates to how your content is arranged to make it readable for users.
It includes using header tags and images to make content easily skimmable.
Header tags:
You need to have appropriate header tags for your content.
For example, you cannot use an H1 tag twice on your content. H1 tags are usually reserved for headlines and appear only once on a page.
Image audit:
You should optimize all the images used on your page; you shouldn’t have low-quality or high-sized images that will slow down your page speed.
Most SEO analyzers will show you the readability of your pages.
However, if you are using a hosting provider like WordPress, you can see the readability of each post from the backend of your website before they are uploaded to the internet.
v. Links
Links are essential to SEO; they show search engines that your content is valuable enough to be referenced by others in your niche.
External links:
External links are links to other websites from your site. It shows you respect other experts’ opinions and are all about value for your readers, making search engines tag your content as reliable.
Internal links:
Internal links are links to other pages on your website that help search engines better understand your site structure and contents.
My website’s SEO analysis on AISEO Analyzer shows I have an uneven ratio between my internal and external links.
While this might not directly affect ratings, there should be a good balance between your internal and external links.
Some of the common link issues on your website can include the following:
This analyzes other factors outside your website that can affect your SEO health.
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO is the actions taken outside of your site that may directly or indirectly affect your rankings on search result pages.
Off-page SEO is important for Google to determine your brand trustworthiness beyond your blog posts. It considers factors such as brand mentions and backlinks from websites in your niche.
Off-page SEO analysis checklist
Here are the most important off-page SEO factors to consider when doing an SEO analysis on your site:
i. Backlinks
Backlinks are links to your site from relevant websites in your niche. You need to develop a link-building strategy for your website to get credible backlinks.
Backlinks are one of Google’s top ranking factors. Based on the new way Google’s algorithm is tailored, websites with high domain authority are prioritized for search results, mainly when the searcher uses voice search.
High domain authority shows your level of experience, expertise, authority, and trust (E-E-A-T) in your niche, aligning with Google’s guidelines for determining content quality.
NOTE: The fact that you have a low domain authority does not mean you cannot rank for organic results. SARMLife’s current domain authority is 11, yet we have had posts ranking above relevant sites in the SEO industry.
Domain authority contributes to top ranks, especially when it’s YMYL content, but Google ranks web pages, not websites.
Here are some major backlink issues you can see on your website:
No backlinks
Spammy links
Links from spammy sites
Press release links
Random nofollow links
You can check for backlink issues with your website using your favorite SEO analyzers like Ubersuggest, Ahref, SEMrush, and others.
ii. Local SEO
This is an essential off-page SEO for businesses. You need to optimize your website for local searches.
Using the Moz Local tool, you can get valuable insight into how your business is faring in local directories and social media platforms, including Google searches, Google Maps, Facebook, Bing, Foursquare, etc.
4. Traffic analysis
Analyze the visitors coming to your site and find ways to improve your SEO strategies.
What is traffic analysis?
Traffic analysis is an analysis of the visitors coming to your website. It shows you details on organic and paid results, the source of traffic, and user interactions on your website.
The best tools to use for traffic analysis are Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These tools show you in-depth information as efficiently as possible and give you information on each metric’s significance.
Traffic analysis metrics
You get to see many metrics on your analytics tool that are impossible to mention.
Here are some of these metrics:
Total clicks
New users
Gender
Traffic source
Browers
Pages
Devices
Countries
Total impression
Average CTR
Average position
How to Perform SEO Analysis on Your Website
Now that you know the essential things to look out for in an analysis, what is the best process for conducting an SEO analysis on your website?
Do you go to the SEO analyzer and type in your domain? How do you make an effective SEO analysis? The end goal of an analysis is not just to know what is wrong with your SEO strategy but also to fix it.
To perform SEO analysis on your website, follow this process:
a. Set your goals.
Before analyzing your site for SEO issues, you must have your goals down. What do you want to achieve? What are the major SEO challenges you need to address?
When you have a goal, staying focused on the metrics you need to track is more effortless.
b. Decide your metrics.
When you do an SEO analysis, you will see many metrics and factors; they are so many that one can get distracted and curious about the numerous figures and data.
This is why the first step is essential. When you know your SEO goal, you will be able to understand the exact metrics that are relevant to you.
c. Choose your tool.
What SEO analyzer tool do you prefer?
Numerous SEO analyzers can give you in-depth insight into your site’s SEO health.
However, you need to consider different factors:
Pros and cons of each tool:
Some tools prioritize and are great at analyzing specific aspects of SEO but are weak in some other areas. Your tool choice will depend on your goal and the SEO analyzer’s ability to carry it out.
Budget:
The free features of most SEO analyzers are okay, but if you want a more detailed analysis, you must be ready to pay for it.
The prices also vary, so consider the amount you can spare for the analysis.
Experience:
Depending on how experienced you are, the user interface of some tools is easy to understand, even without technical knowledge. However, some require a certain level of expertise to understand and navigate.
d. Crawl your website.
This part is pretty much automated. All you need to do is to insert your domain name in your tool, and it will crawl all the pages on your website to detect SEO issues that it might have.
I often enjoy SEO analyzers that highlight the parts I am doing well and not just focus on the issues on the site.
e. Effect corrections.
Usually, your SEO tool will give you suggestions on each issue and how you can make it better. If the tool you use doesn’t, I suggest you switch.
These suggestions are effortless most of the time. However, some suggestions involve coding, and you might have to outsource.
f. Review your website.
When you are done making the corrections, it is best to run another diagnosis on the site to see if these corrections have been updated on the web. You can also test manually on your device.
For example, if you worked on page speed or mobile optimization issues, you can check whether these have been rectified on your device.
g. Create an action plan.
You will have discovered fundamental issues in your SEO strategy from the analysis. The next thing to do is to create an action plan to avoid future occurrences.
It might mean changes in your content writing processes, intentional link building, or image optimization.
Your action plan should indicate what to do, how, and when to do it.
h. Implement the strategies.
Implement these strategies continuously and also make sure to stay updated regarding industry changes that affect SEO.
NOTE: You can always outsource your SEO analysis to an expert.
SEO Analysis Report
After carrying out a thorough analysis of your SEO health, the next thing to do is to draw up a report. It doesn’t matter if you are doing the analysis yourself or from an agency; it is crucial to have an analysis to track your progress better.
What is an SEO report?
An SEO report summarizes the SEO issues discovered on a website that shows how a website performs over time.
SEO reports are relatively easy to create, and most SEO analysis tools automatically generate a report for your analysis.
For example, when I used the AIOSEO analyzer to analyze my website, I got a 13-page detailed report that included the issues and the solutions. It also had details like the date and categories.
It even had a table of content!
Features of an SEO report
If you are making an SEO report for yourself or a client, here are some features to keep in mind:
i. Easy to understand
SEO reports are meant to be easy to understand, even for an SEO baby; it doesn’t need to be filled with many technical terms.
ii. Focuses on a few metrics
Your report should highlight the few and most important metrics. If you need to include more metrics, you can use umbrella words.
iii. Outlines issues
Clearly state the SEO issues that are relevant to your SEO goals. The issues are more than just metrics and data; an SEO report should clearly state what issues each data represents.
iv. Recommendations
Give recommendations for each of the highlighted issues. How do you expect them to be solved, tools that can be used, and the time it will take to see results?
v. Outlines results over time
For each analysis, ensure to include both expected and seen results over time.
