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https://strongpages.com/ Digital Marketing Services Tue, 22 Nov 2022 12:46:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Content Writing Tips: Practice Productive Brainstorming Habits https://strongpages.com/2022/03/28/content-writing-tips-practice-productive-brainstorming-habits/ Mon, 28 Mar 2022 18:03:49 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6412 Many content writers will say their best ideas come when they’re in the shower. But, unless you have a waterproof notepad or keyboard, what good will it do you then? Generating thought provoking ideas that will bring your site traffic doesn’t have to strike like lightning. With effective brainstorming, you can help good ideas grow [...]

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Many content writers will say their best ideas come when they’re in the shower. But, unless you have a waterproof notepad or keyboard, what good will it do you then? Generating thought provoking ideas that will bring your site traffic doesn’t have to strike like lightning. With effective brainstorming, you can help good ideas grow when you need them.

Always Be Prepared for the Next Idea

Like with most things in life, a little bit of preparation can go a long way. Start logging down things that inspire you. Whenever an idea floats by, whether it’s a quote you’ve heard, a visual or jingle, store it somewhere you can reference it. There are many simple applications you can use like Notes on Android, Voice Memos on iOS, and your phones camera to keep information.

You can also take it a step further and organize these ideas in a folder on applications like Google Drive or Evernote. The best method is the one that can maintain — so long as you’re maintaining productive note taking habits.

Create Consistency in Your Brainstorming Sessions

People are always prone to distractions. The smallest resistance in our work can lead to lost time spent on other things like browsing social media or hanging out by the water cooler. Coming up with new ideas isn’t easy and we may not always be in the mood to do it. This is where being consistent on when, where, and for how long you brainstorm comes in handy.

If you give yourself an hour to brainstorm the week’s ideas at 11am every Tuesday, and stick to it, you’ll find yourself programmed to the activity at hand. Make sure the space you’re in is well lit and without distractions like a window or loud noises. Set a clean desk and close out all tabs, but the ones you’ll be using for notes and research.

Perhaps the most important thing is to set yourself a small schedule for your brainstorming – starting ideas, research, development, briefing – and stick to them. All parts of a brainstorm are equally important. If you find yourself spending too much time in research and not enough in development, cut the research short. Too much time developing ideas and not enough for a recap? Put the pen down and review what you have.

The point is to program consistency into your method, so that you will always have some form of output by the end. You can always come back and do more research or develop an idea later.

Know When to Reach Out for Feedback

The best ideas are the ones that immediately make sense to others and create excitement. Keep in mind that you’re writing content for other people to read. Without adequate feedback, we won’t really know if an idea is worth pursuing, until hours and resources later.

If you find yourself stuck in rut or repeating yourself during a brainstorming session, you may want to consider reaching out for feedback. There’s nothing wrong with reviewing the same ideas a few times. In fact, it may even help clear up the bigger picture. However, if you’re pacing back and forth on a problem and you keep hitting the same wall, without progress to show for it, then you may want to reach out for feedback.

At the same time, you want to give your ideas enough time to grow and solidify before you approach others for feedback. If the ideas are too vague, you’ll find yourself sinking more time in your explanations – taking away from your brainstorming.

As a rule of thumb, you should reserve getting feedback for when you need a unique perspective on an idea. But before you can use someone else’s perspective, you need to develop your own perspective first. If a brainstorming session leaves you with more open-ended questions than answers, then you should consider doing more research instead.

Content writing is challenging. The process is personal, and it requires you to invest a great deal of focus. Take each project as an opportunity to refine your brainstorming process and build productive habits.

Stuck with poor traffic to your site? Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful SEO and PPC strategies!

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Intro to Schema for SEO, Part 3 https://strongpages.com/2022/03/21/intro-to-schema-for-seo-part-3/ Mon, 21 Mar 2022 19:23:07 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6408 In this third and last part of our “Intro to Schema” blog series, we’ll discuss the marketable features of using Schema – snippets. Schema is supported by most major search engines and reward pages the potential to rank higher in search rankings by giving webmasters more opportunities to contextualize their pages. More context on what [...]

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In this third and last part of our “Intro to Schema” blog series, we’ll discuss the marketable features of using Schema – snippets. Schema is supported by most major search engines and reward pages the potential to rank higher in search rankings by giving webmasters more opportunities to contextualize their pages.

More context on what the page is about can help search engines better score pages for their content, leading to more accurate searches and user satisfactions. Search engines build upon their user satisfaction with snippets that highlight certain marketable traits with more information like a review.

