SEO

On page SEO

3 ways to boost your Google rank with advanced on-page SEO

You already know that on-page SEO is important.

You’ve taken the time to carefully selected the best possible keywords, you’ve created outstanding content you know people will love, you’ve made sure that your title is on point, got all the right sub-headings, and you’ve even got your alt tags down.

But you’re still not getting the ranking you deserve.

So what gives?

In this SEO tutorial you’ll learn about a vital piece of the Google algorithm that nobody told you about.

So today I’m going to walk you through it step by step and show you three ways to boost your Google ranking, with advanced on-page optimisation.

For best the results from on-page SEO efforts, we need to optimise our content for RankBrain.

What is Google RankBrain?

RankBrain is the third most important ranking signal, right behind backlinks and content.

SEO courses from pre-2015 won’t mention it because RankBrain didn’t formally exist until 2016.

In all, there are over 200 ranking signals and this is just one, albeit an important one.

For that reason, it’s vital to understand how RankBrain works and optimise our content properly.

Rankbrain is artificial intelligence that’s part of the core Hummingbird algorithm, designed to help Google understand the exact context of a search query.

For example, if you’re searching for ‘Jaguar’, RankBrain will figure out if you want to receive results about the Jaguar cars, the football team, or the wild animal (roar).

To do this, the algorithm uses LSI keywords.

What are LSI keywords?

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a set of additional relevant keywords that Google looks for to help understand the context of a piece of content.

For example, if your article is about ‘Jaguars’, then additional words like ‘roster’, ‘schedule’ and ‘stadium’ will help Google to figure out when it should serve your content to users.

We can structure our entire site using LSI, for example the categories could be relevant keywords.

But today we’re just concerned about on-page SEO, and not the internal link structure of website.

So I’m going to walk you through using this, and show you how to uncover the right words to use in your content.

For this, we’re going to use a technique called WAG.

The WAG Technique

As far as I know, the WAG technique was developed by Brian Dean, and it stands for:

  • Write
  • Ask
  • Google

We optimise our content around a long tail keyword, just as we normally would.

Ok, long tail keywords have become a contentious issue with some in the SEO industry, and Brian Dean once declared that long tail is dead as a result of RankBrain.

Back in the day it made sense to create hundreds of different pages… each one optimized around a different keyword.

For example, you’d create one page optimized for “best keyword research tool”. And another optimized for “best tool for keyword research”. 

And old Google would rank each of them for their respective long tail keywords.

Today, RankBrain understands that these terms are basically the same thing. So they show nearly identical search results.

Brian Dean, Backlinko

He instead encourages people to use medium tail keywords.

I still believe long tail keywords have a place in SEO.

But whatever approach you choose, we need to include the words that we know Google will expect to see, as part of our optimisation process.

So how do we find the right words to use?

I’ll show you. Open a new browser window and follow along.

Step 1: Use Google

Make sure you’re using an ‘Incognito’ browser for this to make sure we limit the amount of personalised search results, because Google tries to guess our intentions we need to get as close to a default search as possible.

Now search for your main keyword or phrase.

Let’s assume my article is about Jaguar cars so in this example I’m going to search for Jaguar.

On page SEO for RankBrain

Next I’m going to scroll down to the bottom of the SERPs and look at the ‘Searches related to’ section.

Here you’ll find a list of additional keywords you can include in your article, if they are relevant.

These are powerful words that Google is expecting to see in your content.

Google Related Keywords

Step 2: Using the SERPs

This is even easier than the first step, because we’re already on the SERP page.

All you have to do is look through the page for words in bold. These are perfect LSI keywords to add to your content.

In my example you can see the phrase ‘Jaguar XF’ is in bold. Google understands the content is ONLY about Jaguar cars.

Google RankBrain Bold

Step 3: Keyword Density Checker

This step is a little bit more involved, but simple nonetheless.

Here, we take the actual URL of the SERP and paste it into a Keyword Density Checker to find other words that Google expects to see.

For example, in my example we can see that the word ‘luxury’ appears multiple times in the SERPs, so this is another word we might want to include in our content – if it’s relevant.

Keyword Density Checker

Obviously don’t include stop words, and you should be good to go.

So now you’ve got another technique to help you improve your on-page SEO .

3 Pro Ways To SEO Your WordPress Website

Understanding SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is important for anyone running an online business. Knowing how to optimise your content helps you to get better results when it comes to your online presence. It drives free, organic traffic to your content by allowing search engines to index it correctly.

