How to Identify & Remove Bot Traffic in Your Google Analytics

How to Identify & Remove Bot Traffic in Your Google Analytics

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How To Identify & Remove Bot Traffic In Your Google Analytics

Have you at a time wondered what rate of your traffic was actual human users and how much were bots, web spiders, or some scrapers? Well, whether you like them or not, bots sending hits to your Google Analytics data are not of any advantage for you. I bet you wouldn’t want to see them near your reports.

The reason is simple – bots are not real users. And a minimal session, say 5% or more, of bot traffic, can skew your analytics and ruin your plans.

In this post, I’ll show you how you can identify bot traffic and remove bot traffic in your Google Analytics. Let’s get started.

How to Identify & Remove Bot Traffic in Your Google Analytics

What is Bot Traffic in Google Analytics?

Bot traffic in Google Analytics refers to getting traffic to your site from spiders and robots instead of human traffic.

While some have good intentions – they crawl users to your site and of course, help with your rankings. However, it can get a bit tricky when you’re performing a site audit to understand the performance of your website. Well, that’s when you haven’t filtered them off your site.

Bots are becoming smarter. Hence, the need to stay alert. So, it just makes lots of sense to identify this bot traffic to ensure metric reporting is precise and correct.

Where Does Bot Traffic come from?

Site monitoring services

Site monitoring services such as Pingdom that track your site’s performance also use bots to ping the site from time to time. These types of bots can affect your Google Analytics statistics.

Malicious

Malicious bot traffic just automatically generates and look for websites to hit and make a mess of. And yours isn’t an exception.

Spam referral

Traffic from spam referrals also adds up to the nuisance on your GA data. The bad thing to note about spam traffic is that it can appear in any part of your reports. But of course, they impact the performance of your site just like every other bot type.

How to Identify Unwanted Bot Traffic?

The best place to check for spam and unwanted bot traffic during a Google Analytics audit is the hostname.

The simple logic is trying to see if you’ll any service provider’s sessions with a very high percentage and low engagement data, including average sessions and pages. If you found one, you must be suspicious.

Also, check conversion rates. This works because bot traffic rarely converts. So, doing this makes a lot of sense.

Don’t be surprised if service providers such as Amazon inc. and Google inc. make up a larger share of your bots traffic. Don’t freak out – service providers don’t send out bots, but bots flow with their cloud servers in an attempt to disguise the servers.

So, what’s your best option to remove all this bot traffic?

How to Filter Bots in Google Analytics

Fortunately, filtering bots in Google Analytics is quite simple.

  1. Google Analytics filter option

The filter option was announced a few years back, and it’s easy to tweak.

Go to your Admin settings. Then, from the View panel, select View Settings. Scroll to the end of the options and check the Bot Filtering checkbox. When you do this, you’ve just successfully filtered known bots and spiders from your Analytics metrics.

Now, you can expect real adjustments in your traffic signals that will help you improve your site for your audiences.

However, keep in mind that if you check this option of filtering bots, you’ll see a significant drop in traffic to your site – don’t panic!

  1. Set up filters based on ISP

Adding custom bot filters based on the ‘ISP organization’ will help filter traffic from their corresponding servers.

Finally, don’t forget to check your data regularly to see if your filter worked. It may take a while before you see a significant impact but the junks will eventually be filtered off.

We would love to hear from you – tell us the issues you’re facing and we’d be more than happy to help you sort them.

Website Design Manchester

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Here’s what You Need to Do to Create a Google Action using Schema!

Here’s what You Need to Do to Create a Google Action using Schema!

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Here’s what You Need to Do to Create a Google Action using Schema!

What do you know about Google Action?

Google Actions are the apps that are specially designed for Google Assistant.

Brands may carry their services to Google Assistant on Google Home through the development of actions. Actions for Amazon Alexa are similar to abilities, but in a few important ways are different.

The main differences between Google’s actions and Amazon’s Alexa skills are that users must not allow an action before it can be utilized or even discovered by the user. Instead, any action can be accessed at any time.

Here’s what You Need to Do to Create a Google Action using Schema!

How to enable Google Actions using Schema?

You give Google the required details to perform Google actions on that page by adding the entire and appropriate scheme markup to your pages.

It could be to provide the user with instructions on how to do something or prepare a recipe, answer questions, read news articles aloud, or play a podcast episode.