Let’s Talk About Snippets

As mentioned in our “Intro to Schema” blog, major search engines worked together to create Schema to make their searches more accurate for users. Not only will pages with Schema have a greater chance of showing higher in a search engine’s listings, they can also show more information through snippets.

Google’s Knowledge Graph Card

You may have noticed a panel on the right side of a listing with information about an organization like their headquarters, stock price, and a link to their Wikipedia article. This information is pulled by Google’s Knowledge Graph engine using many sources. Marketers can implement Schema into their pages that influence the information displayed on the card like links to their other social media profiles.

Ratings and Reviews

Show off your positive customer reviews! This Schema is most popular with eCommerce and service industry organizations. Keep in mind that this Schema is highly transparent with users by averaging scores to a percentage and showing the number of total ratings. If the ratings and reviews aren’t positive, then you may want to work on bringing these up before implementing this Schema. The ratings and reviews will also show on other listing tools like Rich Cards.

Breadcrumbs

Not quite like the story of Hansel and Gretel, but the idea of guiding users to other pages on your site is the same. Marketers can implement a secondary navigation scheme within their search listing using a breadcrumb Schema. The second page is noted by the (>) character next to the primary page’s link. This type of Schema works best for organization whose site offers multiple product or service pages.

Featured Snippet

This is the large block of text that appears above a search listing. As you may imagine, this is the best spot to show your page because it is the first result and it comes with a large box for an exhaustive description. Like the Knowledge Graph Card, the information is typically gathered by Google’s engine. Marketers can implement Schema into their pages that help influence the descriptions shown on the snippet.

Using Schema effectively can help give your pages the boost they need to win a higher placement on the search listing. Schema was created to give organizations the chance to define their pages for crawls, ultimately leading to more accurate search results and a greater customer experience.

Pushing your pages to the top of the search listings can be resource intensive. It also doesn’t help that search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to favor new ranking factors over others. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful SEO and PPC strategies!

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Intro to Schema for SEO, Part 2 https://strongpages.com/2022/03/14/intro-to-schema-for-seo-part-2/ Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:38:05 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6406 Every organization should aim for the top spot of their search listings. The first and second positions get the largest pieces of the click pie. On high converting keywords the difference in being 1st, 2nd and 3rd is great. So, how do we help our pages get to the top of the search listings? We [...]

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Every organization should aim for the top spot of their search listings. The first and second positions get the largest pieces of the click pie. On high converting keywords the difference in being 1st, 2nd and 3rd is great. So, how do we help our pages get to the top of the search listings? We can help by giving search engines more information about our pages using Schema.org markup.

In our last Schema blog, we discussed the basics of what Schema markup is and how it helps search engines contextualized your page. Schema uses a shared vocabulary bank and three key attributes – itemscope, itemtype, and itemprop – to define what a page is about. These key attributes are all defined in a page’s HTML using a supported specification.

There are three specifications supported by most search engines that use the Schema.org vocabulary bank: Microdata, JSON-LD or alternatively RDF syntax. Other specifications use different vocabulary banks but service the same goal of contextualizing pages for search engine crawls.

Which Specification Should I Be Using?

There are pros and cons to using all the specifications for Schema. Ultimately, the one you use will depend on your intent. For many years, Microdata had been the preferred specification because it was supported by all search engines. Currently, JSON-LD is the preferred specification for many digital marketers because it is simpler, supported by Google, and as of early 2018 is now supported by Bing.

What’s the Difference: JSON-LD vs Microdata

There are many technical differences to consider when deciding between the two specifications. Both work to contextualize search engines, but the way they interact with pages is different.

Inserting the Data

JSON-LD works by weaving code into the header section of the page. Microdata is added within the HTML code itself. This means webmasters will need to edit the HTML to work the Microdata effectively. This can make writing and troubleshooting Microdata difficult because the code is written into the HTML whereas other specifications can sit as a block separate from the rest of the HTML.

Types of Pages

As mentioned earlier, Microdata works through the HTML. This means Microdata can only be used on HTML documents. On the other hand, JSON-LD works with all types of media content. It can be used for APIs and web pages both.

Page Output

Most marketers take into consideration the contents of the page when they decide on which specification to use. For example, pages filled with a variety of content or a site with pages that use a similar template should be contextualized by their individual components.