So, today’s post will be a tutorial for all you beginners out there, especially for those of you who use WordPress.

Now I want to make something very clear before we move forward. I’ve seen countless tutorials on YouTube and other sites that are just thinly disguised sales pitches for products. There is no pitch here, it’s completely free. The methods I’m going to share with you work. In the complementing YouTube video, you can clearly see and verify this, as I used my own website. I’m going to give you a simple, step-by-step lesson in SEO, without trying to sell you a product, program, or training course.

Step 1- Website Speed

The first step you’ll need to take is to figure out exactly how fast your website is running so far. There are a few tools you can utilize for this process, including:

1. Pingdom
2. GT Metrics
3. PageSpeed, by Google Developers

For this tutorial, I used PageSpeed first. I took one of my websites; a dormant domain that I own but haven’t yet put to good use called marketingoracle dot com, and typed it into the corresponding area in PageSpeed. Once the tool was finished analyzing, it showed me that the site had very low scores for both mobile and desktop speeds.

The results were the same when using both Pingdom and GT Metrics; the website received a low performance score. These tools use a grading scale, so you’ll want to aim for either A or B. Anything below this, and your website is running too slowly.

Generally speaking, seeing low results this way means that you need to look deeper into your website and optimize it more effectively. You’ll need to make some changes. So why was my

website showing such a low score? I’m using the default theme, which is lightning fast, but the server I’m using to host my site isn’t high quality, and therefore very slow.

So, if your WordPress website has low speed grades, you may need to change your theme to a faster one or switch over to a new hosting provider (assuming your server response is still below average). Were I using a site in this tutorial that I wanted to monetize or use for professional purposes, I’d need to make some massive changed in order to have an acceptable performance grade.

This step is very important, and you don’t want to move past it without thoroughly checking out your website speed. It will affect your ability to optimise your site overall.

Step 2- URLs and Custom Structure

Next, you’ll want to log into your WordPress admin dashboard where you’ll start working on some actual hands on SEO. In case you’re wondering, you won’t need to know any serious coding to work on this step; its all very simple point-and-click methods.

First, head to the plugins section and search for Yoast SEO. Installing this plugin will be very useful for optimising your site in the future, as it gives you tips and corrections for each piece of content and page. There are other options and similar plugins such as All-In-One SEO, but Yoast is the best in my opinion. Be sure to activate it after install.

From the WordPress dashboard, you’ll want to find the settings option on the left tab and select Reading. Here you’ll see ‘Search Engine Visibility ‘. This option should be unchecked you allow search engines to index the site and it’s content.

After you’ve done this, you should see a tab titled Permalinks. Select and erase the content inside of that field and make sure the Custom Content option is checked.

Now you can move on to the next step and head over to your posts! Step 3- Keywords and Headlines

When you click on a post on your site, and look at the title, you’ll see a forward slash.

Delete that forward slash and replace it with a dot HTML, HTM or PHP. Based on my own experience while working in the SEO industry, dot HTML tends to perform better than just a forward slash, but you can choose what to replace it with. You should save this change after you’re finished.

Now your Permalinks will have changed and the URL will contain the post name. You’ll also want to add keywords to this URL as well. For example, I added a new post titled 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge; so the whole title was the keyphrase with my established keywords in it.

When writing these posts, the first paragraph should contain those same keywords. For example, my article’s first paragraph included the line “Today I’m going to show you the results of a ninety day content marketing challenge”. I also changed this line to a heading.

When choosing headings, you have several options titled as H1, H2, H3, and so on, (with importance decreasing with each tag). This will apply a heading tag to your article, telling Google that it has an important keyword within that line.

You can add multiple keywords by using these heading tags. After writing the actual copy itself, try to add the keywords or keyphrase to the last paragraph or two, as well. This way, they are found in several places throughout the post, but it is not overdone and doesn’t compromise readability by cramming the keyword in places where it might not seem natural.

A big question many people have during this part of SEO is “how many keywords do I need?” And the answer is; the more, the merrier! So long as they stay relevant. For instance, if you’re writing a 1,000 to 2,000 word post, the keyword should run frequently (at least every couple of paragraphs). This is a very efficient way to optimise your post or article.

Step 3- Images and SEO

When done correctly, adding images to your post is an excellent way to increase the SEO aspect of your site.

In order to do this, you’ll need to add a ‘featured image’ first. Be sure to rename the image file in its settings/attributes, using the keywords or key phrase used in the article itself, and do the same with the alt text section of the image. You can also add other images and throughout the article with relevant tags.