Importance of an SEO report
SEO reports are vital, and aside from the fact that they allow you to access relevant data regarding your SEO health easily, they also enable effortless communication between you and your clients.
Also, with SEO reports, you highlight the critical metrics, allowing you to review months of evaluation in record time. You don’t need to waste time reviewing a metric only to realize it isn’t relevant to your goals.
What metrics should be highlighted in an SEO report?
The metrics that need to be highlighted in an SEO report depend on the SEO goals of the clients. If all the client wants is to increase traffic, the highlighted metrics will differ from those focused more on conversion.
However, specific metrics are essential to a website’s SEO health regardless of the goal. For example, if you want conversions, you must attract enough traffic.
No matter what the client’s SEO goals are, there are some metrics every client will want to know about their website. These metrics include:
Overall SEO score
Organic traffic
Keyword ranking
Backlinks
Domain authority
New visits
The list can vary, so you can ask your client if they have any specific metric they would love to see in the report.
Here are some other metrics that can be based on the client’s goals:
Conversions
Content gap
Backlinks
Traffic sources
Dwell time
Top Tools for SEO Analysis and Report
These are my top tools for carrying out SEO analysis and report:
1. Ahref’s SEO Analyzer
Ahref’s SEO analyzer is an advanced SEO resource tool that analyzes your website’s elements and shows you technical SEO issues, link analysis, and how specific pages are faring on your site. Some of its main features are content explorer, keywords explorer, site auditing, and site explorer.
Pricing:
Trial Period – $7 for 7 days
Lite Plan – $99/month
Standard Plan – $179/month
Advanced Plan – $399/month
Agency Plan – $999/month
2. Ubersuggest.
Ubersuggest is a freemium SEO tool that allows you to crawl your website in minutes and generate a detailed analysis. It helps you check performance and technical issues affecting your website and gives suggestions to make your site more SEO-friendly.
Pricing:
Free version
Premium Plan
Individual Plan – $12/month
Business Plan – $20/month
Agency Plan – $40/month
Lifetime access
Individual Plan – $120
Business Plan – $200
Agency Plan – $400
3. AIOSEO
AIOSEO analyzer allows you to discover SEO issues affecting your website effortlessly, gives you information on the data, and shows you how to fix it. It also gives you a detailed SEO report showing the places needing improvement.
The icing on the cake is that this tool also gives a free SEO audit to ensure your website’s SEO issues are fixed!
Pricing: Free
4. Google Search Console
Arguably one of the best SEO analyzer tools, Google Search Console allows you to analyze your site from scratch and helps you identify crawl errors, keyword rankings, mobile responsiveness, indexed pages, and even show metrics important to your SERP rankings.
To use the Google Search Console, you must confirm that the domain is yours through DNS verification. You can also select analyzing the entire domain or a single URL.
Pricing: Free
5. Google Analytics
Some people pair using Google Analytics with Google Search Console, which is good, especially when you cannot afford the paid version of Google Analytics.
This tool focuses on customers and allows you to filter your search sources, determine your engagement metrics and identify pages on your site that lead to conversion and those that don’t.
Pricing: Free
6. SEObility
SEObility free SEO checker is another SEO analysis tool that checks if your site complies with search engine guidelines. It analyzes your website for technical errors, meta information analysis, link structure, and server errors.
It also gives you tips on optimizing your website for future success in SEO. With SEObility SEO checker, you can access 1,000 subpage audits, alerts, keyword monitoring, and email reporting.
Pricing: Free
Screaming Frog
This is one of the tested and trusted analysis tools out there.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider helps you to crawl your website for crawl issues. It can carry out big-scale analyses of larger websites.
Pricing:
Free version
Paid Plan – €149/month
8. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the biggest SEO analyzer tools trusted by big brands like Tesla, Walmart, and even Forbes. SEMrush’s SEO Toolkit allows users to track keywords, build links, and conduct keyword analysis and competitive analysis.
It covers things from content marketing to PPC and social media marketing.
Pricing:
Pro Plan – $119.95/month
Guru Plan – $229.95/month
Business Plan – $449.95/month
9. SEOptimer
SEOptimer is an SEO analysis and reporting tool that checks over 70 data or metrics. It covers on-page SEO analysis, backlink analysis, usability, performance, and local SEO analysis.
It also helps you create customized white-label SEO audits and conduct keyword research.
Pricing:
Trial Period – 14 days free trial
Paid – $19.99/month
10. Moz Pro
Moz Pro offers a range of recharge tools that help with SEO, including crawling up to 3,000 links for a given URL to search for errors influencing your SEO health. It also allows you to track growth, build reports, and identify SEO opportunities for your site.
Pricing:
Trial Period – 30 days free trial
Standard Plan – $99/month
Medium Plan – $149/month
Large Plan – $249/month
Premium Plan – $599/month
Final Thoughts
The best strategy for your SEO analysis is to ensure you have a goal in mind. It makes it easier to understand what metrics to look out for and how you can measure your growth.
It’s also okay for you to outsource the SEO analysis of your website, and it doesn’t mean you are less of a blogger. Sometimes, you need to work with a professional SEO marketer or agency because some issues are more technical and severe than others.
For SEO reporting, it’s necessary to do it for the sake of records and to make your metrics more accessible. It’s like a summary book that you can quickly review to get facts or quick reminders.
Overall, you want to ensure your SEO content strategy is in place and that you are not going against any of Google’s guidelines on your website.
How often do you carry out SEO analysis on your website?
Google introduces hundreds of Google algorithm updates yearly.
These updates include minor and major updates that can affect your post rank on search engine result pages.
How do you stay updated? Which algorithm update will affect your SEO strategy, and how exactly will it affect your ranking? More importantly, how do you maintain and improve your ranking despite these updates?
The answer to these questions starts with understanding the role of the Google algorithm in satisfying a searcher’s query and how its updates are based on increasing satisfaction.
If you’ve tried a recent search, you’ll notice how images, long-form, and short-form videos are now a part of Google’s search engine result page.
Not to talk of featured snippets.
These are just a few algorithms updates Google rolls out yearly and their impacts on how searches are answered or displayed.
To simplify Google’s algorithm, I’ll take you through how Google Search works, how Google determines top-ranking pages, and major algorithm updates that have affected and keep affecting SEO.
What is Google Algorithm?
Google Algorithm is the process Google uses to determine how to rank content on a search engine result page.
To put it more technically, it means the compendium of factors and systems that Google uses to determine the worthiness of content against other competitors. It determines which of the millions of web pages is the most relevant and authoritative for each query.
These factors include backlinks, keywords, user experience, content, website structure, etc.
Three (3) Stages of Google Search
According to Google developers, Google Search is a “fully automated search engine that uses software known as web crawlers that explore the web regularly to find pages to add to their index.”
This means when you upload web pages on your site, web crawlers will crawl the web to determine which pages should be indexed into the Google library. However, there is no guarantee that your page will be crawled, indexed, or served even if you follow the search essentials.
There are three stages of a Google search, and your pages need to go through all these stages before you can start talking about ranking on the first page.
Web crawlers do this. When you upload your pages on the internet, there isn’t an exact registry for it which means that until your page is crawled and indexed by Google, it doesn’t exist.
Google web crawlers constantly crawl the web to look for new and updated pages to add to its indexed list. This is also called URL Discovery. There are two ways your URL can be discovered:
Through a link from an already known page.
