Why Website Age and Domain Authority Matter for Long-Term SEO Success
In the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), not all websites are created equal. Two crucial factors that often determine how well your website performs in search engine rankings are its age and domain authority. While new websites can certainly make an impact, it’s the combination of time and trust that can elevate a site to the top of search results. So, why exactly do website age and domain authority matter so much in the quest for long-term SEO success? Let’s dive in.
Website Age: The Benefit of Longevity
When it comes to SEO, time is a powerful asset. Older websites tend to rank higher in search results for several reasons:
- Established Trust: Search engines, particularly Google, tend to favour websites that have been around for a longer time. Why? Simply put, an older website with consistent activity shows stability and trustworthiness. It signals to search engines that the site is legitimate and not just a temporary page with short-lived value.
- Indexed Content: Over time, older websites have the advantage of having more content indexed by search engines. As you build and publish content over the years, it adds depth and relevance to your site, which contributes to better rankings.
- Proven Track Record: Websites that have been around for years often have a proven track record of user engagement. They’ve had more opportunities to attract backlinks, social shares, and user interactions, which are all factors that search engines consider when ranking a site.
However, website age alone won’t guarantee a high ranking. In fact, domain age is not used as a direct ranking factor by Google. Instead, it’s the quality of content, user experience, and domain authority that help push a site further up the search engine results pages (SERPs). Although domain age isn’t a ranking factor, older websites often benefit from having built a stronger backlink profile and established trust over time, which can indirectly boost their search performance.
Domain Authority: Building Trust with Search Engines
Domain authority is a metric that reflects the credibility and trustworthiness of your website in the eyes of search engines. While it’s not an official ranking factor used by Google, it’s a strong indicator of how likely your site is to rank well for relevant keywords. Domain authority is influenced by several factors, including the quality of backlinks, user engagement, and overall SEO health.
- Backlinks Are Key: One of the most significant factors in building domain authority is acquiring high-quality backlinks. These are links from other trusted websites that point to your site, signaling to search engines that your content is valuable and credible. The more authoritative the site linking to you, the greater the impact on your domain authority.
- Consistent Content Creation: Domain authority isn’t built overnight. It requires a steady flow of high-quality, relevant content that keeps users engaged and encourages them to spend more time on your site. Content that solves problems, answers questions, or provides value is more likely to attract backlinks and improve user engagement.
- Technical SEO: Domain authority is also influenced by how well your website is optimized for search engines. This includes factors like website speed, mobile-friendliness, and secure connections (SSL certificates). A well-maintained site not only provides a better user experience but also sends positive signals to search engines.
The Synergy of Age and Authority
While website age and domain authority are both powerful on their own, they work best when combined. An older website with high domain authority is likely to rank more consistently for competitive keywords and maintain long-term visibility in search results. However, even new websites can begin building domain authority by focusing on quality content, acquiring backlinks, and optimizing their technical SEO.
How to Build Domain Authority as a New Website
If your website is new or relatively young, there’s no need to worry. While older sites may have an advantage, there are actionable steps you can take to build your domain authority and grow your presence over time:
- Focus on High-Quality Content: Prioritize creating valuable, relevant, and well-optimized content that addresses your audience’s needs. This helps attract natural backlinks and keeps users coming back to your site.
- Acquire Quality Backlinks: Reach out to other reputable websites for guest blogging opportunities or partnerships that can earn you high-quality backlinks. Make sure these links come from sites with solid domain authority.
- Optimize Your Site for Search Engines: Ensure your site is technically sound by improving page load speed, using a mobile-friendly design, and optimizing for on-page SEO elements like meta tags, headers, and keywords.
Patience is Key in SEO Success
SEO is a long-term game that requires ongoing effort and continuous optimization, and while website age and domain authority play important roles in your success, patience and persistence are equally crucial. Building domain authority takes time, but with consistent effort, a focus on quality content, and an eye on technical SEO, you’ll steadily climb the ranks—even if your site is relatively new.
Time and Trust Lead to SEO Success
In the ever-competitive landscape of SEO, website age and domain authority are vital factors in determining long-term success. While older websites with high domain authority have an advantage, newer sites can still thrive by focusing on building trust, acquiring quality backlinks, and creating valuable content. Over time, your domain authority will grow, and so will your chances of ranking higher in search results.