As a developer, you can build and manage pleasant and efficient interactions between users and your third-party fulfillment service using Actions on Google.

Benefits of using Schema

Schema is a way to encourage websites to learn more about the content behind search engines. It is also a requirement for sites that want Google’s wealthy results which increasingly account for the lion ‘s contribution to the search results on the first page.

The main advantage of using Schema for content is that it allows brand awareness to be increased in a format with limited opportunities for advertising.

Type of content to target using schemas

  • How-to-guides

These are the guides include step-by-step text, blogs, infographics, pics, and videos that teach users how to do something. The possibilities and range of subjects are endless, regardless of how you link a bond, how you complete a DIY project, or how you cultivate a garden all year long.

How you arrange this “how-to” guide structure holds much importance? For example, while recipes are technically called “how-to” since they tell people how to make some dish, and users need to follow instructions, they are not specified in Google as a guide.

Another important thing to note is that the entire part of the content must concentrate on the instructional component rather than just one section to establish the guide to be classified as such. Furthermore, guides on how to use can’t be used to advertise your brand; they are a true piece of information for users.

  • FAQ pages

For topics relating to your company or your industry in general, FAQ pages are an excellent source of knowledge. You may also use these pages to build your authority in your sector as a whole. Not only will it be useful for you to provide business-specific details including procedures, policies, product information, service information, operating times, and any other information that you can need.

  • News events

Implementing a structured data scheme in your News article enables you to gain more visibility and popularity in SERPs to differentiate users visually. It would help if you created an Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) schema markup to make your news content more accessible through a broad range of devices.

Whenever users search news about specific problems, Google provides them with various top-ranking choices such as carousels, thumbnails, visual articles, top stories, etc. in visual and textual format. The most recent posts are in the top places.

  • Podcasts

Users can find your Podcast on their devices via Google Assistant in the Assistant Directory and play episodes. The labeling helps Podcasters to enhance their display with individual episode descriptions and a built-in player in the Google Search Results and on Google Podcasts, on their first page for each one. Another new feature, Deeper Podcast Search, enables users to search directly into the Podcast for the actual audio using Google transcripts.

Final Verdict

So these are the easiest methods to follow to create Google Action using Schema. I hope this post helped you understand these concepts!

PPC Campaigns

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PPC Search Campaign Launch Checklist: Here’s What You Need to Know

PPC Search Campaign Launch Checklist: Here’s What You Need to Know

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PPC Search Campaign Launch Checklist: Here’s What You Need to Know

PPC Search Campaign- An overview

PPC is an online marketing technique, in which advertisers pay a fee every time their advertisement is being clicked. It is essentially a way to purchase site visits, not to “earn” organically those visits.

Search engine advertising is one of the most common PPC forms. It enables advertisers to place ads in sponsored links of a search engine if they search for the keyword associated with their business.

Sometimes things get overlooked, items slip through cracks, and months afterward, you scratch your head and ask how the scarf publicity landed users on a hat page. In that order, Google Ads was one of the biggest online advisors for the PPC search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you are a new company, who wants to take you into the world of PPC marketing but don’t know what to do, then look no further, because Headland Marketing has put together a checklist to ensure that you are in the right direction towards PPC success.

The checklists in this post are valid for PPC search networks that are built on ground as well as for those that are copied and pasted from current campaigns that carry all settings. Although the copy/paste approach is convenient, it is always necessary to adjust appropriately, or the campaign can go off track. Let’s have a look at the PPC Campaign checklist:.

PPC Search Campaign Launch Checklist: Here’s What You Need to Know

PPC search campaign launch checklist

Keywords Checklist

  • It is important to note that the keywords are listed in the correct ad group.
  • Be sure that appropriate match types are used. (You should not forget that in September the near variant environment shifts.
  • Ensure you look for duplication of keywords.
  • Check the negative keyword lists to make sure that the new campaign does not negate the relevant keywords.
  • If you have over 20 keywords in an ad group, probably you can break it down specifically. Remember that You should have a shortlist of keywords.

Ads Checklist

  • Make sure the most relevant title is included in the ads.
  • If possible, check display URLs contain keywords or not.
  • Make sure that you have mobile ads. Create a call-to-action mobile-specific if it makes sense for your business type.
  • Please include a messaging test between the two ads per ad group. To test and try testing two different calls for actions, create two separate ad messages.