Through sitemaps
When your URL is discovered, the web crawlers, also known as Googlebot or web spiders, will crawl your page to know what you have on it. However, you can disallow Googlebot from crawling your page if need be by using robots.txt codes.
Indexing
Indexing is Google trying to understand the textual content of your page and its attributes (alt attributes, images, videos, and so on).
While indexing your page, Google discovers if the page is a duplicate page, a copy from another site, or if it is canonical. To index pages, Google creates a cluster of pages that answer a specific query and tries to find the most relevant and valuable page that answers the query and aligns with the user’s intent.
The other pages will then be an alternate version that can be served in several other contexts like location, device, or specificity.
In indexing, Google notes ranking factors and signals directly impacting how this page will be served in search engines.
All the information found in indexing will then be stored in the Google index.
There is no guarantee that a page will be indexed, although indexing depends on your page content and its metadata.
Serving
When a query is inserted into the search engine, Googlebot searches the list of indexed pages from that cluster and determines which pages are more relevant to that particular search query.
Several factors, including location, language, and device, determine the relevance of a web page to a query. This is why search results vary even though the same query is inputted.
How does Google Algorithm work?
Google’s algorithm involves several factors, making it a very complex process to understand. Google usually does rigorous testing to improve search results, leading to several algorithm updates to cover up discovered lapses and meet up with technological advances.
The ranking factors developed as a result of these updates are not entirely revealed to the public, probably because of the possibility of abuse by bloggers.
For example, when keywords became a hot topic and an obvious ranking factor, people started abusing the placement of keywords on their blogs, resulting in keyword stuffing and many fluff posts on result pages.
However, some primary and constant factors are consistently used despite algorithm changes, and Google sometimes gives us little hints on the particular ranking factor to focus on.
Google Algorithm ranking factors: How top-ranking posts are determined by Google.
Google uses an automated system to rank the hundreds of billions of pages in its search index to visually present the most relevant, valuable, and appropriate content to its users.
If you want your website to rank high on search engines, you must understand Google’s ranking factors and how they can impact your position on search result pages.
The truth is that there are over 200 ranking factors and signals Google uses to determine its top pages. However, most of these factors are conditional and based on several other contexts.
So, how does Google determine the top-ranking posts?
Meaning of A Query
The Google algorithm tries to understand what a searcher is looking for when they type in their query, known as the user/search intent.
The fact that searchers input queries don’t reduce their relevance to bloggers.
The meaning of a query will determine if Google will rank your post for it because satisfying a user’s intent is what Google strives to do, and hence, the constant algorithm updates.
So, you need to match the content of your posts to match a user’s intent. For example, to create a post around ‘SEO platforms,’ you must first check top-ranking pages for that keyword to discover the user intent.
User intent is majorly categorized into four types:
Transactional: These are searchers looking to buy certain products. For these types of searchers, Google will lead them straight to product pages instead of informational or review pages.
Informational: These are searchers looking for specific information about a topic. It could be a real-time update (soccer scores, epidemic), recipe, or information about SEO strategies.
For example, if you type in ‘chicken soup’ as your search query, Google won’t give you information like chicken soup’s history or its nutritional content but will provide you with recipes.
Navigational: This involves people looking for a company or website name.
For example, if you type in ‘Google Drive,’ ‘Facebook,’ ‘Samsung,’ ‘SARMLife,’ and so on, Google understands you are probably heading to the website. So, the first few results you see will navigate you to the website and pages on the website.
Commercial: These are searchers intending to buy but not at the moment. It is similar to transactional intent but will likely indicate the need for specific information.
For example, a commercial intent will go like this: ‘best washing machine’ or ‘types of automatic washing machines’ while a transactional intent might go ‘Hisense automatic washing machine.’
Relevance
According to Google, the keyword is the most basic signal that the content is relevant. If the keyword in your post is the same as the keyword in the query, it means your post is relevant to that keyword.
Content, content quality, and other attributes are other ways to determine whether a blog post is relevant. Google uses “aggregated and anonymized interaction data to assess whether search results are relevant to queries.”
Relevance to a query also includes the satisfaction of user intent and authoritativeness.
For example, regarding queries that might affect someone’s life, like information about a disease, Google prioritizes certain sites on the result page for that query—usually verified health sites, hospital websites, and even pharmaceutical company blogs that are primarily .org sites.
Queries on educational content or institutions might show a result page prioritizing .edu sites.
To optimize your site for relevance, you must consistently leverage on-page SEO strategies for all your web pages.
Content Quality
A page’s relevance does not mean it will be the most helpful to a user. The Google algorithm puts together several factors to determine if your page will be served to a user and to determine if a page will be most helpful.
These factors are analyzed by Google’s automated system and reviewed by search quality raters who have to follow the Search Quality Evaluator Guideline (SQEG).
The SQEG is a 176-page detailed document highlighting how Google rates your content, and it is a PDF document that is available to the public.
Here are some factors that reflect a high-quality page:
The purpose
This is similar to search intent, which concerns why the web page was created.
The purpose of your web page and even your website needs to be known to determine how well that purpose is achieved with your content.
The type of page does not determine the rating it gets. For example, a humor page will not necessarily rank higher than an informative page.
Why?
Because the purpose of a humor page is entertainment, and as long as that purpose is being fulfilled, it can be rated as high quality.
E – E – A – T
The E-E-A-T is a set of signals that Google prioritizes and uses as its major pillars for assessing a web page. However, it is not the final determinant of a page’s ranking.
Expertise: This considers the knowledge and skills the writer/creator has on the topic.
It usually includes relevant certification.
Experience: This considers the first-hand experience the writer/creator has on the topic, which doesn’t require any certification.
Authoritativeness: This is the extent to which a writer/creator is considered a go-to site. Google can determine the authoritativeness of a page or site through backlinks and domain authority.
Trustworthiness: This is the most crucial part of the E-E-A-T family. The level of trust a page needs depends on the page type.
Informational and product review pages must be accurate, honest, and informative.
Online stores or product pages need secure payment systems and good customer service.
Main Content Quality
Google rates web pages in four categories:
Lowest quality rating
Low-quality rating
Medium quality rating
High-quality rating
Highest quality rating.
These ratings are determined by specific factors, including:
Quality of the main content: Your content should show your talent, skill, originality, and effort toward achieving the page’s purpose. This writes off automatically generated posts using AI tools.
The page title: Your page title (headline) should give enough information about the post’s content.
In other words, your title should give a summary of the page.
Impact of ads or additional content: The ad placements in your post should not interfere with the page’s quality in any way.
In the same way, supplementary content like navigation links, embedded graphics, and videos should not affect the quality of your page.
Website information: This usually includes information on your ‘about us’ page. While Google understands that this information might be biased, it uses it as a starting point to understand the purpose of your website and, ultimately, your posts.
Website reputation: This is your website’s online reputation, from online reviews to social media mentions. Google tries to know what others think of you and your posts.
E-E-A-T: The content of your post should communicate an adequate level of experience, expertise, trust, and authority.
YMYL Content
This is called ‘Your Money or Your Life’ content, which indicates content that directly impacts the user’s health, safety, happiness, and even financial stability.
To rank these types of content, Google leans more on the authoritativeness and trustworthiness of the page than other aspects of its guidelines.
In the SQEG document, Google explicitly states what it considers as YMYL content, and these types of content need to be written by certified professionals in the respective niches.
For example, a blog post on diet plans, the treatment of a disease, or the nutritional content of food should be written by a certified health professional.
