Here’s everything you need to know, including bold predictions, notable storylines, fantasy advice and score picks.
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Most people don’t have the cash to purchase a home outright. They need to take out a loan to do it. That’s where mortgages come in. Mortgages, also known as home loans, are different from other loan types because of the risk involved. These loans are typically worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, so lenders…
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A one-stop shop for our best content as you prep for draft season, including rankings, projections and analysis.
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With the sunsetting of Universal Analytics (UA) on the horizon in 2023, it’s more important than ever to learn how to create a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) landing page report.
Change can be difficult. What steps are you taking to get ahead of the curve?
While this post is not an ultimate guide to Google Analytics, I’ll show you how to get GA4 set up and give you the best GA4 tips out there. From setting yourself up to best practices, by the time you’re finished, you’ll feel confident creating a landing page report in GA4.
Google Analytics 4 is the latest edition of one of the greatest web analytics tools on the market.
With so many awesome features and a smooth user interface, it’s no wonder that over 28 million websites worldwide count on Google Analytics to track their traffic.
With a landing page report in GA4, you can follow the digital path your customers travel along your branded content.
The best part? GA4 landing page reports track customer data from all the platforms your content is on to determine trends in traffic, engagement, product demand, predictions, and more.
It accomplishes these incredible analytic feats with the help of artificial intelligence. With the use of AI, GA4 helps you figure out how customers are currently using your content, as well as predict what customers will do next.
You don’t have to be a large business to make GA4 work for you. In fact, a recent survey by Enlyft found that roughly 71% of businesses that use Google Analytics are small companies with less than 50 employees.
While this may all sound similar to what you’re used to in Universal Analytics, the two function quite differently.
The biggest difference between UA and GA4 is the way data is collected and organized. While the former groups user interactions into time-blocked “sessions,” GA4 tracks each and every user interaction as its own event.
What does this mean? Well, because of this key switch, GA4 is better at predicting the behavior of customers in a wider variety of ways.
Simply put, a GA4 landing page report is a detailed analysis of user interactions based on metrics that you choose.
For those who don’t know, a landing page is the page that is a user’s first interaction with your website or platform. For example, if you searched for information about landing page reports and clicked on the link for this article, then this page is your landing page for my site.
A landing page report in GA4 gives you deeper analytic tools that can really help you develop the best SEO strategy.
If you’re familiar with UA, you’ll remember that their landing page report was automatically generated. All you had to do was look for the report by clicking the Behavior drop-down menu. and from there. clicking Site Content and then Landing Pages.
GA4 is not automatic. Fortunately, it only takes a few steps to get your GA4 set-up.
GA4 landing page reports must be generated manually. The good news is you can create your own preset landing page report, so you don’t have to set it all up each time you need information.
Follow these steps to create your own landing page report in GA4.
Log in to your account with GA4. From there, open your Reports (the button below the Home icon, with a bar graph inside a white square). Next, click on Acquisition and then look for and select Traffic Acquisition in the dropdown menu.
In case you don’t already know, dimensions are essentially the qualitative titles or categories being measured by GA4. When you choose Traffic Acquisition, GA4 will pull a report for you, automatically using the Session default channel grouping dimension.
While this is great info for you to know in order to increase traffic to your website, it’s not the data on user landing page interactions.
To create a custom landing page in GA4 to suit your analytical needs, click on the small pencil icon in the upper right corner of the user window.
In addition to adding new dimensions, the Customize Report button can add new metrics, rework charts and create summary cards.
For our purposes, we’ll focus for now on the dimension aspect.
On the right side of the screen, click on Dimensions and then select Add dimension.
From there, you should be able to scroll through the options until you find one labeled Landing Page. Click it, and landing pages will be added to your primary dimensions.
Don’t forget to save when you’re done!
Let’s get real: do you actually want to go through those steps every time you want to analyze user interaction on landing pages?
No way! Follow this quick GA4 tip to make a shortcut for yourself.
Locate the Landing Page dimension once more. This time click on the three vertical dots and then select Set as Default.
When you are finished, click the Apply button in the lower right corner to save your new default setting.
If your goal is to replicate the UA report as close as possible, you will need to follow a few more steps.
Not all engagement metrics are created equal. As you become more familiar with the GA4 set-up, explore all the data at your fingertips to determine which data will help the most. You never know what new insights you’ll discover!
Customizing metrics is not all that different from dimension customization.
Instead of clicking on Dimensions, this time select Metrics.
From here, you can add and remove metrics that suit your needs. For a UA-style landing page report, make sure to choose the following metrics:
Summary cards are a great way to take a fast scan of your analytics when checking reports.
While they won’t show you everything, summary cards can help you streamline your review of the information you find most important.
To create a new summary card, simply click on Create a New Card. From there, you can customize the card to choose specific dimensions, metrics, and visualization style.
The key here is not to overwrite your other template that you used to get started. Instead, save your work as a New Report.
Remember, our intention is to make pulling GA4 landing page reports as quick and easy as possible.
That’s why I would recommend creating a shortcut for you to access this with just a couple of clicks going forward.
That’s it!
Now when you click on the Reports icon on the main menu, you can pull your latest landing page report with ease. Simply click the drop-down menus for Life Cycle and Acquisition, where you will find the template that we’ve been putting together.
The whole point of this practice is to understand what customers are driven towards and how we can improve our content to bring in more traffic.
When you run your GA4 landing page report, be on the lookout for pages that have a low number of visits, or worse, poor engagement. These are areas of growth for your brand.
Take advantage of landing pages that are doing well. Any time a landing page has a high click rate and engagement, you should be looking for ways to capitalize on that momentum.
Add more links to that page that direct users to more of your articles. Use those pages to advertise upcoming promotions. If at all possible, recreate that style of writing in new content.
Google Analytics 4 is a powerhouse of reporting. In the right hands, GA4 can revolutionize your marketing and content strategies.
