Broken link building is a tactic that always sparks off some dispute. Some SEO experts swear by it, while others claim it is a waste of effort. The thing is that link building, by itself, is very difficult to implement. Theoretically speaking, if your content is good enough, it should get backlinks. But this implies getting traffic, and you need to have a good strategy to guarantee that this will happen. 

Going after broken links might at a glance seem easy, but there is actually a methodology to it. In this short guide, we’ll show you how to do broken link building in just a few easy steps.

What Is A Broken Link?

As its name indicates, a broken link is a link that doesn’t work. When you click on a broken link, instead of being taken to the intended destination, you might encounter a “404 Not Found” error or a similar message stating that the page you want could not be found. This can happen for many reasons, for example, the page was moved or deleted, or the website is no longer available.

Broken links can negatively impact user experience and website credibility so you want to avoid these errors as much as possible. And that leads us to broken link building, which benefits from these missing pages by offering alternative links to replace the broken ones.

What Is Broken Link Building?

Broken link building is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that consists of finding broken links on relevant websites for your niche, and leveraging them to build backlinks to your own website instead. The main idea in broken link building is that website owners don’t want to link to resources that are no longer there. So, a suggestion of a new relevant link would be welcomed right?

The problem is: you’re not the only person contacting them to get a link. The fact that broken link building seems so easy makes it appealing for many SEO practitioners. Webmasters are getting tired of emails asking to replace their broken links with content that might not always be suitable or of the best quality. One of the things we’ll mention in this article is how to create a proper outreach email to get your content in front of the webmasters. 

Want to know more? Read on and find out how you can improve your backlink profile through broken link building.

How To Create A Broken Link Building Strategy 

In this section, we’ll show you how you can use broken link building to your advantage.

1. Identify relevant websites

Firstly, start by finding websites in your niche or industry that have a good authority and are likely to have broken links. An easy way to find broken links in your niche is by using advanced search operators. For example, if your goal is to promote a pet hotel, you can try search terms like the following:

• pet hotel intitle:links – This search operator will show you results that have the keyword “pet hotel” in the title, and the links associated with it.
• pet hotel intitle:resources – This term will get you results from informative content. Since this content is meant to teach readers about pet hotels, you will find great opportunities for backlinks here as the website owners for these guides will want to keep their content updated and relevant, which means using links that are not broken.
• find pet hotel inurl:links – This search operator will show you the links that have the specific keywords in the URL.
• pet care blogs inurl:resources – This is similar to the other search for “resources” – the difference is the keywords will be found in the URL and not necessarily in the title. 

These are just a few ideas to help you get started.

2. Analyze for broken links

Once you have identified some possible websites, analyze their backlinks and find the ones that link to websites that are no longer online, or return a 404 error for certain sections. How do you do this? The great thing is that you don’t have to manually check each backlink one by one to find broken links. You can use a broken link checker tool to scan the websites you've found and create a list of broken links. This will provide you with a list of opportunities that you can work with.

Of course, the broken links you’re after should be related to your line of business or website. You need to make sure that you get links that will be of benefit to you or show you off as an expert in your field. This will improve your rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). That’s the main purpose of doing any link building: to improve your ranking.

3. Content creation

In most instances, you are not going to readily have content that would be a suitable replacement for the broken links, so you will likely need to create them. When creating your content remember to make sure that the content you are creating:

• Is in line with the topic or context of the broken link. 
• Give value and offer a similar or better experience to the reader.

4. Craft Your Outreach

Now, finding broken links does not seem difficult so far, right? Problems usually start to occur when you try to get in touch with the webmasters. As we mentioned previously, webmasters on popular sites get a large number of emails every day. They might be asking for link exchanges, or to suggest links… you get the idea. This means you have to find a way for your email to stand out. How can you achieve this? 

There is no simple or perfect solution, no exact formula you can use for every outreach campaign you do. However, there are some tips that can help you create better emails when reaching out to webmasters. In this case, you should absolutely go against the grain. Here is what we suggest you do when creating your outreach emails:

• Research your recipient: Before reaching out to the website owner or webmaster, do your research and make sure you understand what their website is about, who their target audience is, and what their main goals are. Check out things like their recent updates, articles, social media posts …basically anything to help you learn more about them so that you can tailor your outreach. This will help you create a connection with them and help you stand out. It might seem like a lot of work, but trust us: this can be the difference between success and failure. 
• Find the exact email address: It’s very unlikely that you are going to reach the webmaster by emailing the website’s general email address like “info@example.com”. We recommend searching for the exact email address of the webmaster. You can use LinkedIn to find it, or Twitter, Instagram… Check out the webmaster’s social media to find their contact information. 
• Personalize your outreach: Don’t use automated generic outreach emails. Personalization is key in making your email stand out. Address the recipient by their name, mention their website and refer to recent contents like a recent article or twitter post. You want to show them that you have taken the time to study their business and understand their needs, interests and goals.
• Introduce and explain your purpose: Introduce your business and give a short explanation about what you do. Clearly state that you notice a broken link on their website and that you have a suitable replacement that you are sure would be of value to their audience.
• Highlight the value of your content: Briefly explain the value and benefits of your content as a replacement for the broken link. For example, explain how it fits in with their website content , provides additional information, or offers a great user experience for their audience. 
• Follow-up plan: Before ending of, mention  when you plan to follow up with them if you don’t receive a reply. This shows your commitment and persistence, while also giving the webmaster time to consider your proposal.
• Keep it short and sweet: The longer the email, the higher the chance of it ending up in Spam. Just like you, your recipient doesn’t have time to waste. They want to know what’s in it for them, quickly and clearly. Be sure to spend a bit of time working on your copy and make it as simple as possible for your readers.
• Be Polite and professional: Be sure to keep a polite and professional tone throughout your outreach email. Avoid any aggressive or pushy language. Your aim is to build a positive relationship and foster cooperation.

Remember, a personalized and thoughtful outreach is likely to yield a more positive response. Focus on building relationships, giving value, and demonstrating your expertise in your outreach and you won’t go wrong.

Now that you know what is broken link building, and how it can be used to help improve your search engine rankings. If you use SERPed.net, we have another tip for you: how to use the Expired Scraper tool to find available domains with backlinks from high authority websites. This is another broken link building technique that you can use. Here is how it works…

Broken Link Building with SERPed.net

In short, the Expired Scraper tool helps you find aged domains with backlinks from the most popular and trusted websites.

First, open the “TOOLS” menu and click on “Expired Scrapper”, which is located in the “Domain Finding” section.

Then, click on the “+” button at the top right of the screen, or on the search button if it is the very first time you are using Expired Scraper.

A modal window will appear… Enter the domain name of a high authority website like msn.com, mashable.com, apple.com or nytimes.com and select the appropriate category. Once this is done, click on the “SEARCH FOR DOMAINS” button.

Then in the next window, you’ll see that your search is being processed. Usually, this takes a few hours, up to a day, depending on the size of the website, so please be patient. 

Once the search is done, the status will change to “Completed”. Click on the domain name to view the results.

At the top of the results page, you will see a sentence like this:

“We found 10,000 broken links, of which 1,216 were unique URLs with extensions that can be checked. From those 1,216 unique URLs we found 1195 that were offline, and 21 domains that were available to register. Here are the metrics of those 21 domains.”

In other words, the Expired Scraper tool found 21 available domains that have at least 1 backlink on msn.com. This means that you could register some of these domains and rebuild the website using a tool like our Content Restorer for example, or build a brand new website, making sure you re-create the webpage msn.com links to.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the Expired Scraper tool lists the metrics of each domain, including the SERPed Rank, MozRank, Moz Domain Authority, Moz Page Authority, Majestic Citation Flow, Majestic Trust Flow, Majestic Backlinks, SimilarWeb Rank and Social Signals. These metrics should help you decide whether registering the domain is worth it or not.

You can view more information by clicking on the “Info” button, next to the “Register” button, as well as check the history of the domain, perform a Google search, check the domain in the Site Explorer tool and Backlinks Explorer tool.

And that’s how you can have a website or blog with a backlink on a high authority website which could then be used to build backlinks to your own webpages or client’s webpages.

Wrapping Up

Now you know how to use broken link building to improve your backlink profile. Plus, you found a way to take advantage of broken links on high authority websites using SERPed.net

This tactic can improve your search engine rankings a lot, as you’re getting links from relevant sources with a good reputation.

You also need to create a good outreach email, which you can do using the tips from this article. Personalizing is the key for great results in outreach for link building.

What do you think? Did we miss something? Let us know in the comments, or find us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post A Quick Guide to Broken Link Building 🔗 Perfect Your Strategy appeared first on Serped.com.

Are you wondering how to measure SEO ROI?

If you do SEO, you need to know how profitable your campaigns are. Are your SEO campaigns driving traffic to your website? Is that traffic resulting in sales?

All these questions need to be answered as part of analyzing your SEO efforts and results. And that’s where SEO ROI comes in.