The Importance of Fresh Content for SEO
In the constantly evolving world of digital marketing, one thing remains clear: content is still king. But it’s not just about having content—it’s about having fresh content. Search engines like Google prioritize websites that regularly update and add new content, recognizing them as more relevant and engaging for users. Here’s why consistently updating your website with fresh content is crucial for SEO success.
Search Engines Favour Fresh Content
Search engines aim to provide users with the most up-to-date and relevant information. Websites that regularly update their content are seen as more current, which boosts their rankings in search results. Google’s “Freshness” algorithm update underscores the importance of regularly adding new, high-quality content. Whether it’s new blog posts, updates to existing pages, or fresh product descriptions, regularly refreshing your content signals to search engines that your website is active and relevant.
Why It Matters for SEO: Regular updates show Google that your site is current, giving you a higher chance of ranking well in competitive search results. Fresh content also opens opportunities to target new keywords and trending topics, further improving your SEO.
Improves User Engagement and Experience
Users are more likely to engage with websites that offer fresh, relevant content. Stale, outdated content can lead to higher bounce rates, as visitors may not find the information they’re looking for. By continually updating your content, you not only improve SEO but also keep visitors interested and engaged with your site.
Why It Matters for SEO: Google pays attention to user engagement metrics, such as time spent on a page and bounce rates. By offering updated content, you can improve these metrics, signaling to search engines that your website provides valuable information to users, which can positively impact rankings.
Increases Crawl Frequency by Search Engines
Search engine crawlers visit websites regularly to index new content. When search engines detect that your site frequently updates, they will visit your site more often to crawl and index the fresh pages. This can lead to faster ranking improvements for your new content.
Why It Matters for SEO: A site that’s regularly updated is crawled more frequently, meaning your new pages and updates are indexed and ranked faster. This can be a significant advantage when targeting new keywords or reacting to trending topics.
Boosts Keyword Relevance and Rankings
As user behaviour and search trends change over time, so do the keywords they use. Fresh content allows you to continuously update your SEO strategy, incorporating new keywords and optimizing for changes in search intent. This is especially important for industries where trends shift frequently, as fresh content keeps your site relevant in search results.
Why It Matters for SEO: Regularly updating your content with new keywords ensures that your website stays relevant to current search trends. By consistently optimizing for the latest keywords, you’ll maintain or even improve your rankings over time.
Establishes Authority and Trust
Creating fresh, valuable content on a regular basis helps you build authority in your industry. When users see that your website consistently offers the latest information, tips, or insights, they’ll view your site as a trusted resource. This can lead to higher-quality backlinks, which are crucial for boosting your domain authority.
Why It Matters for SEO: High-quality backlinks from authoritative sites are one of Google’s top ranking factors. By offering fresh content that’s useful and trustworthy, you’re more likely to earn backlinks, which directly contribute to better SEO performance.
Keeping your website regularly updated with fresh content isn’t just a best practice for SEO—it’s essential because SEO requires ongoing effort. Fresh content plays a crucial role in improving your rankings, maintaining keyword relevance, and increasing user engagement. Regular updates signal to search engines that your site is active and authoritative, which helps boost domain authority and improves visibility. By committing to a consistent content strategy, you’ll not only stay in favour with search engines but also build lasting trust and authority with your audience, ensuring long-term SEO success.
What is Keyword Cannibalization in SEO and How to Fix It
In the ever-competitive world of SEO, it’s crucial to make sure every piece of your content works together rather than competing against itself. One of the common issues that can arise when managing SEO for a website is keyword cannibalization. Let’s explore what keyword cannibalization is, why it can hurt your SEO, and, more importantly, how to fix it.
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on your website are optimized for the same keyword or similar keywords. Instead of one strong page ranking highly in search results, several pages compete with each other, which can confuse search engines and lower the rankings of all involved pages.
For example, if you have three blog posts about “best energy efficient windows” all targeting the same keyword, they may end up competing for the same search queries. This can dilute the performance of all three pages rather than allowing one authoritative page to shine.
Why is Keyword Cannibalization Bad for SEO?
There are several ways keyword cannibalization can negatively impact your SEO strategy:
- Reduced Rankings: When search engines encounter multiple pages optimized for the same keyword, they struggle to determine which one is the most relevant. As a result, all of the competing pages may rank lower than they would have individually.
- Split Traffic: Instead of concentrating traffic on one page, keyword cannibalization splits that potential traffic across multiple pages, reducing the overall impact of your SEO efforts.