However, if you are writing on a YMYL topic and not necessarily a certified professional in that field, you can:
Focus on your personal experience with the topic. For example, if you’re writing about pregnancy, you can focus on your experience when you were pregnant.
Let a certified professional review your content and include this information in your post.
Context
To keep search results in the same context as the search query, Google uses specific information like the search history, settings, location, and so on to serve only the most relevant results.
So, depending on your location, Google shows you the most relevant results.
For example, if you type ‘football,’ your result page will differ if you’re in London compared to America.
If you’re in London, you’ll most likely see results about soccer, while in America, you’ll see results on Rugby.
Also, if your recent search history is around fruits, you might see a search result on the apple fruit when you search for ‘apple,’ but if your search history has been about gadgets and phones, you might see a search result about Apple phones.
Search settings like SafeSearch will filter your search results to avoid showing explicit ones.
Backlinks
Technically, Google wants to know if your page is relevant in your field through backlinks, which is one factor determining a page’s quality.
Backlinks are links to your site from authoritative websites or pages. Each of your pages needs backlinks from relevant authoritative sites relevant to the search query.
So, the fact that you have tons of links from the Search Engine Journal on an old post does not mean you will rank high for a newer post; your new post should also contain topically relevant backlinks.
Obtaining these links is known as link building and can be burdensome, especially for new sites. However, backlinks are one of the most important and prioritized ways Google uses to rank pages and increase a site’s domain authority.
How do you check for backlinks on a page?
Using Ubersuggest
Go to backlinks on Ubersuggest
Input the URL
Filter your result.
Backlink opportunities
How do you build links?
Guest blogging: This includes strategic reach-out offers to website owners/bloggers. You are not just approaching bloggers from different niches to amass links; you need to write valuable posts that appeal to the blogger, search engines, and your audience.
The sites you approach for guest blogging must be relevant websites in your niche, have significant domain authority, and be closely streamlined to your audience.
Resource pages: Resource pages are some of the fastest ways to get backlinks. Here is an example of a resource page.
You can create resource pages that answer specific questions in your niche.
For example, when it comes to the blogging industry, the most common and relevant issue is ‘how to rank your posts high on Google.’ If you want to create a resource post, you can create one like this:
30 blogs that will teach you how to rank on Google
Best 20 blogs that will make SEO easy for you
When you finish writing your resource page, you can email these website owners to inform them that you referenced them in your post.
You might only get a response from some of them, but many will be inclined to reciprocate by linking to your post.
Infographics: Infographics are linkable.
They are graphical illustrations of information; creating original, simple, and catchy infographics increases your chances of getting backlinks from authority websites.
Your infographics could be a graph, chart, illustration, or any other graphical description of a concept in your niche.
You can carry out industry studies on a subject and summarize it graphically. The originality of your infographic increases the chances of getting backlinks from authority websites.
Industry statistics: This is also one of the ways to get backlinks from authority websites.
Of course, carrying out industry statistics will be time-consuming, but the reward is worth it.
You can create a post that showcases the statistics around a single SEO strategy.
For example, create a blog post about email marketing statistics. It can include statistics on how many digital marketers and bloggers use email marketing, their strategies, percentage of effectiveness, platforms, etc.
One thing I love about this type of post is that you can create a statistics post on a broad subject and segment it to fit across different niches.
For example, email marketing cuts across both blogging and business, and I can segment the statistics to their relevance to blogging and business.
Broken link building: There are many web pages by authority websites with broken links, and you can capitalize on this.
This strategy is called the broken link strategy; it largely depends on finding dead links from existing or expired domains and offering your links as a replacement.
There are different ways to spot broken links on a site; while you can do this manually, it is time-consuming and exhausting. However, you can search for expired domains, check for sites that link to them, and reach out via email to pitch a replacement link to them.
Email outreach: Although most link-building strategies require you to reach out via email, you can also directly write emails to specific websites to request them to link to your posts.
You should not copy an email template word for word when carrying out an email outreach campaign. In Neil Patel’s post about how to leverage broken links, he explains that most outreach campaigns do not work because “lazy marketers blindly copy email templates.”
The most important thing to include in your email is your name, website, link, and destination point in the post. You also want to make sure that you highlight why you chose the site.
Keywords
Keywords are used to determine the relevance of a page to the search query.
This highlights the importance of keyword research and keyword placements on your page.
Keyword research.
This uses SEO tools like Ubersuggest, ahrefs, or SEMrush to determine what posts you can rank for; it includes statistics like search volume, cost per click, SEO difficulty, keyword intent, paid difficulty, and so on.
The tool you’re using will determine what statistics you’ll see.
When researching for relevant keywords, you also need to know the intent of that particular keyword; this helps you to streamline the path your content will take.
For example, a keyword like ‘how to use a washing machine’ is informational. When creating your content, you want to ensure it contains all information about using a washing machine, not a review or product page.
If your content does not follow the search intent for its keyword, the possibility of ranking is slim.
Keywords can be short-tail, medium-tail, or long-tail. It is advisable to use medium-tail keywords because they are narrow enough and specific.
However, with voice search optimization, optimizing your content around long-tail keywords is best.
When placing keywords in your content, you must ensure it settles naturally into a sentence.
If you place your keywords unnaturally, the algorithm can pick that up and render your keyword invalid.
Google understands that keywords cannot be the final judge of a content’s relevance, so it uses several other signals to corroborate the relevance of such content.
For example, short-tail keywords are broad and can appear too frequently in a post. For posts like these, other signals are checked to determine their rank.
User Experience
A positive user experience on your page will help your pages to rank higher on result pages. These experiences include:
Security of the site.
An SSL Certificate is essential for your content to rank high on Google because Google prefers more secure websites.
So, an HTTPS site will rank higher than an HTTP site.
To get an SSL certificate, you need to buy it, install it on your blog host platform, and update all your URLs to HTTPS.
Page responsiveness.
How responsive is your page?
Page speed is an essential part of user experience. If your page loads very slowly or appears differently on other search engines, it might reduce your ranking.
All your pages need to be optimized for mobile devices. Google uses mobile-friendly as part of its ranking factors because many searches are from mobile devices.
Your page’s attributes (images, videos, texts, etc.) should fit perfectly on a mobile device screen.
It doesn’t mean you should ignore optimization for desktops. You should optimize your pages to fit any device, including tablets, iPads, desktops, and mobile phones.
Value.
Google can determine how valuable a search result is to a user through the time spent on the page.
This time is mainly reflected in the bounce rate and dwell time.
If Google ranks your page high on search results but discovers that it doesn’t satisfy user intent or its content is not valuable to searchers, it drops that page down on search results. Similarly, it boosts pages with the best user experience and satisfies significant ranking factors and signals.
The Google algorithm can also pick up pages with return visits compared to one-time visits.
High return visits to a page indicate high-quality content, and Google will prioritize this page more than others.
Intrusive Interstitials.
Intrusive interstitials are page elements that disrupt the user’s view of the page’s content. These intrusive interstitials are usually promotional materials exclusive of legal or mandatory interstitials.
For example, a casino site must validate the user’s age, so intrusive interstitials might not apply. However, it’s best to follow best practices for interstitials so Googlebot can easily crawl the page.
If you need to create pop-ups/interstitials on your page either for promotional or navigational purposes, do these instead:
Use banners that take up a fraction of the screen.
In addition to the above, the Google algorithm also looks out for Core Web Vitals, an additional user experience signal that will help site owners measure user experience.