Campaign Checklist

  • Double-check the daily budget and ensure that a decent budget is in place for new campaigns. After just one user clicks, the last thing you want is to achieve the maximum price per click.
  • Test the campaign settings. When there is an organization in various countries, such as in the US and internationally, ensure that the right place and marketing plan is targeted.
  • Make sure your campaign is configured for the search network too.

Ad group checklist

  • Review each ad group’s naming convention.
  • Make sure that the ad groups match the content and keywords and ads are under the right ad group.
  • Check the default ad group bid twice to make sure that you want it for each ad group.

Final Verdict

So these are the things you must take into consideration while making the PPC checklist. After your campaigns have been launched, you must take care of your PPC checklist regularly. To make sure that your checklist is up to the mark with the latest PPC standards, you must update your checklist regularly.

PPC Campaigns

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How to Check If Google Has Penalized Your Website

How to Check If Google Has Penalized Your Website

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How to Check If Google Has Penalized Your Website

Are you suspecting that Google has penalized your website? Sometimes, the reason could that you’re doing your on-site SEO practices wrongly or excessively.

You guessed right! A website penalized by Google will continue to drop in ranking till it doesn’t show in search engine result pages (SERPs) anymore.

If your priority is to get your site on top positions of Google or find possible ways to avoid Google from penalizing your site, you’re in the right place. But before that, let me tell you what Google penalties are.

How to Check If Google Has Penalized Your Website

What are Google Penalties?

Whether you’re new to blogging or a webmaster, it’s crucial to get familiar with this term ‘Google penalty.’

Google, the #1 search engine, defines parameters and update its algorithms (such as panda, penguin, pigeon, and hummingbird) periodically to constantly improve the quality of their search feeds.

And every time this happens, some websites get favored while others suffer. This means that algorithm updates sometimes help some sites get better organic traffic while some other sites are just dropping in rankings.

There are two types:

Manual Penalty.

This happens when someone from the Google webspam team reviews your website and finds it violating a number of reasons. Then, they decide to penalize the whole site or some pages of the site.

When this happens, Google gives you an update and tips to correct the issues.

Algorithm Penalty.

Commonly, your site may be automatically penalized by Google if you’re using SEO practices that are against their webmaster requirements. Algorithm penalty results from the frequent changes to Google’s ranking algorithms.

How to find out if you were hit? Use Google Search Console (which we’ll discuss below)

How to tell if Your Website has Been Penalized by Google?

Here are two practices you can use to check if Google has penalized your website:

  1. Login to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the platform you can interact with Google to see any potential issues with your site. Whether a manual penalty or algorithm penalty, this medium will help you tackle the problem effectively.

All you need to do is create an account and login. Then, scroll down under Security & Manual Actions and select ‘Manual actions.’

If you see a “No issues detected” message, it means your site is clean. However, if there are any issues, follow the instructions carefully to solve them.

  1. Check Your Google Analytics Data

The best way to check if Google has penalized your website is to check if you’re indexed.

Login to your Google Analytics and review your organic traffic if there’s a drop or not. If you notice a drop during the period Google updates their algorithm, then most likely you were affected.

From the dashboard, select your website and then click on ACQUISITION. From the dropdown, click All Traffic > Source/Medium.

The statistics from the report are the number of human visits from search engine result pages (SERPs) for the specific period you want to see.

Why Google Penalizes a Website?

There are several reasons Google may penalize your site. Some of them are:

  • Broken Links. Feedback from a broken link will read a 404 error. No one likes it – even Google hates it. Depending on the CMS you’re using for your site, you may install plugins to always check and tell you if there are any broken links. An example is a broken link checker plugin from WordPress.
  • Anchor Text Over-optimization. Over optimizing your anchor texts will result in keyword stuffing, which is just bad for your website.
  • Duplicate Content. If you’re just copying or repeating the content on your site, for instance, your blogs, that will amount to nothing. Instead, Google may eventually penalize your site. UNIQUE, top-quality content ranks your pages.

Other reasons may include:

  • Use of excessive ads
  • High bounce rate
  • Hidden links
  • Lost backlinks
  • Malware or suspicious code on your site

Final Thoughts

The first step to recovering from Google penalties if you’ve already been penalized is to diagnose the problems. The issues could be low quality or duplicate content, broken links, or anything else. Then, you may start resolving the issues one after the other.