Don’t wait until UA finally kicks the bucket for good in 2023. Learn about GA4 now to easily generate the reports that matter most. You should consider creating your GA4 tracking ASAP so you have as much data as possible to compare for reporting.
We’re also here to help!
If you need more information on how to best utilize the features of your GA4 landing page report, or if something doesn’t look right, just reach out and my team will get back to you ASAP.
How are you going to use Google Analytics to increase your web traffic? Let me know!
From keywords to building backlinks and analyzing your competitors, there are many things you can work on to increase your website ranking. However, there might be one area you’re overlooking. Any idea what I’m talking about yet?
It’s the influence your web hosting has on SEO.
Whether you realize it or not, the web host you choose can make all the difference between getting your website ranking higher or being pretty much invisible online.
When you think about it, it’s obvious why.
The web host you go with impacts several areas of your website, including uptime and loading speeds.
If you are researching how to host a website, here are 7 things to look out for to help meet your SEO needs.
Your chosen web host plays a significant role in putting your website on the map and keeping it visible, and therefore, you need to pick your web host carefully.
Before I go too much further, let’s just see what Google says about how search works. It considers five factors:
As we’re talking about SEO and web hosting, I’ll focus on usability. For ranking, Google looks at:
Basically, the more accessible your content is, the more likely it is to rank better.
Google also considers page experience signals, like whether your site uses HTTPS.
Your webhost influences all of the above, which is why you need to choose carefully.
When it comes to web hosting and SEO, you should expect a few things from your provider as standard, such as uptime reliability and efficient loading times. However, as detailed in the next section, there are other features to look out for:
For businesses, a few minutes of downtime can cost thousands of dollars in lost productivity. For your visitors, it’s frustrating if they can’t access your website or if it keeps crashing. However, downtime is equally damaging to your reputation among search engines.
The likes of Google regularly visit websites, and if your website is down a lot, your site gains a reputation for unreliability.
While no web host can guarantee to keep your site online 100 percent of the time, most hosts now provide 99.9 percent uptime. According to Search Engine Journal, 99 percent uptime equals approximately 1.44 minutes of downtime daily, or 8.8 hours a year. Pretty good, huh?
Ever heard the saying ‘speed is of the essence’? Your visitors agree with this, which is why you don’t want to keep them hanging around.
A slow website causes users to leave, increasing your bounce rate significantly, as the stat from Google’s research shows.
However, despite the importance of fast loading times, too many websites fail to make the grade.
According to research by Littledata, the average time it takes for a mobile page fully loads is 4.6 seconds. On the face of it, that sound pretty swift, but it won’t put you among the best-performing sites.
What should you be aiming for?
Littledata says if you want your site among the top twenty percent, then your loading time should be within 3.2 seconds. To appear in the top ten percent, your site should reach a full mobile page load within 2.6 seconds.
Not sure about your current speed? Here are some tools to check:
That’s your speed covered, now let’s move on to the importance of customer service.
When choosing web hosting for SEO, there are some key areas of customer service to think about:
Would you buy from a site you don’t trust? I doubt it. It’s also unlikely that you’d share your sensitive information if the site didn’t have an HTTPS certificate, but It’s not just about consumer trust.
Back in 2014, Google first named HTTPS as a ranking factor. As Google’s Search Advocate, John Mu, explains on Twitter, it’s only a lightweight ranking factor, and the lack of an HTTPS won’t stop your site from getting indexed.
However, as Mu explains, HTTPS is great for users, and Google’s research shows a considerable rise in web users relying on HTTPS. Here are some of the key stats:
While you can install an SSL certificate yourself, the easiest way is to find a web host that provides a free or affordable certificate.
Some of the sites offering free SSL certificates include
That’s HTTPS covered. What about server location and its impact on your SEO and web hosting?
Does server location affect loading times? Absolutely.
In a YouTube clip, former Google Search Quality expert Matt Cutts said: ‘We try to return the most relevant results to each user in each country. And server location in terms of IP address is a factor in that’.
For example, if your server is in the United States, but most of your customers are in the United Kingdom, data transfer times are likely to be considerably delayed. However, changing the server location to the UK is likely to reduce response times and improve website loading speed.
The reason for this? Well, it comes down to two things: network latency or ‘ping’ (the time it takes for information to travel from one point in a network to another) and time to the first byte (the interval between the request being sent to the server and the browser receiving the first byte).
The server location also affects your bounce rate and legal compliance (you need to store any data per local laws)
To help find the best server locations for your site, follow these three tips:
3. Check your Time For First Byte with a tool such as GeekFlare:
For both tests, the lower the number, the better.
If you notice delays, it may be worth looking around for the best cheap web hosting and transferring your website to another provider.
Shared hosting is a popular option for small businesses, as it offers an affordable way to start a website, but it has some downsides.
The biggest issue for users can be website performance. As shared hosts typically have many users sharing the same server, performance can suffer compared to dedicated servers. This can result in slower page load times and decreased Site Speed Index scores (a page loading score metric).
Further, if you need to make any major changes or updates to your website, like adding new features or redesigning your entire site, then the customization options may be limited.
You may also find that your performance dips the more your traffic grows.
That said, shared hosting has plenty of positives, such as its ease of use and scalability,
A content management system (CMS) is a software application or set of related programs used to create and manage digital content efficiently.
It aids your web hosting SEO by enabling content optimization and its integrated SEO plug-ins.
According to Zippia, there are over 80 CMS options to choose from, and 64.9 percent opt for WordPress.
The sheer number of available systems can make it difficult to choose, so look for the following three features to narrow down your options:
1. Ease of use: A CMS should be easy to use, even for beginners, and have a user-friendly interface and simple, straightforward controls.
2. Flexibility: Find a flexible CMS to accommodate your website’s specific needs. It should allow you to add or remove content easily, change layouts, and more.
