March 2016

Best Keyword Research Tools
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Best Keyword Research Tools

Keyword Research, AdWords, Keywords, PPC, SEO

31 03, 2016

Best Keyword Research Tools

By Stephen|2019-01-30T21:20:51+00:00March 31st, 2016|Keyword Research, AdWords, Keywords, PPC, SEO|0 Comments

As I talked about in my last post, Google’s algorithms have changed a lot over the years, no more is it just about keywords, but content and how good/relevant it is. Begging the question, what value do keywords hold now?

It’s true keywords don’t hold as much clout as they used to, but they are still required to help your content to appear relevant, which is what Google loves at this moment in time.

A lot of different factors come into play when researching keywords than just looking at exact-match keywords. Bounce-rates, expected CTR (click through rate) and volume of searches are just some of the areas that warrant attention before going ahead with a keyword.

What hasn’t changed is including the right keywords in meta descriptions, constantly monitoring and making judgments on your rankings and researching your competitors to get a sense of how they are performing on similar keywords.

3 Of The Best Keyword Research Tools Around:

WordStream

A great tool if you want thousands of results from a single search. WordStream gives you relative volume for each keyword, so you can see how many people are searching for that word and weigh up the pros and cons based on the data given. There are niche options and the ability to email all the keywords to you if required.

The only major problem with the WordStream tool is that relative volume is the only big metric that is analysable, which may not be enough for some users.

With WordStream you get 30 free searches with the keyword research tool, so there is no excuse to not give it a try. You may find it’s worth a great deal to your business.

Have a look: http://www.wordstream.com/keywords

Übersuggest

A free to use tool which is really simple but really effective. Übersuggest allows you to enter a word and pick the source (web, images, shopping, YouTube and news) and location from drop-down menus, if you are looking for something a little more specific. The results are laid out in alphabetic order, making it clearer for the reader.

But because it’s free tool, you don’t get any specific metrics or measurements in volume which may require a different tool if that is what you are looking for. Despite that being it’s only flaw, it is definitely one of the best tools on the market, it’s quick, easy-to-use, you get a ton of results and best of all it’s free!

Here is the link: https://ubersuggest.io/

Google

There are different keyword research tools that Google offer. They bring something different to the table and best of all they are free.

Google Trends (above) shows the interest of certain topics over periods of time. Great if you need to see when certain keywords are in “fashion” so you can plan your campaigns accordingly. It can go more specific if needed, with trends in different countries and the ability to look at categories. For a free tool it is great for looking at current hot trends in the market which you could use to your benefit.

https://www.google.co.uk/trends/

The second tool is Google’s Keyword Planner (below). For really in-depth analysis of search volumes, Keyword Planner is great for analysing your competitors for similar search queries to your own. It is mainly built with Google Adwords in mind, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great tool nonetheless.

Summary

There is a simple rule I think should be adhered to when it comes to researching keywords. Pick the words that have low competition and high volume of searches. Of course other factors help to come to a decision, but that simple sentence helps to put keyword research into perspective.

All round I feel I have picked a good mixture of the best keyword research tools available today, giving you a lot of options to find the right keywords for your meta tags, content, ads and many more.

What do you think are the best keyword research tools that are out there? Have you tried any of the tools I have mentioned above? What do you think? Have they been useful?

Leave a comment and let me know

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Google Algorithm Changes

By Stephen|2019-01-30T21:20:52+00:00March 24th, 2016|Google, Algorithm Changes/Updates, SEO|0 Comments

Over the years Google has made many changes to how its search engine ranks websites (known as Google Algorithm Changes or updates), for better or worse, they have managed to adapt and improve it’s algorithms to make sure only genuine websites with high quality and most importantly relevant content, backlinks and well optimised pages get the best rankings.

Technology is constantly evolving and so too is Digital Marketing and SEO. Staying abreast of these changes is hard work but worth it in the end. These updates have changed the way webmaster’s approach SEO because it now requires a team effort from the whole business, to make the website presentable and ultimately drive the traffic organically from the search engines and encourage users to stay on the site.

Panda And Penguin Updates

Panda – First launched by Google in Feb 2011, the real first huge, mainstream update to the search engines algorithms. It introduced measures to tackle websites that were producing low-quality content and penalising them in the search rankings as a result. Panda is still being updated to this day and is part of Google’s core algorithm.

Some other examples of sites that were penalised were ones that were spamming or duplicating content and overusing ads.

How to make sure you don’t get penalised? High quality content is the simple answer. Make sure you go through all your pages and update them if they need more substance.

Penguin – launched in Apr 2012, a year after the Panda update. The update mainly took into account the backlink profiles of websites as factors that determined the ranking of a site. Those with spam links were the ones penalised in this update.

Before this update, many users figured out they could abuse Google’s algorithm by getting 100’s and 1000’s of backlinks that were spam and irrelevant but overall rank well because of it. Now the focus is on backlink quality, the biggest determining factor, not the amount you have.

Hummingbird – Came a year later and updated Google’s search capabilities. They noticed a lot of people used the search engines in a conversational manner, so the update helped Google to understand these types of search queries a lot better.

Content on websites had to change again as well, past the keyword, showing understanding of users and what they want to learn.

Mobile Update – The first two year gap in major updates. Launched in 2015 the mobile update was a huge deal and seriously impacted websites that weren’t prepared for it, and Google warned them which was a first.