SEO in Leeds

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How to Diagnose Your Google Ranking Drops?

How to Diagnose Your Google Ranking Drops?

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How to Diagnose Your Google Ranking Drops?

A sudden drop in Google ranking can be caused by several factors, such as an algorithm update, technical issues, internal link issues, and a Google penalty.

However, don’t panic!

I’ve put together some helpful tips to help you diagnose your Google ranking issues and a possible way to fix them! Let’s get started.

How to Diagnose Your Google Ranking Drops?

Did Your Google Rankings really drop?

You need to be sure your rankings dropped, and not your SEO tools acting up.

First of all, check your rank tracer’s website to see if there are any issues. Just so you know, results with Google and the trackers could be tricky. The reason is that rank tracers often lag on updates as Google changes their search engine result pages.

Additionally, double-check your web analytics suite as well as your Google Search Console to confirm that your SEO traffic and Google rankings truly drop.

If after running these checks and you’ve confirmed that your ranking has dropped, then you can proceed with diagnosing the underlying issues behind the poor search position.

Diagnosing Your Google Ranking Problem

In this section, I’ll explain possible reasons your Google ranking may be dropping and how you can fix the problem – and possibly preventing it in the future.

Did You Get Penalized?

More frequently, a Google penalty could be the reason for ranking issues. And the tricky part is, there are a lot of reasons we don’t care about that could earn a penalty.

It could be that you implemented some Blackhat SEO tactics, duplicate content, keyword stuffing, broken external links, and the list goes on.

Whether an algorithmic penalty or a manual penalty, you should ensure not to face either of them.

That said, you could even lose out your ranking for some other reasons. So, read on and pay attention.

Traffic Changes

Analytics data, including web analytics data, Bing Webmaster Tools data, and Google Search Console data can help you identify falls in traffic and its effects so you can diagnose the issues.

However, keep in mind that a drop in rankings does not only come from issues from your site. You may want to check if there’s any problem with your social media presence.

Perhaps, the problem is with your hosting provider and has prevented users from reaching your site. In other words, ensure the page is indexable. Also, compare the period in which your rankings dropped to the time in which they were still good.

Most importantly, focus on problems that have the most notable bad impact on your site. For instance, you should prioritize a problem that impacted your site ranking from page one to page 4 on SERPs higher than a problem that made one of your pages dropped rankings.

Technical Changes

As before, double-check that your site is still reachable and search engines are still indexing your site.

Check if there are any changes in your HTTP status codes, Canonical URL, Robot.txt, or Meta robots tag.

Internal Link Structure Changes

If there are frequent changes to the internal links on your homepage or other authoritative pages, you might have unstable SEO performances.

More frequently, when you just performed a website redesigning.

But how to fix and improve rankings?

Having understood reasons your rankings may be dropping, the next big thing is finding possible ways to fix and improve your rankings. Here are two important things you can do:

  1. Create High Quality, Optimized Content

One of the most significant ways to measure relevancy and rankings in the search results is to continue posting highly-optimized SEO blog posts.

If you publish a website or you’re starting a business, and just let it sit, chances are it won’t as well as your competitors’ who update their blogs regularly.

If you neglect your site for too long, consider updating your content now. Publish fresh, new content with natural SEO keyword – you may take a quick surf on your rivals – and watch your site rankings perform better.

However, in all you do, try as much as possible to avoid duplicate content. This is because no matter how relevant or unique your content is, duplicating it can affect your rankings negatively.

  1. Consider Hiring an SEO Expert

If you’ve been through every step above and all you can think of, and still can’t diagnose your Google rankings drop issues, or perhaps you’ve tried fixing the poor statistics but all to no avail, it may be time to talk to an SEO expert.

The internet is already highly competitive to not pay attention or invest in your search engine rankings. So, it makes a lot of sense keeping up with your rankings. After all, your site is the most significant tool in your marketing strategy considering long term benefits.

SEO in Leeds

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Google Announces Web Vitals

Google Announces Web Vitals

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Google Announces Web Vitals

Early May 2020, Google announced an upcoming change to search rankings –  Web Vitals as a ranking signal. These are a set of initiatives equipped to offer web developers and site owners with metrics to help them improve their sites with the consumer experience in thoughts.