- Diluted Link Equity: Backlinks and internal links pointing to multiple pages on the same topic dilute the authority of each page. This means none of the pages will rank as well as they could have if all the link equity was focused on a single page.
How to Identify Keyword Cannibalization
Before you can fix keyword cannibalization, you need to identify it. Here are two methods to do so:
- Use SEO Tools: Tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz can help you analyze which pages on your site are ranking for the same keywords. You can easily spot cannibalization when multiple URLs show up for the same search queries.
- Manual Search: Another method is simply searching your target keyword on Google and seeing how many of your pages rank for that term. If more than one page shows up, you may have a cannibalization issue.
How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization
Once you’ve identified keyword cannibalization on your site, it’s time to fix it. Here are some effective strategies to resolve the issue:
- Merge Content If you have multiple pages targeting the same keyword, consider merging them into one comprehensive and authoritative page. This approach can create a more valuable resource for users and search engines, improving your chances of ranking higher.
- Reoptimize Pages Assign each page a unique keyword or topic. By doing this, you ensure that each page targets a different aspect of your subject matter, helping prevent overlap and confusion for search engines.
- Use Canonical Tags If you need multiple pages on similar topics (such as different product variations), applying canonical tags can inform search engines which page is the primary source. This ensures the preferred page gets priority in rankings.
- Internal Linking Strategy Revise your internal linking to direct traffic to the most relevant page. This helps search engines understand which page is the most authoritative for a particular keyword and can help boost its rankings.
- 301 Redirects If you have outdated or underperforming pages that are cannibalizing traffic from a stronger page, consider using 301 redirects to consolidate SEO value. Redirecting these pages to your main content page helps funnel all authority and traffic to the page you want to rank.
Not sure what all these SEO terms mean?Our SEO Glossary breaks down everything you need to know, from keywords to link building. Start mastering SEO today by getting familiar with the essentials. |
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Not sure what all these SEO terms mean?
Our SEO Glossary breaks down everything you need to know, from keywords to link building. Start mastering SEO today by getting familiar with the essentials.
How to Prevent Keyword Cannibalization in the Future
The best way to deal with keyword cannibalization is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Here are a few tips to keep your content and SEO strategy in check:
- Conduct Thorough Keyword Research: Ensure that every page targets a unique keyword or topic to avoid overlap.
- Regular SEO Audits: Regularly audit your website’s SEO performance to identify any cannibalization issues before they become major problems.
- Use a Clear Content Hierarchy: Structure your content so that different topics are addressed on different pages. Consider using a pillar page strategy, where one broad topic page links to several more specific subtopic pages.
Keyword cannibalization is a common but often overlooked issue that can undermine your SEO efforts. By identifying and fixing cannibalization, you can improve your site’s rankings, consolidate traffic, and enhance user experience. Regular SEO audits and smart content strategies can prevent future cannibalization, ensuring your website performs at its best.
What Is NAP and Why Does It Matter for Your Local SEO Strategy?
When it comes to improving your local SEO, one of the most overlooked yet crucial elements is NAP, which stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. Ensuring that this information is accurate and consistent across all platforms is essential for search engines to recognize your business as credible and trustworthy. We will discuss what NAP is, why it’s vital for local SEO, and best practices to ensure you’re fully optimized.
What is NAP?
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. It refers to the consistent use of a business’s exact name, address, and phone number across all online platforms, such as your website, Google Business Profile, and directories like Yelp or Yellow Pages. Maintaining uniformity in your NAP details ensures that search engines recognize your business as legitimate and trustworthy.
Importance of NAP in SEO
Consistency in NAP information is essential for local SEO. Search engines, like Google, use NAP data to validate a business’s identity and its location, especially when showing search results for local queries. Accurate NAP data increases your chances of appearing in the Google Local Pack (the list of businesses with map locations that appear at the top of search results). Furthermore, consistent NAP improves user trust, as potential customers are more likely to reach out when contact information is correct and uniform across platforms.
Key Reasons NAP Matters for SEO:
- Improves Local Search Rankings: Google looks for consistency in NAP when evaluating businesses for local searches. Discrepancies can hurt your chances of ranking in local search results.
- Enhances User Trust: Accurate and consistent contact details build trust with both search engines and users. Incorrect NAP details could lead to lost customers.
- Boosts Credibility: Inconsistent NAP across directories can confuse search engines, reducing your business’s authority and leading to lower rankings.
- Helps in Citation Building: Citations are online mentions of your business. They play a major role in improving local rankings, but only when the NAP data is consistent.