Defining ROI

ROI is a concept that refers to return on investment, i.e. what is your actual profit in contrast to the value you have spent.

ROI is not the value of all sales; it measures what you actually got from this campaign, removing from the sales total the amount that was spent.

Defining ROI in SEO

In short, ROI in SEO will measure the percentage of return you are getting from a specific SEO campaign.

So, you need to know:

• How much money did you get in sales that resulted from your organic visitors?
• How much did you spend to achieve this result?

We’ll show you how to use these values to measure SEO ROI further along this article. For now, we’ll start by showing you the importance of SEO ROI.

Why Is SEO ROI important?

Of course, if you are making an investment in any type of digital marketing technique, you need to know if it’s working or not. And how do you know if it’s working? Through your sales values.

Making sure you’re getting something out of your SEO efforts is essential for your company to be profitable.

Also, it’s important to know the results while your SEO campaign is ongoing, as it can take up to a year to see results in SERPs (search engine result pages). This means that while results are still not noticeable in SERPs, you need to have a way to check and make sure your investment (or your client’s) is successful.

Therefore, while you’re still rising in the ranks – and sometimes far from the first page of results – you need a way to show that your SEO efforts are paying off. And, once you have gotten to an advantageous position, it’s still important to show how your SEO efforts have brought money to the company. If you are selling enough to get a decent profit, that’s a way to show the value of your optimization efforts.

Benefits of Measuring SEO ROI

Knowing how to measure SEO ROI is very important when it comes to analyzing campaign results. The best way to prove that you are achieving results is to have supporting ROI data. There are also other benefits that come with it, such as:

• Finding out which activities get the best returns will help you understand which of them are profitable. Having this information will help you decide which parts of your SEO you should focus on, and which you should refrain from spending time (and money) on.
• Knowing where to invest helps you optimize your SEO strategy for best results. You can make changes to your strategy to match the target audience and buyer personas.
• Estimate future returns. As you analyze results, you can forecast future earnings and factor them into your business plan.
• Identify opportunities for growth. As you analyze results and returns, you can find areas in which your business can improve and grow.

That said, SEO ROI can be useless if other KPIs are not taken into account. Sometimes, it’s not only about sales. Other metrics can give you a bird’s eye view of your results from SEO, such as clicks, impressions and similar measures.

These other metrics cannot stand on their own if you’re only going to measure sales. It is necessary to take all metrics into account when evaluating an SEO campaign.

The Importance Of Setting Clear Goals & KPIs

When it comes to digital marketing, it is easy to get lost in all the possible KPIs. Some KPIs are considered “vanity metrics” for some SEOs, while not for others.

To calculate your results, and how your campaigns are performing, it’s essential to have clear goals for each. What do you want to increase – visibility, leads, conversions? When should you achieve the result you are after?

It is very important to know where you’re going, and why. And SEO, as a marketing technique, is one of the hardest to measure results. Therefore, you need to rely on a few traffic metrics to evaluate success.

Setting precise goals is of the utmost importance if you want to make sure you are heading in the right direction. In the next section, we’ll go through the KPIs typically used to evaluate SEO success.

The Different Types Of KPIs Used To Evaluate SEO Success

1. Organic Traffic

When measuring results for SEO, this is the first metric you should check. Organic traffic shows how many visitors arrived on your website through organic search – i.e. those who typed keywords in Google, Bing, and etc.

Even though results from Google Ads Search Campaigns come from a specific keyword as well, they are filtered out since they are paid results. Organic traffic costs “nothing” to get – well, apart from the investment on SEO freelancers or agencies, of course.

2. Search Rankings

Search rankings show your position on search engine result pages for your target keywords. One of your main goals is moving up on the result pages, ideally to the top of the first page.

Of course, it’s not easy to get to the top, especially if your keywords have a lot of competition. The higher you get, the more traffic you’ll receive.

3. Organic CTR

CTR stands for click-through rate. This is measured by assessing the number of visits that resulted in a click (meaning, the number of clicks from that landing page to another place in the website) and dividing it by the number of visits in a specific time period.

How Can SEO ROI Help Me Get More Clients?

A great way to attract clients is through actionable tips that you can deploy for them. A preliminary SEO ROI analysis can help you understand possible weak points in their SEO strategy (or lack thereof) that you can then use to make a better proposal.

Having a comprehensive proposal is essential when working with SEO clients. You don’t need to tell them that you’re the best in town – you need to show them what you can offer, and SEO ROI is a great metric to use. After all, your clients want returns, and they want to know how you can help them make more money, before anything else.

How To Measure SEO ROI

If you need to calculate your (or a client’s) SEO ROI, you need to perform a few calculations. If you use SERPed, our SEO ROI Calculator does the heavy lifting for you, but more on that later.

First, add your keywords to an Excel or Google spreadsheet.

Then, add the monthly search volume next to each keyword. You can get this number from Google's Keyword Planner or a keyword research tool like Ultimate Research for example.

Then, you need to enter a capture rate for each keyword. The higher the keyword position, the higher the capture rate. For example, if you rank 1st or 2nd, you could expect a capture rate around 70 or 80%. Multiply the search volume by the capture rate and you should get an estimation of traffic, for example:

Search Volume of 1,000 x Capture Rate of 40% = 400 visits

You will then need to take your contact rate and closing rate into account. The contact rate is how many visitors you successfully get in touch with, for example:

400 Visits x Contact Rate of 25% = 100 Leads

Now, for the closing rate… This is how many leads you successfully turn into clients, for example:

100 Leads x Close Rate of 25% = 25 Clients

Then, you need to know your lifetime value in order to proceed. Can you estimate the value a customer will typically spend in your products? Once you have that value, add it to the spreadsheet to calculate the monthly value, for example.

25 Clients * Lifetime Value of $500 = $12,500 every month

You can then multiply by 12 if you are interested in seeing the yearly value.

You will then need to deduct the cost of the SEO campaign of course.

As you can see, it is not that complicated, but it can be a little time-consuming, which is why we decided to create an SEO ROI Calculator, which gathers all search volumes and more, as well as calculates everything for you.

How Can SERPed.net Help Me With SEO ROI?

If you’re looking for an easy way to calculate SEO ROI automatically for all your keywords, SERPed.net can help. We have an SEO ROI Calculator included in our Keyword Lists tool. Here is how you use it…

First, click on “Keyword Lists” in the “TOOLS” menu, under “Keyword Research”.

To create a new list of keywords, click on the blue “+” button. In this case, we’ll use previously selected keywords in the “Test 2” list.

 
Then, click on the “Show SEO ROI Calculator” button.

Once you click that button, more fields will appear in the table.

You’ll find that, at the right of the competition bar, there is a field you can fill in. The field is for Traffic Capture, which means the percentage of visitors that will click on your link on Google’s SERPs. You’ll then get an estimation of your monthly traffic.

Once you’re happy with all the Traffic Capture values, you can scroll down to see a few different metrics including the Total Search Volume and Total Monthly Traffic.

Now, at the bottom you have what interests us the most here. First, Web Traffic, which is the monthly traffic to be expected from these keywords. The Contact Rate measures the amount of leads collected among visitors. The Closing Rate is the percentage of sales generated from leads.

The lifetime value is the amount of money you expect to make from each customer.

These last three metrics have to be input manually, as each business is different. Then, from calculating how these metrics interact, you’ll get your monthly ROI value and the yearly ROI value – the results you should expect in a year from now, taking into account all the other inputs from you and the automatic calculations. You will of course need to remove costs from these values.

We’ll use an example to make it easier. Let’s say you have the following:

• Your target keywords have 70,000 monthly searches combined;
• Your Traffic Capture is 30% (so, 0.30), meaning you get 21,000 visits every month;
• Your Contact Rate is 20% (so, 0.20), meaning you get 4,200 leads every month;
• Your Close Rate is 10% (so, 0.10), meaning you get 420 sales every month;
• If your Lifetime Value is $300, then your monthly ROI will be $126,000 and your yearly ROI $1,512,000.

Remove costs from those values, and there you go – that’s your SEO ROI.

Wrapping Up

As you have seen, SEO ROI is not that easy to manage if you don’t have the right tools.

Using SERPed.net will allow you to calculate this metric easily, using both your data and ours.

Knowing which keywords are performing better than others and the ones you shouldn’t spend that much time on can make a huge difference in your SEO results. At the same time, if your optimization is working, you’ll see an increase in visitors, but other factors weigh in for top performance – such as UX/UI (user experience/user interface), design, fonts, CTAs… We’ll discuss these factors in more detail in a new blog post, so stay tuned.

Did we forget anything? Would you like to add something? Check the comment box or find us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Now you can calculate your SEO ROI using SERPed.net. If you're not sure about becoming a member, you can use our 30-day $7 trial and test the tools yourself, no strings attached.

The post How To Measure SEO ROI 📈 appeared first on Serped.com.