3. Compatibility: Ensure the CMS is compatible with popular web browsers and devices. It should also work well with other software and plugins you may want to use
It depends on which host you’re using. If SEO isn’t already built-in, you can often add plug-ins to your CMS for optimization
It depends on the host. Some are better than others but remember, you get what you pay for, and web hosting costs shouldn’t be your only consideration. Free hosting sites may lack quality, advanced features, and built-in SEO.
Yes. The closer the server location is to your visitors, the quicker the speed.
Wix has some great SEO features, including a Google Search and Google Analytics integration, as well as a single template for SEO on multiple pages.
Additionally, Wix has an SEO Wiz. This is a step-by-step checklist that you’ll find on your site’s dashboard under ‘marketing home’. The checklist helps you to connect and verify your site with Google, enables efficient site indexing, and gives you SEO tips for improved visibility.
Hostinger, Bluehost, and SiteGround all score well among reviewers for SEO web hosting, but it all depends on what features you’re looking for.
You will most likely have a long-term relationship with the hosting service you choose, so you want to pick the right one.
With so many web hosts to choose from, finding the perfect host is often time consuming, and you might not always get it right the first time.
To simplify things, when looking for a provider for your SEO web hosting, ensure it offers uptime reliability, speed, and security.
Also, don’t overlook server location and the impact it can have on your SEO, and test customer service first by making a few queries.
What tips do you have for SEO and web hosting?
Are you frustrated by the ever-changing landscape of social media? Are the algorithm changes making you feel lost? As changes arise, consistency is key.
If you’re looking to improve your reach on Instagram, you need to start thinking about Instagram SEO. Just like with Google or any other search engine, there are specific tactics you can use to help improve your rankings and visibility.
In this article, I’ll show you how to optimize your profile and content for better search engine visibility. Follow these tips, and you’ll be well on your way to reaching a larger audience on Instagram.
Instagram SEO is the process of optimizing your profile and content to increase your visibility in search engines. This can be done by using specific keywords, hashtags, and other strategies that we will cover in this article. By optimizing your account for SEO, you will be able to reach a larger audience and grow your following on Instagram.
There are two types of SEO that you need to be aware of when it comes to Instagram: on-page and off-page.
On-page SEO refers to the optimizations that you can do on your own account, such as using keywords in your bio or captioning your photos with relevant hashtags. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, refers to the things that you can do outside of your account to improve your SEO, such as building links from other websites.
Both on-page and off-page SEO are important for growing your Instagram following. In this article, we will focus on on-page SEO tactics that you can use to optimize your account and content.
Before we dive into the specific tactics that you can use to improve your Instagram SEO, it’s important to understand the difference between search engine SEO and Instagram SEO.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engines. This can include using specific keywords on your website and in your content, as well as building links from other websites.
Here’s something to remember, though. Search engines like Google search all websites, including social media platforms. That means that when people are searching for the kinds of things you are posting about, Google may crawl your social media pages, too and pull results from there.
Instagram SEO is the process of optimizing your profile and content to rank higher in the Instagram search engine. This can be done by using specific keywords in your bio and captioning your photos with relevant hashtags. Just like with regular SEO, Instagram SEO is all about using the right keywords to help improve your visibility.
Instagram allows users to search for words, phrases, profiles, and hashtags. Being able to search by interest broadens your opportunities as a consumer of Instagram, allowing you to dive in and explore topics of interest without the limitations of specific hashtags. Users can search for topics or by interest, just as you would on Google.
To start, find the magnifying glass icon on your desktop interface or mobile app. That’s where you’ll type in your topic of interest. Let’s look at how it works.
Now the fun begins. You can start clicking around to find more ideas.
You can click on more ideas and dive down that rabbit hole, where Instagram and Instagram content creators hope you’ll stay for a while.
As we mentioned above, Google crawls Instagram and other social media sites like any other website. This is especially true for profiles or usernames. When people search for your brand on Google, your social media pages are likely to come up. So make sure that your username mirrors your brand name closely.
Here’s an example, using Google to search for fiddle leaf figs on Instagram. Of course, to get Instagram in the top results, we had to use the word “Instagram” in the search, but it shows you the power of having your top keyword in your username and bio.
When you are creating content to be optimized to Instagram’s search features, you may also want to think about how Google is analyzing that content, to get better traffic, whether customers are using the internal search on Instagram or Google.
Instagram SEO is important because it can help you reach a larger audience and grow your following. By optimizing your account and content for search engines, you will be able to improve your visibility and attract more followers. As you go through the time and effort to create your Instagram posts, you want to make sure that you’re getting the most engagement and ROI on each of them.
There are two main benefits of improving your Instagram SEO:
While there are other benefits of Instagram SEO, these are two of the most important ones. If you’re looking to reach a larger audience and grow your following, then you need to focus on optimizing your account and content for the search engines.
Now that you know a little bit about Instagram SEO, you might be wondering why you should bother with it. After all, isn’t it enough to just post great content and hope that people see it?
The answer is no. Just because you’re posting great content doesn’t mean that people will see it. In fact, most of your content is probably not being seen by anyone except for your most loyal followers.
If you want people to see your content, then you need to make sure that it’s optimized for the search engines. This is where Instagram SEO comes in. By optimizing your account and content for the search engines, you will be able to improve your visibility and reach a larger audience.
Instagram is a competitive platform, and if you want to be successful, you need to do everything you can to stand out from the crowd. Optimizing your account for the search engines is one of the best ways to do this.
Let’s take a look at some best practices for improving your reach. Here are nine tips for improving your Instagram SEO.
*Note: You will notice that some of these tactics are similar to regular SEO tactics. That’s because they are! The same principles that apply to SEO also apply to Instagram SEO.
The first step to take is understanding what your target market is interested in. What are they searching for on Instagram? It’s important to optimize your profile with relevant keywords in your bio. Your bio is one of the first things that people see when they visit your profile, so it’s important to make a good impression.
The images below show how a user can search by interest in two ways. The first image shows the top accounts based on the keyword. The second image shows the top posts for that keyword.