Within those new metrics, there is a unified set of metrics every website builder should concentrate on, referred to as “Core Web Vitals.”

Usually, Google has always been in the business of helping SMEs and builders improve consumer experiences. And now, Web Vitals is here to enhance clarity and consistency challenges for business owners.

According to Google, “Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world, user-centred metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger – how annoying!

Google Announces Web Vitals

Page Ranking Signal & Ranking

By introducing Core Web Vitals as ranking signals, and combining with page experience, Google aims to encourage better website buildings. Moreover, this is a win-win for website owners; an improved page rank, and user experience.

Invariably, Google will rank a page that considers user experience and engagement seriously. However, don’t forget to invest in a good content strategy, as all these work together.

Annual Updates for Core Web Vitals

Google’s Core Web Vitals will embrace several tools such as loading experiences, interactivity, and visibility of page content.

Specifically:

  • Largest Contentful Paint. is the time it takes for the content of a page to load. Google recommends an LCP of 5 seconds or faster.
  • First Input Delay. measures responsiveness or time it takes a page to interact with its users. Unlike LCP, a recommended FID is 100 milliseconds.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift measures the amount of stability or unexpected layout shift of web page content. The recommended timing is less than 0.1.

With this set of metrics, Google aims to help site owners measure their user experience. In other words, site owners can measure loading time, visual stability, and interactivity.

Keep in mind, however, that Core Web Visuals may change from year to year.

Measuring Core Web Vitals

There are many tools available online that can be used to measure Core Web Vitals. Examples include Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, and Chrome UX Report.

Also, Google promises to release an extension for the Chrome browser so you can quickly preview the Core Web Vitals of any page. The company is also working on other third-parties tools.

Other User Experience Signals

Other page experience ranking factors can be measured using the following:

  • Mobile-friendliness: use Google’s mobile-friendly test.
  • Safe browsing: check to ensure if your site is harmless for users. Also, check the security issues report.
  • HTTPS: is your site using a secure HTTPS connection?
  • Intrusive interstitial guidelines: is your site free from nasty pop-ups?

What’s Next…Google Page Experience Update?

For the next page experience update in 2021, Google is promising “building better understanding and ability to measure page speed, and other critical user experience features.”

To allow site owners, SEOs, and developers to gather their tools, Google gives an insight into the update to come. You can expect new tools to enhance these metrics, new documentation, better report on how you can improve your site, and privateness preserving experiences.

Need some help?

if you need help with improving the speed of your website, making it more mobile-friendly, or overall SEO efforts, feel free to reach an expert on 012 74 615 959

SEO in Leeds

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What Is Keyword Cannibalization?

What Is Keyword Cannibalization?

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What Is Keyword Cannibalization?

There’s this common saying “the more pages you have targeting a specific keyword, the better your chance of ranking.” That’s incorrect!

If you optimize several pages for the same keyword, you can expect the opposite result – poor ranking.

The reason is simple: you’re competing with yourself. And that’s referred to as keyword cannibalization. In this article, I’ll explain why keyword cannibalism is bad for your SEO, how you can identify it, and possible ways to solve it. 

What Is Keyword Cannibalization?

What is Keyword Cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization means that you’re splitting links, contents, and CTR between various blog posts or pages that should be 1. It happens when you optimize 2 to 3 pages on your site for the same search query or keyphrase.

When this happens, Google considers your site to have shallow information. In other words, the 2 or 3 similar pages will need to compete for ranking. And ultimately, all of them struggle in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Usually, Google will pick just 1 of the several pages you’re ranking for the same search query.

For example, if your website sells female clothes, and “ladies clothes” is the only keyword on your pages, you’re telling Google that every page is about “ladies clothes” regardless of whether they’re large, XL, XXL, etc.

5 Reasons Keyword Cannibalism is Bad for Your SEO?

Keyword cannibalization can be potentially harmful to your SEO strategies, and make them seem struggling.

It’s just very straightforward; you compete with yourself! Sometimes, people don’t even know when they do keyword cannibalization.

Practically, the effects are now clear, however, keyphrase leading to the wrong page, lost site organic traffic, fluctuating SERPS ranking, and of course, lost in sales.

Here are four reasons keyword cannibalization is bad for your SEO:

  1. Lower Page Authority

As expected, keyword cannibalism will result in lower page authority. Since you’re splitting CTR to several pages, you’ll have shared authoritative pages instead of 1 solid page.