Now the keywords can be found many times through the article and in the media itself. You can apply these same techniques to other content as well, and in order to be seen by search engines and in turn viewed by visitors, you’ll need to optimise every piece of content you share online.

SEO is much more simple than it may seem at first, and now you have the tools to better optimise your WordPress content in just a few easy steps.

Want more free training with no strings attached? Be sure you visit profitcopilot.com/traffic and get more website traffic.

Free Traffic Source & Do-Follow Backlinks

Free Traffic Source & Do-Follow Backlinks

Free Traffic Source & Do-Follow Backlinks

Today I’m going to show you how to get traffic from a little-known website that has 9 million users.

You’re going to be able to share your content on there for free and you’re gonna be able to get some valuable backlinks from it too.

Practically every single niche is covered and that means you’re going to be able to get laser targeted traffic.

It’s a website called Diigo.com.

You can content under your own profile but things get really interesting when you start sharing content to relevant groups.

You’ll probably be able to find multiple groups that you can join, and when you share content on those groups you can drive large amounts of traffic to your website.

You can create your own group or you can join someone else’s, and I suggest for the moment you join someone else’s group and start contributing.

Obviously don’t spam, mix it up a little bit and include other websites amongst your own.

Some of the groups are very popular and jumping with activity, so you can get traffic from them immediately.

Most of the groups are also indexed by Google, you will get a ‘do follow’ backlink when you share your content.

You should also add tags to your posts so people can find your content when they search for information.

The site is easy to use, and is a decent source of free back and backlinks. What more could we ask for?

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How to Fix the Google Keyword Planner Tool

Fix the Google Keyword Planner Tool

Imagine if you could fix the Google Keyword Planner tool, and restore it back to showing you the same data that it used to give you, that made keyword research so easy and so lucrative.

I’m going to show you how you can do it today.

I had to share this with you because this is probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen in the digital marketing and SEO industry.

This could be a game changer for everybody.

Keyword Research Gone Bad?

Remember a year or two ago Google changed the way the Keyword Planner worked?

The removed, or at least berried the data we relied on for keyword research.

Things like the exact search volume, cost per click information and completion volume.

This made things very difficult for digital marketers who created content and invested time in SEO.

If nothing, Google can be cruel.

So let’s restore it back to its former glory.

Imagine if you could get the Google Keyword Planner tool working like it used to, in the next few minutes.

It won’t cost you a penny and you won’t have to do anything technical either.

I’m going to show you how to do it.

What Data Do We Need?

Along with the infinite number of keyword suggestions that the Google Keyword Planner will give you,  you will now be able to see the exact search volume for every keyword, the exact cost per click, and the exact competition levels.

But is more than an alternative to the Google Keyword Planner tool. Its like taking the planner with you everywhere you go online.

Sounds strange, right? I’ll explain more in a minute.

But you probably already seen pretty decent alternatives come along over the last year or so.

Websites like Keyword Finder, UberSuggest, KeywordShitter etc, and these are really good options.

But this is this is so much more.

This is what we have been waiting.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a free browser extension for Firefox and Chrome.

It will take your keyword research to the next level.

So open your browser now and let’s go install it.

Keywords Everywhere - Keywords Research Tool

When you’ve got it up and running go to Google and search for something related to your niche.

The instant you start typing the extension will start working.

It will automatically generate keyword data for that specific phrase, it will give you the exact monthly search volume, cost per click, and the competition level.

Google Keywords

How crazy good is that?

And it does all this in real time.

That means you don’t have to jumping around on different websites to try and get accurate data about  a keyword or phrase.

This tool will give you all the information you need when you need it most.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Fixing The Google Keyword Planner Tool

The Keywords Everywhere extension works with a wide range of websites including the Google Adsense Keyword Planner.

This is amazing.

Try this when you have the extension installed; sign into Adwords and go to the Keyword Planner tool – just like we used to do a year ago.

Now search for a keyword that’s relevant to your niche or the piece of content you’re creating.

And now immediately, we have all the data that we’re supposed to have, just like we used to before Google cruelly took it away from us.

Google Keyword Planner Tool

Again we can see all the important data that we need for every single keyword.

Can we all breathe a collective sigh of relief, that we can now go back to doing proper keyword research the way it’s supposed to be done?

But something occurred to me while I’ve been messing around with this tool today.