When writing your bio, be sure to include relevant keywords that describe what you do and who you are. For example, if you’re a photographer, you might use keywords such as “photographer” or “photo tips.”
Including relevant keywords in your bio will help you rank higher in the search engines and attract more followers.
You should also use the correct Instagram hashtags to target a larger audience that is interested in your product or service. When you use relevant hashtags in your posts, you’re more likely to show up in the search results when people search for those hashtags.
For example, if you use the hashtag #photography, you’ll be more likely to show up in the search results when someone searches for that term. Including relevant hashtags in your posts is a great way to improve your visibility and attract more followers.
You can also use those same keywords in your caption. Just like your bio, your captions are another great place to include relevant keywords. When you use keywords in your captions, you’re more likely to show up in the search results when people search for those keywords.
For example, if you’re a photographer, you might use keywords such as “photo tips” or “how to take better photos.”
Including relevant keywords in your captions is a great way to improve your visibility and reach a larger audience.
When it comes to Instagram SEO, one of the most important things you can do is be consistent. It’s important to post regularly and maintain a consistent posting schedule.
If you’re inconsistent with your posting, you’re more likely to lose followers. People will unfollow you if they see that you’re not posting regularly.
It’s also important to maintain a consistent theme with your posts. Your posts should all be related to a certain topic or niche. For example, if you’re a photographer, all of your posts should be about photography. The image below showcases a beautifully curated profile that is both on brand and consistent with photography.
If you post about a variety of topics, it will be more difficult for people to understand what your account is about. It’s important to focus on one niche and maintain a consistent theme with your posts.
Being consistent with your posting schedule and maintaining a consistent theme will help you attract more followers and improve your visibility.
When you’re creating content for your Instagram account, it’s important to be on brand. All of your posts should reflect your brand’s values and message. Note that this applies across platforms. Whether someone sees your website, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, there should be a uniform look and feel.
Your posts should be visually consistent with your brand. Here are some examples:
Your posts should also reflect your brand’s voice. Here are some examples:
It’s important to make sure that all of your content is on brand. When you’re on brand, you’re more likely to attract followers who are interested in your brand.Users are attracted to brands that encompass the look and feel of whatever it is they’re selling. If you’re a makeup artist but don’t have any pictures of your clients, how would anyone know what your service looks like? Representing what you sell and who you are as a business is key to getting people to trust you.
Being on brand will also help you rank higher in the search results. When you’re consistent with your branding, it’s easier for people to find you when they’re searching for keywords related to your brand.
If you’re not sure how to be on brand, take a look at your competitors. See how they’re creating content and try to emulate their style. Being on brand is a great way to improve your visibility and attract more followers.
Your social media captions are another great place to include relevant keywords. When you use keywords in your captions, you’re more likely to show up in the search results when people search for those keywords.
It’s important to be thorough in your captions and include as many relevant keywords as possible. However, you don’t want to stuff your captions with keywords.
If you stuff your captions with keywords, it will be difficult to read, and people will be less likely to engage with your content. You want to strike a balance between including relevant keywords and making your caption readable and natural.
All the tips and tricks aside, search engines are constantly working to be more human. And the more human you can be, the better. Some of the best tips for social media SEO include just being authentic, natural, and just showing up a lot. Keep the “social” in social media and be kind. The quickest way to get hidden or pushed down the algorithm is to just have poor etiquette on these types of platforms.
People are more likely to follow an account that feels personal and relatable. If you can show that there’s a real person behind your account, you’re more likely to attract followers.
There are a few tools that you can use to help improve your Instagram SEO. Using these tools will help you find the right keywords to use, track your progress, and measure your success.
To really up your Instagram SEO game, you may want to explore the number of Instagram analytics tools and other programs that can help you learn how your Instagram strategy is working. Here are just a few to get you started.
Using tools to track your progress is a great way to ensure that you’re making the most of Instagram for your business.
User interaction is a great way to build relationships with your followers and get people talking about your brand. If you can take advantage of user interaction, you’re more likely to attract followers and grow your business.
One way to take advantage of user interaction is to run giveaways. Giveaways are a great way to engage with your followers and get people talking about your brand.
Another way to take advantage of user interaction is to create polls. Polls are a great way to get feedback from your followers and learn more about your audience.
By taking advantage of user interaction, you can build relationships with your followers, get feedback from them, and learn more about your audience.
When you’re trying to improve your Instagram SEO, it’s important to have a social media measurement strategy in place. You need to be able to track your progress and measure your success. Different metrics may be more important based on the goals of your Instagram page.
One way to measure your success is by tracking your engagement. Engagement includes likes, comments, and shares.
You can also track your reach. Reach is the number of people who see your content.
Another way to measure your success is by tracking your traffic. Traffic is the number of people who visit your website from Instagram.
You can also track conversions. Conversions are the number of people who take a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.
By tracking your progress, you can see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you adjust your strategy and continue to grow your business.
Here are some helpful tools to better understand your Instagram analytics:
Even though Instagram is a visual platform, don’t forget the basics of internet presence.
Be sure that your copy is spelling and typo-free. Errors look messy and unprofessional.
Instagram is a visual platform. So it’s important for your images to be relevant and high-quality. A user should have a good understanding of what your business does simply by looking at your profile gallery.
Be sure you are keeping all of the links in your profile up to date. The last thing you want is for someone to click on your profile link and find an error message.
As much as SEO is important, if the people who are on your profile leave because of errors, low quality images, and broken links, you’ll lose credibility and your efforts could go to waste.
SEO is a key part of your entire content strategy. They are interrelated and critical in our ever-growing digital world, and that doesn’t stop with your website and your blog. Instagram SEO and all other social media platforms you are using consistently should also be part of this equation.
How are you planning to create captions that are more searchable for your customer base?
Sunday’s match looks very even going in. Here’s what to pay attention to at kickoff.
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Have you heard the line ‘ if you build it, they will come’? In case you don’t know, it’s from the late 80s Kevin Costner movie ‘Field of Dreams.’