Essentially, all the pages, say about 3 of them, are fighting for pageviews and ranking.

  1. Google May Devalue the More Relevant Page

One of the best ways of signaling Google that your page is relevant is to optimize it with a user’s keyword. Imagine what happens if you’ve just one keyword for multiple pages – Google gets confused!

  1. A Sign of Poor Page Quality

Several pages trying to rank for similar keyphrase tells your audience that your content is probably mediocre. Also, it tells Google that your content may not be relevant to the search query of your potential users.

  1. Diluted Backlinks and Conversion Rate

Inevitably, important factors like conversion rate and backlinks will get diluted over multiple posts.

Instead of directing your audience to an authoritative page and making the best of it, you’ll lose potential leads. And the pages will rank lower because they compete with each other.

  1. Internal Anchor Text

Since multiple pages on your website focus on the same subject, you lose out on the value of internal anchor text targeting one of the pages.

How to Recognize Keyword Cannibalization?

Fortunately, identifying cannibalization is easy.

Follow these detailed steps:

  1. You can simply use online tools like Ahref Site Explorer to search for your site’s specific keywords.
  2. Export the result in a spreadsheet and sort alphabetically. This way, you can easily identify any two pages targeting a similar keyword.
  3. Identify manually. This is the bit that becomes time-consuming but it’s worthwhile

That’s just it!

How to Solve Keyword Cannibalization?

Now that you’ve learned how to identify one, I’m guessing you’d like to jump to resolving a cannibalization problem.

Depending on the root of the problem, here are some options for you:

Restructure Your Website

This is the simplest option available to resolve a cannibalization problem.

Here’s how it’s done: take your “master” page and convert it into a landing page that links to other relevant pages that target similar keywords.

Simple as that!

Merging & Using 301 Redirects

It’s possible to merge two underperforming pages and turn them into a more juicing source. However, this option is best for two similar pages that are getting traffic for the same keyword.

For instance, let’s say you have a page “10 Best Gaming Laptop of 2020” and which is cannibalizing with another page “10 Best Gaming Laptops of 2020 Under £1,000”.

The best option here is to merge the content on the two pages into one “authoritative” resource. Merge the “under £1,000” page into the “10 Best Gaming Laptops of 2020” page. This way, you avoid thin content – and rank even better than before.

Then, you can use 301 redirects to send juice from the former page to the “master” one.

Doing this, the receiving page inherits the traffics and anchors of the sending page. Your visitors will land on the right page and Google will give preference to the most valuable page.

Canonical Tags

Instead of using the same key phrase on several pages, you can deploy kinds of it and link back to the canonical source for the specific keyword. This way, you’re telling Google that one of the pages is important than the others.

When used properly, canonicals do not only resolve keyword cannibalism but also keeps your users in mind. So, in return, you’re resolving two problems with one solution: cannibalization and better user experience.

SEO in Leeds

 

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How Google My Business Can Help Your Local SEO

How Google My Business Can Help Your Local SEO

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How Google My Business Can Help Your Local SEO

Since its debut arrival in 2014, Google My Business has been a game-changer. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it even makes more sense to make the most of it. Moreover, it’s free to use.

There are loads of ways Google My Business can help your local SEO. Let me show you how.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a one-stop tool that offers several benefits for local businesses. It’s one of the most useful tools that give you insights into how the performance of your business across Google, including Google Maps and organic search results.

It’s a free platform that lets you edit and update your information such as your NAP details, photos, opening hours, and more. However, you must verify that you own the business before you can have access to these tools.

Google My Business is the first step towards improving your local SEO content strategy. In addition to giving you an edge on your competitors, it will help with your organic rankings and visibility on Google Maps.

How Google My Business Can Help Your Local SEO

How Does It Work?

Getting started with Google My Business is easy. All you have to do is create an account by clicking on ‘start now’. And you can either sign in with an already existing Google account or create a new one.

You’ll be required to fill in correct details about your business such as business name, contact, address, etc.

Once done, Google will send you a real-life postcard through the address you identified with your listing. Usually, it takes a few days to arrive. And it will come with a verification code. Depending on your type of business, it’s possible to get verified via an email or a phone call.