Not sure what all these SEO terms mean?Our SEO Glossary breaks down everything you need to know, from keywords to link building. Start mastering SEO today by getting familiar with the essentials. |
|
Not sure what all these SEO terms mean?
Our SEO Glossary breaks down everything you need to know, from keywords to link building. Start mastering SEO today by getting familiar with the essentials.
Best Practices for NAP SEO
To ensure that your NAP data works in favor of your local SEO efforts, follow these best practices:
- Be Consistent: Use the exact same business name, address, and phone number on all directories, your website, and social media pages. Even minor discrepancies, like using “St.” instead of “Street,” can create issues.
- Use Local Area Codes: Always list a phone number with a local area code, as this reinforces to search engines and users that you are truly a local business.
- Monitor Citations Regularly: Set up periodic checks on key directories to ensure your NAP details remain consistent, especially after rebranding, moving, or updating phone numbers.
- Utilize Google Business Profile: Your Google Business Profile is one of the most important places to have your NAP data accurately listed. Ensure that your details are up-to-date and regularly reviewed.
- Manage Business Listings: Use tools like Moz Local, BrightLocal, or Yext to track and correct NAP inconsistencies across directories and citations.
- Implement Structured Data Schema: Adding LocalBusiness Schema Markup to your website’s code provides search engines with a clear and structured way to understand your NAP information. This structured data helps search engines display your business details accurately in local search results and can increase your visibility in rich snippets.
Tip: How to Add LocalBusiness Schema Markup
- Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper
Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper is a free tool that helps you easily add schema markup to your website. Simply tag the relevant elements on your webpage, and the tool will generate the necessary code. You can access it here. - ChatGPT for Generating Schema Markup
You can also use ChatGPT to generate LocalBusiness Schema markup! Simply describe the business details you need structured, and ChatGPT can produce the schema code for you to implement on your site. - Plugins and SEO Tools
For WordPress users, consider using plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math. These plugins automatically add schema markup, including LocalBusiness details, without needing to manually edit the code.
By following these practices, you’ll ensure that your NAP information strengthens your local SEO efforts, leading to better visibility, more leads, and higher customer trust.
Google Tag Manager Basics for Beginners
There is a whole suite of Google services available that makes life easier for webmasters and marketers. More often than not, individuals that run a website will install Google Analytics to track website traffic and they will likely utilize Google Search Console and/or Google Ads for their SEO and PPC efforts.
For the most part, you can run your website and marketing efforts based on these services and do a good enough job with your conversions.
If you are looking to gain greater visibility on what website visitors are doing on your site once they get there, then Google Tag Manager is for you.
What is Google Tag Manager?
According to Google, straight from their site, they say:
Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that allows you to quickly and easily update tracking codes and related code fragments collectively known as "tags" on your website or mobile app. (click here for full overview)
So, what exactly does that mean and why should you care? Basically, the tag manager allows you to track certain events that occur on your website. And what does that mean? Well, if someone for instance clicks the "call now" button on your website, having that button tagged will then trigger an event that you can see on Google Analytics!
Is this the Only Way to Track Events on my Website?
No, not necessarily. If you are good at coding javascript, you can manually tag buttons, links, and other desired events. This is the beauty of using Google Tag Manager though, you don't need to be an expert coder to start tracking these events.
So, Why Should I Care About Tracking Events?
In this day and age of digital marketing, there are various sources of traffic coming in. To properly attribute where this traffic is coming is crucial, but being able to attribute who is converting, where the source of this conversion came from, and what elements on your site are not converting will allow you to better spend your marketing dollars.
Say for example you received 30 phone calls from potential leads to your business last month. Your marketing efforts included SEO, PPC Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Which marketing effort drove the 30 phone calls? Now, one month shouldn't determine how you spend your marketing dollars, nor should one type of event, but at least this is a good starting point for developing a larger digital marketing strategy.
Related Article: How Google Can Help Your Small Business
How Do I Setup Tag Manager?
Here are the steps to setup Google Tag Manager:
1. Go to https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/tag-manager/
2. Sign into your Google account and click Create Account
3. Fill in account information, country, website address and choose web (for website, this tutorial is for tagging your website)
4. Read over the terms and service, accept and proceed.
5. Next, you see a pop up similar to below. This is the most coding that is required before you start using Google Tag Manager. You will need to add a piece of code in the <head> and a piece of code in the <body> sections of your website.
