Where should you start with technical SEO? Technical SEO work ensures that the time you’ve spent on on- and off-page SEO pays off — if a website can’t be crawled and indexed, the content on that site can’t rank no matter how high-quality or link-worthy it is. For that reason, SEO pros know that a comprehensive search marketing strategy should include periodic audits of a website’s technical health and its opportunities for improvement. But as you uncover these opportunities, how do you know which ones are most important? What information can you provide to your managers and web developers so that they know which issues deserve their time and attention? Every website’s technical SEO situation is different, depending on platform, code base, history, and complexity. As the SEO Manager here at Moz, I use information from our Campaign tools to make recommendations about the urgency and predicted impact of our site’s technical SEO needs. Our devs use these insights to plan their sprints,...

What is on-page SEO? On-page SEO is when you blend the art of writing with the science of SEO to rank individual pages for specific keywords. On-page SEO includes everything from meta tags, content format, and keyword optimization to get your content found by search engines and move your audience to convert with you. While it’s only one part of the equation, on-page SEO guides your content to match customer intent, user engagement, and tactics to increase conversions. You need to have a map on you before you head out to the forest if you don't want to get lost. Just like hiking, you need to have a good idea of where you're going if you want to stay on track to your destination. The same line of thinking can be applied to content production, because you should know how to structure content on your site to help sculpt search results and meet the needs of your customers to drive more conversions. It’s not easy to write content that ranks in Google and drives conversions, but...

Many marketers approach Search Engine Result Page (SERP) features from the wrong angle. Instead of asking what you can do to rank for SERP features, ask what SERP features can do to inform your content strategy. By flipping this thought process, you can build a successful content strategy that speaks to your audience at every stage of the buyer’s journey, using the most efficacious language and content format. SERP features are designed to provide users with the most relevant answers to their questions, and they’re formatted to package this information in the best way possible. In other words, the exact language and format of each SERP feature is the most accurate representation of the type of language and content format that your audience seeks (at least according to Google). As a digital marketer, this is gold. With a little digging, you can now mimic the keyword topics, style, and format of the SERP features present for your target keywords, creating content that engages your audie...

With more than 3 billion monthly searches , YouTube is not just a popular social networking platform, but the second largest search engine on the Internet. Five hundred hours of video footage was uploaded to YouTube every single minute in 2019 — and that figure has likely grown since. YouTube has 2 billion active monthly users who watch over 1 billion hours of content on the platform every single day. With content coming in at that volume, it gives a more accurate sense of scale to think of any individual video not as a person shouting amidst a crowd, but as a single grain of sand on a beach. It’s not a perfect analogy, because grains of sand on the beach are not individually identifiable, searchable, or able to be organized and catalogued. YouTube videos are. That doesn’t mean that it’s in a marketer’s best interest to have an “if we build it, they will come” mentality on YouTube. Content creators and marketers who publish video to YouTube sometimes assume that the most interesting ...

There are so many ways to improve SEO, not least of which is link building . But do you feel like the quality of results from your link building strategy has started dwindling? If your answer is “yes”, you’re not alone. Link building has taken off in the content marketing world, but we’ve exhausted the typical strategies by overusing them. There is one method to improve SEO and brand awareness that marketers haven’t utilized broadly yet — designing guestographics . This is a strategy that we at Venngage have been using for years to earn backlinks and improve our SERP. Guestographics aren’t exactly a secret, but since so few content marketers know about them, here are our tips for creating and pitching them. What is a guestographic? A guestographic is essentially a guest infographic. We’ve used this term internally for years because it has a very specific purpose. Guestographics are created in collaboration with other brands. It’s their content with our infographic design. This ha...

Creating the right content for your website needs serious planning and development. In an increasingly competitive world, it’s not enough that your audience loves it — Google has to love it too! This article will show you how to create, optimize, and promote cornerstone content that drives traffic to your website and eventually converts visitors into loyal customers. What exactly is cornerstone content? The dictionary describes “cornerstone” as something essential, indispensable, basic, or the main foundation upon which something is constructed. Cornerstone content, therefore, is the most important part of your website. It refers to a high-value piece of content that aims to increase traffic and brand awareness by showing what your business can offer. Letting potential customers know what you’re all about will help define your brand and reflect your values. As well as creating a positive first impression, cornerstone content tells Google what your website wants to share. Corners...

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign. You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs. From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again. That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide , we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you...