Core Web Vitals, according to Google, is a “real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience” and is related to page speed, interactivity, and visual stability of content as it loads.
Google combines Core Web Vitals with the existing page experience signals to create a more effective measure of a user experience on a web page.
Freshness
When it comes to the freshness of content, this is about how recent or updated that content is.
When it comes to the freshness of a page, it doesn’t mean you have to make changes or update your content daily; some do not need to be updated regularly compared to others.
For example, web pages involving current happenings in the world, like sports news, disasters, or trends, will need to be updated because Google will rank more recent posts for search queries.
However, content like blogging tips or kitchen storage ideas does not necessarily need to be recent for Google to rank them higher on result pages, so it is necessary to write on topics that will stay relevant over a long period. These are referred to as ‘evergreen content.’
However, it is essential to consider this ranking factor even if you have evergreen content.
When you decide on a target keyword, analyze search engine result pages to know if Google ranks more recent pages. If it does, you want to include recent details in your post, attach a header tag, and even include it in your FAQ section so web crawlers can see it quickly and clearly.
If you have an old post similar to the keyword, you can update it, known as historical optimization.
Domain Authority (DA)
Websites with high domain authority are usually given preference at certain times.
This doesn’t mean you can’t rank for specific keywords if your domain authority is low. Google doesn’t rank a website; it ranks web pages.
Domain Authority comes into play when Google needs web pages that reflect authority and expertise.
For example, regarding YMYL topics, Google will prioritize content from sites with high DA compared to other sites.
15 Major Google Algorithm Updates That Affect SERPs And How.
1. Florida.
This update was released in November 2003 and began the Google algorithm update revolution.
Retail sites that used spammy strategies like keyword stuffing, invisible texts, and hidden links took the most hit.
Google revolutionized how keywords will be used in web pages to give preference to pages that provide value beyond just ranking on search engines.
2. Jagger.
This update was between September – October 2005 and focused on penalizing sites with suspicious backlinks.
Sites that had a sudden, suspicious surge of backlinks, irrelevant anchor texts, backlinks from spammy sites, and known link farms were penalized.
3. Big Daddy.
The Big Daddy update was approved and released in December 2005, and it was an extension of the Jagger update but expanded its focus to inbound and outbound links.
The Vince update was named after a Google engineer and focused on giving preferences to brands or businesses for commercial and transactional queries.
This update was exclusive to the brand’s SEO practices. So, it didn’t matter if your posts were not optimized; so far, you sold the product in the search queries.
5. Panda.
In June 2010, Google released an algorithm update focused on the speed at which Google crawls and indexes web pages. This was to release more recent search results to users.
However, this update also saw the boosting of low-quality pages because of their freshness.
So, Google released the Panda update to combat the negative impact of the Caffeine update.
This Panda update was released in February 2011 and aimed to penalize sites with low-quality content, including thin content pages, affiliate sites, and duplicate pages.
It is one of the major updates that still affects search results.
6. Penguin.
This algorithm update was rolled out in May 2012 and focused on correcting the abuse of link-building strategies through black hat link-building techniques.
It focused on external and backlinks to check for its genuineness and is an extension of the Panda update in 2011.
With this update, sites that bought links or used spammy or artificially created links were penalized by giving them a negative site value.
7. Hummingbird.
In September 2013, another Google algorithm update was released. This update focused on improving the accuracy and relevance of search results, especially for more complex and conversational queries.
It used Natural Language Processing (NLP) dependent on latent semantic indexing, synonyms, and co-occurring terms.
This algorithm update marked the beginning of optimizing content for voice search.
The update focused on each word of a given query to understand the search context. This helps to provide more defined results that are satisfactory to the user.
8. Pigeon.
This algorithm update focused on local brands and businesses. Released in July 2014, its primary goal was to improve local search results for queries that might indicate local intent.
It started with the Venice update in February 2012, revealing that Google understands that some search queries might have local intent. It showed result pages based on the device’s location or IP address.
9. Mobilegeddon.
This was the beginning of mobile-friendliness as an important ranking factor. Released in 2015, Mobilegeddon focused on boosting pages optimized for mobile devices in search rankings.
It affected sites with tiny texts, closely placed clickable elements, and the inability of web pages to adapt to different screen sizes.
This update is still relevant to today’s SEO.
10. RankBrain.
Also released in 2015, RankBrain focused on improving the machine learning algorithm to help understand queries and enhance search results.
It is one of the best and most technologically advanced algorithm updates.
With RankBrain, Google could predict a searcher’s intent using their search history. It analyzes your past searches and gives you the most relevant result to a query, even if it involves polysemous words.
11. Possum.
In 2016, Google released this new algorithm that helped to improve the Pigeon update in 2014.
This Google algorithm improves the visibility of local search results by taking into context the exact location of the searcher and their proximity to the business/brand.
12. Fred.
This Google algorithm update was released in 2017 and aimed at penalizing sites with suspicious backlinks and low-quality content.
13. Medic.
This Google algorithm update focuses on life-altering content (YMYL) and penalizes sites that do not have enough trust, authority, or expertise (E-A-T) to talk on that subject.
To write a web page about a YMYL topic, you need expertise/experience, affiliation with a regulatory body, or a link from a trusted authority site in that niche.
14. BERT.
With Google focusing more on user intent, it uses the BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) algorithm released in 2019 to understand user intent and provide more accurate and valuable results.
Like Hummingbird update, it uses NLP to understand search intent and boost pages that can create content to meet the search intent of its user and drops content that focuses on its search engine.
15. Core Updates
Google releases core updates to check existing algorithms and their effectiveness and update these algorithms to produce better and up-to-date results.
In 2020 alone, Google released three core updates.
With these core updates being released, little information is usually known about them.
However, there are ways you can keep track of the most Google algorithm and tailor your web pages to fit the standard.
How to keep track of new algorithm updates
Keeping track of Google algorithm updates is essential as some updates might not be confirmed.
However, you do not need to track every update because Google releases several new updates yearly and also improves on existing ones.
The core updates that will impact SEO and SERPs should be what you’re tracking.
Here are ways to keep track of core algorithm updates:
1. Google Search Central Blog.
The Google Search Central Blog is where you will see official algorithm updates, announcements of new search features, and best practices for SEO.
You can even subscribe to its RSS feed to get the latest updates in your feed reader.
You can filter the information based on the year and authors in case you want specific information.
There are blog updates from as far back as 2005 till date and over 60 different authors, including Matt Cutts and John Mueller.
2. Set up Google Alerts for Algorithm Changes.
Google Alerts is a free notification tool for several purposes, like online mentions, competitor keyword tracking, and algorithm changes.
You can set up Google Alerts by signing in with the Google account you want to receive the notifications.
Next, decide what source/keyword you want to track and decide when you want to receive the updates.
For example, you can opt-in for weekly or monthly instant alerts.
You can also choose between getting an email with the report or getting it on your RSS feed.
When you set your Google Alerts to track ‘Google algorithm updates,’ you get notified via email or RSS feed when something about algorithm updates is mentioned online.
From this account, you can get algorithm news straight from the source and access to the information available for that update, including how it can affect your on-page and off-page SEO.
4. Search Engine Roundtable.
This website gives a well-rounded view of SEO by tracking and providing reports on search engine industry news and algorithm updates.
Search Engine Roundtable can also send notifications directly to your phone to give you trending news in the SEO world.