You are now all setup. On the screen, you will see your "workspace". The 3 main components to pay attention too are tags, triggers, and variables.
What is a Tag?
A tag is basically a set of code that gets executed when an event occurs and it then sends information to a source like Google Analytics. In order for a tag to execute, it looks for an event to happen which is usually triggered by a set of rules that you design.
What is a Trigger?
A trigger is basically a set of rules that you design that Google Tag Manager will be on the look for to occur on your website. As mentioned above, once these rules are met, the tag will then communicate this information to Google Analytics as an event occurring.
What is a Variable?
A variable is a compartment used to store values. Huh? Well, to break it down in a way to better understand, a variable in Google Tag Manager is basically things that can potentially happen on your site that you can create rules around. As an example, "click text" is a variable. Now, we can create a trigger that says when the variable "click text" = call now, fire the trigger. Then, we can create a tag that is on the lookout for this trigger, and when it happens, it communicates with Google Analytics information for you to see on your Google Analytics dashboard.
A lot of this can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but the information you receive from tagging your website properly can give you the data you are looking for to properly attribute which marketing campaigns are driving your best ROI.
Check back again for a future article that will show you how to create your first tag on Google Tag Manager.
About Retailors Group
Retailors Group is a results-driven marketing agency. We focus on digital marketing and field marketing.
72 Facts About SEO
Many website owners have problems with getting the desired amount of traffic on their websites. There are many strategies that can help enhance traffic, and even though it is not an appropriate strategy for every website, search engine optimization is one of the best strategies out there.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process that helps the growth of the online visibility of a website so that it gets unpaid (also known as organic, natural, earned) results which are the goal of every webmaster. It may target different kinds of searches such as image, video, academic, news, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
Who Controls the Market?
With 2.3 million searches performed per second, Google is the leader among the search engines, and with 92.59% of the mobile devices and 72.87% of desktop searches belonging to the company, it has the biggest chunk of the market shares.
Other major search engines include Baidu, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex who have control of the smaller part of the shares.
What Are the Ranking Factors?
1. Page speed
Top ranking sites have 1,900 ms page speed.
2. Content quality
Longer and informative content ranks higher.
3. Backlink profile
Rank 1 websites have more links.
4. Bounce rate
The bounce rate of rank 1 websites is lower.
5. SSL Security
27% of top search results use https.
6. Click-through rate
Higher CTR leads to higher rankings.
7. LSI Keywords
These keywords help Google understand what a page is about images – Most of page 1 results have an image on their page.
What Lies Ahead?
With the rapid growth of voice search, 50% of online searches will be voice searches by 2020.
Most searchers are moving mobile as search on mobile devices is starting to dominate. Search engines such as Google are getting along with the trend. They require that websites become mobile-friendly, or get out of the search.
The importance of Google answer box terms is growing as Google answer box gets triggered to about 25% of total searches.
Take a look at the infographic which follows to better understand SEO in 2018.
URL: https://seotribunal.com/blog/stats-to-understand-seo/
How Important is a Top Listing In Google?
I want to start off by telling you that this is a sales pitch…in a way… Well maybe not… However, I will ask that you call us if you want us to help rank you after you finish reading this. For now, all that I ask is that you manage to keep your attention on the next couple of paragraphs and learn the importance of being at the top of Google.
Are you a windows and doors contractor? Maybe a plumber who specializes in basement waterproofing services? Or a financial advisor who provides critical illness insurance?
Regardless of what type of product or service you sell, whether you’re a videographer, sell shawarma, your clients go through a certain process in order to choose the solution for their problem. Before showing up on the top of page one, you need to understand that process and how clients interact with search engines at each step of that journey. Let’s assume I need to find a new optometrist because I just moved to a new neighbourhood.
First, I am going to take my phone out and Google search “optometrist” near me. Google says 60% of people that search a business near them make a physical trip to a location of their choice within 24 hours. I am going to look at the first 3-5 options, open their website, read reviews, and do a little bit more research. I will either decide on the spot to call someone and book an appointment or I will re-visit the topic again in the following days. If I revisit the topic in the next few days I will probably go through the same exercise again, remember a couple of names maybe and repeat the process.