It’s an inspiring quote, but when local business owners set up their websites, it doesn’t really hold true. They believe once they’re set up online, prospects start flocking to their doors wanting quotes, making orders, or signing up for their mailing lists. However, that isn’t the case for many people.
That’s not just conjecture on my part. Research shows that 77.23 percent of local business owners surveyed struggled to get online visibility.
According to the same survey, 42.85 percent believe that Google favors larger brands. Now, don’t get me wrong. High-profile businesses do tend to perform better online simply because more people are looking for them. However, that doesn’t mean your local company website can’t compete for local keywords.
All it takes is some careful local keyword research and a detailed local SEO strategy, and that’s exactly what I’m going to talk about today.
Local SEO is valuable because it helps small companies reach potential customers who are looking for products or services in their area.
For example, if you own a home repair business, you would want to target people in your local area who may need your services. In other words, local keyword research targets potential customers who are already interested in what you have to offer.
When done correctly, local keyword research:
Research also supports the importance of local SEO. According to Statista, 35 percent of consumers go online multiple times weekly to find local businesses.
That’s not all, though. The research shows that 21 percent of consumers use the internet daily to find local businesses.
These stats demonstrate that as a local business, you need to be visible online, but perhaps you need some more evidence? Okay, here goes.
There are plenty of case studies showing how small businesses can benefit from local keyword research and SEO optimization. Just search for ‘local SEO case studies’, and you can see what I mean.
As I’ve already detailed, the main focus of local SEO and local keyword research is attracting more leads and gaining more customers.
However, aside from using local SEO to target a particular geographic area, there’s plenty more that makes local SEO different.
The most obvious is Google’s ranking factors. With local searches, the search engine giant considers several vital areas, such as:
To improve your local SEO further, Google offers these tips:
Google also considers relevance, distance, and prominence (your overall web presence), including content, backlinks, and directory listings.
Another factor that makes local keyword research unique is the emphasis on modifiers. The search terms you integrate into writing must be super specific to your location. For example, if you’re a business in Austin, Texas, you would want to use keywords like ‘Austin restaurants’ rather than just ‘restaurants.’
Additionally, voice search is essential to local SEO. Research shows that 74 percent of people use voice search at least weekly to find local businesses, while 76 percent of voice search users choose smart speakers at least once a week, with most searching daily.
A further survey from SEMrush suggests optimizing voice search for each smart speaker (Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, etc.) and has some helpful tips to enable you to do this:
The above graphic also includes some useful tips you can introduce into your local keyword research strategy.
You know the importance of local keyword research, but how do you discover the best ones to use? Fortunately, it’s not as complicated as it may seem. Just follow these tips.
To do this, first, consider what you offer and what services or products you want to promote; then brainstorm a list of keywords related to your business.
Alternatively, a simple way to find local-based keywords is using Google search results. Type in your main keyword and scroll down to the bottom of the page. There, you’ll see a section called ‘related searches.’ For example, a small business located in Miami could target the keyword ‘Miami dentist.’
Then:
Using keyword modifiers lets you focus your efforts on specific areas or types of searches for targeted traffic and better results from your local SEO efforts.
These modifiers can include location-based terms like ‘near me,’ ‘in my area,’ or ‘local.’ Or you might use ‘car mechanic Cincinnati’ or ‘local mechanic Cincinnati.’
Again, use Autosuggest, related search, or competitive keyword research to see the terms others are using.
What are your prospects looking for? Are they looking to buy a product or service, find out more information, or just browsing? Once you know the searcher’s intent, you can better target your keywords and content to meet their needs. Use the same techniques, like Autosuggest, to get an idea of the keywords users are typing in.
Another great tool for finding local keywords is the Google Places search bar.
When you do a geographical search by entering a location in the search bar, you get a ‘pick list,’ which includes places and likely search terms.
Once you have a list of keywords, it’s essential to analyze them and determine which ones are the best fit for your business.
When doing local keyword research, there are two main ways to target your audience: implicit and explicit.
Implicit targeting is when a user searches for a term like ‘hardware store’ or ‘DIY.’ but doesn’t include specifics like location.
In simple terms, Google basically guesses what you’re looking for and offers your location-based results.
To find out what implicit local keywords might be important to your business, do some research online and talk to your customers. Ask them how they would search for a company like yours if they were looking for one in their area.
On the other hand, explicit local keyword targeting involves search terms that people use when looking for your product or service. For example, ‘Dentist in Santa Barbara’ or ‘Hairdresser in Venice Beach.’
Can you really steal your competitors’ keywords? Absolutely! Just use a tool to conduct competitive research to find out what keywords they’re using.
There are a few ways to assess and use your competition in your local keyword research:
1. Look at the keywords they are targeting and see if there are any that you’re also targeting. Chances are, if your competitors are targeting a keyword, it’s because it’s profitable and has a lot of search volume.
2. See what their website looks like and how they rank for their target keywords. This can give you ideas on how to improve your website and rank higher for your target keywords. For less competition, you could take the opposite approach and target keywords your rivals aren’t using. Just make sure they’ve got a worthwhile search volume.
3. Review what content they are creating around their target keywords.
4. Look at the SERPs and pay attention to keywords. These terms are usually in bold.
Now let’s look at some tools to make your local keyword research easier.
I’ve already referenced my tool. Ubersuggest, but it’s worthy of another mention here. It’s an easy-to-use tool that delivers:
For example, if I search for ‘digital marketing agencies California,’ I get:
You can also choose from ‘prepositions,’ ‘related,’ ‘comparisons,’ and ‘questions,’ to get a better idea of search intent.
Other tools to consider:
Ultimately, the best way to find the right keywords for your business is to experiment with different tools and techniques and analyze what works for you.
Local keyword research aims to identify relevant keywords that people are likely to use when searching for businesses like yours online.