A realtor showcasing a variety of buildings and houses on a single page will want to be specific with how search engines understand their page. In this case, Microdata should be used and weaved into the contents of the page. Smaller pages with a more focused topic like an “About Me” or other generalized topics will work well with JSON-LD, as the descriptors accurately contextualize the page in the header.

Despite their differences, JSON-LD and Microdata are both effective in contextualizing pages for search engines. Using a mix of both specifications can help optimize pages for a higher search engine ranking.

Optimizing your page’s search ranking can be time and resource intensive. Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful SEO and PPC strategies!

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Intro to Schema for SEO https://strongpages.com/2022/03/07/intro-to-schema-for-seo/ Mon, 07 Mar 2022 18:29:11 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6402 The endgame of all SEO strategies is to get more (quality) traffic to your site. Search engines like Google crawl the pages of your site and run them through a scoring system to help its algorithm understand a lot of things – page accessibility, user experience, and content. Search algorithms have come a long way [...]

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The endgame of all SEO strategies is to get more (quality) traffic to your site. Search engines like Google crawl the pages of your site and run them through a scoring system to help its algorithm understand a lot of things – page accessibility, user experience, and content. Search algorithms have come a long way in learning what a page is about and how relevant its information is to searchers, but they’re far from perfect.

Search engines need as much information about the context of a page as they can get to effectively rank a page. One method search engines gain context over a page is through Schema.org Markup (Schema). Put simply, Schema is a semantic vocabulary of tags used to help search engines better understand and represent the context of your page.

What is Schema Markup?

Search engine crawlers use a site’s content found in the HTML to learn about the content of a page. Information in the heading and body are read, valued, and indexed to return to users when they search. In some instances, a search engine can have trouble determining the context of information.

For example, a page with a heading 1 titled “The Cowboys” can be about a number of things. It may be an article discussing the latest draft picks for the Dallas Cowboys football team, an article about the American wild west, or a 1972 movie called The Cowboys. Without any other information, search engines won’t know the context of what the page is about or who the page is for.

Schema offers SEO marketers a collection of shared vocabularies to better define their pages for crawls by four major search engines: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Yandex. This vocabulary is expressed in the page’s HTML using three key attributes –

  • Itemscope: Terms used to describe what the page is “about”. This starts the DOM tree for the Schema.
  • Itemtype: Terms used to describe a specific “item” about a topic.
  • Itemprop: Terms used to describe the “properties” of the item.

The schema vocabulary has grown to cover a multitude of topics. The broadest itemtype is “Thing” and has four properties: name, description, url and image. There are also highly specific itemtypes like “LocalBusiness” with their unique sets of property attributes that help refine the identity of your page. Of the many itemtypes, the most common are:

  • Creative Works
  • Event
  • Organization
  • Person
  • Place
  • Product

Finding the itemtype that best fits the context of your page will help strengthen its search ranking. Not only will it make your page more visible by offering more information than the standard headline and description, search engines will have more information to better understand the value of your content to specific searches. In our next blog post, we’ll discuss the application of Schema and the leading strategies used to push your page higher in the search listings. Stay tuned!

Optimizing your page’s search ranking can be time and resource intensive. Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful SEO and PPC strategies!

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The Case for Bing Ads In Your Marketing Mix https://strongpages.com/2022/02/28/the-case-for-bing-ads-in-your-marketing-mix/ Mon, 28 Feb 2022 19:12:27 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6399 When it comes to PPC advertising, many marketers forget to include Bing Ads into the conversation. It may be because Google AdWords has the far greater audience size and that warrants more attention by advertisers. Instead, advertisers should take a closer look at what Bing Ads has to offer, because there is a high potential [...]

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When it comes to PPC advertising, many marketers forget to include Bing Ads into the conversation. It may be because Google AdWords has the far greater audience size and that warrants more attention by advertisers. Instead, advertisers should take a closer look at what Bing Ads has to offer, because there is a high potential for untapped markets at a lower cost.

I personally always advocate for a crossover strategy where AdWords and Bing Ads are shown together to help fill in the gaps of the other. According to Bing, the search engine has 63 million users across all industries not reached by Google AdWords.

[1] The two PPC platforms share a lot in common in terms of interface and strategies, so extending some of your experimental budget into Bing Ads is a worthwhile venture. Here are 5 reasons why your digital marketing strategy should consider Bing Ads in addition to AdWords.

  1. Bing Ads show in multiple search engines.

At its core, AdWords and their strategies operate within two primary advertising networks:

  • Search Network: These are the ads that show when a user is searching for something. They come in either
  • Display Network: These are ads that are displayed on other sites.