Here’s a note: It’s important to let you know that even when your listing is live, you should log in regularly as people can try and make changes to your account details.

Optimizing Your Google My Business Listing

After claiming your business, do the following to optimize your Google My Business for SEO efficiently:

Enter Complete Data for Your Listing

Google requires that you enter your complete data for your Google My Business profile.

When done, your listing will be more relevant to searchers and will provide valuable information about your company, including what your business does, its location, and your services.

Let me remind you that there’s a “Suggest an edit” button on every GMB listing. And if you don’t fill this up yourself, anyone – even your competitors – can make some dramatic edit to your listing.

So, you must log in to the GMB dashboard frequently to ensure no one has to input any unwanted edits to your listing.

Add Photos

Gone are the times when the internet used to be centered on text and information. Marketers have discovered that media, especially photos, help business performances even beyond expectations.

Google observed that businesses with photos on their listings receive 42% more requests on Google Maps and 35% more click-throughs to their websites than businesses without photos or media.

So, adding photos to your Google My Business page is a great way to improve your local SEO game. Moreover, it helps for better interaction between you and your customers; a “behind-the-scenes contribution.

Google My Business & Customer Reviews

Interacting with your customers online gives the impression that you care about your customers.

Positive reviews can let your business stand out among your competitors. So, don’t forget to ethically ask satisfied customers for online reviews.

Additionally, online reviews can influence customer trust, as well as impact your business’s visibility in search results. According to BrightLocal’s 2019 Consumer Review Survey, 68% of consumers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

TIP: To create a direct link to where your customers can leave a review on your Google My Business listing, you can click here to begin.

Keep Business Operating Hours Accurate

Here’s something you should pay attention to when setting up your Google My Business listing.

Ensure that your business hours tally with your actual working hours, or say your opening and closing hours.

Summary

So, get your claim your My Business listing and leverage it for better business performance. Optimize all of it!

But, it will be great if you put in the same efforts to improve your on-site and off-site SEO. This practice will increase your rankings. Optimize your site, create local content and news. Ask customers for review. Make your page professional.

And that’s all it takes. Go for it!

SEO in Leeds

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Tips for Your Local SEO Content Strategy

Tips for Your Local SEO Content Strategy

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Tips for Your Local SEO Content Strategy

In terms of some tips, Local SEO is similar to onsite SEO – only that it’s mainly targeted at the local users. Specifically, you’re aiming to rank above other local firms that offer the same services as you.

There’s no point in a Bradford-based cleaning agency ranking high in Leeds’ local search results. They want users searching the cleaning agency in Bradford to find them.

Your goal is to help local searchers discover the products or services they need – that you offer. So, it’s important to improve your local SEO if you want results with your onsite SEO traffic.

Now then, let me give you tips to improve your local SEO content strategy.

Tips for Your Local SEO Content Strategy

Optimize Your “Google My Business” Page

One of the most potent tips to improve your local SEO strategy is to optimize your Google My Business page.

Google helps local businesses like yours maximize their visibility and business. All you need to do is to list your business with the platform. And when local users search for a keyword that you’re ranking for, your business will show up on the local Google Maps.

Here’s how:

  • Create dedicated, detailed information about your business indicating your Name, Address, Email, and Phone contact.
  • Put your business addresses
  • Make your page mobile-friendly – make phone numbers clickable. 76% of local searches result in a phone call.
  • Add a map or your locations
  • Add testimonials

Additionally, you must optimize your website. Otherwise, it becomes difficult for your business to climb the search engine result pages (SERPs).

And this leads us to tip 2: creating local content.

  1. Create Local Content

Content and SEO work together.

And just as that is true, you should optimize your blog with relevant local keywords.

There are many free tools available online, including Google’s Keyword Planner, you can use to find relevant keywords your local audience use when they surf. It doesn’t just end there – include the keywords in your content, titles, and meta tags.

However, in all you do, avoid the habit of keyword stuffing. Otherwise, the content becomes very poorly and is considered spamming.

Also, creating a link to your blog such as https://staging.techomatic.co.uk/blog-news/ will help in directing traffic to your business’s main site.

Don’t forget to include local city, neighborhood areas or towns, and unofficial terms wherever you find suitable.

  1. Get Regular Reviews from Happy Customers

Another great tip for improving your local SEO content strategy is by asking happy customers to give online reviews.