Using the right tools is essential. After all, if potential customers can’t find you in your area, you’re missing out on a lot of business. Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, and Moz’s Keyword Planner all get you off to a great start. Then there’s competitive analysis, viewing the SERPs to see what’s ranking, and using autocomplete.
When it comes to doing local keyword research, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. Consider what your customers might search for when they want to find your business and brainstorm. Then, conduct local keyword research with tools like Ubersuggest, Google’s Autosuggest, or People Also Ask. You can also view the SERPs and look for keywords.
Local keyword research should be an essential part of any small business marketing plan.
By understanding the keywords people in your area are searching for, you can create content and advertising that speaks to them directly, and by using the right tools like Ubersuggest, it’s easy to find out what those keywords are.
Search intent is also a vital part of online visibility, so don’t overlook that area if you want local customers to discover you online.
Do you use local keyword research? Share how you got your business on the map below.
Is your content not getting the results it deserves?
Unfortunately, in today’s ultra-competitive, crowded SERPs, creating great content isn’t enough. You need to optimize it effectively if you want it to rank and sell.
That doesn’t just mean optimizing content for Google. You also need to optimize your content for readability and for conversions.
Confused? This is the guide for you. I’ll show you a step-by-step guide for optimizing your content. We’ll cover:
Ready? Let’s begin.
Content optimization is the practice of updating and improving your content so it has the best possible chance of achieving its goals. That goal could be ranking in Google, but it could also be converting readers into customers or acquiring backlinks. In many cases, it’s a combination of several of these metrics.
From an SEO standpoint, content optimization is essential if you want to rank. You might have written the best article in the world from a reader’s perspective. But if you don’t optimize content for Google, it won’t rank.
Getting your content to rank in Google has many additional benefits. These include:
Optimizing your content for readability improves audience engagement and helps your brand to build trust with readers. It can also help to position your brand as an authority. It’s a lot easier to trust a brand that clearly puts time into content creation compared to one that puts out barely legible content.
Optimizing content for conversions is critical if you want to squeeze as much money out of your efforts as possible. You’ll never write the best-converting piece of copy the first time around, which is why tweaking your headings, targeting new keywords, and improving your CTA is vital. In addition, goals for conversion may change over time, and you want to make sure your content adapts with them.
Improving your content’s rankings is the primary reason for content optimization. So let’s start by looking at how to optimize content for SEO.
Optimizing content for SEO starts with keyword research. You need to make sure you’re targeting a keyword that
Ubersuggest is one of the best ways to find suitable keywords. Use the Keyword Ideas tool to enter a seed keyword and get a list of relevant keywords along with their potential volume and SEO difficulty.
You’ll want to choose the keyword that best represents your content, but also has a decent amount of traffic and a realistic keyword difficulty. If your site is new, there’s little point optimizing for a term with an SEO difficulty in excess of 50. You’re fighting an uphill battle from the start.
You can also use this tool to find semantically related keywords that you should also use in your content. The more of these topics you include, the easier it will be for search engines to understand what your content is about.
Once you have your keywords, it’s time to see what’s currently ranking on Google. In particular, you need to make sure your content aligns with what users are searching for. Luckily, that’s pretty easy to understand by analyzing each of the top-ranking results. Open them up and look at:
Don’t try to be unique here. If Google is prioritizing blog posts over e-commerce pages for a certain query, then you need to create a blog post. The same goes for the content’s format and angle. Understand what Google wants and then deliver it.
Don’t just create cookie-cutter content, however. By analyzing the content for each page, you can see what’s missing and find places to add your own perspective.
At the same time, you’re editing your content to align with Google’s preferred format, make sure you’re integrating your keywords into your content.
You should include keywords in the page’s:
You should also naturally include your main and related keywords throughout your copy. Be careful of keyword stuffing, however. Keyword stuffing is when you fill a webpage with a specific term. Not only does this provide a terrible user experience for your readers — who have to trip over the phrase every other sentence — but it will also get your site penalized by Google.
If in doubt, err on the side of caution and follow Google’s advice:
“Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.”
Internal linking is criminally overlooked when it comes to content optimization. The more internal links you have on your site, the easier search bots can crawl it, and the more link authority will be passed between pages.
Internal linking also makes it easier for humans to navigate your site.
When optimizing a page, list all related pages on your site and find a way to link to them naturally in the copy. Then go to each of these pages and make sure there is a link back to the page you’re optimizing.
Next, let’s look at how to improve your content from a human perspective. There’s no point in having an article that ranks well if users aren’t going to spend time reading it. At the same time, the more readers engage with your content, the better your rankings will be.
Does your content look like a stream of consciousness, or is it carefully structured and easy to scan? If it’s more the former than the latter, then you’re going to need to reassess your content’s structure.
Luckily, improving your content’s structure and increasing visual comprehension is easily done:
Another way to improve your content’s structure is to add images and videos to your content. Make sure the images are relevant and add to the content — in other words, limit the use of stock photos.
When you add images, improve your SEO by adding keyword-rich,descriptive titles and alt tags to all of them. But again, be careful of keyword-stuffing.
Imagine I’m writing an article about choosing the right sized moving truck and I want to include the following image:
Here’s a bad example of a title and description for this image.
Title: truck.png
Alt text: moving truck
Neither are particularly descriptive, despite including the keyword.
Here’s another bad example:
Title: moving truck.png
Alt text: moving truck image to find the right sized moving truck
This is a classic example of keyword-stuffing. The alt text has too many keywords that it becomes unreadable.
Here’s what the title and alt text should look lke
Title: loading-moving-truck.png
Alt text: Loading a moving truck with black crates
Both the title and alt text accurately describe the image and include a relevant keyword once. Were someone to use a screen reader on this image, they’d be able to imagine what it looks like fairly easily.
If your users are spending their valuable time reading your content, make sure it’s a great experience.
There are lots of ways to improve your writing:
Tools like Hemingway, Grammarly, and Writer are fantastic additions to your arsenal when it comes to improving your content’s readability.