You can also follow them via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
5. Use of Analytics Tools.
Analytics tools might not give you updated information on algorithm updates, but they will help you monitor traffic and rankings.
This makes it easy to spot changes or fluctuations an algorithm update may cause.
Grump
Grump by Accuranker is the best analytic tool to help track Google algorithm changes. It checks if Google is ‘grumpier’ than normal, which indicates there might’ve been an algorithm change.
MozCast
This analytical tool shows changes or turbulence in the Google algorithm using a weather forecasting format.
MozCast analyzes 10,000 hand-picked keywords across 20 niches and five major US cities and compares the result page to the previous day’s results.
It then uses a weather format to show the degree of change in the search results. The hotter or stormier the weather is, the more likely it is that Google ranking factors or algorithms have changed.
How to know which of your contents are affected by new algorithm changes
Here are the ways to determine if any of your content has been affected by a new Google algorithm update:
Google Search Central.
Google Search Central is formerly called Google Webmasters and contains specific information that can help improve your website’s SEO.
It also has a blog where Google gives updates on algorithms and guideline changes.
The blog explicitly explains everything you need to know about these changes and even offers tips (best practices) for them.
You should check the Webmaster’s blog regularly.
Search Console.
This free analytical tool by Google helps you monitor your website’s analytics and troubleshoot for SEO issues. With Google Search Console, you can monitor your website traffic and receive alerts for SEO issues.
This will help you take prompt action and be quickly notified of changes in search results due to algorithm changes.
Google algorithm changes that affect SEO will also affect search results, reflecting your site traffic, conversion, impression, and even rankings.
The main goal of using analytical tools is to monitor SEO changes that algorithm changes might have caused.
You can also use analytical tools to carry out a competitive analysis. The purpose of this is to check if your competitors also experience the same changes as your site. If changes are similar, it means there is a general change in the algorithm.
Sometimes, the effect of an algorithm change is not immediate and might take some time before it reflects on your site. Also, some minor algorithm changes are not noticeable.
What to do when a Google algorithm update affects your site content?
If your site has been affected by a Google algorithm change, rectifying and getting it back in the game is easy.
Here are the steps to follow:
Identify the problem.
If you notice some issues with your content, likely affected by algorithm changes, try pinpointing the exact web pages affected by these updates. Usually, the algorithm focuses on spammy links, unsatisfactory search intent, low-quality content, and user experience.
You want to be able to identify the pages that have one or more of these issues.
Evaluate the problem.
How can you fix it? Once you know the pages affected by these updates, evaluate for possible solutions. You can delete or update these pages from your site to align with Google’s guidelines.
Be patient.
Patience is necessary for updates that take days before they are completed. While it is important to fix issues as soon as possible, you also want to take your time to analyze what an update is targeting so you can fix it better and more permanently.
Get verified information.
You should only get information concerning Google algorithm updates from verified sites. Only some forums have trusted information, especially when the updates are recent.
When fixing your content for algorithm updates, ensure it is absolutely needed. Usually, if you already follow best SEO practices according to Google guidelines, your content will hardly be affected by algorithm updates.
Improve.
One of the best practices for SEO is always to give valuable and relevant content. Improve your SEO strategies and work on website issues that affect device responsiveness and user experience.
Does the use of AI in SEO help to increase ranking potential?
Using AI in SEO might help you increase ranking, but this is conditional.
The fact that Google uses an automated ranking system does not mean you can set up machine against machine.
Aside from using automated systems, Google has human search quality raters hired by Google to evaluate the quality of their search results. They access search results served by Google algorithm and analyze them for relevance and usefulness.
Search Quality Raters use a set of guidelines provided by Google to evaluate several elements of the post. They do not change the search results, but their evaluation helps Google assess its algorithm’s effectiveness and know what parts must be fine-tuned.
AI can be a valuable tool for SEO, but you shouldn’t use it independently.
Tips for maintaining top-quality posts despite Google algorithm changes.
Have you noticed a decline in your site’s traffic due to algorithm changes? Do you want to consistently boost your page’s ranking despite the changes to Google’s search algorithm?
Here is how you can maintain top rank despite Google algorithm updates:
1. Mobile optimization.
This is one of the most important SEO tips to help with your ranking. Mobile-friendliness is a solid ranking factor because of the number of searches from mobile devices.
Google prefers sites that optimize their visual display for mobile users.
This applies to several other devices as well. You need to optimize your content to be adjustable or responsive to different mobile sizes.
While optimizing for mobile devices, you must ensure the contents displayed on mobile and desktop are the same to avoid duplicate content and cloaking.
2. Implement effective link-building strategies.
Right from the Jagger update in 2005, Google has been very focused on penalizing sites that have illegally acquired backlinks. This is why it is essential to focus on effective link-building strategies that will earn you links from relevant sites in your niche instead of a half-baked strategy that will get you spammy links.
Most site owners focus more on on-page SEO techniques and work mildly on their technical SEO. All aspects of SEO are essential when it comes to ranking.
Technical SEO helps with the technicalities involved with Google Search, which impact how Google crawls and indexes your website and affects your rankings.
Have a consistent URL structure for your web pages.
Use an XML sitemap for your website.
Always use structured data.
Use canonical URLs for similar pages.
Use Hreflang for foreign sites.
Use HTTPS to secure your website.
Fix broken pages on your site.
Increase your site’s page speed.
Have a mobile-friendly site.
Stay up-to-date on technical SEO news.
4. High-quality content.
Knowing that Google now prioritizes user satisfaction, you must design your content to be as valuable as possible.
High-quality content designed to satisfy a user’s query has a higher chance of ranking than content designed for search engines.
Here are some of my best practices for quality content:
Reflect E-E-A-T.
Carry out thorough keyword research.
Streamline your content to a single topic.
Optimize your headline.
Understand user intent for your keywords.
Write comprehensive content.
Include visual illustrations and designs.
Make your content readable and skimmable.
Use appropriate header tags in your posts.
Make it easy to understand.
Write a compelling CTA.
Edit and proofread your content.
Track your rankings and improve your strategies.
FAQs on Google Algorithm
What is Google algorithm?
Google algorithm is an automated, complex ranking system and signals that are used to determine if a page will be more authoritative and relevant to a search query.
How does the Google algorithm work?
Google algorithm considers hundreds of ranking signals, search settings, and context to determine which page out of its indexed cluster is more relevant to a query.
What does Google use to determine top-ranking websites?
Google uses ranking factors like content quality, keyword optimization, mobile-friendliness, page speed, backlinks, structured data, core web vitals, and user experience to determine top-ranking pages.
What are the major Google algorithm updates?
Major Google algorithm updates that have and still affect search results are Panda (2011), Penguin (2012), Hummingbird (2013), Pigeon (2014), Mobilegeddon (2015), RankBrain (2015), Possum (2016), Medic (2018), Fred (2017) and BERT (2019).
What is the latest Google algorithm?
The link spam update is the latest Google algorithm update, and it was released in December 2022 but was completed in January 2023. It uses an AI called SpamBrain to neutralize unnatural, spammy links.
How often are Google algorithms changed?
There are thousands of algorithm changes on Google every year, but Google confirms only the core updates because those are the ones that affect search results.
Final Thoughts
The algorithm is constantly evolving, with Google updating it multiple times yearly to keep up with changing user behavior and new technological advancements. This is why website owners and marketers must stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the algorithm and make necessary adjustments to their website and content strategies.
