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8 Best Steps to Designing a Website for Inbound Success

October 11, 2019 • Featured • 22
Designing a website is a very different proposition now than it was a few years ago. With the changes in technology but more importantly, the changes in buyer mindset, websites need to be designed carefully. If you want inbound success, this should be at the core of the website design. Following these 8 steps will help you get there.

Who is your website attracting?

The first step is to think about who your website is attracting – who are you talking to? In order to create websites designed to generate leads, you need to know who those leads are and what you need to say to them.

One of the best places to start with this is buyer personas or ideal customer avatars. These are a process where you examine your ideal customer, what they are looking for and how you can use your website to attract them.

What stages of the marketing funnel do you need to cover?

Because the aim is to use the inbound marketing approach on your website, you will want to consider the different stages of the marketing funnel and where your customers are in it. You might need to hire an inbound marketing agency to help with this stage because it is very important. But a snapshot of the three main areas include:
- Top of the funnel – someone searching for a general type of car ‘best small car’
- Middle of the funnel – someone looking for more information on something specific ‘reviews of Ford Focus’
- Bottom of the funnel – someone who has made a choice and now wants to buy ‘Ford Focus cars for sale’
Another way of looking at this is people may be at the Learner, Shopper or Buyer stage depending on their awareness of the topic. You need to see where your product fits in and how your website helps them move through the stages.

What kind of content do you need?

Once you have lined up the funnel and where you fit into it, you can start to consider the type of content you need for your audience. The aim is always to stand out from the competition and to provide top-quality content that helps your audience.

One phrase often used is a ‘thought leader’ – based on the idea of taking what has already been done and improving it. This can have benefits for both your audience and also SEO – more on that in a moment.

Focus on talking about the ‘why’

As you are planning your content, make sure you are thinking and talking about the ‘why’ more than the ‘what’. This means talking about why someone needs or wants what you offer, how it helps them, what problems it solves. If you are just talking about what the product does or is, this won’t have the same emotional connection for your audience as to why they need it or how it helps them.

Understand the basics of SEO

You don’t need to be an expert in SEO to create an inbound website, but you do want to learn the basics and apply these as you go. For certain, the basics of on-page SEO should be in your mind as you are creating the website.

Keywords are one of the most important things to understand. What keywords and phrases would your audience use to find your product? What keywords are needed to help them understand it and why it is what they need? Naturally including these in the copy, the URL, the title and in the meta description are also the foundation of SEO.

Ensure your website is easy to navigate

SEO is about optimising your website for user experience and as you design your site, one of the top things to consider is the design and navigation of your site. The more complex the navigation, the more chance people abandon their visit and go elsewhere.

Instead, make sure the most important parts of the site are in key places. Your menu should show the next steps to take. Links in the footer should make it easy for people to find key areas. Anchor texts within content should be logical for the content they are linking with.

Have a responsive design

Depending on your industry, the percentage of users on mobile could be anywhere from 40-80%. This means a responsive design that is mobile friendly is key to capture all visitors on all devices. It is also a big part of SEO and Google are now taking a ‘mobile-first’ approach.

Stand out from the competition

The final step is to look for ways to stand out from your competition. You don’t want to copy anyone but look at what they do and see how you can do it better. This doesn’t always mean flashy graphics or bold colour schemes – it may be about simplifying the customer experience, offering more information or simply ensuring it is easy for customers to reach out to you with questions.
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How To Protect Your Website From Negative SEO

September 20, 2019 • SEO 101 • 97

The practice of using black hat SEO and unethical techniques to undermine a competitor’s ranking in the search engines is referred to as negative SEO. The most common forms of negative SEO include hacking, building spammy links, and removing high-authority backlinks.

Fortunately, there are various steps that can help you detect whether your website has been a target of negative SEO.

Detecting Negative SEO

Here are 3 ways to detect negative SEO attacks on your website:

Set Up Google Webmaster Email Alerts

Connect your website with Google webmaster tools and configure your email alerts to ensure you get alerted when someone tries to attack your website with malware, or when you get a manual penalty from Google.

You can also retrieve alerts when there is a sudden spike or drop in your website’s impressions, clicks, or organic traffic.

Analyze Traffic Quality

Frequently analyzing your website’s traffic quality will help you identify bots and undesirable traffic. A sudden unexpected spike in traffic might be a signal of an external attack.

Use specialized analytics tools, such as Databox, to get a detailed report on your traffic quality.

Keep An Eye On Your Competitors

Since negative SEO tactics are mostly used by competitors, it is essential to analyze their activity to know if they are engaging in unethical SEO practices.

Follow the footprints of your competitors using a VPN service — this will ensure you remain anonymous. It is essential that you compare VPN services before you make a decision.

Protecting Your Site From Negative SEO

It is important to take effective measures in advance to protect your site from any possible negative SEO attacks.

Perform Regular Backlink Audits

Regular backlink audits are necessary, and the best way to spot suspicious activity on your website. They can also save you from negative backlink attacks.