Grammarly and Writer are writing assistants that will improve your spelling, grammar, and clarity. Think of them as spellcheckers on steroids.
So not only will they highlight spelling mistakes and suggest places to add an Oxford comma, they’ll also offer style and tone suggestions.
In the example below, for instance, Grammarly suggests you replace “very helpful” with “constructive” because it’s a stronger and more concise alternative.
Both platforms have their own app and can be integrated into common writing tools. Writer, for instance, offers add-ons for Chrome, Microsoft Word and Figma. Grammarly can be integrated into an even wider range of tools, including Gmail, Outlook, Slack, LinkedIn, Notion, Google Docs and even Salesforce.
Hemingway can also improve your grammar, but it excels in suggesting ways to make your copy bolder, more concise, and more engaging.
For instance, it highlights hard-to-read sentences, suggests simpler phrases, and gives your content a readability score. It won’t turn you into Heminway, but it can certainly help you write with more style.
Good content converts. But here’s how to create great content that converts.
Choosing the right topic is the first step to driving sales with content. Just as you did when optimizing for SEO, make sure the keyword you’re targeting has a high user intent. You can use Ubersuggest to analyze keywords, but the following sources are also a great way to find suitable topics:
Bonus points if your product or service is relevant to the keywords. For instance, we can use the related questions tab on Quora to find a great list of blog topics for a company that sells kitchen knives.
“Is a good chef knife worth it?” and “what is the best type of kitchen knife?” are great high-intent information-based topics that may be easier to rank for than a more general keyword like “best kitchen kife”.
There are several persuasive strategies you can use to make your copy much more enticing. These include:
If you can combine several of these points in a single piece of content, even better. Take this blog post about e-commerce website security by BigCommerce as an example:
In a section about fraud protection, they include a quote from a store owner explaining how a specific app on the BigCommerce platform helped them reduce chargebacks after losing thousands of dollars in merchandise.
Not only does it show BigCommerce apps work, it also proves they are used by real retailers.
Every piece of high-converting content features at least one call-to-action. CTAs can take many forms. You could:
CTAs typically come at the end of a landing page or blog post, but they doen’t have to. Buffer, for instance, include an email signup CTA in the middle of their blog post.
Note how hard it is to miss and how far down it is on the page. That’s on purpose. If you’ve read this far, there’s a good chance you enjoy the content and will want to be updated whenever a new post goes live. This CTA wouldn’t be half as effective if it was used at the start of the article.
Now that we’ve looked at the three major methods you can use to optimize your content, let’s cover the most common content optimization mistakes I see time and again.
Content optimization is the process of improving your content so that it ranks better on Google and is more digestible to human readers.
There are several ways to optimize your content. You can improve your content’s SEO so that it ranks better in Google. You can improve its structure and readability so that it’s more engaging. And you can improve its sales elements like the CTA so that it converts more readers.
Content optimization offers a ton of benefits. It can bring better rankings, a larger audience, more backlinks and help you build trust.
Optimizing your content is essential if you want it to be read and drive conversions.. A well-optimized mediocre article will always perform better than a poorly optimized but well-written article.
So make sure you optimize your content for the right keywords, use tools like Grammarly and Hemingway to improve your copy and, and think about ways you can improve your copy’s conversion rate.
Do all three, and you’ll have a killer piece of content that ranks well, engages readers, and sells.
How are you going to optimize your content?
Want to know how your SEO efforts are paying off?
Google provides a free tool called Google Search Console that offers a ton of detailed information about your site’s performance, security issues, errors, and more.
How does it work? That’s what we’re going to cover today.
Google Search Console is a suite of tools from Google that helps you track your site’s performance, find issues, and help your site rank higher in Google. It is a powerful, but complex, tool.
Back in 2010, we wrote a thorough beginner’s guide to Google Webmaster Tools. Since then, there have been significant changes to Google Webmaster Tools, including a rebranding as Google Search Console.
We’ve updated this guide to include how to use Google Search Console, what data you’ll find about your website, important data you might have forgotten about, and how to continually monitor for any issues that might affect your search engine rankings.
If you haven’t already, the first thing you will need to do is set up your website with Google Search Console.
To do this, visit the Search Console website, sign in with your Google Account, preferably the one you are already using for Google Analytics.
Click the Start Now button to the lower left-side of the screen, and you’ll see this dialogue box:
Select the URL prefix, as it gives you more options for verification.
Next, you will have to verify this site as yours.
Previously, this involved embedding code into your website header or upload an HTML file to your web server.
Now, if you already have Google Analytics, it automatically verifies your site for you and you will see this:
If this doesn’t work for you, use one of these other options for verification.
One of the newest verification options, DNS CNAME verification, is actually something that was in the old Google Webmaster Tools, but has been brought back for Google Search Console.
Once your site is verified, you will want to submit a sitemap if you have one available.
This is a simple XML file that will tell Google Search Console what pages you have on your website.
If you have one already, you can usually find it by typing in http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml to see it in your browser.
To create a sitemap if you don’t already have one, you can use online tools like XML Sitemaps.
If you are running a website on your own domain using WordPress, you can install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.
Once you have activated the plugin, look under your Settings in the WordPress dashboard and click on XML-Sitemap.
The plugin should have already generated your sitemap, so there’s nothing else you have to do.
You’ll find your URL at the very top of the page:
Copy the link address and head back over to Google Search Console, then paste it under “Add a new site map” in GSC.
It may take a few days for Search Console to start pulling information about your website.
Be sure to wait a bit, then keep reading to find out what else you can learn from Google Search Console!
Once you’ve added and verified your website, you’ll be able to see tons of information about your site performance in GSC.
Remember, this is a powerful tool; these are only the highlights of new types of data and the important data you should remember to check on occasionally.
When you visit your website in GSC, you will first see your Overview.
This is an overview of the important data within Google Search Console. You can visit specific areas such as your Crawl Errors, Search Analytics, and Sitemaps from this screen by clicking on the applicable links.
