rankingCoach's Digital Marketing Tips of The Month

#1 Content Marketing Tip   

 "Make sure that articles are always published on your website first - Google recognizes the author"

If you are planning to share your site's content with another website, but you still plan to use the content on your website for SEO purposes.   Make sure the version on your site is posted first, and that the other site uses canonical tags to let Google know that the version on your website is the original.  For more information on canonicals   check out Google best practices 

#2 SEO Tip

"Links are give and take: pages that give links get more in return"

An important part of link building strategy is collaboration, rather than wasting money on buying links, which will be more likely to hurt your rankings than help them.   Be generous with the links you offer, and if you are targeting another site for a link exchange , linking to them before, in a relevant article may be a great way of getting their attention for an exchange.

#3 SEO Tip 

"Google shows emojis in search results" 

There are a whole host of other characters that you can use in the meta title and descriptions to grab the user's attention on the SERP.  From less used symbols such as $ and $ signs to the space-saving ampersand (&). Some sites have had success with using thumbs up emoticons in their meta descriptions. Think about how you can spice up listings in the SERP. But keep an eye on the rankings of those pages using rankingCoach and Google Search Console to make sure this experimentation doesn't go too far. 

#4 SEO Tip 

"Don't expect immediate improvements - it may take time for your changes to have the desired effect"

This tip mainly refers to Digital Marketers who are frustrated with their SEO progress.   Ranking improvements can take a few weeks or sometimes even months to take full effect.  This is down to the sheer number of ranking factors that need to be improved and also the time it takes for search engines like Google to discover these changes. 

Professional tip: If you want to professionally optimize your entire site for SEO, rankingCoach 360 is a digital marketing that will conduct a full SEO audit of your site and show you exactly how to optimize it for SEO with step-by-step video tutorials, easy-to-use keyword research tools.  

#5 Content Marketing Tip 

"Check if you can update older content on your website"

Creating an effective website content strategy is not just about constantly posting new content on fresh pages. The age of your website and its pages is an important ranking factor, so updating old pages to make the subjects they cover accurate and current will get quicker results than posting the updated content on a new page. 

#6 Digital Marketing Tip 

" A blog is an essential part of an effective Digital Marketing strategy"

Creating a blog is an excellent way for a business to demonstrate expertise in its field.  Building trust and interest in this area provide customers with useful information. This is also a great way of targeting keywords and bringing traffic to your site through SEO.

#7 Digital Marketing Tip 

"Sites with a blog are visited more often by their customers"

Blogs also bring freshness to your website. Especially if this blog is given a presence on your homepage.   Adding new content to your website regularly is important for keeping customers coming back. Setting up a blog feed on your homepage is a great way of doing this without having to make any drastic changes to your site's structure. 

#8 Digital Marketing tip 

"Keep up with industry news, you never know when things can change in SEO" 

The internet has changed an awful lot in the last decade from the fading out of HTTP websites to the prioritization of mobile-first websites for ranking purposes. Maintaining your rankings isn't just about working on what's important now.   You also need to have an eye on the future by keeping up with all the important announcements from Google and the many other big names in Digital Marketing,or by using rankingCoach who constantly updates Digital Marketing plans to make sure all of the latest requirements from the big players in Digital Marketing are covered. 

#9 SEO Tip 

"Make sure each page has its own unique title"

It's also important to avoid duplicate page titles and URLs as well as the main body of text. This is also an important part of site structure.   Make sure each page has a distinct URL 

#10 SEO Tip 

"Don't use a # in your URLs. Googlebot doesn't like them!"

URLs play an important role in SEO.  They are an often underused location for keywords, they are also the first part of a page that Googlebot sees. but If Googlebot cannot read these symbols, Google might miss the keywords in the URL or miss the page altogether.

#11 Local Marketing Tip 

"Claim your physical address on Google Maps"

This is an especially useful tip for these current times when making sure Google knows about your business's opening hours and services have become more important than ever. Claiming your business's GMB profile confirms to Google that you are the owner of a business.   This means any changes you make to these details will take less time to be verified and can be updated more quickly, a crucial advantage for when you need customers on Search Engines to get crucial information as quickly as possible.

Beginner’s tip: rankingCoach Free shows you how to set up your Google My Business and Google Analytics accounts and manage them.

Set up Google My Business now

#12 SEO Tip 

"Each page should only have one H1"

The H1 tag is the title tag for the page you post. It is normally the first and largest piece of text at the top of the page. This is often the title of the article you type into your CMS before posting the main body of the text. You can also label the body of your texts with H markers including H1 but the subheadings in your articles should be labelled as H2 or H3 not  H1 because Search Engines will only use one H1, so make sure it's the best one by only picking one.   

#13 SEO Tip 

"Your backlinks should always be thematically linked to your page"

Backlinks are important for core Digital Marketing activities like SEO but it's about quality and serving the users interests. Don't just link to other pages for the sake of creating links or link exchanges.   Create a logical link between your content and what it links to . Only link to content that will enhance the user experience and boost a page's authority. Only link to other reputable sources linked to the theme your content covers.