To leverage the world of SEO as a digital marketer or SEO agency, you need to keep track of the several Google algorithm updates from verified sources and wait to understand how each update affects SEO.
However, the bottom line is that Google focuses more on improving the user experience because the truth remains that Google is more of a document retrieval company. And its primary goal is matching the needed document to the user irrespective of mitigating factors like intent, preference, and context.
No matter how often changes or updates are made to the Google algorithm, the fundamental issues addressed directly or indirectly relate to the user search experience. So, you can not go wrong with ticking off all the tips I’ve discussed.
How well do you track Google algorithm changes and updates?
Imagine walking into a store for shopping only to find out that the goods are displayed in no particular order, and you get surprised at each turn.
As if that isn’t enough, you meet a robot at the cashier stand! – it’s a stretch, really, but here’s the point:
No one wants to go back to an unpredictable store where you don’t know what might happen next.
The fact that we can largely predict what’s around the corner gives us a sense of control that we don’t want to lose. We are humans, after all.
The marketing goal of any business owner is to make sales; entirely true.
But,
Content marketing keeps telling us that you can’t just walk up to a person and ask them to buy from you; you have to make them happy first!
You have to give your audience enough space and make them feel in control of that purchasing decision.
It’s added work, but it gives a satisfactory result when done successfully.
This post aims to break down content marketing and its importance to your business.
Why is content marketing important?
Content marketing is crucial because it defines your brand, products, and services to your audience. It makes them completely aware of you and what you stand for.
It answers your audience’s questions before they are even asked, helps you build trust, develop relationships, improve conversions and generate leads.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing focuses on building a solid relationship with your target audience by consistently delivering high-quality content relevant to your audience.
Notice how I said ‘building’? Because content marketing is a continuous process that involves planning, creating, sharing, and reviewing contents across various digital platforms. These contents are in multiple forms, but regardless of what form of content it is, the main goal is to increase brand visibility, engagement, and definitely sales.
Content marketing is a continuous process that contributes to retaining new or by-chance customers while also maintaining relationships with existing clients.
Another definition of content marketing would be that it is a marketing process that realizes and acknowledges that most consumers are now capable of completely disregarding the noise of the marketing efforts they are being exposed to daily.
In other words, it is the art of communicating with your potential consumers without directly selling to them.
In content marketing, you leverage the audience’s interests and create a content strategy that aligns with their interests, preferences, and dispositions. This makes you create and curate unique contents that your consumers will find helpful and valuable.
Now, it’s not just about what they want but also what they need!
In contrast to other marketing methods, content marketing is a much better option because it shows that you care about your customers and their needs.
Types of content marketing.
Content marketing types vary, but they all provide value-added content that customers want to see rather than paid-for adverts they would rather not see.
The key to hacking the different content marketing types is to understand the benefits of the other techniques and decide which would be more effective for you.
Content marketing types.
Content marketing types are;
Blog posts.
Video/YouTube posts
Podcasts
Social media posts
Newsletters
E-books
Lead magnets
Infographics
Webinars
Case studies
Even though most methods for content marketing have evolved over the years, the formula for great content has almost remained the same.
The key to getting people to buy your products include;
Push on their pain point
Agitate that pain point
Solve the problem.
For example; “A quick guide to solving your blogging struggle
Hi, I am Ruth Adeyemi, an SEO and blogging coach. I am also the founder of SARMLife.
(PROBLEM) – Over the years, as a blogging coach, I have come across bloggers who struggled with monetizing their blog and getting it to rank on the first page of Google. Trying various methods and not getting the desired results will frustrate even the strongest of bloggers – (AGITATION).
I decided to launch a course to help bloggers struggling. In this course, you will get first-hand strategies that hundreds of bloggers and I have used to monetize our blogs successfully. (SOLUTION)
Including:
A 1:1 FREE consultation.
An online course on SEO for beginners.”
Notice how I’m not directly selling but communicating what I can do for a specific group of people.
This is an example of content that can be used for content marketing.
Either your contents are created internally, through a third party, or are user-generated; when you make contents for your content marketing, always follow these rules:
Have a defined audience
Be consistent always
Have a strategic plan
Create educational contents
Don’t sell directly
Identify a pain point
Offer solutions
Give quality contents
Focus on the audience
Let’s look at two critical terms in your content marketing strategy.
Content Mapping
Content mapping is the process of understanding your audience so well that you can then create content for each stage of their journey towards buying your product and services.
The fact is, very few people go straight from discovery to buying. Most of them go through a phase of discovering your website, thinking about your products, spending a few more months thinking, seeing retargeting Ads, and then buying.
The bottom line is that people take a lot of time to buy.
In creating an effective content marketing strategy, you must keep your goals clear. You are to ensure that you are building towards the goals you have set for the business with every content you put out. Your goals should not be isolated from your content.
You can probably start with long-term goals related to your overall brand vision before moving on to identifying your short-term goals that content marketing strategy can help accomplish.
Like I mentioned in the content mapping, no one wakes up in the morning and decides I will buy something today from this brand I met online.
Most of them go through a journey to purchase, and that journey is referred to as the buyer’s journey.
You must understand your buyer persona and their journey so that you can create content that is helpful to them. A content marketing funnel is more commonly known as a sales funnel, and it describes the different journeys a customer goes through before a purchase decision.
Your content can influence any decision this buyer is going to make.
Why content marketing is important.
Content marketing is important because:
It is cost effective and productive.
It helps to improve brand reputation.
It advances your business through SEO.
It educates and strengthens relationships with customers.
You would generate more and better leads.
With everything shared so far, let’s look at these reasons in detail.
1. Content marketing is cost effective and productive.
Content marketing is not expensive! Many business owners avoid talk of marketing because they have this perception that it costs a lot of money which isn’t entirely true.
Content marketing is far less expensive than several forms of traditional marketing, and you must explore it. It is also productive even though it takes a while to see the results because content marketing is all about the long-term.
If you are a small business owner looking to grow and struggle with understanding why you must use content marketing instead of traditional marketing, then this is a valid reason. You can be sure of progress and productivity after a while.
Keep in mind that, unless you hire an agency, creating great content for marketing across various digital platforms takes time and effort.
In fact, Social Media Examiner reports that more than 81% of marketers experienced increased traffic by investing as little as 6 hours per week in their social media content.
An easy way out is to access the types of content marketing and compare them with your availability and experience (you don’t want to be inconsistent and naive). Select the content marketing type that your level of growth – as a brand and an individual – can take.
2. Content marketing helps to improve brand reputation
In today’s world, businesses must work to build trust and loyalty with their customers.
Content marketing helps with that, and by building trust, you help your business establish a positive brand reputation.
For instance, if a healthy drink vendor continually educates her customers on the dangers of spoilt drinks and how to identify them.
With time, her word would carry the truth to those who love her brand, and over time it would start to reflect on the brand’s reputation.
“78% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than ads.”
‘70% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.”
Here’s a secret, when customers read or see your content, they start to develop an opinion of your brand, and this is why content marketing can either break a brand’s reputation or improve it.
3. Content marketing advances your business through SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) has proven to be a very effective tool in content marketing and, if utilized well, can help grow the business.
SEO is one of the pillars of content marketing; it is how search engines use your content to connect you to your next customer!
People, including buyers of your products and services, go online and use several keyword strings on search engines to look up topics of interest.