Bing Ads has a similar network structure to AdWords with its own search network. Bing Ads can show ads across three search engines – Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL. Advertising on Bing Ads will show ads in all three of these networks, in addition to sites that are part of Bing’s Syndicated Partner Network like Apple’s Siri, Amazon Fire, CBS Interactive and The Wall Street Journal.

  1. Greater results for a smaller investment.

When you compare the ROI metrics of Bing Ads and AdWords, on average, you’ll see a consistent trend of Bing Ads giving you a greater payoff. A study by Search Engine Land found that average Cost per-Click (CPC) was nearly half of AdWords’ across many major industries:[2]

  • Financial Services: AdWords $2.88, Bing $1.98
  • Computer and Internet: $1.08 AdWords, Bing $0.40
  • Business: AdWords $1.98, Bing $0.91

While the CPC for Bing Ads is much lower than in AdWords, it’s also essential to consider the size of your search audience when setting goals. Bing Ads are still working with a noticeably smaller group than AdWords and this can influence the quality of search traffic.

  1. Over 38% of the Bing Network Audience has a household income over $100,000.

The Bing Network Audience is made up of households with large incomes. Outside of the 38% with incomes over $100,000, the second largest demographic were households making between $75,000 and $99,999 at 17%.[3] When we look at the education background of the Bing Network, over one-third have graduated with at least a bachelor’s degree.[4]

  1. Bing offers Ad Group level controls.

Optimizing the quality of your conversions is essential and Bing allows this more effectively. AdWords allows marketers to target users based on language, location, and on a schedule. Bing Ads offers these same controls but takes them a step further with ad group level controls. Bing Ads also allows marketer to assign different ad campaigns to different time zones – something unique to Bing.

  1. You can import AdWords campaigns into Bing Ads.

You read that right. Bing Ads has a built-in feature that allows marketers to import their AdWords campaigns into Bing so you can start advertising quickly. Although the Bing Ads interface borrows a lot of features from AdWords, but not everything will line up perfectly. After you’ve imported your AdWords campaigns, you’ll want to inspect your ad group-level extensions, remarketing lists, and IP exclusions to ensure that they’re showing properly.

You may also want to run your keywords through Bing’s keyword research tools to better optimize for the platform. Google’s keyword planner pulls terms based on the traffic and activity in Google Search. Bing’s algorithm and userbase may cause some terms to behave differently. Using the optimization tools that the platform provides can help you reach your goals.

Bing Ads has a lot of functionality to offer digital marketers and the platform’s ability to bring results shouldn’t be underestimated. Even a simple campaign with Ad Groups, keywords, and landing pages imported into Bing Ads can open the possibility to untapped conversions. With effective optimization and an open mind, Bing Ads can be a cost-effective way to expand your conversions.

[1]“The Bing Network Audience”. Bing. https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/insights/planning-tools/bing-network-audience
[2]Ginny M. “New PPC Report”. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/new-ppc-report-bing-ads-vs-adwords-in-6-us-verticals-152229
[3]“The Bing Network Audience”. Bing. https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/insights/planning-tools/bing-network-audience
[4]Ibid.

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Top 5 Must-Know International Search Engines https://strongpages.com/2022/02/21/strongpages-top-5-must-know-international-search-engines/ Mon, 21 Feb 2022 11:42:51 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6389 In the digital marketing sphere, winning a high search engine rank placement on major keywords is foundation to a site’s success. Effective digital marketing strategies revolve around this goal. This makes knowing the ins-and-outs of the most popular search engines essential to formulating effective strategies. When we think of search engines, chances are Google Search [...]

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In the digital marketing sphere, winning a high search engine rank placement on major keywords is foundation to a site’s success. Effective digital marketing strategies revolve around this goal. This makes knowing the ins-and-outs of the most popular search engines essential to formulating effective strategies.

When we think of search engines, chances are Google Search is the first name that comes to mind – and with good reason – followed by Bing and Yahoo!. According to Digital Trends News, Google has a held 68% share of all searches in the U.S. and growing.

[1] Bing sees roughly 8% of searches with Yahoo! at 5%.[2] Google’s Chrome browser has had a helping hand in solidifying this share, as it is also the default browser for many Android mobile devices.

