A three-step process for brainstorming, collecting and refining your keyword list

Whether you’re putting together a pitch proposal, preparing for an interview or working on a comprehensive SEO strategy, keyword research enables you to develop a clear understanding of what people are really searching for online. It’s a simple yet fundamental task that serves as the foundation for any small or complex project. Effective keyword research removes the guesswork and provides a level of objectivity based on real user behaviour. I’ve often been confronted with requests to use certain words or phrases because they seem right or align neatly with a particular brand positioning. But when we’re creating content that we want to surface in search, we must mirror the language of our customers. [si_guide_block id="5762" title="Download our Premium Resource – SEO gap analysis Excel spreadsheet" description="An SEO gap analysis helps you review your market share of consumer searches by comparing the number…

It isn't always easy to determine exactly why you've dropped in SERPs and have seen a traffic dive

You might know the 'flush of victory' when your content eventually hits the first page of search results and attracts significant traffic. Can you imagine the moment it drops one day? Perhaps, this has already happened to you? You’ve taken the effort and have created high-quality content, which should have been fresh and engaging for quite a long time, but something went wrong. Time passed and you've noticed that the page isn't performing that well anymore. The reasons for this may not be obvious at all. If you want to know how you can diagnose the problem, recover and prevent the same decline next time, this post is for you. [si_guide_block id="35519" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Managing SEO playbook" description="This guide is for marketing and digital marketing managers who need to manage Search…

Without well-written and engaging content, chances of you catching the eye of your target audience are quite slim

Content is the key factor when it comes to SEO, Social Media or any other digital marketing campaigns. Without a well-written and engaging content, chances of you catching the eye of your target audience are quite slim. As such, if you are running an online business then having a strong content marketing strategy is of utmost importance. When it comes to SEO, specifically, Long-form content has a greater impact compared to Short-form content. This is because most Long-form blog posts are detailed articles that not only help improve audience engagement but also helps generate more traffic and social shares. Longer content also has a direct correlation to higher search ranking, as corroborated by various studies. Thus, if you are in the midst of building a content plan for your next…

Did you see your website’s ranking dwindle following the August Google Medic update? Find out how you can recover

As you might expect given its name, "Medic" - Google’s August 2018 algorithm update - affected many websites in the health sphere. This included domains publishing content related to health, wellness and fitness. However, these weren’t the only websites to suffer ranking losses. Some sites featuring broader content, such as news, as well as finance and legal websites, also saw dramatic declines in visibility and traffic. Such websites are referred to as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) — a term Google defines as sites that are of low quality, or drastically misinformed — could have a negative impact on a person’s life, income or happiness. With reason to believe that the Medic update and the more recent June 2019 core update are linked due to…

Find out whether Latent Semantic Indexing has such an impact on your SEO and what you should do to improve your keyword research

Before writing this post, I’ve noticed wide discussions on Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and its effect on SEO. Some sources state it’s crucial to select what’s called LSI keywords to boost your rankings. Others say LSI has no impact on the positions your website takes. After reading different opinions on the topic, I’ve realized there are lots of people who don't know what LSI actually represents. [si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Successful SEO guide" description="This 7 steps SEO guide is one of our most popular and rightly so. If you get it right, SEO can be a fantastic, relatively low-cost way to drive quality visitors who want to do business with you to your site."/] If you’re interested in SEO tendencies, you’ve obviously heard of the Latent…

Five months after Google announced the rolling out of what is commonly known as the ‘EAT Update’, just what have we learned about Google’s interpretations of expertise, authority and trustworthiness? The answers lie in those brands that have thrived

Since Google announced the 'broad update' in August, leading brands have seen some significant and sometimes erratic changes in their organic search visibility. Some brands saw their visibility almost wiped out entirely, only to return to normal shortly afterward. Weeks of volatility followed as Google appeared to tweak the dials on the updated algorithm.

This week we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. Our guidance about such updates remains the same as in March, as we covered here: https://t.co/uPlEdSLHoX

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 1, 2018 Five months on and, whilst the volatility may have calmed down somewhat, there are still major…

Topping the SERPS and dominating your niche is most certainly within your grasp since Google’s ever-improving ranking algorithm now makes things simpler

It would be nice to sit at the top of page one for commercially valuable keywords, wouldn’t it? Imagine being able to hoover up traffic and generate leads and sales on autopilot. As nice as that sounds, I’m sure you’re dreading the thought of creating lots of content and tackling the technical side of SEO for multiple web pages for years to come. You’re not alone. It’s one heck of a commitment… … or is it? Because, actually, things have changed and you might be in luck. Topping the SERPS and dominating your niche is most certainly within your grasp since Google’s ever-improving ranking algorithm now makes things simpler for business owners and digital marketing managers everywhere. In this post, I’m going to reveal why. I’ll discuss why…

Learn how to ensure your content gets discovered

Ever work on a single important article for weeks on end?  Maybe you had to interview a number of busy executives or had trouble sourcing good images for the piece? You know how it goes. Anyways, after all of that work, you finally click “publish” and sit back. 24 hours later, you login and see zero likes and zero shares, a crushing defeat. Sound familiar? Trust me, you’re not alone. Far from it in fact. Nowadays there are over a billion webpages available to web traffic. Even more shocking, a staggering 2 million articles are published daily. As you might imagine, standing out can be a bit of a problem. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix. But there is an important first step that you’re…

Learning How to Construct a Keyword-Savvy SEO Strategy

For SEO professionals, keywords are the foundation of every tactic and digital marketing initiative we perform. If you’re looking for a stronger understanding of how SEO strategy works – you’ve come to the right place. In the blog, we’re going to break down the elements of a digital marketing strategy and emphasize how to optimize your website’s “on-site” copy for search engines. At this halfway point in the year, it’s time to assess how well your keyword strategy is contributing to your organic search rankings and site traffic performance – and most importantly, how you can improve it for the remainder of the year. 

[si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our recently updated Premium Member Resource – Successful SEO Guide " description="This guide is one of our most popular and rightly so. If you get it right, SEO can be a fantastic, relatively low-cost way to drive quality…

A detailed guide to scaling SERP rankings using competitor analysis

Every time search engine optimisation comes up in discussions with colleagues or clients, the first thing I do is place a mental bet on how quickly the chat is going down the rabbit hole. There is absolutely no denying the importance of SEO. No matter how much runway you think you have with PPC to fuel your business’ needs, sooner or later you’ll want to incrementally reduce the cost of acquiring users at the top of the funnel. What’s that thing about rabbit hole again? There are numerous factors (some say over 200) that Google takes into account to decide where your page ranks for a given search query. If you go about optimising each of these factors, it is going to take you a whole lot of time before each piece of content goes out into the world. Either that, or…