The businesses that have mastered getting to the top of search are the big winners in organic search. They’re bringing qualified traffic to their websites. So, one of the best ways to build organic traffic to your website is with great content!
SEO and Content marketing have created an incredible amount of change in the digital marketing world! You need to leverage these two digital marketing strategies to invest in keyword research, website design, content creation, and SEO writing.
Our blog post on SEO writing critically explained the content writing process that gives you optimized posts that can rank on Google’s first page!
4. Content marketing educates and strengthens relationships with customers.
If your content isn’t educating your customers, you are doing it all wrong. Gone are the days of mediocre marketing tactics; now, we focus on their pain point and try to make it easier.
Imagine a curious customer stumbling on your page and, after spending time with your contents, leaves with more questions?
Content marketing is the best way to engage any audience and provide what they need. You can also effectively create an avenue to build a relationship with them.
People would only consistently buy from a brand they trust. When we first started, we had to build trust with our clients using content marketing. You, too, can make your customers trust your brand through content marketing.
5. You would generate more and better leads.
Content marketing helps with generating leads. Behind every content you create is a huge demand from users for lead generation.
When you meet that need with your content marketing strategies, your users will trust you with anything you throw their way.
Likewise, different types of content will generate different numbers of leads for you. Additionally, calls-to-action (CTA) placed directly in your content can generate new leads for the business. The more content a customer is with your content, the more likely they will click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.
It is essential to note that no content marketing is effective without a content strategy. So, before you hop on content marketing, make sure you get the strategy down.
There are hundreds of Google Analytics metrics available on the Google Analytics platform, and it can become increasingly difficult to keep track of the ones that truly matter or get distracted by the various data being displayed.
Regardless of what specific goals you are targeting, there are some Google Analytics metrics that every blogger should track. These particular metrics showcase data that reflects how well your website is doing.
DISCLAIMER: To use Google Analytics, you need to have a functioning website.
Google knows fully well that the site goals of every blogger vary, so there is an option of customizing your analytics dashboard, which focuses on specific metrics based on your goals.
Get more information on the Google Analytics dashboard here.
Every blogger should have a specific site goal they are targeting either weekly, monthly, or yearly. These goals could be clicks, sales, or engagement.
However, there are goals that every blogger should have because no matter what specific goals you hope to accomplish, you still need your audience to find you easily through search engines.
But first, what are blog metrics?
What are blog metrics?
Blog metrics are data used to analyze and track site performance over a specific period. They include measurements, statistics, and numbers used to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign or in comparison with a marketing goal.
These metrics reflect how well a website is doing, what marketing campaigns were effective, and which ones weren’t.
Every blogger should intentionally analyze their blog metrics monthly.
What is Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free SEO tool by Google that provides website owners with insight to analyze the performance of their website.
This insight lets you understand your audience experience on your site and track marketing campaigns and site goals.
Sections on Google Analytics
1. Audience
All the data in this section gives you an insight into ‘who’ your audience or customers are. It includes metrics such as location, age range, device, etc.
2. Acquisition
This shows how your customers get to your website through direct, social media, or organic traffic. It shows the most-used channel and lets you know if your SEO efforts are effective.
Have you ever wondered what your audience does when they’re on your site? This section shows data related to the time each user spends on your site, bounce rates, sessions per user, etc.
4. Conversions
This has to do with your Call-To-Actions (CTAs). It shows data that reflects if the users pick up on the offers you set for them or otherwise. These offers can be purchases, signing up for newsletters, or registering for a course.
RELATED: Check out our Instagram reels on Blog metrics below
https://www.instagram.com/p/CcA7ZCOOwcc/
Now that you know more about google analytics, let’s talk about the google analytics metrics you must track in 2022.
Google Analytics metrics to track in 2022
1. Organic traffic
Every blogger who keeps in touch with current SEO trends is probably aware that organic traffic can cover up to 90% of the overall traffic.
The organic traffic metric shows the users that come from unpaid sources, usually search engines, and it is important because it reflects the effectiveness of your SEO strategies.
The Overall traffic report differs from organic traffic as it shows the total number of incoming traffic, excluding the traffic source. In contrast, organic traffic showcases only the number of visits from search engines.
2. Top viewed posts
This shows your highest-performing blog posts in terms of clicks, and it lets you know which of your posts people open more.
This can be due to keyword choice, post length, title, etc. Based on this data, you know which of your posts you need to study, what to improve, and what strategies to replicate.
3. Bounce rates
Bounce rates refer to the number of users that visit your site and how well they interact with your content.
There are many reasons why you might have an increased bounce rate, ranging from low site loading speed, inconsistent content, and overload of Ads.
Although, a high bounce rate doesn’t always mean you have bad content. Sometimes, it means that site visitors find answers to their questions quickly on your website hence little to no need to say on your site longer.
But, ensure your content is top notch always and always fix any technical SEO error on your website that could contribute to a high bounce rate.
Bounce rates are more appropriate metrics for discovering users’ interests than traffic metrics.
4. Conversion rates
How often do users follow through with an offers you present to them on your site? How often is your CTA clicked on?
The conversion rates for each of your posts are displayed, and you can analyze what kind of offer, content, and every other on-page feature of the post performs best.
5. Dwell time
Also known as the average time on page. Dwell time refers to the amount of time a user spends on your website. It lets you know if people read your posts.
For instance, if you have a post that takes approximately 5 minutes to read and users spend an average of 1-2 minutes, it could mean that your contents have low readability, the page doesn’t load properly, or other on-page errors.
6. Returning visitors
Are your first-time users coming back to your site? This metric gives you an insight into this data.
This can help you analyze the overall user experience, although it might not be entirely accurate as there might be several reasons users come back to a site or choose not to come back.
7. Landing pages
This refers to the first website page that leads a user to your website or the first page a user sees when they log into your website.
You might want to know which landing pages are more popular with users and include the important CTAs in the most popular landing pages.
8. Exit pages
This refers to the last page a user views before exiting your website. If you can pinpoint the most exited page, you will be able to know which of your pages need optimization.
9. Devices
This data shows the devices your users use mostly to open your site, and it lets you know which device you need to optimize your website.
If most of your users log in via a desktop, you might want to consider optimizing your website for desktops. However, most users generally access the internet via their mobile devices.
10. Unique page views
Unique page views show you the number of new visits, i.e., new visitors that click on your website.
This is important because you get to gain insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns. It lets you know if your strategies bring in new visitors and if it is easy for new users to find you on search engines.
11. Average pages per session
A session is the series of interactions that a user does on your site from the time they land to the time they exit. The average number of pages per session refers to the total number of pages viewed by a user during a single visit.
A user can initiate multiple sessions during a single visit.
To gain insight into the user experience, you should know what additional pages the user goes to from the landing page.
12. Search Queries
The best hack for every blogger is knowing which exact keywords to use for created content. MonsterInsight, a good WordPress SEO plugin, allows you to know what specific keywords users use to find the contents on your page.
This lets you know which of the keywords will probably rank higher on search engines.
I will round off this blog post by listing the importance of analyzing your website.
Importance of analytics
It shows points of weakness
It shows how each content is faring
It provides insight into user experience
It shows the content that resonates more with the audience
It reflects blog growth or what needs improvement
It shows which marketing campaign is effective and otherwise.
It shows your strengths and lets you know what to leverage on
It enables you to be a better blogger.
I hope these benefits convince you to be more intentional about checking your blog metrics now and then. This can make the difference between you and that successful blogger who motivates you.