If you are one of those optometrists that show up on the top, 3 things are important to me:
1. The User Experience of the Landing Page
A landing page is the first page you land on once you click on the business. There are several things to consider on your landing page such as: Did the landing page load fast enough? Is the website optimized for Mobile devices? Is there an easy way to interact with the business – is the “book an appointment” button or the “call now” button in front of me? Is the website modern and clean? Can I trust based on my first impression that this establishment cares about their clients? Do they care enough about their own business to keep things updated? Is there a map of their physical location on the website? Can I see some client testimonials there? All these factors contribute to the image I am creating of that business.
2. Does the Business Answer the Questions to My Problem?
If I searched “optometrist” near me, is it clear on the landing page that I am looking at an optometrist office? Although it seems obvious you will be surprised at how many businesses want to promote a specific product or service and confuse users by occupying most of the real-estate on the home page with their current promotion that often is not related to the core service or product that made the user land on that page.
3. Other Online Presence
Now that I am somewhat sold on the business, I want to do some additional research. I will look at reviews, social media pages, online mentions of that business, and Google Listing.
All of these things will contribute to the process of deciding who to give my business to. It seems like a lot, doesn’t it? I just want to point out though that none of these points are relevant if you do not show up on the search results when customers are searching terms that are relevant to your business. Remember how the journey started? I took out my phone and Google searched “optometrist” near me.
If you need help getting your business there, call us! Try searching “escape room Mississauga” or “bathroom vanities Kitchener” on Google. All of our clients ranked on page 1 within the year of hiring us. You can check out our other SEO articles if you want to know more about how to rank high on Google.
How to Submit Your Website to Google?
Do you have a business, but don’t have a website? If so, you’re missing out on many opportunities for your business. Wouldn’t you want your customers to know your business and what you can offer them?
You can help your business grow by establishing an online presence with website design. Having a website allows your customers to access your website at any time to browse for the products or services that your business offers. Our team at Retailors Group will take the time to understand your business to ensure that your goals are aligned with your website. Whether you want to utilize a website for branding, to collect leads, or to generate sales, Retailors Group has a solution for you.
And on the other hand, you’ve created an amazing site. Are you ready to share your website with your customers? If so, you need to submit your website to Google so it knows your website exists. Google will crawl and index your content to get your site listed on search results. This happens automatically over a couple of days or weeks, but manually submitting your site to Google will accelerate this process.
How does Google find my content?
Google uses a crawler called the Googlebot to crawl billions of pages on the web. The crawling process starts with Googlebot using a list of URLs generated from previous crawls. Then, it augments those pages with sitemap data provided within Google Search Console. Googlebot also looks for new sites, any broken links, and updates to existing pages.
When the crawling process is complete, the results are fed into Google’s index. Google will look at the information on your webpages such as title tags, meta descriptions, and more.
How can you check if your site is listed in Google? You can check if a particular site is listed by typing in “site:www.yourwebsite.com.” Take a look at the example below for a drain cleaning page.
How do I submit my website to Google?
1. Add Your Site to Google Search Console
Log in to Google Search Console to add the URL of your site and select “Add a Property.”
2. Verify Your Site on WordPress
Log in to WordPress and select “Appearance.” Then, select “Editor” and click on “Header.php.” Look for the head tag of the header and paste the HTML tag you copied from Google Search Console. Go back to your Google Search Console dashboard and click “Verify.”
3. Submit Your Sitemap to Google
Go to your Google Search Console dashboard and select “Crawl,” then “Sitemaps,” and click on “Add/Test Sitemap.” Open a new tab and type in yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml to get your XML sitemap. Copy everything after https://yourwebsite.com, then go back to your Google Search Console dashboard, paste the sitemap on the box and click “Submit Sitemap.”
4. Fetch as Google
Fetching as Google will help your content appear in search results as soon as possible. Go to your Google Search Console dashboard, select “Crawl” and click on “Fetch as Google.”
If you want to fetch your entire website, leave the center box blank, select “Fetch” and choose “Crawl This URL and its Direct Links.” If you are fetching a specific webpage, enter the URL of that webpage, select “Fetch” and choose “Crawl Only This URL.”
How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
Are you looking to grow your business and attract more customers using local SEO strategies? Local SEO is an effective way to market your business online because it helps businesses promote their products and services to local customers. One of the best local SEO strategies to help improve your online visibility is Google My Business.
Google My Business is a free and easy to use tool for businesses to manage their online presence. Claiming and verifying your local business’ Google My Business listing can increase your chances of showing up in Google’s Search, Maps, Local Pack, and Local Finder.