Hackers usually alter the content of a website to include spammy links, or to modify existing links to redirect to their own website. Therefore, performing regular backlink audits can help you quickly identify if this is happening.

If you find bad links that are hurting your rankings, try to remove them as soon as possible. You can use Whois to find the email address of the webmaster by entering the domain name of the website or its IP Address.

Check For Content Scraping

Content marketing is a very effective way of increasing organic traffic. However, content scraping is one of the most common techniques used by spammers to negatively affect a website’s SEO.

Scraping is a process of copying your content (word-for-word) and publishing it online. If most of your content is copied, there is a higher chance of Google penalizing your website.

Use duplicate content detection software such as Copyscape to identify if someone else is publishing your content without your permission. Fill out Google’s Copyright Removal Form to report it.

Protect Your Best Backlinks

In order to increase the impact of negative SEO, spammers will often try to remove your best backlinks by contacting webmasters using your name.

The most effective way of preventing this from happening is by making sure that you always use an email address from your domain when communicating with webmasters.

The Bottom Line

Negative SEO can hamper your website’s ranking. Fortunately, you can take steps to protect your website from it. Make sure you set up email notifications on Google webmaster tools and analyze your website’s traffic regularly.

Also, keep an eye on your competitors using a VPN service, use a plagiarism checker, and perform regular backlink audits. By taking these precautions you will not only reduce the impact of negative SEO, but could prevent it altogether.
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How Ensure Online Plagiarism Doesn’t Harm Your SEO

August 22, 2019 • Content Marketing • 127
It’s a commonly believed myth that anything posted on the Internet is in the public domain. This is not the case. All creators hold the copyright to their published works in digital form, and unless stated, others do not have the right to use it without permission.

Although it is not mandatory to protect your public works, there are small steps you can take to reduce the chance of suffering from plagiarism and mitigate any damage to your Internet marketing efforts.

Follow this Anti-Plagiarism Checklist

You can never fully prevent people from copying your words and images; however, you can certainly deter them. Always follow this checklist from law firm Plattner Verderame, P.C., when creating new content.
1. Outline clear guidelines for writers and editors.
2. Fact check and verify all of your sources.
3. Ensure your writing is unique and offers something brand new for the reader.
4. Don’t hire cheap content creators without a proven track record.
Understand Copyright Laws

If you are based in the United States, you and the infringing party will be subject to US law. Outside of the US your content could be protected by the Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Work. That means, in the event of copyright violation, you can prosecute.

That said, it’s always worth checking up on your local copyright laws before you engage in legal proceedings. According to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, you should always start by sending a letter to the relevant party. If their physical address isn’t available, an email will suffice.

If you don’t get a response, you can send a takedown notice to their website hosting service or Internet Service Provider (ISP) requesting that the content is removed. However, in such circumstances the burden of proof lies with you, meaning you will have to provide evidence that you created the works in question.

Dealing with Duplicate Content

A lot of Internet marketers fear duplicate content; however, it’s not as disastrous as it’s generally made out to be. Google will not penalize all websites that contain duplicate content. Instead, they’re more likely to penalize the website that offers the least amount of value overall. While this doesn’t mitigate the damage of content theft, it will hopefully provide a little consolation if you have been a victim to plagiarism in the past.

Using Copyscape

Copyscape is still the go-to website for detecting whether your content has been stolen. While it would be tedious to go through each page of your website on a regular basis, it’s often worth checking your pillar content every quarter.

Sometimes it’s simply better and more cost efficient to cut your losses and accept that your content can never be fully protected. However, in the event of a large-scale plagiarism issue, it’s definitely worth seeking legal advice and taking steps to regain control of your work.

Note: this blog post should not be taken as legal advice for SEO violations and issues of copyright. While the advice above is a good starting point to mitigate the damage caused by plagiarism, it’s important that you read up on the relevant law and address issues accordingly.
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What Search Engine Marketers Mean When They Discuss Quality

August 14, 2019 • SEO for Your Agency • 194
The SEO landscape is in constant flux. Without constantly keeping tabs on the industry it can be difficult to know for certain what the search engines are looking for. Regardless of your skillset or level of understanding with regards to Google’s algorithm, one thing’s for certain: quality matters.

Quality matters in every sense of the word. Be it the links you acquire or the words you write. Without a strict emphasis on quality and an SEO plan that focuses on value, your rankings will suffer.

This article, developed alongside Charlotte SEO, will help you understand what defines quality in the Internet marketing industry.

What are quality inbound links?

Inbound links (backlinks) are links that direct to your website. The power of inbound links relies on various factors. And the more powerful they are, the more “authority” Google will give your website. While domain authority and page authority used to be metrics that carried weight, nowadays they have little relevance.

An even greater factor that determines the quality of an inbound link is its relevancy. A link from a website with a low DA and PA means very little if the on-site content isn’t related to your niche. That’s why, when you’re conducting outreach, it’s better to focus your efforts on attaining links from websites that would actually benefit your own.

What is quality content?