There are many SEO myths and misconceptions that most of us take at face value. After all, SEO is such a complex subject that sometimes it gets difficult to know what is true or not. Concepts like E-E-A-T, the skyscraper technique, entity SEO and other complex tactics confound professionals, to the point that you don’t know which techniques you should use or who to believe.

Truth is, even some of the top SEO experts are not sure of everything. Google has kept many algorithm updates under wraps, misleading SEOs and making one unsure of what to do to rank.

In this article, you will learn about some of the top SEO myths and misconceptions that even seasoned professionals might get wrong.

Top 7 SEO Myths And Misconceptions

1. Keyword Research Is Easy

When working with SEO, keyword research might seem easy. You just look up your business and find similar keywords, right? Wrong.

When researching for the keywords you should rank for, you need to make sure that your keywords match your product, have a high search volume, and low competition.

You might have an idea of which keywords your customers use to find your product, but you need to source actual data to find the best keywords for your business.

If you use SERPed, you can leverage keyword research easily by using Ultimate Research and Keyword Analyzer. With Ultimate Research, you can get more keyword ideas that are relevant for your business. Keyword Analyzer will give you details about each keyword, including competition level, websites that rank for that keyword, and more.

2. Use As Many Keywords As Possible

When optimizing, it’s commonly expected that the more keywords you use, and the more often, the greater are your chances of ranking. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Google can tell when content is over optimized. Also, if you repeat your keywords too many times – in what is called keyword stuffing – you’ll end up missing the spot and ranking even lower.

We recommend targeting a maximum of 3 keywords per page, and using them sparingly.

3. Duplicate Content Leads To Penalizations

It is commonly believed that Google penalizes duplicate content. However, it’s not as simple as it looks.

Duplicate content happens on many occasions without being necessarily intentional. When that is the case, Google finds the page with the highest quality content and is the most relevant for that specific search. The goal is to show users what they are looking for.

If a website is full of duplicate content, however, that might be an issue for the webmaster. Not like losing all ranks, though.

Unlike what you may have heard, duplicate content does not incur penalties. Penalties in SEO are reserved for much worse activities. That is, unless the website is trying to manipulate rankings by duplicating content.

It might seem difficult to tell which one it is in each case: accidental duplication, or manipulation of results. However, Google has become quite accurate at detecting intentional content duplication, so, no need to worry.

4. Content Is Not Important – Keywords Are

This is not as common now as it was around 8 years ago, but it should be mentioned. No matter how well you do your keyword research, the best way to rank is through high-quality, relevant and strong content.

Working hard on your website content – including blog posts – is of the utmost importance to rank high.

As we usually say, what is good for humans is good for machines. Google’s algorithm recognizes quality and relevance with decent accuracy, and it is improving with every update.

You might have heard about E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. These are the main factors that help Google measure content quality. So, it will prioritize content that offers a great user experience, published by someone who is knowledgeable, an authority in the niche, and a reliable source.

5. Set & Forget

Unlike some clients would like to believe, SEO is not a set and forget technique. If you want consistent results, you need to update your content often, check for errors, and optimize frequently.

This is a common source of frustration for both clients and in-house teams. Why won’t all these SEO tactics work?

With SEO, you need to be persistent. A basic SEO audit is great to begin with, but over time you need to go over more details and create a strong content strategy to improve your ranking on SERPs.

It’s all about the constant improvement, as SEO (i.e. Google) is constantly changing.

6. Domain Age Improves Ranking

The SEO myth that domain age affects ranking is an old one, and many SEO experts still swear by it. However, John Mu himself (from Google) has debunked this theory on Twitter in 2019:

What does help when having an old domain is having  more content that might’ve been linked to, increasing authority through activities that every webmaster can do. It’s just easier to reach your goals after you’ve been putting in the work for years rather than months.

7. Domain Authority Helps

For a while, Google used PageRank to help them evaluate the authority of each website in a specific niche. PageRank went from 0 to 10 and was updated until 2013. In 2016, Google announced that PageRank would no longer be used to calculate rankings.

However, SEOs were convinced that another metric replaced it – Domain Authority, from Moz.

When evaluating a website, many professionals still use Domain Authority to understand how “important” or “relevant” that domain is.

But does that matter for SEO? Not surprisingly, it doesn’t. Google has mentioned already that it does not use any of those metrics in order to rank a website.

Wrapping Up

Now, there are many other SEO myths that we couldn’t mention here for the sake of brevity.

It is however very important to be aware of misconceptions when doing SEO work.

SEO, as a subject, includes many perceived rules that turn out not to be as important as we thought. At the same time, there are things we sometimes miss that can make or break your SEO strategy.

Would you like to see a Part II? If you would, let us know in the comment box, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

The post Top 7 SEO Myths & Misconceptions 🤔 appeared first on Serped.com.

Did you know that video search results are fifty times more likely to rank organically in Google when compared to text-based results?

In Google search results, you’ll find videos mostly from YouTube. So, your videos need to be there. But what is YouTube SEO and how does it work? In this article, we’ll discuss this topic and give you a few tips on how to rank YouTube videos on Google.

What Is YouTube SEO?

When you use the search bar on YouTube, you get results for the keyword you entered. So basically, YouTube is a video search engine. And this means that in order to get views, you need to optimize your videos for the search engine to find your content.

Also, 8 in 10 results on Google include video results. Google wants you to see different types of content while keeping users on their platforms. So, you won’t see many videos from Vimeo or other video platforms on search engine result pages (SERPs).

But is optimizing for YouTube the same as optimizing your website? Let’s find out.

How Do I Optimize My Videos For YouTube?

Optimizing for YouTube has its own secrets. In this guide, we’ll go through what you can do to get the best performance out of your YouTube videos and grow your following. YouTube is a very strong tool to build up your reputation as an expert in your field. And this is one of the reasons you can, and should, optimize your video content.

Here are the main techniques you need to use for YouTube SEO.

1. Use Your Target Keyword In The Video Filename

The first step is essential for all kinds of SEO: find your target keyword and look for the search volume and difficulty, research similar keywords that might be suitable for your topic, and find how customers are searching for products and services similar to yours. You can do this using the Long Tail Keywords tool from SERPed.net

When you open the tool, this is what you'll find:

Use the blue “+” button at the top right to create a new search.

As you can see, you can select YouTube as the search engine for your search. Just tick the box and type your keyword idea. Then, click on “Get Keyword Ideas”.

And there you go. As you can see from the results, if you want to create guitar video tutorials, you have many suggestions from SERPed to use the right keywords to rank.

Now that you have your target keywords, what do you need to do?

First, rename your video file using the main keyword you want to rank.

But why? Well, YouTube cannot read your video itself, but it can read the filename – and that’s where you add that keyword you’re targeting first. This will help the video platform in indexing your video correctly so you can rank for the ideal search terms.

2. Use Your Keyword In The Video Title

Now that you’re closer to publishing your video, remember to use the keyword we mentioned before – let’s say you chose “how to play guitar for beginners”. You need to find a way to insert your keyword in the video title, and it has to look natural.

This is the same as when you are creating written content for SEO. You need to figure out clever ways to use your keywords without hammering them on.

Another thing we should mention is keyword intent. If you are able to adapt your keyword to fit the search intent of your target audience, great. If not, it’s better to be informative than to seem too salesy.

Also, keep your title under 60 characters for better results.

3. Keep Your Description Short

Your video description should be a great place to add your keyword to, but remember to keep it short. If your description is over 100 characters, you might want to cut down – over this limit, viewers have to click on “Read More”. This might be an issue if you want viewers to check out a landing page you have created.

Make sure to add all links at the top of your video description for better results, and, of course, make sure to include your target keyword.

The way you go about this will depend on your target audience, your keywords, and the search intent that suits this piece of content.

Just make sure you add the relevant information, put the main links at the top, and, if possible, add your target keyword(s).

4. Use Tags

Tags on YouTube have a similar function to how they are used on Twitter. You should use topics like “#guitar”, “#musiclearning”, “#playingguitar” and so on. Research the tags first on YouTube to get an idea of competition and similar tags you should use. Tags don’t need to have your keywords, although that is recommended when possible.

We recommend searching for tags related to your subject, without necessarily having an immediate purchase intent. After all, you don’t want to sell all the time – you need to build trust with your audience before you sell anything.

5. Use Video Categories

Once you publish your video, you can access Advanced Settings on your YouTube dashboard and add a category.

These are quite powerful when it comes to showing your video against competitors in YouTube search results. If you pick the right category, you’ll be able to find your video together with influencers in your niche and competing brands. But how do you achieve this?

There are a few questions that you should ask yourself about your business to pick your category. Here:

• Who are the top creators and influencers in your niche? What are they known for?
• When looking at similar channels, are there any recognizable patterns in the audience?
• When looking at videos in the target category, do they share settings like length, format or even production costs?