#14 SEO Tip 

"Optimize your images and always create alt tags and descriptions"

When it comes to SEO most of us know to put keywords in the meta title and meta description. The debate on how many keywords to put is always raging, my advice:

Use as many as you can whilst maintaining a logical and professional link between the description and the page you are describing. Meta titles and descriptions are often, but not always, what appears on a page's Google listings, so having visible but well-presented keywords will also draw the users' eyes to your listed page. Don't forget to put keywords in your photo descriptions, also known as alt tags. This will ensure that images on your website appear in search engine image results.  

#15 SEO Tip 

"Improve the loading time of your website - it is a ranking factor and should be less than 3 seconds"

Another crucial ranking factor that can get overlooked is site speed. This isn't just important for creating a better user experience & improving sales. Websites that are slow to load do not rank well on Google because pagespeed is a ranking factor. It is important to pay special attention to the load speed of your website for smartphone visitors.  Google uses the smartphone version of your website for ranking purposes. Fortunately, most modern site-building applications have settings for checking and building a smartphone-friendly site.   Without getting technical at all you can visit your website with a smartphone and cookies deleted to get a better impression of the user experience. 

Bonus tip: Viewing your website's content with your smartphone is also a great additional way of proofreading your content. As the smartphone page's reorientation provides a fresh perspective, making it easier to see mistakes that you wouldn't otherwise notice.

For more help in this area check out this article from the blog.

#16 Digital Marketing Tip 

" Keep your pages up to date so your visitors know the latest news and Google will appreciate it!” 

This tip reminds the marketers of an important fact:  the quantity of your content is also a ranking factor. Simply by posting well targeted and well-written content more regularly you can improve the number of terms that your website ranks for and the ranking of your indexed pages. This is not just good for your rankings because more content means more listings, it also helps because the more quality content you post relating to your website's specialized area of focus, the more authority you build with Google as an expert in this field. This is why it is so important to create a content plan and stick to it. 

#17 SEO Tip 

“Your keyword should match your target group so that users find what they expect and are looking for on your site”

This tip is especially important for site owners chasing high search volumes by mixing their keywords with popular topics. Being creative with content is good but we should avoid spamming keywords or creating content that is too loosely connected. 

#18 SEO Tip 

"Don't panic, SEO takes time! Work consistently on your website and the rankings will come"

Simple but important advice for any business who has experience in SEM and is looking for the same kind of results for SEO.   Building up a website's rankings takes a little time but the long term benefits can vastly improve a business's scalability. This is a classic concern many marketers have when switching their focus from Search Engine Marketing with platforms like Google Ads to Search Engine Optimization of their own website.

In contrast to the almost instant visibility of Google Ads, with SEO it's important to think more in terms of weeks and months. If you are tracking your progress with the right tools, such as those you find in the rankingCoach 360 App. Watching these rankings improve can be very satisfying, and improved SEO visibility can spread to countries and terms you hadn't even targeted so it's great for awakening unknown potential. It will also be cheaper to maintain in the long run.

#19 Digital Marketing tip 

"Make sure that your FAQ page contains keywords"

To create the best SEO strategy It's important to take full advantage of all of your site's content. The FAQ page is an often-overlooked page that can really help both the customers' usability of your website and its SEO.

The question and answer format of the FAQ page is ideally suited for optimizing phrases relating to your products. For instance, a website selling jewellery may want to optimize for  the term "handmade jewellery" and their town's location; On their FAQ they could feature a QA exchange saying:

Q: How much of your Jewellery is handmade?

A: We are proud to offer 100% handmade Jewellery from craftsmen in the Santa Barbara California

Here we have logical reasons to list keywords without any keyword stuffing: product longtail "handmade Jewellery" and location "Santa Barbara California". This is great for SEO whilst simultaneously enhancing customers' perceptions of our product. 

#20 Digital Marketing tip 

"Make sure your website is mobile-friendly"

If your website doesn't create a satisfactory user experience for smartphone visitors, this is something you should work on. More and more people use smartphones as their main device for accessing the internet and the number of people doing this is only set to increase. Also, Google uses the smartphone user experience as a primary ranking factor,  often making it more important than the desktop version. This means a poor smartphone user experience is almost certainly hurting your rankings and preventing potential customers from finding your site.

Thank you for reading our best of rankingCoach’s tips of the month. To take your site’s Digital Marketing to the next level: try rankingCoach Free the digital marketing solution for SMBs that helps you to grow monitor and protect your business online

Get Free Brand Watch for your business now

To get the latest tips and blog article as they are shared subscribe to our social media channels 

LinkedIn @rankingcoach

Twitter @rankingCoach

Facebook @rankingCoach.en

Instagram @rankingCoach