Maybe this extension has actually made things better than they were before.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned a second ago, you can use this on other websites.

You can use it on Amazon when you’re looking for product ideas, you can use it on YouTube when you’re looking for content creation ideas, you can use it on eBay, on KeywordShitter, on Moz Site Explorer, Majestic, UberSuggest, AnswerThePublic, and a few other websites too.

This means you no longer have to jump around using different research tools to find lucrative keywords and phrases in your niche.

You’ve now got everything in one place, no matter where you’re looking for opportunities.

Hopefully you can see that anyone can do this, and it has probably made keyword research even easier than it used to be – before Google messed with their Keyword Planner tool.

Now anyone can easily get the data that they need to help guide them towards making the right decisions for their business.

How to Build Backlinks for Free

How to Build Backlinks for Free

Today I’m going to give you 8 free ways to build backlinks to your website, ethically, and only using white hat methods.

This is a good idea because obviously the more high quality backlinks your website has, the higher in the search engine results pages you begin to climb – at least that’s the theory.

You don’t have to use all of these 8 strategies, if you master just one then are you gonna do really well.

Newsjacking

The first strategy I’m going to give you is called Newsjacking.

And this is really effective – for not only link juice, but for overall branding.

Because there is news breaking around the world, across every industry, practically every second of the day, you just find something that will relate to your audience.

You make your brand relevant to the news item.

I’m going to dive into this in a lot more detail in a separate post because it’s an incredibly powerful strategy.

Essentially, you take a piece of breaking news and you attach your brand to it and make your brand relevant to it.

A good example of this; Kate Winslet was staying on Richard Branson’s Island during storm.

Lightning struck and set the house on fire, and Kate Winslet saved Richard Branson’s mother by carrying her out of the building.

As that news broke, the London Fire Brigade caught onto it.

They jumped on board and they offered Kate Winslet firefighter training.

That story went viral because it was shareable and had an emotional hook.

And that’s 2 essential components that you need to make newsjacking work.

Content that is shareable, or even controversial, but has some emotional hook attached is best.

Newsjacking is a very effective way to get your brand out there and get backlinks as a result.

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Quora and Yahoo Answers

The second strategy is to use Quora and Yahoo Answers.

Take the time to answer people’s questions on these websites and give as much detail as you can because people are asking questions here because Google has failed to find the accurate or relevant information for them.

That means you can step in and fill that gap by helping them to solve the problem.

And while you’re giving them the information that they need, also include a link to your website where they can get more information.

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Communities

The third way of building backlinks is through communities.

Get involved with places like Reddit and forums in your niche.

Start networking and make contacts, because these type of communities are full of people you have natural rapport with.

Also take advantage of the ability to put a link in your forum signature.

Contribute high quality posts, become an asset to the community and occasionally provide help with a link to your website.

Obviously don’t spam, outsource or automate this process.

When you contribute helpful information it will help you to establish yourself as an authority figure and someone that they can trust.

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HARO

Keeping with the authority theme, we can also use Help a Reporter Out (HARO).

This is a website that lets you connect with journalists, bloggers and influencers, people who want to interview knowledgeable authority figures experts and you can be one through that website.

It’s free to join and you will get twice daily email digests from reporters who need expert opinions.

If you’re selected they will quote you in their articles and with that comes a backlink to your website – or at the very least a mention of your website, which is almost just as good because it’s a notable mention.

And that helps your overall SEO, even if your blog is just mentioned in a news article.

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Repurposing

The fifth strategy that I’ve got for you is repurposing content.

I do this almost every day.

You can take one of your blog posts and turn that into other formats.

For example, you could turn it into a video, or you could turn it into a podcast, or into a PDF.

No matter what format you’re repurposing content to, you can link to your website or link to the original version.

This creates another level of white hat backlinks to your website.

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Guest Blogging

Then the sixth one that I’ve got for you is guest blogging.

You contribute original high-quality blog posts to other people’s websites.

Most sites will allow you to put a link to your own website either inside the article, which is what I would recommend, or in the author bio box at the bottom.

If you can get a link inside the actual body of the article and high up on the page, I would recommend you do that instead of inside the author box because it will get a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) and Google places more value on links that are higher on a page.

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Blog Commenting

The seventh method that I’ve got for you is blog commenting.

This is a very common and popular method of getting backlinks to a website.

And it works really well because you steadily increase the number of backlinks to your website overtime.

If you were going to comment on other people’s blog posts I would absolutely make sure that you contribute insightful and meaningful comment.