These questions should give you an insight into what category you should target for your video. In this case, it would be “Educational”, as we’re talking about a potential video about learning guitar. You can find the list of available categories here.

6. Create A Custom Thumbnail

Crawlers don’t read images, but people do.

You can select one of the suggested thumbnails, which are still images taken from your video or add one from your own files. As you are competing for the attention of viewers on YouTube, you should have a custom thumbnail. Insert some text in your thumbnail that refers to the main topic. Use a picture that signals the general feeling of your video (like excitement, awe, anger…).

These simple tips can make the difference between success and failure. If you look up popular youtubers in your niche, you’ll find they use custom thumbnails – also, this has become the norm for most videos on YouTube. If you don’t customize yours, you’ll find it’s very difficult to stand out.

7. Add Subtitles And Closed Captions

We always recommend adding subtitles to your videos, and closed captions too. But what is the difference between these two? Subtitles are meant for users that can listen, but do not understand the language spoken. Closed captions are meant for users that cannot listen to any of the audio content, so they include environmental cues rather than just the subtitles.

It’s also important to add translations of your videos for different languages, as not all your viewers might speak English.

You can get the subtitles translated automatically, which makes it a very quick and easy process. YouTube has the tools to do this. The advantages are many, from enabling users to watch the video with the sound off to allowing for users who suffer from hearing impairment to be able to understand the content.

We recommend using a .srt file to add subtitles and closed captions manually, if possible.

8. End Screens

An end screen is not an SEO tactic per se, but it is essential when it comes to optimizing your videos. But what is an end screen?

This is an example:

In this video from NikkieTutorials, you can see a subscribe badge, and several recommendations of other videos on her channel. It helps viewers to stay on the channel, by enticing them to watch other similar content on the same channel. This is a typical example of an end screen.

End screens help you suggest your other videos, or maybe videos from other channels that were used as sources for your video. It is also a great way to give thanks to a guest or someone who helped you on the production, usually by presenting links to their social media.

9. Use Playlists

Playlists aggregate content about a similar subject in a series of videos. This is a great way to organize your content according to video topics, but also to make sure users keep on clicking through.

In this channel, you can see that Nikkie split her videos into playlists. Each playlist includes a subject, which can be named using a related keyword. This will prevent users from leaving your channel as they navigate through the videos they are interested in.

10. Leave A Pinned Comment

It might seem weird to comment on your own video (we all know it’s annoying to have people liking their own posts on Facebook), but this is a great tool to leverage engagement with your content.

In this example, the video from Vogue has a pinned comment with interesting information, including where to buy the products used for the look. By adding it as a comment and pinning it, Vogue makes sure users will see this message and interact with it.

How To Rank Youtube Videos On Google

Now, how to rank YouTube videos on Google is slightly different. We’ll go through a few tips for improving your overall ranking.

1. Optimize Your Title, Description and Tags

Wherever you can add information about your video, go for it and use your target keywords (without overdoing it). #⃣

2. Add Chapters

You can use the Chapters tool on YouTube to mark content in your video. It makes it easier for viewers to find specific points in the narrative, and it also highlights main topics you mentioned in your video.

3. Optimize For Links And Shares

Think about how you would attract links and shares to your written content. How do you get natural links to your pages? The same goes for YouTube videos. Also, your videos can be embedded in a page on your website. This implies optimizing that page for the target keywords and using good SEO practices. Over time, that page will collect likes and shares just like your other content would.

SERPed.net YouTube Tracker

Now that you have optimized your videos, you should track your positions constantly. Using SERPed.net's YouTube Tracker, it's easy to keep up with your results and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. This is how.

First, you'll find the YouTube Tracker tool on the Tools menu, in the Rank Tracking section.

Once you open the tool, you have access to a dashboard with your up to date results for videos you have previously added. To add a new video to track, click the blue “+” button at the top right.

In the modal window, write a title for the video (for internal purposes only) and paste the video's URL on YouTube. Then, click on Add New Video.

On the URL View, you can find some metrics for your YouTube videos, like the number of views, likes and dislikes.

On Keyword View, you'll find your positions for your target keywords for the video. This section is easy to read and gives you important data at a glance.

Finally, in the Competitors tab, you can add links to videos that your competitors have created with the same keywords in mind. This is especially interesting if you use this data to update your videos for a better performance.

Wrapping Up

YouTube SEO has a particular way to optimize its content. However, good practices for normal SEO match these: find the right keyword, use it on metadata, and create easy ways to access your content such as playlists and captions or subtitles.

Plus, embedding your video in a page of your website will attract users to your website too. It goes both ways.

What do you think? Do you use SEO tactics on your YouTube videos? Let us know your opinion on the comment box or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post What is YouTube SEO? – A Quick Guide appeared first on Serped.com.

Even if you’re not an SEO expert, you probably have heard of Google’s search operators.

These operators allow you to expand on and filter your search terms, by selecting specific results and keyword combinations.

In our opinion, these operators can be useful not just for SEOs, but for every person who uses Google to find information.

In this article we’ll go through the main search operators that you can use in Google. Read on to find out.

Google Search Operators

Quotes

The quotation marks (“”) operator will only present the results that are an exact match for the search term. This will refine your search results to precisely what you are looking for, in this case, using a long tail keyword.

“Can cats drink cow milk”

Pipe Symbol

The pipe (|)operator will give you results for either dogs OR cats (you can also use the word OR rather than the | operator), or both in the same page.

Dogs | Cats

Brackets

The brackets () operator will show you results for any of these three cat breeds, or all of them in the same page. As per the previous example, you could also use (Siamese OR Bombay OR Russian Blue) Cats for the same result.

(Siamese | Bombay | Russian Blue) Cats

Minus Sign

The minus sign (-) limits your search results to exclude what’s after the sign. In this case, we would find pages about purebred cats, but not the Sphynx breed.

Purebred cats -sphynx

This cat is obviously sad for being left out.

Asterisk

The asterisk (*) operator is like a wildcard, and it works especially well when you are looking for a quote but do not remember all of it. The results will include the other terms and something that Google deems suitable to fill in the gap according to the options in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Also, the * operator must be accompanied by the “” operator for it to work properly.

“Soft kitty, * kitty”

Dollar Sign Operator

The $ operator is especially useful if you are looking to purchase something – and if dollar is your currency. In this case, we would be looking for Sphynx cats at a price of $1000. There is no other operator required for this one to work.

Sphynx cat $1000

Number..Number Operator

The (number)..(number) operator shows you results for an interval of numbers. In this case, we were looking for the winners of the CFA International Cat Show between 2016 and 2021. This operator is great if you are looking for data in specific intervals.

The CFA International Cat Show winners 2016..2021

Site: Operator

This operator (site:) followed by the website URL is very popular for SEO professionals. It will return all the pages of a website that Google has indexed. In this case, we are looking for all the pages in the Cat Fanciers Association website.

site:cfa.org/

Quotes + Site: Operators

The “exact match” site operator combined with the “site:” operator will give you results for those exact words in the indicated website. So, we will only find the pages about sphynx cats on the CFA website.

“Sphynx cats” site:cfa.org

Keyword on Site: Operators

In this case, we’re looking for the page from the CFA website that Google considers more relevant for the keyword cat. It’s also very important for SEO work, as it shows you your pillar page in the specified website URL.

Cat site:cfa.org

Related: Operator

The “related:” operator looks for websites that are similar in subject to the one we mentioned. This is the UK website for cat protection in the country, so the related pages will be related to cats and their conservation. Especially relevant when it comes to entity SEO.

related:cats.org.uk/

Cache Operator

The “cache:” operator will help find the latest cached version of a website in Google. Of course, for this operator to work, the website needs to be indexed.

cache:cats.org.uk

Define: Operator</h3
The “define:” operator gives you the meaning of a specific word or term. The result is then shown in a “Dictionary” entry.

Define:cat

Filetype: Operator

The “filetype:” operator will provide you with files about cats that match the filetype you have indicated. However, the filetype operator only works for certain file types like pdf, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, and similar.

Filetype:pdf will find all related pdf documents for the search keyword (in this case, “cats”).

Cats filetype:pdf

Site: + Filetype:

When you use these two operators together, you’ll find files with the .pdf filetype in the website you indicated. It’s quite useful when looking for a specific file in a website you already know.

site:cfa.org filetype:pdf

Ext: Operator

The “ext:” operator works exactly the same as the filetype one. It basically looks for a specific extension in the files, which is the same as the one used in the filetype command.
width=”1024″ height=”470″ />

cat breeds ext:pdf

Intitle: Operator

The “intitle:” operator looks for pages that have a specific text in the title. In this case, we found pages on the web that have the text “sphynx cats” in the title. However, you might want to add “” to force the search to show only exact matches.

Intitle:sphynx cats

Allintitle: Operator

The “allintitle:”operator will find only pages that contain all the words in the query. When you have several search terms that you want to find in the title of the same page, this is the operator you should use.