Below is how your business would show up on Google’s search results. If you Google search the term “Banquet Hall Mississauga” you will see the top 3 businesses on the first page.
Related Article: Why is SEO Important for Small Businesses?
Benefits of using Google My Business
There are 3 benefits of using Google My Business for your business:
1. Manage your information
Google My Business will help you manage the information that customers see when they search for your business, products, or services. Did you know that businesses who verify their information with Google My Businesses are twice as likely to be considered reputable by potential customers?
2. Interact with customers
You’ll be able to read and responds to reviews from your customers and post photos that show off what you do with Google My Business. Did you know that businesses that add photos to their listings receive 42% more requests for driving directions and 35% more clicks through to their websites than businesses who don’t?
3. Understand your presence
You can see insights on how customers search for your business, as well as where those customers are coming from. You’ll be able to see information such as how many people called your business directly from the phone number displayed on local search results.
Optimizing your Google My Business Listing
If you haven’t claimed and verified your Google My Business listing, that’s the first step so visit https:www.google.com/business to get started. There are many local businesses that just claim their Google My Business listing and forget about it. Most local businesses don’t realize that Google offers a variety of other features that you can use to optimize your Google My Business listing.
Here are 10 ways to optimize your Google My Business listing:
1. Enter Complete Information for Your Listing
Google will ask you to fill out the information about your business such as an address, hours, and phone in order to complete your Google My Business listing. This information will make it easier for your potential customers to find more information about your company. Completing all the information Google asks for is very, very important because if you don’t, anyone including your competitors can suggest a change or edit to your business listing.
Take a look at this example of Skyward Business Centre, office space in Mississauga. This is how your Google My Business listing will look like with all of the information filled out.
2. Include Important Keywords
Your Google My Business listing is just like your traditional website SEO. Google uses a variety of factors to serve search results, therefore including important keywords to your business will be helpful since your website is listed directly with your Google My Business Listing.
For example, if you’re selling a product like ATVs you should include keywords such as ATVs for sale, quads for sale, and four-wheelers for sale or if you’re providing a service such as installing charging stations for electric cars, you should include keywords such as electric car charger, home charging station, and condominium charging station.
3. Google My Business Posts
You should utilize Google My Business Posts because it’s almost like mini-ads or social media posts that show up in Google search underneath your Google My Business listing. Here are examples of Post ideas for Google My Business Posts:
1. If you’re having an event you can set up an event Post with a date and time.
2. If you have a sale going on during a specific time you can create a sale event Post.
3. If you created a killer blog with amazing content, add a short description, and link to the post on your blog.
4. Booking Button Feature
Google has a booking button feature that can help your business stand out from the crowd. If your business relies on customers making appointments and you’re using integrated scheduling software, people can now book an appointment with your business directly from your Google My Business listing.
5. Questions & Answers
Questions & Answers is an amazing feature for Google's local search. This allows people to ask questions about your business and you’ll be able to answer those questions.
6. Google My Business Reviews
Did you know 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations? Google encourages businesses to ask their customers for online reviews. These reviews will appear next to your listing in Google Search and Maps which will help your business stand out in search results.
7. Photos and Videos
Make sure you add photos and videos to grab people’s attention. This is a great way to show off your brand and let your customers find out what your business is all about.
8. Business Descriptions
Google now allows businesses to include a business description on Google My Business Listing. This gives you the chance to tell potential customers your story and what makes your business unique. Please keep in mind that you only have 750 characters and only 250 of those show up in the Knowledge Panel.
9. Services and Menus
The services and menus feature is useful if you sell services such as a spa, nail salon, or hair salon. This feature allows you to list out all of your services and provide prices so that potential customers can easily see what your business has to offer. This feature is only available for health, beauty, food and drink, and other service businesses that don’t have a third-party menu link.
How to Optimize Anchor Text For SEO?
In the early days of SEO, black-hat SEO experts were doing everything imaginable to rank their sites on Google which included keyword stuffing and creating spammy backlinks. (Black-hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies and techniques that focus on search engines rather than a human audience). Those older SEO hacks are long gone as we deal with a much more sophisticated algorithm like Google Penguin.
Google Penguin was launched on April 24, 2012 to decrease search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO strategies and techniques. Such strategies and techniques are commonly described as link schemes that involve artificially ranking a webpage by manipulating the number of links pointing to the page.