Do not spam, do not outsource, and not automate it in anyway. Keep it real and provide high value, original content and meaningful insights and opinion that are relevant to the blog post that you’re commenting on.

Add value to the discussion.

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Replace Broken Links

Now for number eight, this is the final one that I’ve got for you.

It is replace broken links.

You’re going to find broken links on other blogs that are relevant to your content.

How it works; you contact bloggers explaining that you’ve found a broken link on their website and you just happen to have a replacement.

That replacement will be a piece of your content.

To find broken links, use one of the many free backlink checkers to crawl through your favourite blogs.

It might be worth reminding the blogger that Google does not like broken links and neither will their readers, and your replacement fills that gap to keep Google and readers happy.

In a lot of instances bloggers and webmasters will be thankful to you because you’re helping them out with their SEO by delivering value.

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Final Thoughts

So there you go, that’s eight free ways to build more backlinks to your website.

Hopefully you can see just how easy this stuff is, because even if you just master one of these methods you can do  well right.

Anyone can do this, no matter what level you are at and no matter what kind of experience you have.

You now have 8 strategies to easily build backlinks that steadily increases over time and get an increasingly higher position in the search engines as a result.

More Traffic from Guest Blogging

Get 78% More Traffic from Guest Blogging

Today is traffic Tuesday and I’m going to give you a tip that you can use to get 78% more traffic from guest blogging.

This is a really nice twist.

The Problem with Guest Blogging

Now the problem with guest blogging is that because you will typically have a whole heap of really useful content on the article, the link to your website is at the bottom.

In most cases you’ll be given and author box and that’s where you have a link to your website.

The issue is that fewer people click on that link because it’s e fewer people will make it to the bottom of the article and even the ones that do might be less inclined to click.

If your article is transformational in nature, or it provides actionable tips, then your audience will go and take action and implement your advice.

So these kind of links aren’t very effective for generating traffic.

And also according to some patents, Google considers links that are higher on the page a lot more valuable than links that are lower.

What’s the solution?

Obviously you gotta move the link to the top of the page, or even the middle of the page will do.

You gotta get in front of people and Google will view that as a more valuable link, too.

But of course when you do that there’s always going to be a danger that a link to your website is just going to look out of place.

There’s also a risk that it’s going to look spammy.

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How to Avoid Spammy Links

To avoid that you have to make sure that the link is contextual, there has some editorial merit for it being there.

So instead of linking directly to your home page, you might want to link to an individual blog post on your website instead.

If you’re guest posting on other people’s blogs then there’s a high probability that you have covered that topic on your own site as well, so you shouldn’t be short on content to promote.

A good way to do this could be; add a new ‘resource’ section underneath each subheading.

The new section might contain two three links to high quality resources for that specific topic.

For example, if you’re writing a guest post about mobile phones then one of your subheadings is about the latest iPhone, and another subheading might be about Android.

You deliver value in each paragraph and then include a short list of helpful resources in each section, one list for iPhone and the other for Android.

If you still need another example, take a look at this very post.

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Go Easy with Your links

It’s important that you don’t overdo it – only link to your site once, and then in the author bio you might want to link to your social media profile.

You can also improve on this strategy a little bit too.

Instead of just linking to random sites that you might find during your research, you could also link to other guest articles that you’ve written.

This is a white-hat tiered link building strategy.

It’s completely ethical, it’s all good with Google and the chances of that becoming a black-hat strategy is pretty slim. Everything on the page, all the links have solid editorial merit.

Ultimately this is how you can add more value to the niche, how you can get more traffic to your website, and get more link juice to your website so you increase your position in the SERPs.

You’re creating content in a way that benefits you, it benefits the websites that you guest post on – so you become a valuable asset to them, and it also helps the people who consume your content.

It’s a win-win-win for everybody.

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Increase Organic Traffic to Your Blog

Easy way to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Blog

I’m going to give you a 5-step process you can use to boost organic traffic to your website.

This works great if your blog is at least six months old, and the older your blog is the better this works.

But if you have a brand new blog or one that is less than six months old then I probably wouldn’t bother with this, but otherwise it’s definitely going to help you get more traffic.

This is something that I first learned from Glen from ViperChill, and in the last couple of days Darren from ProBlogger has also spoken about this strategy.

Darren says that 92% of his traffic goes to his the archive pages on his blog.

It’s really important to understand where traffic is going, because if 92% of his traffic is going to the older pages on his blog, that means that 92% of that blogs income also comes from those pages.