Allintitle:bombay cats black cats

Inurl: Operator

The “inurl:”operator will show you results that have the search term in the URL. It can be interesting to match with other kinds of searches for SEO purposes.

This operator does not force an exact match, as it can identify related terms and synonyms.

Inurl:bombay cats

Allinurl: Operator

Like intitle and allintitle, allinurl will only show results that include all the keywords specified. Ideal for a more precise search.

Allinurl:bombay kittens siamese kittens

Intext: Operator

This is a similar query to “intitle”. However, in this case, the search term should be found in the page, not necessarily in the URL or the title.

Intext:russian blue cats

Allintext: Operator

This operator, in a similar fashion to the previous ones, will include all the specific words in the page “body”.

Allintext:russian blue scottish fold

Other Useful Search Operators

In/To Operator

You can use this operator to convert currencies. Let’s say in this case we want to know how much is $10 in Brazilian real. This is the result:

in/to

Weather: Operator

This operator gives you the weather predictions for a specific location.

weather:Lisbon

Stocks: Operator

The stocks operator allows you to check the value of the stocks using the brand’s ticker symbol in the stock market.

stocks:TSLA

Map: Operator

This operator shows you a map of a specific location.

map: Lisbon

Movie: Operator

The movie operator looks up information about a specific film. If it is showing in theatres, you’ll also get the showtimes in cinemas near you.

movie:Cats

Wrapping Up

As we showed, there are many ways to refine your Google searches and optimise your search practices.

92.42% of all the people on the internet use Google as their search engine. That’s a lot. So, by knowing these search tips, you’re ahead of the game, no matter what you are searching for.

Did we forget any main search operator? What are your thoughts? Use the comment box below or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The post Useful Google Search Operators In 2023 appeared first on Serped.com.

SEO has a lot of “secrets”. There are no exact hacks into achieving success on Google results, but relatively minor details can make a big difference when optimizing your website or a client’s.

One of these secrets is what is anchor text. But what is anchor text in SEO? It can affect your internal and external link structure, which is a metric to consider for a high SERP (search engine results page) ranking. In this article, we’ll go through a few essential aspects of anchor text optimisation and how they can apply to your website.

What Is On-Page Anchor Text?

First, let’s start with links. Links are the connections between two web pages. These links can be internal or external. Internal links connect two different pages on the same website. External links connect pages on one website to another website. Anchor text, in SEO, is the text that marks that connection. This is an example from one of our blog posts:

The words in blue (“Keyword Clusters”) link to another area of our blog. They have been chosen specifically to create a link that is relevant to the used keyword in the anchor text and at the same time to connect related pages.

This is where anchor text comes in. Anchor texts show search engines what to expect of that link. Adding the right anchor text will imply that both this article and the one we’re linking to are relevant for this keyword.

Using relevant keywords in your anchor text is a great way to get ahead in the game for ranking high on Google SERPs. However, there is also a risk for over-optimization… Does your anchor text fit the content of your page, or does it feel unnatural? Is that really what your page is about, or are you just aiming for a popular keyword?

What Is An Anchor Text In Code?

This is how an anchor text looks like in code:

<a href=”https://example.com”>anchor text</a>

Knowing how it shows in your HTML code is essential so you can troubleshoot when needed. The HTML is relatively straightforward, which makes it easy to detect any mistakes or wrong syntax.

Types Of Anchor Text

Did you know that there are different types of anchor text for SEO? The reason behind this is there are several different ways to create it, for different purposes. We’ll explain how they work in this section.

Exact Match

An anchor text is an exact match when it shows the precise description of the page linked. Let's say you have an article about pressure cookers. In this case, an exact match anchor text for this page would be “pressure cooker” as it is the main keyword targeted for that page.

This will also give the crawlers (the part of search engines that cruise the web looking for new pages to add to their index – pages need to be crawled and indexed in order to appear on search results) an insight into what can be found on the page you link to.

Partial Match

This kind of match iterates the main keyword by adding a related keyword that is relevant for the context. As an example, “pressure cooker recipes” could be a good partial match anchor text to link to the potential article about pressure cookers to sell.

Partial match anchor text can be used to further develop the topic of your page. Each page will usually rank for more than one keyword, so it is important to also add related anchor text that is not an exact match.

Branded Anchor Text

Branded anchor text, in this case, would be “Hawkins”. This is a brand of pressure cookers. If you can use this kind of anchor text, we recommend doing it.

If you don’t rank for your branded keywords, it’s very difficult to rank for any other keywords. Your brand is the low hanging fruit for keyword research, however, don’t overdo it. Users will know your brand if you provide quality content and ideas about how to solve their problem.

Naked Link

You can add the link URL as the anchor text, just like this: https://www.hawkinscookers.com/

This is called a naked link. Sometimes, it’s easier to get your reader’s trust with this kind of link since they know exactly where they’re going to get when they click on the  link. This does not contribute to your anchor text profile as an exact match keyword would do, but it does help make sure all pages are indexed.

Generic Anchor Text

This is commonly used, but we recommend avoiding it if you want to improve your SEO profile. Common  generic text is “Click Here” or “Click Now” and other similar calls to action. (Calls to Action are embedded in your content to make sure that the readers perform the action you want them to: subscribe to your mailing list, make a purchase, request information about your product… A call to action typically consists of three or four words like “Subscribe For More”.)

While it’s good to use a CTA in your content, these should be left for buttons rather than text content as they don’t add a lot of value as anchor text.

Images

Sometimes, you can use an image as an “anchor text”: i.e., the anchor text will be the alt-img attribute you assigned to that image. The alt-img attribute describes what is depicted in the image for browsers (like Google Chrome), since browsers are not perfect at reading images yet.

Alt-img is also used when a visually-impaired person uses your website. So, you are not only making your website good for machines, you’re also improving it for users. A win-win situation from our point of view.

Now, these are a few different types of anchor text in articles and pages you create. But are there best practices regarding the use of anchor texts and their target pages? We’ll explore that in the next section.

Best Practices For Anchor Text

When it comes to anchor text, there are certain tactics that can help. We’ll go through a few best practices we consider relevant for a good SEO performance. Remember, there’s more to SEO than keywords, and there’s more to anchor text than optimisation. Plus, as a great rule of thumb, what’s good for humans is usually good for bots – the robots that crawl your website in order to index it. They’re usually called spiders for they create a “net” of crawled pages.

Be Straight To The Point

Don’t add any unnecessary fluff to your anchor text. Be succinct and straight to the point. What does this anchor text mean? Why is it relevant for your readers? That should be answered, if not in the anchor text, in the previous or following paragraphs.

It needs to be clear what users are going to get out of this anchor text. Is it a story? Is it an article that proves your point? Is it something that relates to your main keyword and, therefore, to your main subject? All of these are valid and your anchor text should show why these links are relevant.

Is Your Target Page Relevant?

This should make sense for an SEO content creator. If the page you’re linking to is not relevant to the subject of the main article, your page’s ranking will be negatively affected.

Relevance for the keyword you’re targeting is highly important, especially after the May 2022 core algorithm update.

When you’re linking to a page, you need to make sure that link makes sense in relation to your content, and also in regards to your anchor text.

Your anchor text must describe perfectly the page it is pointing to. This includes selecting the right page to link to, but also anchor text that is meaningful to your main content.

Mind Your Keyword Density

Google is very careful with over-optimisation. This means that if you have your main keyword repeatedly on your content (including anchor texts), your ranking is going to suffer.

Don’t overdo it. Anchor text should be natural and relevant. If the main keyword is repeated ad nauseam in your content and anchor texts, Google will be able to tell you’re forcing it.

Evaluate carefully where you can add your keyword, and where it doesn’t make sense to.

SERPed Tools To Check Anchor Text

Site Explorer

This tool allows you to find links that point to your website, and your anchor text profile – common keywords used, the referring domain, etc. This is how you do it.

You'll find Site Explorer in the Tools menu.

In this page, you'll see the records for previous searches. For a new search, click the blue “+” button.

Fill in the form with the website's URL, and whether you want to search with www or without it. Click on “Explore”.

This is the result page. Check “Anchor Texts” in the menu on the left hand side.

Here you can see the main anchor text from referring domains on Thomann's website.

Here are the referring pages. You'll be able to find patterns here and see where you need to apply some link building effort.

You can also analyse the languages for the anchor texts and see which language is more popular on referring links to your website.

Site Crawler

Site Crawler analyses internal links on your website.

You'll see Site Crawler in the Tools menu, under “Site Management”.

You'll find your history of websites crawled. To create a new search, click the blue “+” button.

Fill in the form with the website URL and the number of links you want to crawl. This number is entirely up to you, but remember you have to spend credits for each link crawled. Wait for a few minutes, and you'll get the report.

Here it is!

Here are the crawled pages. To check each one, simply click on the blue links.

Here is your crawled pages report, in which you can see which are the top anchor texts.