What’s more, 91% of millennials trust online reviews as much as personal referrals.

This means that positive reviews can help you attract more local customers. So, go ahead and ask your happy customers for glowing reviews to your online page.

Find some tips below to encourage your customers to give positive reviews:

  • Don’t forget to ask for a review in person after the close a sale
  • You can send a post-sale text message or an email asking your customer to write a review (but only after you’re confident they are satisfied with your services)
  • Give feedback to existing reviews just as soon as you can. Thank your customers and encourage them to visit again.

  1. Create a Mobile-Responsive Website

The use of mobile is shifting significantly, and so is the number of mobile visits to websites.

According to a data by Statista, 52.2% of all website traffic came from mobile devices in 2018.

Also, a study by Stone Temple supports this fact. From the report, visits from mobile devices grew from 57% in 2016 to 63% in 207. And total visits to websites from desktop shrunk from 43% in 2016 to just 37% in 2017.

This tells you that creating a mobile-friendly website is key to improving your local SEO content strategy.

Read here: why you should invest in SEO.

Final Thoughts

So, you see that putting enough time on developing a quality local SEO strategy is key to the growth of your business. However, at the same time, pay attention to SEO trends that change frequently.

Implement these actionable tips we’ve discussed above to strengthen your local SEO content strategy. This way, you can be many steps ahead of your competitors – and even have a solid foundation for the regular SEO updates

SEO in Leeds

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How to Fine Tune Your Keyword Research

How to Fine Tune Your Keyword Research

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How to Fine Tune Your Keyword Research

Before you begin your keyword research journey, you should know about how to fine tune your keyword research to avoid costly mistakes that may slow your growth down.

One of the top mistakes SEOs make is focusing on the keyword, rather than the customer himself. Don’t panic, let me show you how!

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Focus more on your audience, and less on your site structure and content when planning keyword research.
  • Go beyond popular keyword strategies.

How to Fine Tune Your Keyword Research

3 ways to Fine Tune Your Keyword Research

Let’s get started.

#1 Focusing on Keywords that are irrelevant to Your Customers

Frequently, people use high ranking keywords related to their field but fail to pay attention to the relevancy of those keywords.

When selecting keywords for your content, you need to pick keywords that match your audience’s concerns – not just keywords with high search volumes.

For instance, if you’re targeting high school students who are searching for best public colleges with affordable fees in Bradford, you shouldn’t use keywords like “high-cost public colleges Bradford” or “best universities in Bradford.” They aren’t searching for those keywords. Instead, you should target a keyword like “best affordable colleges Bradford.”

Moreover, you must not forget that each of your audience has a unique need, and they use different keywords when they surf.

Additionally, study the language and behavior of your customer. Your page needs to be relevant to what they search for and provide answers to their questions.

#2 Do NOT Focus only on Keywords based on Existing Site Structure

A common practice among marketers is that they look at the main pages of their site to figure out mostly ranked keywords searched by users.

Getting this, they focus on optimizing those pages for the keywords they picked.

That practice may not be helpful at the very end. The reason is that one can miss out on several other relevant keywords users search for that the site structure or content is yet to cover.

To fine tune your keyword research, you’ve got to find all possible keywords that are currently relevant to your potential audience.

You must begin to focus more on your audience, and less on your site structure and content.

After all, your customers don’t live in the past. They might even be searching for relevant content to your business that you’ve not written about.

Among the SEO essentials is the need to modify your site content, create new pages and headlines that are better optimized for the right keywords.

#3 Go beyond popular Keyword Strategies

When it comes to refining or trying to fine tune your keyword research, you may sometimes need to beyond the popular keyword strategies.

Other than the regular brainstorming or using keyword planners like Ahref Keyword Explorer and Google Keyword Planner, try something different.

In fact, most keyword research tools will just sort all keywords by search volume by default.

The problem with this approach is that your competitors are doing the same thing as you. So, it becomes difficult to rank higher, especially if they are doing it better than you.

Instead, try something different such as intercepting your customer in the middle of a purchase decision (knowing your buyer’s journey) or simply offer a better solution. That’s it!

Going beyond popular keyword strategies works because fewer people are doing it. Hence, low competition, less targeted keyword traffic, and more business-focused.

I hope you find this piece of information useful.

Have a question? Feel free to contact us here.

SEO in Leeds

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