So for that reason he is now encouraging people to update their archives just like Glen did a few years ago.

If they’re both seeing the same results then we should listen.

What they are both encouraging bloggers to do is to go through their archives and update the older post.

And what happens? When we update the old pages on our blog, Google loves it.

And that increases your chance of getting a higher rank in the search engine result pages.

I’m going to give you a 5-step process that you can use to update your archives as a checklist.

Fix Errors

The first one is to fix any errors so grammatical errors and broken links.

Make the content relevant for today.

You might have written that article two or three years ago, and some of the content might be out of date.

So make sure that the information still matters today and it still speaks to people in current terms.

Flesh it out

And then the second thing that I’m going to tell you to do is to flesh it out.

Add more detail to your older blog posts.

So add quotes, and use the comments section as a resource.

Answer questions from the comments, or throw in more info and ideas from there.

Basically, make your older blog post a more substantial and valuable piece of content.

Make it More Visual

Then the third thing that I’d like you to do is to make it more visual.

Improve the images, add diagrams, and if you’re not using images then certainly add one at least one big image at the top of the article.

Optimize

And then the fourth thing that I’d like you to do is to optimize.

Optimize your content in a couple of different ways.

The first way is for search engines, so make sure your on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is up to date.

SEO changes over time, so make sure it’s still working.

Also, focus on conversion optimization and social sharing optimization.

When you optimise for conversions make sure that your call to actions are still relevant, and that they still work.

Maybe now is a great time to add lead magnets if you’re using them.

And make sure that people can subscribe to your email list or whatever easily see your main call to action.

Schedule Maintenance

Then the fifth one is to schedule ongoing maintenance for your archives.

What I would do is; every day that you’re not blogging could be a maintenance day.

So you could go through an article on those set days, every week.

To sum up; fix errors, then flesh out your blog posts and make them absolutely the best they can be.

If you do this then you will increase the amount of organic traffic to your website because Google loves these kind of updates.

And generally speaking, they will increase the search engine rank of that piece of content.

I’m going to leave it there for today, if you’ve found this useful then share it with others who might benefit too.

How to Optimise your Website for Google Voice Search

Is your website optimized for Google voice search? I’m going to share some expert opinions, and some solid data with you to help you decide the best way to go when it comes to optimizing your website.

Backlinko has analysed 10,000 Google Home search engine results, I’m going to run you through what they found and I’m also going to tell you what the HubSpot SEO experts have said about the findings.

And they might not necessarily agree with Backlinko’s research.

How to you do Optimise for Google Voice Search?

So how do you optimize your website for Google Voice Search?

I’m going to simplify this, so you only get the info that you need to know when it comes to SEO for voice search.

You see, there are very few clear black and white answers. SEO is a fairly murky area, and two identical pages might get wildly different results depending on over 200 different factors.

Here’s what Backlinko have found, and what HubSpot think about those findings.

Page Speed

Backlinko claim to have found that page speed is important for voice search.

They found that on average voice search results load 52% faster than the average web page, and load within an average of 4.6 seconds.

Now interestingly HubSpot disagrees that page speed is a factor of voice search.

They argue that sites that have good user experience will naturally rank higher.

So personally, I think that optimizing your website for page speed is a good idea because it’s not gonna do any harm.

Fast loading pages provide a good user experience, so cover your bases either way.

HTTPS

Then they found that HTTPS / Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is also important.

Backlinko found that 70% of all voice SERPs have an SSL cert, but again HubSpot disagrees.

They argue that if HTTPS is an actual signal that Google uses to rank voice search results pages then it would be higher than 70%.

Personally I think it’s important – irrespective of voice search or not, so make sure your website HTTPS and invest in a secure socket layer.

Google will appreciate it, and it will rank your website higher.

And now a lot of hosting companies will actually give you an SSL cert for free.

So you really have no excuse to not use SSL on your site.

Short Answers

Another thing that Backlinko has found is that short answers win.

The typical voice search result comes in just 29 words.

And HubSpot agrees, so that seems to be important another signal.

Domain Authority

Backlinko claims to have found that authoritative domains are important.

Now, this is something else that Backlinko and HubSpot both agree on.

They both say that Google will try to provide the best and most accurate answer so therefore it will look towards the highest authority domain.

Social Sharing

Another signal Backlinko claims to have discovered is social sharing.

They claim that the average voice search result has 1,199 Facebook shares, and an average of 44 tweets.