These reports are very useful in order for you to analyse your internal links, their anchor texts and so on.

Wrapping Up

In this quick guide, we have given you  a few tips that should help you start optimizing your anchor text properly, without exaggeration. As usual, remember our SEO rule of thumb: what is good for humans is good for machines. Make your anchor text profile natural and relevant, and you’ll reap the benefits of this strategy.

Is there something you’d like to add? What do you think?

Let us know in the comment box or find us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post What is Anchor Text in SEO? ⚓ appeared first on Serped.com.

If you check your analytics frequently, you’ll most likely have noticed that most of your traffic comes from a few blog posts. However, the posts with the highest traffic are not always the ones that bring in the most conversions. This seems counterintuitive, but we’ll explain why.

Many of the keywords that bring in the most traffic are on the top of the funnel, i.e. don’t have a purchase intent. These are short, generic keywords like “piano”.

If you want a search term from someone who is interested in buying, it would be something like “buy electronic piano roland”. This second search term is a long-tail keyword. Can you tell the difference? It’s a lot more detailed and it has a buying intent, i.e. the customer is ready to buy.

But what does this have to do with pain points? And what is pain point SEO? We’ll explain soon, so stay put!

What Is Pain Point SEO?

Pain point SEO is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on the problem your product solves. Rather than focusing on features, it focuses on benefits. Because, ultimately, that’s why customers buy from you: to eliminate the problem they are facing.

This strategy analyses your users’ pain points, which results in content that targets their issue and presents your product as a solution.

Of course, the keyword research for this kind of SEO implies specific tactics. First of all, you need to find out how your customers look for your product online. You can use a tool that tells you which questions are searched in relation to a specific keyword. In this example, we used “paleo diet”:

As you can see, there is a large variety of questions that users are asking about your product. Also, if you use SERPed, you can use the Long Tail Keywords tool:

Long Tail Keywords allows you to figure out which keywords have purchase intent, low competition and a decent search volume.

Pain point SEO stands in contrast with volume-driven SEO. Volume-driven SEO brings you traffic, but pain point SEO brings you conversions.

This applies especially for B2B, where there is a typically long research process before the prospect decides to buy or subscribe. These users will be at the bottom of the funnel and will be aware of what you offer. This is what a sales funnel looks like:

As you can see, users begin at the top of the funnel. On each stage of the funnel, a few leads slide off. The ones that get to the bottom, the “Purchase” stage, are leads that know what they want and are ready to buy. However, as you know, most leads never get to the purchase stage, which reinforces the need to act upon your pain points.

The more educated your customers are about your product, the easier it is for them to decide.

Now you know how and why you should create keyword research tactics to fit pain point SEO. But are there any frameworks that can help you develop this kind of SEO content? We’ll show you a few in the next section.

Frameworks for Pain Point SEO Content

There are a variety of content you can create for pain point SEO. Here are some examples to get you started.

Comparison posts

If you want to highlight why your product is the best one that is available, write a comparison article. Research your main competitors and show how your product offers a better value for money. Users buy benefits, not features.

WooFresh created a comparison between Platformly and HubSpot. Here it is…

This kind of content approaches your customers’ issues and how you solve them compared to your competitors. List the facts and let the readers decide for themselves.

Best product or service lists

Readers love lists. Creating a list is a great idea if you’re unsure how to structure an article to improve traffic and engagement.

In this list post, WooFresh mentions a few different SEO tools and what distinguishes them. This is a great example of pain point SEO. By listing the benefits of each tool, it becomes clear which of them is better for each of your readers.

Different use cases call for different approaches. By listing products or services that are related to what you sell, you can easily get your customer’s attention.

Alternatives to ‘X’

Usually, there is a popular product that serves as the main offer in a specific market. In our case, we could say Ahrefs or SEMRush are the main competitors for SERPed.

This is a great content idea: show your product or service as an alternative to your main competitor, and explain why there are many reasonable alternatives out there.

In our case, many people are looking for an SEO tool for their company or agency. Ahrefs is well-known, but you can do the same using SERPed, at an incredibly lower price. Why pay more when you can get the same results at a lower price?

Other than price, SERPed also has other advantages such as the Agency add-on, which allows you to find customers using several prospector tools. Let’s say your agency helps companies whose websites are not responsive. The mobile prospector helps you find businesses that need that update.

As you can see, it’s easy to find alternatives to even the most popular tools. Sometimes, if something is “mainstream” or more expensive, that does not always mean it’s the best available.

An alternative software that fits your readers’ needs is a great pain point SEO subject. Remember to focus on benefits rather than features (i.e. what can this tool do for me?).

Articles about pricing

One main pain point for users is pricing. After all, not everyone can afford the most expensive tools, and as time passes, people’s needs might change. An example is email marketing and marketing automation software.

Tools like ActiveCampaign and Hubspot boast results, but do you really need to spend all that money to get a service that fits the bill? Tools like Platformly offer similar features and benefits at a lower price.

So, it’s clever to compare pricing and plans for these tools in order for readers to understand which fits their business better. When it comes to pain point SEO, pricing comparisons can create great content for your readers.

Product or service use cases

Use cases are also important for prospective customers: speaking of how you solve a specific issue for a business will give your prospects an idea of how your product or service will help them.

Also, use cases and case studies function as social proof: if other customers similar to you are happy about that product, wouldn’t you like to see what it was all about?

Now that we’ve described a few types of content you can use for your pain point SEO strategy, here are a few pertinent questions that will help you develop conversion-focused content, the main goal of pain point SEO.

Survey Questions for Conversion Focused SEO Topics

Survey questions, in this case, should promote detailed answers. Use “why”, “how”, “what”, and other question words to create open-ended questions.

The kind of answers these questions promote will be more detailed and allow you to create use cases and case studies easily. Surveys are great to understand what current customers (or even past customers s) think about your product, what they like and what needs improvement.

By focusing on your customer pain points, you can manage expectations and create social proof for your website or other media.

Let’s dive into a few questions you should ask in your survey and why.

1. What problem does our product solve?

You know the purpose of your product or service. You know why you created it. But your users might have a different opinion, because they know what they are trying to achieve with your product. So, it’s important to ask them: what problem does our product solve for you?

The answer to this question might be surprising, but it’s important to detail further: how does this product solve that problem? What benefits are the most valuable for you?

It’s important to stay open to different approaches. Your business is about your customers: if you’re not helping them, maybe you need to re-think your approach.

In order to be customer-centric, you need to understand which problems you are solving for your customer base, and how your product can be appealing to prospects and leads.

2. If our product or service disappeared, what product/service would you use as an alternative?

This is a very important question for your survey. You might see one product or service as your main competitor.

However, the product or service that could replace you, according to your customers, is your real competitor. How do you stack up against their offer? What are your advantages and disadvantages in comparison to that competitor?

Using this question is great for pain point SEO, as it makes clear what it is about your product that your customers value. The benefits of your product against that of your main competitor are a great starting point to creating content.

3. How would you describe our product/service to a friend who knows nothing about us?

This is an open-ended question that can get you a lot of material for social proof and your SEO content strategy. By describing your product to someone who doesn’t know what it is for, your customers offer you information about how you should sell it.

This survey question lets your customers tell you their pain points and the problem your product solves. Once you have this material, you just need to get the gist of it and use it to create SEO content. Customer opinion tells you a lot about how you should advertise your product or service online.

4. What are the top 3 benefits that you receive from our product/service?

If customers could pick three top benefits of using your product, what would they mention? Maybe ease of use, or the quality of your customer service – the point is, what your customers consider to be benefits can be totally different from the benefits you explore in your SEO content.

This question can give you a different perspective on what customers value in your product or service, and motivate a new SEO content strategy based on your findings.

5. If you were to search for our product or service, what would you search for?

This question is ideal to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords in your SEO content strategy. It also helps you understand your customers’ language and the way they communicate about your product.

It might seem like it’s easy to know how people search for your brand online. However, until prospects know what kind of product or service will fix their problem, they search Google several times with different intents…

The goal is to discover keywords with buying intent. These keywords lie at the bottom of your sales funnel, and they are the ones you should focus on to increase conversions. Other search intents are important too, but you need to make sure your content is getting readers to buy from you.

Wrapping Up

The main rule for pain point SEO is simple: focus on the problem you solve for your customers. Also, focus on benefits, not features. Benefits are the reason why customers buy from you. Features can only take you so far; if you don’t focus on your customers, your business will be in trouble.

And, finally, as we mentioned, remember to use keywords that express purchase intent to improve your conversion rate on your website.

If you’d like to find out more about SERPed, check out our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post Content Strategy For Pain Point SEO appeared first on Serped.com.

As you may already know, we recently launched a new keyword research feature called Keyword Clusters.

In this article, we’ll dig into what keyword clusters are, how you can use them, and how this feature can help you with your content strategy. Let’s dive in!

What Are Keyword Clusters?