You can also navigate to these areas using the menu in the left sidebar.
In the left sidebar, you’ll see Search Results.
This section gives you an overview of how your site appears in the Search Engine Results Page, including total clicks, impressions, position, click-through rate, and what queries your site shows up for.
The filters at the top allow you to sort data based on location, date, type of search, and much more. This data is crucial to understanding the impact of your SEO efforts.
This report gives you data about the URLs Google has tried to index on your selected property and any problems Google has had.
As Googlebot crawls the internet, it processes each page it comes across to compile an index of every word it sees on every page.
It also looks at content tags and attributes like your titles or alt texts.
This graph shows a breakdown of the URLs on your site that have been indexed by Google and can thus appear in search results.
As you add and remove pages, this graph will change with you.
Don’t worry too much if you have a smaller number of indexed pages than you think you should. Googlebot filters out the URLs it sees as a duplicate, non-canonical, or those with a no index meta tag.
You’ll also notice a number of URLs your robots.txt file has disallowed from crawling.
And you can also check how many URLs you’ve removed with the Removal Tool. This will most likely always be a low value.
I mentioned sitemaps earlier, so I’ll cover this again in brief.
In GSC under Sitemaps, you will see information about your sitemap, including whether you have one and when it was last updated.
If you notice the last date your sitemap was downloaded is not recent, you might want to submit your sitemap to refresh the number of URLs submitted.
Otherwise, this helps you keep track of how Google is reading your sitemap and whether all your pages are viewed as you want them to be.
If for some reason you need to temporarily block a page from Google’s search results, head to Removals.
You can hide a page for approximately 90 days before this wears off.
If you want to permanently remove a page from Google’s crawling, you’ll have to do it on your actual website.
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that impact your search ranking. They include speed, usability, and visual stability. These are now ranking signals, so you’ll want to pay attention to them.
Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open-source initiative designed to provide fast-loading mobile websites that work with slow connection speeds.
You can go here to get started creating your first page if you don’t have one already.
You’ll get a boilerplate piece of code you can customize to your site.
To view pages in GSC, head to Enhancements > AMP.
Curious about your backlinks?
GSC shows you the domains that link to you the most as well as the pages on your website with the most links. Scroll down in the left side bar until you see Links. Click and you’ll see a full report of links to your site:
This is probably the most comprehensive listing of your backlinks (and internal links!) you will find, for free at least.
It’s a powerful tool to know where your content is being leveraged around the web, and what performs best in Google’s eyes.
The Manual Actions tab is where you can find out if any of your pages are not compliant with Google’s webmaster quality guidelines.
It’s one of the ways that Google has taken action against web spamming.
On the Mobile Usability tab, you can make sure all your website’s pages are aligned with what Google considers best practice.
As you can see, you can have issues with text size, viewport settings, or even the proximity of your clickable elements.
Any of these problems, as well as other errors, can negatively affect your mobile site’s rankings and push you lower on the results page. Finding and fixing these errors will help your user experience and results.
While reviewing this information, I suggest that you also check your site’s mobile speed. I use Ubersuggest to do so.
The first thing you want to do is type your URL into the search box and click Search.
After clicking the Search button, click Site Audit in the left sidebar and then scroll down the page until you seed Site Speed.
You’ll see the site speed for both desktop and mobile devices. For the sake of this exercise, we’re more interested in mobile loading time. My site loads on mobile devices in two seconds, which scores in the excellent range.
In addition to overall site speed, there’s also an advanced breakdown for:
If you see any issues here, fix them immediately, and then re-test your site. It may be enough to improve your loading time.
For a more in-depth analysis of how often Googlebot is looking at your site, you can use the Crawl Stats report under Settings > Crawl stats.
Here, you’ll see how often your site’s pages are crawled, how many kilobytes are downloaded per day, and your site’s download times.
According to Google, there is no “good” crawl number, but they do have advice for any sudden spikes or drops in your crawl rates.
This tool is helpful as it lets you actually do a test run of how Google crawls and renders a specific URL on your site.
It’s a helpful way to make sure that Googlebot can access a page that might otherwise be left to guesswork.
If you’re successful, the page will render, and you’ll be able to see if any resources are blocked to Googlebot.
If you want access to the code of your site, click View Tested Page to see the HTML, a screenshot, and any crawl errors. (Note: Crawl errors used to be its own report; now it’s located in URL inspection under Coverage.)
When you get to the debugging point of web development, you can’t beat this free tool.
If you’re using a robots.txt file to block Google’s crawlers from a specific resource, this tool allows you to double-check that everything is working.
So if you have an image you don’t want to appear in a Google Image Search, you can test your robots.txt here to make sure that your image isn’t popping up where you don’t want it.
When you test, you’ll either receive an Accepted or Blocked message, and you can edit accordingly.
Google themselves recommend using this tool sparingly, as an incorrect URL parameter can negatively impact how your site is crawled.
You can read more about how to properly use URL parameters from Google.
When you do use them, this tool will help you keep tabs on their performance and make sure they’re not pointing Googlebot in the wrong direction.
FAQs
What is Google Search Console?
The Google Search Console is a collection of tools that enables you to monitor the operation of your website, identify problems, and improve its Google ranking. It’s a free online tool Google offers with details about your website and the users who visit it.
When learning how to use Google Search Console, first add your website to Google Search Console. Then, set up operations you want to look to consistently optimize. Next, submit a sitemap, and finally, learn metrics for refining and reporting purposes after putting the Google Search Console to work.
Start by signing into your Google Account, open Google Search Console, and add your site. Finally, add in your domain or URL prefix to verify your account and begin taking advantage of the features.
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Google Search Console gives you powerful insights into how your site performs, as well as what you can do to keep Google’s attention. Once you have the basics down, learn how to use GSC data to increase your traffic by 28 percent or more.
Do you use Google Search Console? What areas do you find most useful? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, and happy data analyzing!