Despite Google’s hold on the majority of search traffic, there is still a third of U.S. searches made on an alternative engine. When we look into the activity of international markets, other native brands are eating at sizable portions of the search engine pie. Here’s a list of 5 search engines to be aware of — outside of those big three.

1. Baidu

Baidu is Chinese equivalent to Google with a variety of internet-related services and products. For many years, China had barred companies like Google from expanding their services into the country, allowing companies like Baidu to secure their foothold and grow. Baidu receives 80% of China’s mobile search traffic, making it the most used search engine in china and the one of largest search engines in the world.[3]

Baidu works closely with the Chinese government and its internet policies. Violating their policies can lead to pages not showing up on Baidu’s search listings. Being familiar with their policies and writing content in simplified Chinese with a .cn domain are crucial to ranking well on Baidu.

2. Yandex

Yandex is a Russian search engine with a large presence in Russia and its neighboring countries. In 2015, Google ran into trouble with Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) competition laws that resulted in a ban of phone manufacturers from preinstalling Google apps – including Google’s Chrome browser.[4] In 2017, Google settled negotiations with Russia to include a choice window between Google Search and Yandex.[5] The active Russian government’s intervention has helped Yandex secure a 56% share of the search engine market.[6]

Yandex divides queries into two categories – geo-dependent and geo-independent. Queries that are geo-dependent will favor sites from that region. This makes it easier for smaller and local businesses to compete against larger global enterprises. Yandex also weighs fresh content as a ranking factor even heavier than Google. Large enterprises are encouraged to constantly push new content to secure their online markets, making SEO highly competitive.

3. Naver

In most free markets, Google has a stark hold over many international markets. However, South Korea’s Naver seems to have found their kryptonite against Google with over 70% of the search market.[7] South Korea’s Naver offers a search services that is unique from its contemporaries. Naver heavily weights content from online users, social media platforms, and PPC in its search rankings, making visibility the key factor to winning a high search ranking.

4. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo has been rising in popularity as an alternative to other major search engines, because it does not store user information. Normally, a search engine will adjust search listings to the user’s history and demographic information for a tailored experience. DuckDuckGo is user-agnostic and will show the same search listings to all users regardless of their search history or user location.

Most search engines will return users a listing of pages ranked from most relevant to least relevant. DuckDuckGo takes a different approach by providing users with a list of results that are crowdsourced from other sites. To keep search listings relevant, DuckDuckGo weighs page quality as a key factor.

5. Daum

Daum is another South Korean search engine that shares a lot of similarities with the Naver engine. Daum compete head-to-head with Google as the second largest search site in Korea and offers an interface that focuses on real-time news and social media updates. Daum’s strategy is to keep users on the frontpage. In 2014, Daum partnered with Twitter to build a portal for microblogging as users go through search pages. Maintaining fresh content that encourages link sharing and a strong social media presence is essential to gaining attention on Daum.

Taking advantage of the “worldwide” nature of the internet can lead to more search traffic and potential customers for your products and services. While Google, Bing and Yahoo! maintain massive shares of the search market, knowing how your pages fair on other listings will only serve to strengthen your SEO conversions. This is especially evident in countries with markets whose search habits may be changing in favor of their native search engines.

 

Optimizing your page’s search ranking can be time and resource intensive. Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful SEO and PPC strategies!

 

[1]Konrad K. “Google is easily the most popular search engine, but have you heard of who’s in second?”. Digital Trends. https://www.digitaltrends.com/web/google-baidu-are-the-worlds-most-popular-search-engines/

[2]“Search Engine Market Share”. Net Market Share. https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx

[3]Imogen U. “Top 5 Chinese Search Engines You Need to Care About”. Dragon Social. https://www.dragonsocial.net/blog/top-chinese-search-engines

[4]“FAS Russia Reaches Settlement with Google”. FAS. http://en.fas.gov.ru/press-center/news/detail.html?id=49774

[5]Ibid.

[6]Brendan M. “How the Russian search market looks now”. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/how-russian-search-market-looks-283072

[7]Alesia K. “Google vs. Nave”. Link Assistant. https://www.link-assistant.com/blog/google-vs-naver-why-cant-google-dominate-search-in-korea/

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What More Featured Snippets Means for SEO https://strongpages.com/2022/02/14/featured-snippets-means-seo/ Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:20:33 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6385 The race to the top of Google’s search listings was once a straight road. The page that ranked highest for a given search query took the 1st position, followed by the page ranked 2nd, 3rd and so on. However, Google has gradually added more forks in the road with featured snippets – snippet blocks that [...]