Keyword clusters, like the name suggests, are clusters (or groups) of keywords grouped by topic, each cluster representing a topic or sub-topic.

Once the keyword research is done, you normally get a list of keywords that relate to your main keyword. With our Keyword Clusters feature, you can automatically group these keywords by topic or sub-topic. These clusters can then be used for new content ideas, or see if any existing content needs to be updated or optimized, for example.

You could of course create your own keyword clusters manually, but that may take you some time. With our Keyword Clusters feature, clusters are automatically created when you do your keyword research using our Ultimate Research or Long Tail Keywords tools.

You can even create keyword clusters from a list of keywords that you obtained from elsewhere. Simply upload the keyword list to our Keyword Clusters tool and we will do the grouping automatically for you.

Keyword Clusters – Why Are They Useful?

Now that you know what keyword clusters are, how can you use them to your advantage? Well, since you know these keyword clusters relate to one main topic, you can use each cluster to plan a section of your website, a webpage, or a blog post.

You could for example use the keywords in each cluster together. It might seem surprising, but each webpage you create can rank for dozens of different keywords. By using keywords in the same cluster, i.e. keywords that are closely related to each other and to the topic, they have the potential of ranking together, thereby increasing your chances of ranking high in SERPs for different keywords on the subject. Therefore, you increase exposure.

You can use keyword clusters to create new content, optimize previously created content, or both. We recommend using new keywords for your new content and using the clusters to upgrade old content that needs freshening up. Also, when creating new webpages or writing new articles, clusters can help you plan. Let’s say you search the keyword “piano”. There will be clusters for “digital piano”, “grand piano”, “electric piano” and so on. Each of these keywords represents a cluster that you should use to create and plan your content strategy.

How To Use The Keyword Clusters Feature

As we mentioned previously, SERPed includes a Keyword Clusters feature. We’ll explain how it fits in with our other tools.

Ultimate Research allows you to discover keywords related to a specific keyword. All you need to do is choose a keyword and start a search. The output will be a list of keywords related to the search term you chose. Keyword Clusters are automatically generated from the keywords list generated by Ultimate Research and can be accessed simply by clicking on the “Clusters” tab as per the below screenshot:

Long Tail Keywords also provides you with a list of keywords as the output, but in a slightly different way. Long tail keywords are highly specific and have a lower competition level – which makes them great for creating a granular SEO strategy. As an example, if your keyword is “piano”, using Long Tail Keywords, you’ll get suggestions like “grand piano”, “digital piano”, and so on. These keywords are longer and suggest details that a keyword like “piano” could never cover on its own.

As with Ultimate Research, keyword clusters are automatically created from the list of long tail keywords generated by our tool and can be accessed by clicking the “Clusters” tab of the Long Tail Keywords results page as per the below screenshot:

There’s also What Ranks Where, which gives you content ideas based on your competitors’ content. You just need to enter the competitor’s website URL, and you’ll get a list of the keywords that the website ranks for, along with search volume and other metrics. You can then use these keywords as a source for your own articles, with your own research.

Another new tool we created is Keyword Lists, which allows you to create your own lists of keywords from the results obtained from our keyword research tools. You can read more about this tool here… Keyword Clusters are automatically created for your lists of keywords and can be accessed in the “Clusters” tab.

Finally, our Keyword Clusters feature allows you to upload your own keyword list from other sources like another SEO tool, for example. Our tool will then create keyword clusters for you.

Here is how you can generate keyword clusters in Ultimate Research:

Find the Ultimate Research tool in the menu, open it.

start a new research process by clicking on the blue “+” button.

In this modal window, type the keyword you want to look up, select a location (or leave it as “Everywhere”) and a language, and click “Search Keyword”.

Now, there will be a tab named “Clusters”. Click on it and you'll find the results gathered automatically into clusters.

In this case, we chose the keyword “bonsai”, which gives us a few clusters to work with. You can use this tool directly from Ultimate Research, as is the case in this search.

Now, once you have these clusters ready, create your content strategy around these keyword groups. Each article or web page should have its own related cluster.

Wrapping Up

Keyword clusters are very important for your on-page SEO strategy, and they make it easier to find the keywords you should use together.

You’ll find Keyword Clusters easy to use, no matter if you’re a beginner or an SEO expert. It will also upgrade your SEO work by grouping keywords under certain topics or sub-topics.

If you need help using our Keyword Clusters feature, watch the tutorial video located below. You can also read our help article here…

The post Keyword Clusters 🔍 A Quick Guide appeared first on Serped.com.

If you use SERPed, you most likely already have a very defined SEO strategy for your content and offers. However, in this article we are going to talk about a tactic you might be missing. 

What is it, then?

Seasonal keywords.

These are keywords that relate to seasonal searches, i. e. keywords that have a higher search volume at certain times of the year.

One example is a search term like “christmas decorations”: a lot more people are looking for Christmas decorations in December, whereas in the summer months there will be a really low demand for that kind of product.

Now, should you use seasonal keywords in your strategy? Yes, without a doubt, you should because they guarantee you a source of traffic that, although fluctuating throughout the year, will add up to your other pages and pillar content.

In this article, you’ll find a quick guide to seasonal keywords and why you should use them in your SEO plan.

What Are Seasonal Keywords?

The first thing we need to dig into is the definition of seasonal keywords.

Seasonal keywords are any keywords that relate to seasons of the year (as the name suggests), major holidays, such as Christmas, and important dates for business, such as Black Friday.

These keywords tend to have high traffic during these certain times of the year, like when users are searching for “bikinis” or “swim shorts” during summer. If you have data that demonstrates that your customers look for these products at a certain time of the year, you need to put that information to good use.

Also, seasonal keywords are usually long tail keywords, which makes it easier for you to rank for these search terms. Long tail keywords are more specific and have lower competition.

There are many different products that you can sell that will benefit from a seasonal keyword strategy.

Seasonal keywords depend on the region as well. A common example is “air conditioning”. In the Northern Hemisphere, there are likely to be more sales during summer: June through September.

However, in the Southern Hemisphere, summer is from December through March. If you sell all around the world, you’ll benefit from targeting different regions for different products at specific times of the year.

How To Create A Campaign With Seasonal Keywords

Okay, so now you know a bit more about seasonal keywords. But how do you put this knowledge into practice? In this section, we’ll show you how to use these keywords for an SEO campaign.

1. Start planning a few months in advance for each season

As is usual with SEO, planning is essential – and you need to plan in advance so when each season or holiday comes, you’ll have done your keyword research and optimized your content already.

So, ideally, you should be planning ahead by at least four months. This means preparing for Christmas in August, and preparing for summer at the beginning of Spring.

Once you have this setup, you still need to constantly update your content and off-page SEO, but at least you have a strategy in place that will increase your traffic all year round.

2. Check the data from previous years and discover your seasonal peaks

Of course, you need to know first which times of the year already get the most traffic. This will help you define your strategy.

In order to check this data, we recommend using SERPed’s Web Analytics tool. If your website is based on WordPress, you can use our plugin for an easy setup.

This tool will give you data about usage peaks on your website, monthly traffic, bounce rate (the percentage of users that leave your website without navigating past the landing page), actions per visit, and so on.

If you use Google Analytics, you can also access and use that data.

Whatever tool you use for analytics on your website, make sure you set it up as soon as possible to be able to track results.

Once you have collected data for at least a year, you’ll find some months have more traffic than others. Find the months you want to target accordingly.

3. Do a keyword research for the seasons you want to target

After you have defined the seasons you want to target, you’ll want to do keyword research. This task is of the utmost importance, as it will define the search terms you want to rank for.

When choosing keywords, you need to first research for long tail keywords relevant to your audience in that season. Long tail keywords are usually sourced from a more general keyword – like, let’s say “electric fireplace” is your general keyword. Examples of long tail keywords for this one are “electric fireplace with mantel”, “electric fireplace heater”, or “recessed electric fireplace”.

As you can see, keyword research helps you refine your main search term to get closer to what your visitors are looking for. It also gives you ideas for new content.

4. Create new pages or optimize the existing ones with the keywords

Now, after you’ve defined your target keywords, you need to create your content plan. This is how it goes.

Make a map of your target keywords, how they relate to each other, which ones have lower competition and higher search volume, and which ones could be considered pillar content.

The data you get from keyword research will help you to plan your content more effectively.

From this data, you will also be able to see whether you can edit your content or if you need to create it from scratch for each keyword.

In the previous electric fireplace example, we could write some cornerstone content with the more general keywords and then do a few articles on each specific type of electric fireplace, targeting all the long tail keywords that are relevant to your customers and related to your product.

5. Create an offer for that season (discount code, free shipping, etc.)

To make sure that you profit from the extra traffic, you could try to add a special offer directed at those seasonal keywords.

A special offer can be a discount code, free shipping, or even a digital raffle ticket to win one of your most wanted products. This creates an extra push for these times of the year, be it Christmas, New Year, fall or any other time in which there is more demand for your product.