But HubSpot disagrees and they say that Google does not use sharing to determine authority.

This has been in debate for a number of years but maybe the high number of shares is a byproduct of awesome content – which naturally gets shared anyway.

Linguistic Simplicity

Backlinko also found that linguistic simplicity is important.

The average Google voice search result is written at a 9th grade reading level.

And HubSpot agrees with this.

It really comes down to making content that is conversational and easy to understand.

Long-form Content

Another signal that Backlinko have found, and I think this is really interesting is long-form content.

They have found that the average word count of a voice search result page is 2,312 words per article.

And HubSpot agrees.

So this tells us our content has to be fleshed out, and in depth.

Great Content

And in the same vein as long-form content, Backlinko have also found that great content outranks mediocre content.

This is so painfully obvious, I’m not entirely sure why they included in their findings.

They have found that approximately 75% of voice search engine results also appear in the top three results for the same query on the desktop SERPs.

That means you should write content for the desktop search engine results pages first.

And obviously HubSpot agrees.

Featured Snippets

And then finally Backlinko has found that 40% of all voice search answers came from featured snippets.

Of course HubSpot agrees.

So there you go, I’ve run you through all the main points that you need to consider if you want to rank your website high in voice search.

I’ve just removed all the stuff that you don’t need to know, and just focused on the actionable stuff you can do.

If you’ve found this useful then share it with the other people in your network who need to know about it.

How to Optimize your Content for Google

How to Optimize your Content for Google

Today I’m going to show you how to optimize your content for Google. You’ll learn how to find low-hanging fruit that you can use to rank high in the search engine.

And then I’m going to show you how to structure your content so it ranks fast.

You’ll see how to find the exact phrases that people are searching for, so you know what type of content to create for them that delivers maximum value.

And then I’m going to show you how to structure your content in the right way.

So let’s get down to it.

Keyword Tool

I’m going to go through the process with you in the video above, so for a step by step walk through just follow along with that.

The first thing that we got to use is a keyword tool – now you can use the Google Keyword Planner but it’s not as simple as it used to be.

So if you want to get the exact search volume you now have to create a campaign, it’s still free to do it’s just an extra step in the process.

For that reason I’ve actually found a better keyword tool, maybe.

You decide for yourself if its better, in the meantime let’s call it an alternative keyword tool.

I am kind of in love with this, it’s called KWFinder.

You get around 5 free searches a day, that’s more than enough to find the right keyword.

You’ll have to open up Notepad or have some way of making a list.

All set?

We use KWFinder to find out what the exact phrases people are searching for.

It sounds obvious but because we come from the marketing and content creation thing point of view, we only ever make guesses at what we think people are searching for.

The people that we want to reach might be using different words and phrases that we’re not aware of.

So we use the search tool first of all to tell us which phrases people use.

And secondly to also find keywords that have low difficulty but high search volume.

Keyword Phrases

For this example I’m going to use one that Eben Pagan uses.

This is one of those niches that combinations niches.

Eben likes to use ‘lose weight for a wedding’.

This works great because we take the weight loss industry and then the wedding industry and we combine them together to create an overlap.

For the purpose of this post I’m going to assume that you’re a personal trainer and you want to help brides fit into a wedding dress.

So in a keyword tool, I would type something like ‘lose weight wedding’, and then find relevant keywords.

That way you’ll get lots of ideas.

Search Volume

Use the keyword too to find easy to rank phrases, that have a relatively high search volume.

But remember, the niche that you’re in will determine what kind of search volume you receive.

Some niches will have a very low search volume in comparison to other niches which might receive higher search volumes.

But don’t let that deter you – every niche is profitable.

It’s not really about the search volume, it’s about the value that you can deliver – it’s about the problem that you can solve and the urgency of the people who need that solution.

Just make it as easy as possible.

In our example we’re going to target ‘lose weight before wedding’ related phrases, so you make a list of that and other related keywords.

BuzzSumo

Once you’ve got around 4 o5 key phrases to start, the next thing that we would do is take the one that receives the highest search volume and use BuzzSumo to examine what type of content is being shared.

Go through each of the articles it gives you to find out what kind of content is popular.

Then you’ll know what type of content to create. You’ll know if it should be how-to guides, interviews or listicles, etc.

We do this to make sure that the content we create is going to be share-worthy.

Add the URLs of the most popular pages to your list so you can go back and examine it when you need to.