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The race to the top of Google’s search listings was once a straight road. The page that ranked highest for a given search query took the 1st position, followed by the page ranked 2nd, 3rd and so on. However, Google has gradually added more forks in the road with featured snippets – snippet blocks that show at the top of the search results page. These boxes function differently from your traditional search listing, as their contents are filled by Google’s A.I. looking to fulfill the user’s query.

Recently, Google has announced an expansion of the featured snippets with more boxes and images to fit more content. In a blog, Michael Galvez, product manager at Google, wrote, “Search is not just about answering your questions – it’s also about discovery.” The company wants to explore new topics of interest and angles to ideas to help users uncover information that they didn’t think to ask about. So, what does expanding featured snippets mean for SEO?

Ranking Higher with a Featured Snippet

Last year, a report by Stone Temple Consulting found that featured snippets appeared for roughly 30 percent of the 1.4 million search queries they tested.

[1] If Google maintains this trend, featured snippets may rival the top organic search position as the best spot to grab attention.

This is a big change for Google Search, as the engine and its A.I. will now have greater influence on the type of content that appears at the top of the first page. For example, users searching the keyword “skiing” may see related articles about the Winter Olympics 2018 or tips on how to setup GoPro cameras.

Pages that are featured are shown to have a higher click-through rate (CTR) than in their normal search listing. Ben Goodsell, lead SEO for RKG Merkle, found that the CTR on a featured page increased from 2-8% once it’s featured.[2]

Working for Featured Pages

Seeing how Google is pushing featured snippets to appear higher, you may be wondering what needs to be done to get your pages featured – the long and short of it is solid SEO content strategies. Recent research by Ahrefs looked at 2 million featured snippets to decipher what it was that made them featured around found:[3]

  • 99.58% of pages featured were in Google’s top 10 organic search listings.
  • 70% of featured snippets came from pages between the 2nd and 10th position in organic search listings.
  • The clear majority of featured snippets were triggered by long-tail search queries.

The research brings welcomed news for sites where battling for a top position is difficult. So long as your pages land in top 10 of organic’s search listings, it’s possible to be featured as a snippet. These featured snippet changes also place greater value on pages with detail-rich content. Focusing on content topics that present a wealth of information can help bring your pages higher in search and increase your traffic.

Strengthening your page’s search ranking can be time and resource intensive. Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful SEO and PPC strategies!

 

[1]Eric E. “Featured Snippets: New Insights, New Opportunities”. Stone Temple Consulting. https://www.stonetemple.com/featured-snippets-new-Insights-new-opportunities/

[2]Ben G. “SEO For Featured Snippets Leads to Big Gains”. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/seo-featured-snippets-leads-big-gains-236212

[3]Tim S. “Ahrefs’ Study of 2 Million Featured Snippets: 10 Important Takeaways”. Ahrefs Blog. https://ahrefs.com/blog/featured-snippets-study/

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Analyzing Your Competitors and Developing Strategies, Part 2 https://strongpages.com/2022/02/07/analyzing-competitors-developing-strategies-part-2/ Mon, 07 Feb 2022 12:53:28 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6382 In our previous blog, we discussed how to differentiate your advertisement from your indirect competitors. These are competitors whose ads are bidding in the same space as yours, but their offering is irrelevant to your desired target audience. This can happen when the keywords you’re bidding on are broad and capture a wide breadth of [...]

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In our previous blog, we discussed how to differentiate your advertisement from your indirect competitors. These are competitors whose ads are bidding in the same space as yours, but their offering is irrelevant to your desired target audience. This can happen when the keywords you’re bidding on are broad and capture a wide breadth of search queries. They may not be your direct competition, but there is a lot to learn from organizations who’s advertising space is related to yours.

Now that we’ve laid the ground with who your competitors are, you need to find spaces where there’s little or no competition. Doing so can open unexplored opportunities and context for where to go next.

Where Isn’t Your Competition Competing?

During your initial competitor analysis, you may have realized that some organizations who you’d see as direct competitors were missing. This could mean one of two things:

  1. They are unaware of the space.
  2. They choose not to compete in that space.

The important thing to takeaway is they may choose to compete later. Perhaps they’ve tried the space at an earlier point in their PPC campaign and found it unsuccessful. This doesn’t mean they won’t revisit the campaign later with a clearer data on where to optimize for conversions. If they are a direct competitor and are unaware of an advertising space, there isn’t much to deter them from analyzing your PPC campaigns and finding them out. Which is why a seasonal reconnaissance of your competition’s domain activity can help you stay one-step ahead!