Of course, don’t go overboard on the offers – but if it is profitable and ethical, all good.

6. If possible, create PPC campaigns using the same keywords

Apart from SEO, seasonal keywords can also be useful for PPC campaigns, especially on Google Ads. If you target these keywords at the right time of the year, paired with great ads, you can get a steady increase in traffic.

You might be interested in creating Search campaigns, which target specific keywords to show text ads. This helps you get ahead of the competition and, depending on the size of the campaign, Google Search Ads are reasonably priced. Also, you’ll target different keywords each season, which allows you to switch certain ads on and off depending on the season.

How To Use SERPed To Look Up Seasonal Keywords

Now, if you use SERPed, you’ll find it easy to look up seasonal keywords for your SEO strategy.

Ultimate Research, Long Tail Keywords, What Ranks Where and Keyword Clusters are the main tools you can use.

Ultimate Research is the main tool for keyword research. As we mentioned previously, keyword research is one of the cornerstones of seasonal keyword planning. You just need to enter a keyword and Ultimate Research will give you a series of related keyword ideas. This provides you with a list to start researching for your content.

Long Tail Keywords, as the name suggests, allows you to find long tail keywords related to your main keyword. For example, the keyword “wine”: you’ll get suggestions like “red wine”, “white wine”, “french wine”, and so on.

This tool thus allows you to get new ideas to target precise keywords that don’t have as much competition as a keyword like “wine”.

Also, with both Ultimate Research and Long Tail Keywords, you get a trends graph for each suggested keyword, which shows you the monthly search volume in the past year, which is quite useful to find seasonal keywords.

What Ranks Where, on the other hand, works in a different way. Rather than looking for a keyword, you just need to enter a competitor’s website URL. This tool will then show you the top keywords for which your competitor ranks, which gives you ideas for new content.

The ideal approach is to get ideas, take a look at the original article, and create something better – more comprehensive, longer, and more detailed.

Finally, Keyword Clusters – a recently launched SERPed tool – this tool organizes your keywords into clusters based on topics, which makes it easy to plan out your content. Each cluster can be a source for a new piece of content or a new page on your product website.

As you can see, SERPed has several tools that can help you set up your strategy for seasonal keywords. Follow the steps above to make sure you do the best for each season and holiday in your business.

If you are already a SERPed member, log in and try these tools to search for seasonal keywords. If you aren't a member, what are you waiting for?

Start your 30-day trial for just $7!

Wrapping Up

Seasonal keywords can make the difference when it comes to improving your SEO strategy and increasing traffic.

Once you have established these practices, this short-term traffic becomes long-term. By enabling seasonal search terms on your website, you make sure you’re on top of your SEO game all year round.

Have we forgotten something? Do you have anything to add? Please let us know in the comment section below, or find us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post Seasonal Keywords – What Are They & Why Should You Care? 🏖️ appeared first on Serped.com.

A few years ago, when website builders were a novelty, they didn’t exactly have a good reputation when it came to SEO. It simply wasn’t a priority.

However, that has changed tremendously over time. Now there are many website builders with options for search engine optimization that are simple and easy to use.

In this article, we’ll go through the best website builders for SEO and how you can use them to optimize your website.

1. Wix

Wix is a well-known website builder that has been around for a while. Although in the beginning it frustrated users with its lack of customization options, now it is considered the easiest solution to build your website without using any code.

While Wix has a drag and drop website builder, it has gone one step further and now also offers an AI-powered builder that builds your website automatically according to the information you provide. This is a great way to save time since it gives you a full website within minutes.

But what about SEO? You’ll find Wix allows you to:

• Set up 301 redirects
• Set up custom meta titles for each page
• Set up alt-tags
• Access the sitemap
• Edit the robots.txt file
• And more.

Wix also provides eCommerce building options, which are great if you want to set up an online store quickly. It also has a free version that might help if you’re on a tight budget, and seven paid plans that suit different use cases.

2. Squarespace

When it comes to website builders, we had to mention Squarespace. It is a popular service that performs quite well in comparison to most website builders.

First of all, regarding website design and aesthetics, Squarespace is the top option. It offers 110 templates that you can use as a base for your website’s design.

This website builder also offers you a few more options for SEO. First of all, you can use the “SEO Checklist” tool in order to discover your weaknesses when it comes to search engine optimization and how to fix them. Using a checklist for optimizing your website is a great way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Using Squarespace, you can also find the top-ranking keywords for your website and do keyword research so you can adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.

Its tools allow you to add meta descriptions and title tags, create 301 redirects, edit a standard sitemap and even connect your website to Google My Business.

3. Site123

If you don’t need all the bells and whistles, Site123 might be right up your alley. It uses a block builder system, which does not require any coding or even SEO experience.

Site123’s SEO Adviser Tool, as the name suggests, offers advice about how to optimize your website for search engines. It gives you actionable insights and tips in order to improve your ranking.

SEO Pages – Audit Tool checks your meta descriptions, title tags and focus keywords. For your site to rank properly, you need to make sure these details are optimized according to your product or service, your search terms, and the way your audience searches for products like yours.

Also, Site123 offers 160 pre-made pages that can make the setup process of your website easier and faster.

However, there is a caveat to these offers: in order to use Site123’s SEO tools, you need to have the Gold plan. So, these tools are not exactly free.

4. Zyro

Zyro is not as popular as Squarespace or Wix, but it has a lot of potential when it comes to search engine optimization. First of all, it gives you the ability to edit page titles, meta descriptions, alt-tags, and custom URLs.

It provides you with 130 themes from which you can pick your favorite, and it has a modern interface that is easy to use.

Also, you can integrate your Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager properties in seamless integration.

When it comes to mobile optimization, this website builder does not disappoint: the pages have fast loading times, and clean URL structures.

You can also optimize your content using the AI Writer option in Zyro. Another AI-based feature that auto-generates your website, faster than using the regular template editor.

5. GoDaddy

You probably already heard of GoDaddy as a hosting provider that can be used in conjunction with other website builders. But did you know that GoDaddy also offers its own website builder?

If time is short for you, GoDaddy is a great solution. It offers hosting, domain registration, and advanced marketing and SEO tools.

Their InSight tool is adequate for digital marketing, especially if you’re in a rush. Simply tell the platform who you are, and what you wish to do. InSight will then draw your business plan, helping you determine your goals and achieve them.

Specifically for SEO, GoDaddy offers their SEO Wizard tool that gives you tips about what you need to improve on your website.

When it comes to the actual website building process, GoDaddy does not use templates per se. However, there are 20 different layouts. Then, on each layout, you just need to pick the sections you need and add the content.

If all this is not enough for you, fret not. GoDaddy has a dedicated SEO team that offers their customers personalized information and in-depth SEO reports.

6. Gator

If your goal is cheap and cheerful, Gator might be the solution for you. It is simple and low-priced, while its ease of use makes it ideal for beginners – especially business owners that don’t have a lot of time or money to invest in their website.

Gator is another website builder that resorts to AI to create unique websites. You just need to give it a bit of information, add images, and that’s pretty much it: you’ve got yourself a website.

This website builder, however, allows for a lot of customization, even though it is one of the cheapest options available for web building.

When it comes to SEO specifically, Gator allows you to create custom URLs, meta descriptions, title tags, and other metadata. It also lets you add featured images for your pages. Gator generates your sitemap automatically.

Bonus: WordPress

WordPress is not exactly a website builder, as it is a CMS (content management system). However, it is a great option to build a website that adjusts well to the user’s knowledge of web development.

Although some users fear WordPress, thinking it is too complicated to use, it is actually quite simple to create a basic website. You just need to choose a theme (there are thousands of themes available on WordPress), free or paid. All other functions can be added through their plugins – and there are many of them.

WordPress’s themes and plugins are SEO-friendly, and there are lots of customization options available. Hosting is also easy to set up using WP Installer.

Although WordPress is quite different from the other items in this list, it’s impossible to ignore it. If you’re in doubt, it might help to know that a whopping 37% of websites are WordPress-based.

Website Builders: A Short Summary

Wrapping Up

Modern website builders are no longer lacking when it comes to SEO. As you see, there are several platforms that allow you to optimize your website without having to write a single line of code.

The right platform depends on your needs and your budget. Our comparison table gives you a few tips in order to help you pick your ideal website builder for SEO.

However, in our opinion, nothing beats WordPress – and SERPed.net offers an SEO plugin you can use on your website to enhance your search engine optimization efforts. You can find it for free download here…

Still, using a website builder is justifiable for many reasons. If customization is less important than having your website online fast, these builders are ideal. If, on the other hand, you have very specific needs for your website, WordPress might be a better option.

Is there any other website builder for SEO that you think should have made the cut? What do you think of these options? Let us know in the comment section below or find us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post The 7 Best Website Builders for SEO appeared first on Serped.com.