Incognito Mode

Now we need to go to Chrome and use Incognito mode.

We do that because we’re going to search in Google – but we don’t want Google to reference any of the content that we may have previously seen.

When we normally use Google we always end up in a little bubble.

Google presents us with a personalized version of the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) which we ought to avoid this time.

We want to see the SERPs other people see them.

So while in Incognito mode to Google.com and search for your main keyword.

Autofill Suggestions

Notice that you will have the search bar make autofill suggestions.

We want to take note of a few of the top suggestions because this will give us content ideas for later.

Go ahead and search for your main key phrase and take a look through the SERPs.

While you do that notice that we have some of your key phrases in bold.

LSI

We should also see some words in bold that are not included in the phrase.

Take note of those, they are important.

In the example, Google sees ‘wedding’ and ‘bridal’ as almost interchangeable.

This is called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

LSI was created to combat keyword stuffing.

Google creates a degree of relevancy between phrases, so in this instance it’s looking at ‘wedding’ and ‘bridal’ as being relevant to each other, or at the very least being in the same category.

Sometimes it screws up and it gives us weird results, but in this instance it’s got things spot on and it knows exactly what we’re looking for.

Use LSI to find other keywords to add to your content.

Related Searches

Also take a good look at the Related Searches at the bottom of the SERPs page.

In my example I saw lots of additional search phrases related to weddings and weight loss.

For your key phrases you’ll want to take all of the ones that are relevant and add them to your list.

You can use these for future blog post ideas or you can find ways to put them into your current blog post.

Keyword Density Check

One more step that I like to take is to check the density of keywords on the top pages in the SERPs.

Keyword density is debatable, like most aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In my example I take the link address from the top few pages and paste them into this keyword density checker.

There are plenty of other checkers online for free and they will tell us how many times a key phrase has been mentioned in any article.

This will tell you roughly how many times to include the keyword, in comparison to the other words in the page.

Deliver Value First

Now listen don’t get too hung up on the numbers.

I know it’s tempting to create a system or a formula for everything but it doesn’t really work like that.

There are well over 200 signals that Google uses to determine the position of a piece of content in the SERPs.

So don’t get too hung up on things like search volume, keyword density, LSI or any of the other host of things that we could be focusing on.

Really, our focus should be on serving the community that were involved with and delivering value to the niche that were in.

If we make that the priority we’ll naturally create content that absolutely delivers value to the people who will consume it.

The Structure

So now we have an idea of the keywords that we’re going to use, and we have an idea of what type of content to create, we can just go ahead and start work on the blog post.

Take the keyword with the highest search volume from your list and add that to your title.

Do spend the time to think about this because it’s the first thing that people will see.

If you can, write something with a real emotional hook in there.

Once you’ve chosen a title you can now structure the rest of your blog post.

Take a few of your other keywords and phrases then paste them in.

The H1 Tag

If you’re using WordPress then your title is going to be a H1 tag by default, and that’s exactly what we need it to be.

This is going to tell Google that of all the key phrases on your page this is the most important one.

Then you turn all the other keywords or phrases on the post into a H2, which tells Google these are the second most important words on the page.

This is exactly how I structure all my posts.

The very first paragraph should be the introduction.

Sometimes I will start with a story.

Before and after storylines are a great way to pull people into the content.

The H2 Tag

Then for every H2 section I would add 3 main points, with a paragraph for every point.

Typically, the first section, after the introduction, would be used to explain the benefits of your content.

The next section would be the ‘how-to’ part of the post. That’s where you teach your audience how to do something, or give them recommendations.

The final section might include why it’s important for them to take action.

Maybe a little bit of fear would be a good motivator. Explain why not doing what you propose could be a bad thing.

And then before you know it you will have a fairly comprehensive article done and dusted that you can submit to Google.

Submit to Google

To submit it to Google we can go to the Search Console and choose ‘Fetch as Google’.

You just put in the URL of your blog post there and that’s it, all done.

Make a Web

One bonus tip that would give you is if you are creating a lot of content you might want to link to it, from inside your other blog posts that are relevant to that topic.

If you link all of your relevant articles together you’ll create a web, or a network of content for Google to spider.

And good links are like food to search spiders.

So there you have it, I hope you found this useful and I hope you use it to rank your content higher in the SERPs.

Before you go, this stuff can have a positive impact on people’s lives when they do it right, so for that reason pay this forward and share it with the people who need to know about it.

They’ll probably be very thankful that you have and it also helps me out in a massive way too .