Make no mistake. Content doesn’t just mean blog posts and articles. Content is essentially everything that is hosted on your website. Good writing alone isn’t enough. In order to truly reap the benefits of quality content you must ensure your images, videos, and games all offer something of value.

The best way to assess the quality of your own content is to ask yourself the following questions:
1. Am I presenting new information?
2. If this information relevant to my website?
3. Can people access this information somewhere else?
If you answer “no” to any of the above questions, then it’s likely that your content isn’t “special” enough. Quality isn’t about how well you write, it’s about how well your information can be absorbed and shared.

What are quality keywords?

Not all keywords and phrases are equal. If you’re in the business of ecommerce, you should focus on keywords that will lead to sales, rather than keywords that are broad and unfocused. It’s important to target visitors from various stages of the sales funnel to ensure you’re casting a wide net, but still driving visitors towards that final goal of spending.

Never try and cheat the system by excluding prepositions. Google’s algorithm is highly advanced and writing grammatically incorrect sentences for the sake of boosting rankings for certain search terms will not help. In fact, all this will do is harm readability and make you look unprofessional.

What is quality on-page SEO?

Search marketers will often underestimate the power of on-page SEO, considering it to be dated and irrelevant. This isn’t the case. While it might not hold as much weight as it used to with regards to meta data, keyword densities and on-page linking, these elements are still important to consider.

Ensure your meta data is up-to-date and readable. More often than not, this is the first thing people will see when they find your website on Google. Ensure you are targeting highly relevant keywords within your content, and use hyperlinks to link to other pages to help visitors navigate your website quickly and efficiently.

Quality is broad and subjective. People generally don’t know what they want until they’ve found it. Contrary to the above, you can’t always manufacture quality; however, you can always give it your best. While these steps are a great starting point and minimum standard to aim for, you should always try to go the extra mile and explore new and unconventional ways to develop your online brand.

If you’re based in Charlotte, NC and are looking for SEO advice from a leading Internet marketing company, visit Charlotte SEO: Directions to Charlotte SEO.
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Dated SEO Techniques That Have No Place in 2019

August 14, 2019 • Digital Marketing • 158

The SEO industry is confusing. One minute you’re using techniques that are guaranteed to skyrocket your website, the next you’re on damage control, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll remember the legendary Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird updates. The rules changed overnight and many search marketers had to re-strategize and start afresh. Contrary to popular opinion, this is good news for you. As an ethical Internet marketer all these updates do is trim the fat and leave you better equipped to take on the competition.

Having said that, it’s important that you’re on the right side of the fence when the wind comes blowing. Following this article, co-written with San Diego SEO, will make sure you are!

Stop Using Link Directories

Avoid link directories, article directories and other low quality content sites, with the exception of high-quality, niche-specific directories. When acquiring links, always ask yourself “would I trust/use this site myself?” If the answer is no, steer clear.

Forget About Exact Match Domain Names

Back in the day, exact match domain names provided an easy way to rank quickly and highly. Now, they are at a risk of being flagged as spam. This not only causes problems with SEO, but also trustability, as other website owners tend to be cautious about linking to keyword/phrase brand names.

Never Use Reciprocal Linking

Each time another website links to your website, it’s like they’re vouching for you. When you reciprocal link to each other, it’s essentially like saying “you vote for me and I’ll vote for you” and they both cancel each other out. In short, reciprocal linking is just a waste of time.

Do Not Use Keyword Stuffing

This is perhaps the worst technique of all. Keyword stuffing is a method that involves increasing the keyword density of your content to make it seem more relevant than it is. This hasn’t worked for roughly a decade, and it will almost certainly never work again in the future.

Don’t Worry About Exact Match Keywords

Search engines are smart. They have a pretty large vocabulary and know every synonym of every word in the English dictionary. Stuffing variations of the same word or phrase will just make your content unreadable and is a surefire way of alerting Google’s spam detector.

Ignore Word Counts

Content should be as long as it needs to be. When you try to break down the craft of writing in a methodological, mathematical manner, it will lose all character. Stop focusing on hitting certain parameters and start focusing on writing high quality, shareable content that people – not bots – actually want to read.

Don’t Use Variants of the Link Wheel Technique

When SEO was still in its infancy, link wheels were a common method of achieving top rankings. You could create a number of individual websites, load them with keyword heavy content, and essentially link them to each other to get some juice. While this technique can be done properly if the websites are of a certain quality and highly relevant to each other, it’s best avoided.

Unfortunately, whenever an SEO technique earns the blackhat label, there will still be plenty of search marketers reverting back to them, be it out of laziness or lack of better judgement. While some of the above techniques can still generate short-term results, the negatives far outweigh the gains.

Fundamentally, if you follow the rules and do what feels legitimate, you’re likely on the right track. If you’re using techniques that seem too good to be true, then they probably are!

If you’re based in San Diego, CA and are looking for SEO advice from a leading Internet marketing company, visit San Diego SEO: Directions to San Diego SEO.
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