Research their product and service offerings to see what direction they’re taking with their PPC. If your industry has predictable trends and seasons, then take note of how they’re preparing. Ask yourself questions like:

  1. Did they announced a major event or release?
  2. Were there changes to their partnerships, internal structure or team?
  3. How are they responding to industry innovations and change?

The answers to these questions can tell you a lot about how they’re marketing their products and services. Along your analysis, you may have discovered that your direct competitors are focusing on an entirely different sector from you all along.

How Does Your PPC Need to Change?

After putting all the pieces together, the next step is figuring out your best course of action. This is where some analyses fall apart, because organizations fail to follow through. If you’re unsure of what to do next, reexamine your analysis and let the data guide your discussion. Once you’ve concluded your analysis, it should help you answer three main questions:

  1. Who your competitors are
  2. Who your competitors aren’t
  3. How your competitors are competing

Now, it’s time to start looking at your own PPC strategy and enable change where you see fit. Put simply, if you’re competing well in your key spaces, then you may want to consider experimenting into new territory. If your competitor is performing strong in an area that is relevant to you, then you may want to consider strengthening your position there. If your campaigns are saturated with indirect competition, then tightening your targeting methods will help optimize your spending.

Analyzing your competition can be an alarming experience. Knowing who you’re competing with is half the battle. You still need to decipher where to go next and your best course of action. Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. Start seeing results with your PPC by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful PPC strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful PPC and SEO strategies!

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Analyzing Your Competitors and Developing Strategies, Part 1 https://strongpages.com/2022/01/31/analyzing-competitors-developing-strategies-part-1/ Mon, 31 Jan 2022 12:09:43 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6376 If you’ve ever been in an auction, then you’re probably familiar with the quiet tension in the room when the auctioneer names the bid and the paddles start flying. Chances are you don’t know who the other bidders are or what their intentions are. You could be bidding against an avid collector, an investor who [...]

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If you’ve ever been in an auction, then you’re probably familiar with the quiet tension in the room when the auctioneer names the bid and the paddles start flying. Chances are you don’t know who the other bidders are or what their intentions are. You could be bidding against an avid collector, an investor who is hoping to double their profits, or a grandmother who wants something nice for their grandson – all in one competition for the same prize.

Pay-per-click (PPC) isn’t too different. You’re in a space with a variety of organizations all bidding for the same audience. That space can be crowded with 10, 20, 100 other organizations all bidding for the same audience. How do you ensure that you’re always coming out on top winning? You minimize and outcompete the competition! Let’s look at how to analyze your competition and prepare a competitor strategy.

Who Is Your Competition?

This one may seem obvious, but a thorough analysis of who your competition is in your section of the market can bring some surprising findings. Most companies will be able to list their direct competitors and advantages. In some instances, you can expect to compete with these direct competitors for a share of the search traffic. However, in PPC, you’re using keywords and/or web page placements as targets for your advertisements. These targets can be much more universal than you’d initially think.

For example, a car sales company wants to use PPC to boost sales leads. So, they create a campaign that targets keywords like “used car” and “car sales.” On a surface level, these keywords will attract people interested in used cars and car sales. However, long-tail searches can also net people searching for “used car parts,” “toy car sales,” and “car insurance sales.” You’ve suddenly found yourself competing with car repair shops, insurance companies, and the local toy store.

Learning who your indirect competitors are is best done as a process overtime. There are many tools that can subscribe to or purchase for a list of your competitors like SpyFu, SEMRush, AdGooroo, and BrandVerity. If these tools aren’t something your team is interested in, then manually searching your keywords and noting competitors and their placements will do the same. Taking this a step further – with information on your ad’s search queries, you can get a complete view of who comes up in search.

How do we cut out our indirect competition?

Cutting out indirect competitors with negative targeting methods can greatly save your budget and help bring in qualified conversions. Negative targeting methods focus your campaigns into the search queries you want to compete in. Some negative targeting methods to consider:

  • Negative Keywords: Most PPC platforms will allow you to be as broad or precise as you want with match types. Consider mixing both and monitor your impressions to ensure your match type isn’t negating valuable traffic. You may also want to consider adding adverbs like “free.”
  • Geotargeting: Consider where your target demographic is searching from. Some platforms will allow you to target areas as small as a neighborhood to as large as a country. For example, if your landing page and ads are in English, then you may want to restrict your targeting to predominantly English-speaking countries.
  • Ad Schedules: Chances are your PPC traffic will have peak hours. By setting an ad schedule, you’re investing your budget when it is most effective.