Now that Google Penguin is part of the core Google Algorithm, the anchor text you use in your backlinks and internal links is a lot more important. Anchor texts are an important part of SEO and have a strong impact on your search engine ranking. So in this blog, we will show you how to optimize your anchor text in order to positively impact your SEO.
Related Article: The Beginner's Guide to Link Building for Small Businesses
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the visible and clickable text in a link that appears in a different colour and underlined. Anchor text indicates what’s behind that link, provides context for search engines, and most importantly increases the chance of someone clicking on your link. The image below is an example of an anchor text on a web page. The clickable text that you see in a hyperlink is “basement waterproofing.”
But, what does an anchor text look like in HTML? In HTML, the first piece of code is the URL and the second part describes the link. The image below is an example of an anchor text in HTML. The anchor text that you see in HTML is “debt consolidation.”
Anchor Text with Google Penguin
How does Google Penguin analyze anchor text? How does it determine whether a site should be penalized or not? Well here’s exactly how Google Penguin works:
1. You create a backlink
2. Google indexes the backlink through Search Console
3. Google places your backlink into its database for your specific website known as your link profile
4. Steps 1-3 are repeated over and over again, so now you have a link profile that Google Penguin analyzes
When Google Penguin analyzes your link profile, it compares it to your on-site keyword optimization. (A link profile is the makeup of links directing to your site). So if your on-page content is optimized for “condos for Sale North York,” 100% of your anchor texts shouldn’t be “condos for Sale North York” or you will get a penalty. Google Penguin will see that you are trying to rank for “condos for Sale North York” and you are building links artificially. Therefore, exact match anchor text + keyword-rich optimized = Google Penguin Penalty.
The Different Types of Anchor Texts
So then how do I avoid getting penalized by Google Penguin? In order to optimize your anchor text in order to positively impact your SEO, you need to have a clear understanding of the different types of anchor texts.
1. Generic Anchor Text
Generic anchors are normal text like go here, this page clicks here, read more, additional info, check this out, more info here, and about the author.
2. Branded Anchors
Branded anchors use the brand name as text. These are the safest to use unless your website is an exact match domain. Well-know brands and sites like Best Buy and Amazon will have the highest number of branded anchor texts.
3. Naked Link Anchors
Naked link anchors link back to a site by using the URL. For example, https://retailorsgroup.com/ and www.retailorsgroup.com are examples of naked link anchors.
4. Brand + Keyword Anchors
Brand + keyword anchors are a combination of your brand name and your choice of keyword. For example, “Experiential Marketing by Retailors Group” is an example of a brand + keyword anchor.
5. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Anchors
LSI anchors refer to the variations of your main keyword. Just think of it as a synonym. For example, if your main keyword is “financial advisor”, LSI keywords could include “financial planning,” “wealth management,” and so on.
6. Partial Match Anchors
Partial match anchors is the partial presence of keywords in the anchor text. For example, “useful anchor text guide” and “learn more about anchor text.”
7. Long Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are similar to match anchors except that they’re longer. For example, “anchor text is an important part of link building” and “anchor text have a strong impact on your search engine ranking.”
8. Exact Match Anchors
Exact match anchors are the exact match of your target keyword. They are the most important type of anchor text and play a crucial role in improving your ranking or getting penalized by Google. For example, if your target keyword is “optometrist,” your anchor text is also “optometrist.”
Tips & Best Practices for Anchor Texts
Optimizing anchor text without being penalized by Google Penguin for your website can be tricky. However, here are some useful tips and best practices for anchors text to help you optimize your anchor text in order to positively impact your SEO.
1. Keep your Anchor Text Relevant
Make sure your anchor texts are relevant to the content you’ve placed them. For example, if your target keyword is “link building,” you should write an article specifically about link building. The more relevant your article is to your keyword, the better your rank will be on Google.
2. Distribute Different Types of Anchors
You should distribute different types of anchors as it can make or break your search engine ranking. There is no ideal anchor text distribution, however, according to SEMrush, your anchor distribution should be 40% branded anchor text, 25% naked link anchor, 5% brand + keyword anchors, and so on. You can refer to the image below for the anchor text distribution graph.
1. Track your Anchor Texts
It’s important to track the anchor texts that you’ve used when you’re building backlinks. Therefore, you need to be organized and ensure you’re not over-optimizing your page with keyword-rich anchors.
4. Acquiring the Right Links
You should acquire the right links from sites with high traffic and authority. Having authoritative sites linking to you is great for your link profile. Focus on sites with Domain Authority above 30 and Page Authority over 35.