Mobile is rapidly beginning to dominate a lot of search engines behaviour and Google noticed this. In simple terms, if your website is mobile optimised, you are fine and should see a boost to your search rankings.

Sites that weren’t optimised, risked falling down the rankings unless they optimised for mobile and made it a user-friendly experience.

Other Updates – There were two other updates in 2015. The first was what people dubbed as a quality update that Google didn’t acknowledge straight away. It focused on the user experience and distribution of content as a ranking boost for websites.

Near the end of 2015 Google started to put its hat into the Artificial Intelligence ring, by announcing a rather unique algorithm that learned and predicted user behaviour. Google have even called it their third most important ranking measure, which is a big deal.

Google ads have now disappeared from the right hand side of the page altogether on the desktops, the significance of this is a big impact in the amount of ads being served on the desktop platform. Being the second largest in click share, Google side ads still only made up the low 10’s percentages of the overall share, which may not be a huge deal to some. At the same time Google have increased the number of ads from 3 to 4 appearing at the top and the bottom of the page to make up for the loss of the side ads.*

*Source: Merkle RKG

Summary

The Google search engine has changed a lot. It is a system that is constantly seeing improvements and being refined to provide a consistent and fair level playing field to all webmaster’s trying to rank well for their respective websites.

So what can you do to make sure your website is optimised based on these algorithm updates?

High quality content. Content is King. Make it relevant to the user.
Factor in all optimisation techniques for your site, including optimising for mobile.
Gain those high quality backlinks. Remember it’s about quality not quantity!

Google have got a system that is improving each day for the searcher and the people who want to be searched. Keeping abreast of the latest Google algorithm changes is key to making sure your SEO stays on point and doesn’t suffer any unexpected hits in performance. You need to Adapt or face the potential consequences and hopefully I have helped you achieve that by sharing some Google algorithm changes that you didn’t know about.

Backlinks The Right Way

By Stephen|2019-01-30T21:20:52+00:00March 18th, 2016|SEO, Backlinks|0 Comments

How to start getting those powerful links to your website…

Backlinks are a vitally important tool and key factor in good SEO. Get it right and it will improve your website ranking ten-fold, but get it wrong and you could be in trouble with not only the search engines, but with the ‘wrong’ traffic coming to your site.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links directed at your site, known as inbound links. Usually a higher number of inbound links means your site is popular and will rank well in the search results because of it.

But, having a high amount of backlinks, doesn’t mean the search engines will put you at the top. They measures the quality of the backlinks coming into your site, if they are not up to the high standards of quality and reputation when passing through their algorithms, your rankings won’t be affected positively.

If links are coming from websites relevant to yours, the search engines will consider them to be high-quality links.

If backlinks are not relevant to your site, they will be considered low-quality links (basically not worth your time and possibly harming your websites reputation).

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing all like to see websites gaining relevant links over time and not manipulated for quick gain, that’s why it’s important to have an effective back linking strategy, so you avoid creating potential problems.

Link Farming

Search engines like Google now employ sophisticated algorithms that are now even stricter when it comes to scoring backlinks, most definitely a good thing enhancing customer experience and relevance. Google found website owners who were using hidden links and automatically generated pages, where they provided easy inbound links to websites. The older search algorithms didn’t pick this up and the ongoing development of algorithms and releases makes it near impossible to manipulate the links.

Many off-shore businesses sprang up in the pay for links format, so Google took a stand against these dubious websites and the websites that used these link farmers by banning their sites, some even permanently.

Why Get Involved With Backlinks

The main reason anyone with a website gets involved in SEO and back-linking is simple… TRAFFIC! The cornerstone of any website, why you create a site in the first place. Driving potential clients to what you’re offering, whether it be a product or service.

Back linking is one of the best traffic generators around and also instills users with an element of trust, as they are more likely to click-through if they see your website on page 1 or the top 3 results. Being honest, trust levels start to go down if what you’re looking for goes beyond page 1.

How Do You Backlink The Right Way

It all start’s with the website experience itself. The site should be easy to navigate and enable first-timers to easily be able to access a wealth of content and/or contact you for more information. It’s about building that trust level and reputation as a recommended website to visit, but also making it easy for the Search engine crawlers to find the content that’s relevant.

A lot of effort should go into making great quality content and a minimal amount in link building (not only does great content help with back linking but also makes the user subscribe into you and the website experience). Once you have made the site easy to navigate and produced relevant, high-quality content (blogs, in-depth pages, services you offer, contact, about you etc.), it’s time to begin getting those backlinks.

One of the best way’s to go about this is researching similar websites to yours. Other websites and businesses that share in your interests, who you could build relationships with so they link to your content. The same rules apply as with your website, their site should be easy to navigate and have high-quality content, then the search engines will see both as genuine, relevant and a natural link to each other, which is what we want.

A great tool for this is: Similar Site Search

Summary

Google has been getting stricter over the years, with Panda and Penguin updates increasingly putting off webmaster’s from investing in link building, worried about Google planning more updates that are similar in the future. If you keep to the principle of better quality content that is interesting and engaging to your target audience. Gaining backlinks in the right way reaps the benefit, so plan it and nurture the links.

If you would like more information on backlinks, SEO, or anything Digital Marketing, then get in contact with us today. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Monthly Archives: March 2016

Best Keyword Research Tools

Google Algorithm Changes

Backlinks The Right Way

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