What if overlap is inevitable?

There will be times when a valuable keyword and/or page placement creates overlap into unrelated markets. For example, the word “software” can span numerous contexts and hold considerable value. If you offer a software development service, then “software” is a word where you’ll need to carve your own a niche in PPC.

First, you want a firm understanding of your competitor’s messaging. How does their advertisement relate to the keyword and landing page? In what ways is it similar and different from your own? Knowing the answers to these questions can give you a better perspective of who they are targeting and how to best differentiate your ads. Some ad elements to look out for are:

  • Their call to action.
  • Brand names.
  • Display URL and paths.
  • Advertisement extensions: Site links, call numbers, reviews, etc.

If the competition overlap is inevitable and bidding for the first average position is high, then you want to focus on these ad elements and make them stand out as much as possible. The goal here is to bring attention to your ads in a space where the search vertical is crowded and uniform. If your ad stands out and speaks directly to your target, then you increase the chance of winning over those sought-after conversions.

After analyzing who is competing in your space and where you fit, it’s time to look at your potential competitors. These are the competitors who aren’t currently in your space, but they might be on the verge of entering. Keep an eye out for part two of our blog and learn more about analyzing these competitors.

Optimizing your PPC to gain the most conversion at a competitive bid can be challenging. Start seeing results with your PPC by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful PPC strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful PPC and SEO strategies!

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SEO is more than just Content Marketing https://strongpages.com/2022/01/24/seo-just-content-marketing/ Mon, 24 Jan 2022 15:16:54 +0000 http://strongpages.com/?p=6373 I recently spoke with a colleague about their SEO strategy for the upcoming year and a lot of their ideas were tried-and-true. We talked about things to look for when auditing keywords, how to find inspiration for blog topics, and interviewing experts white paper claims. As we wrapped up our meeting, I was struck with [...]

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I recently spoke with a colleague about their SEO strategy for the upcoming year and a lot of their ideas were tried-and-true. We talked about things to look for when auditing keywords, how to find inspiration for blog topics, and interviewing experts white paper claims. As we wrapped up our meeting, I was struck with the realization that most of their strategy revolved around content marketing.

After our meeting, I sent them an email with suggestions on other strategies to consider that stemmed outside of content marketing for a more rounded strategy – inspiring this blog post.

You create content, right?

Most marketers can accurately tell you what content marketing is. After all, it’s in the name! Content marketing is the process of developing page content so that users will perform an action.

Whether you’re using your site to sell software, promote photography services, or writing a blog about your favorite band, you’re going to be using content to inform and engage users as they reach a decision. This is where some marketing teams feel the blurring of the lines as most SEO strategies will often read identical to content marketing strategies, but with differing goals.

You market with Google?

The goal of SEO is to bring your pages higher in the search rankings for relevant queries. To reach this end, marketing teams will employ a myriad of content marketing strategies like making sure a blog has a representative set of keywords. However, the scope of SEO extends beyond content and into the technical factors that determine your site’s ranking, including:

  • Improving their user experience
  • Developing a profile of highly-quality links
  • Optimizing your on-page elements for crawls

You’ll need both, Content Marketing and SEO!

The most effective strategies will take leads from both worlds, because the result should be the same – land sales, conversions, eyes on the page. However, content marketing and SEO strategies should be graded differently, as success in one doesn’t always create success in the other. Keeping this in mind as you review your site’s performance can help your team better diagnose weaknesses and quickly reach a solution.

For example, if your pages have a higher conversion rate, but struggle to rank in the top 3 positions of major search queries, then you may want to revisit your SEO strategy. Your site may do a great job in turning visitors into users, but the reach of your pages is stifled by competitors with a higher ranking. If your pages are consistently 1st position in all relevant keywords, but suffer from a high bounce rate, then you may want to revisit the content on those pages to better serve the needs of those users.

Long story short – SEO and content marketing share a mutual relationship and benefit each other in their own unique way. The stronger your SEO performs the more opportunities your content will have to engage with site visitors. The more valuable your content is the greater the likelihood of search engines raising your rank. If your pages aren’t meeting their goals then consider revisiting one of these two strategies.

SEO is challenging enough without search engines constantly changing their algorithm. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.

Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful PPC and SEO strategies!

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